Melting the Icecaps

[alfonzo_de_credenza]

I think from reading an interview with Harlan Ellison, I saw mention of the author Gerald Kersh. I read one of his books, The Secret Masters, published in 1953.

Spoiled below…

As I recall, the plot was to melt the ice caps by redirecting the gulf stream northwards. This was to be accomplished by using a new type of nuclear bomb underwater to destroy ridges that direct the current north east towards Europe.

The reason for doing this was to raise the water level by several hundred feet, thereby wiping out the riffraff. The plotters would retire to their secret lairs built on high ground. The book contains maps of the dry land masses that would remain.

[Deeg]

@Hussman32

I’m starting to wonder if Cecil’s doppleganger has been writing some columns. The tone of the SD global warming position has changed from the remarkably pragmatic opinion that we probably don’t have much of an impact on temperature, but we need to find a way to use energy to find other energy sources before they run out

It’s possible (even probable) that the skepticism that was warranted 5 years ago is no longer so. More data keeps coming in, some questions are being answered, and much skepticism has died away.

[Measure_for_Measure]

@tomL

I was disappointed by the satire. It looked rather cheap after he’d gone to pains to make this point just two paragraphs prior:

“Fossil fuels, then? Good luck — those 11.3 yottajoules are more than a thousand times the energy contained in the entire world’s proved oil reserves (and that’s assuming we can convert the energy to heat with 100 percent efficiency). Throw in all the globe’s coal and natural gas and, once again, we still don’t get to even one percent of what’s required.”

So we burn every last molecule and get 1% of the heat required, but the insulating effect of the resulting gases immediately provides the other 99%?

Not to mention the reliance on positive feedback in that effect, having just used the negative feedback of “sun-blocking cloud cover” as a reason mirrors wouldn’t work.

Greetings tomL and welcome to the Straight Dope.

You might want to re-read the column. Cecil sez regarding the heat output of fossil fuels, “Good luck — those 11.3 yottajoules are more than a thousand times the energy contained in the entire world’s proved oil reserves”. But our Evil Genius has another plan: he wants to convert fossil fuels into CO2 by some arcane process and use that (along with methane and other greenhouse gases) to level the Antarctic, via a separate and by now familiar mechanism. It’s hard to see how that might be implausible: one mechanism involves rapid combustion, the other enduring interaction with the sun.

[felixSD]

@jimmythefly

What about volcanic energy? Contact evil genius construction company, build deep-bore robots, release liquid hot magma into polar ice fields?

I’m with you, jimmy. Only I was thinking of using nukes to do the boring. Immediate problem: getting the nukes to the hole. Once the hole gets deep, the heat melts all the neighboring ice and makes a deep, deep lake.

Anyway, the Earth is just a super hot ball of iron+ with an ultra-thin, cool wrapper, so the trick would be to simply split that wrapper a bit.

The Secret Government Evil Genius Gravity Reform Board could help with this. Let’s check with them.

Anyway, the hole is also the solution to mankind’s Earth-bound-ness problem. Dig the big hole and put the tailings in a huge mountain to outer space. The top of the mountain would be above water, anyway.

[tomL]

@Measure_for_Measure

Greetings tomL and welcome to the Straight Dope.

Thanks. Been reading and enjoying these columns for a few years now.

@Measure_for_Measure

You might want to re-read the column. Cecil sez regarding the heat output of fossil fuels, “Good luck — those 11.3 yottajoules are more than a thousand times the energy contained in the entire world’s proved oil reserves”. But our Evil Genius has another plan: he wants to convert fossil fuels into CO2 by some arcane process and use that (along with methane and other greenhouse gases) to level the Antarctic

I realize what he’s saying, but he undermines his own skepticism about the time required, and ignores his point about the negative feedback of cloud cover, which was a major caveat to the direct-insolation method. If the actual burning of the available fuel releases less than 1% of the heat required, how are we expected to believe that the remaining 99% will promptly be delivered by the sun (without mirrors), even with the atmosphere nicely insulated?

And as fredricwilliams has put it so succinctly, “if we can’t do it deliberately with everything working in our favor, Cecil thinks we can do it accidentally?”

