PowerSwitch

https://phys.org/news/2019-07-west-anta ... ocean.html

A team of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is now scrutinising a daring way of stabilising the ice sheet: Generating trillions of tons of additional snowfall by pumping ocean water onto the glaciers and distributing it with snow canons.

No, it isn't April 1st. This is a real story.

I love the idea.

Where is all the heat, liberated as the water freezes, going to go?

More to the point where is all the energy to pump all that water going to come from? Solar panels?

Won't all that snow just add weight and make the ice flow quicker?

As to a sense of humour; this is a German University you're talking about!!

Salt water has a lower freezing point than fresh water which is what the glaciers are made of so it may actually melt them further. Antarctica in winter could be cold enough I suppose to melt even salt water.

The liberation of all that latent heat could even change the climate further.

Maybe cover the ice sheets with kitchen foil to reflect the heat. I should charge the European Union five euros for my in depth research project.

Unlikely to be sensible for the reasons already given.

However a related idea would be to make snow from fresh water and apply this to regions that receive natural snow.
This is a well understood technology that is already widely applied in alpine ski resorts.
If a region receives say 2M of natural snow each winter, and if this persists for say 3 months, then applying man made snow in addition could result in the snow cover now lasting for 5 months.
Since white snow reflects sunlight, whilst exposed rock, soil or vegetation absorbs sunlight, this should help a little.
Plenty of renewable energy and fresh water would be needed. But both are available in many places.

So, to stop global warming we simply need to paint much of the world white. Easy.

Catweazle wrote:So, to stop global warming we simply need to paint much of the world white. Easy.

In the back of my mind i seem to vaguely recall reading an idea to paint all the roofs of buildings white and i'm thinking there was a calculation as to how much sunlight would be reflected back out into space.
On a practical but much smaller scale i used to have a workshop with a flat felted roof which in summer would become very hot inside. I painted the roof white and it made it a far more comfortable place to be.

Snow making is an energy intensive operation. You have large, usually diesel, pumps pumping water from a water source up to the top of a mountain along side huge diesel compressors that supply the needed jet of air needed to spray the water out in droplets small enough to freeze into "snow" before they hit the ground. It would be a net loss if you were trying to save the planet with it.
Solar panels on roof tops or in farm arrays on the other hand should be a net positive. The solar energy they convert into electricity is not available to radiate back into the atmosphere and runs through the grid system to it's point of use. The fossil fuel electricity it replaces is no longer emitting CO2 so depending on the use of the electricity you have at least one positive and perhaps two if the electricity is not used to create heat.
So instead of painting Antarctica and Greenland white with paint or snow we should cover West Texas and most of the Shara with solar farms. Might even turn a profit doing it.

That’s a good idea. Which species that currently live there, will it drive to extinction?

Example: desert tortoises.

woodburner wrote:That’s a good idea. Which species that currently live there, will it drive to extinction?

Example: desert tortoises.

That is hard to say with any accuracy. It would take quite an effort to cover all of the tortoise habitat and even if you approached 100 % the tortoises might benefit from the additional shade provided by the PV panels.
Of course you would not install a PV farm on a penguin rookery or anything else as stupid but doing nothing has major negative environmental impacts so one must always weigh which course of action does the least harm.

We get similar opposition from anti wind farm locals about spoiling the views of the North Hampshire and Berkshire Downs by putting wind farms on them. The thought that the changing climate might spoil the view has not occurred to the objectors. And if we find a new miracle energy source the wind turbines could easily be removed and no one would be the wiser that they has ever been there. The lump of alkaline concrete below ground in the alkaline chalk isn't going to do much damage to anything apart from a few earthworms that might grind their teeth on it.

Then there’s the birds knocked out by blades, and the bats. As for the shade for the tortoises, that suggestion is in the category of one the most banal and ill thought through which appear on the forum from time to time, as is KL’s ill thought through suggestion that the world be buggered if we don’t build them, so we’ll build them anyway, and bugger it that way. I would feel safer with nature’s changes than with more interference from industrial and corporate interests, supported by climate alarmists, who repeatedly forecast gloom and doom in twelve years. It’s always twelve years, just likeit’s 97%.

The desert tortoises have lived in their habitat successfully for many years, probably many millenia. So humans can improve their existance by giving them sunshades? You really don’t have much of a clue.

Woodburner, you are putting words into people's mouths again. Where did I say that the world would be buggered if we don't build "them"? What proof do you have that if we build "them" we will bugger it that way? How please? Who is forecasting gloom and doom in 12 years? References please as people are always forecasting "it"? As for the 97% you are overestimating the amount of dissent in climate science circles. You, woodburner, haven't been able to come up with even one climate scientist who doesn't agree with the consensus so it's probably 100% who agree.

Then how many birds and bats are knocked out by turbine blades? References again because this is just another of your denier fairy tales.

So are you saying there will be no problem if wind turbines are not built?

As for putting words into people’s mouths, I must of course respect a master of the art. You, for example, recently called me a trump lover (or very similar) This was during one of your abuse torrents directed at me. So I suppose it’s another case of the pot calling the KettLe black.

I think Nils-Axel Mörner would have something to say about your exaggerating the already ridiculous 97% to 100%. Or is he someone else in the pocket of the major fuel companies?