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@tomL

Thanks. Been reading and enjoying these columns for a few years now.

I realize what he’s saying, but he undermines his own skepticism about the time required, and ignores his point about the negative feedback of cloud cover, which was a major caveat to the direct-insolation method. If the actual burning of the available fuel releases less than 1% of the heat required, how are we expected to believe that the remaining 99% will promptly be delivered by the sun (without mirrors), even with the atmosphere nicely insulated?

And as fredricwilliams has put it so succinctly, “if we can’t do it deliberately with everything working in our favor, Cecil thinks we can do it accidentally?”

The answer to that question is that you’re comparing apples and oranges. We can’t do it with burning fossil fuels, i.e. a finite direct application of energy. We can do it with burning fossil fuels creating a greenhouse effect to trap the relatively inexhaustible additional energy that the suns adds to the earth 24 hours every day, or two sources of energy, one that is continually applied. The greenhouse effect and cloud cover are two different scenarios, BTW, so one can’t be used to negate the effects of the other.

Now it’s true that Cecil ignored the time frame on this, which is likely to be long. But it’s not true that he ever mentions drowning the world. The letter writer did that. Cecil talked about nothing other than melting the polar ice, which is long-term feasible, although in reality we would alter our practices and contribution long before it got to that.

[SpyOne]

@Name_of_the_User

All the ice wouldn’t have to be melted to “drown the Teeming Millions?”
How much would and how much energy would that take?

Indeed, just melting enough that the rest of it started floating would be as good as melting it all, as Cecil himself pointed out (almost accidentally) because the floating ice would displace water equal to it’s weight, causing the seas to rise.

BYW: this grandiose Bond Villain plan was used on an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Doctor Bashir was on the holodeck playing secret agent, and the villain planned to flood the world, surviving because his secret lair was in the Himalayas. Even had the perfect Bond-villain name for a man with such a plan: Dr. Noah.

[SpyOne]

@tomL

I realize what he’s saying, but he undermines his own skepticism about the time required, and ignores his point about the negative feedback of cloud cover, which was a major caveat to the direct-insolation method. If the actual burning of the available fuel releases less than 1% of the heat required, how are we expected to believe that the remaining 99% will promptly be delivered by the sun (without mirrors), even with the atmosphere nicely insulated?

And as fredricwilliams has put it so succinctly, “if we can’t do it deliberately with everything working in our favor, Cecil thinks we can do it accidentally?”

Think of the first option Cecil mentioned, the one that came the closest to working in a meaningful time frame: a Giant Space Mirror the size of North America could do the job in 20 years. In theory.

But the Giant Space Mirror presents lots of practical problems, as Cecil noted.
What we need is something that works like the giant space mirror, but is easier to do.
The Earth reflects, on average, 30% of the sun’s energy back into space. If you could make it stop doing that, somehow trap the energy here, it would be like having a giant space mirror 30% the size of the earth.
However, that mirror would not be aimed directly at the ice, so it wouldn’t be nearly as fast. And as Cecil noted, the cloud cover created by the melting ice will block sunlight, slowing things down, but I bet those clouds would be absorbing a bunch of the heat, so while they are a problem is you are trying to directly cook the ice, they are less of a problem if what you are trying to cook is the atmosphere.

I was on your side until I went to write this reply: re-reading Cecil’s column I saw that a Giant Space Mirror could do the job in 20 years, and that means that something that works 1/10 that well is still pretty frightening, because I’d like to still be around in 1 or 200 years if I can manage it.

[Hussman32]

@Deeg

It’s possible (even probable) that the skepticism that was warranted 5 years ago is no longer so. More data keeps coming in, some questions are being answered, and much skepticism has died away.

If you read Essenhigh’s viewpoint article

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/31/i05/html/05vp.html

you’ll see there is no room for more data to have an impact. He’s talking about problem re-definition. I have a solid, practicing background in aqueous chemistry and radiation attenuation, the concepts he’s describing are spot on (CO2 concentrations in the air are driven by ocean temperature and pH, our contribution is in the noise of the CO2 exchange, and the infrared absorption by water is dominant). Regarding the geological history, I’d have to defer to the references.

Like I said, reducing pollution is the right goal, but make sure the scientific method is followed.

[Deeg]

@Hussman32

If you read Essenhigh’s viewpoint article

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/31/i05/html/05vp.html

Am I correct in understanding that Essenhigh’s article was published in 2001? There’s been a lot of research since then.

[curious11]

This is the article where Cecil explains Essenhigh’s theory…

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...rming-for-real

How long will an economy that runs on digging stuff up out of the ground last? I wonder.

[XT]

Well, humanity has relied on digging ore out of the ground for thousands of years and is still going strong so I’d say we aren’t in danger on that score any time soon…

-XT

[Johnny_Q]

I’ve heard that black paint can cause some serious melting due to it’s heat absorption properties. You probably wouldn’t even have to paint the whole ice shelf to score some serious damage.

[Lestrade]

@curious11

This is the article where Cecil explains Essenhigh’s theory…

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...rming-for-real

How long will an economy that runs on digging stuff up out of the ground last? I wonder.

That URL should be http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2647/is-global-warming-for-real, I think.

[vislor]

I have a friend who works for NASA doing meteorological work. He has been doing this for several decades with the last one studying the ice and permanent ice in the north pole area. (Actually, south of that, but everything is.)

I was not sure if global warming was happening or if it was influenced by humans. He convinced me it was.

In his studies, he has found that the permanent ice isn’t as permanent anymore. I don’t have the numbers but where we used to have X amount of permanent ice, now we have Y where X > Y. So, in the past decade, there is a noticeable change in the amount of ice. It’s melting more and not refreezing as much due to climactic changes.

However, as with most subjects, there are questions about what this means. We are interrupting a centuries or millennial long process with no idea about what it means. I doubt we ever will until it happens and then it’s too late.

What I don’t remember is if it’s speeding up, the rate of melting, as it happens or if it’s a constant amount. In either case, we are definitely influencing the earth’s climate.

[RnBram]

Even though Phil Jones (U of Arcadia), Jim Hansen (NASA) and Michael Mann (Penn State U) were fudging the temperature data like crazy —a billion dollar fraud— they could not make AGW real.

Most of the last 800 million years CO2 and Temp have been **much ** higher than in the last several 100,000 years.

CO2 levels above ~300 ppm are believed to have maxed out their infra red absorption ability. We are presently at ~400 ppm (.04%). In the Jurassic it was approaching 4%, which is 100x present levels. The plants and dinosaurs loved it.

1,000 yrs ago, in the Medieval Warm Period, it was warmer than now… the World did not flood, the permafrost did not lead to a methane & CO2 positive feedback heating system.

The minimum CO2 levels for common C3 plants is ~180 ppm. Earth is STARVING for atm-CO2 because it is all trapped in ocean sediments and sedimentary rocks (you know, the Himalayas, Alps, Urals, Andes, Rockies, Appalachians, and others!). The quantity trapped is insanely huge.

As for ocean level increases. One commenter put it at 3 to 6 mm /year. Well tectonic plates drift up and down (as well as sideways) by 3 to 6 centimeters/yr. That is, the plates are more likely to drown us or protect us than melting ice.

One thing Cecil left out: as the ice caps melt, dust will sit on the top, just like it does on spring snowbanks in cities. After that dust layer gets a few decimeters thick, it will insulate the ice caps, dramatically slowing the melting process.

I think Cecil was ridiculing the AGW crowd… and nicely done so that they would fall for it… heh, heh, heh.

[SpyOne]

@Johnny_Q

I’ve heard that black paint can cause some serious melting due to it’s heat absorption properties. You probably wouldn’t even have to paint the whole ice shelf to score some serious damage.

In fact, recent reports say that the earth is now retaining more of the sun’s energy than before, specifically because the caps are smaller, and the sea is darker than the ice.

Snow is remarkably good at reflecting: while the average for the planet is reflecting 30% of the sun’s energy back into space, an area of snow is actually reflecting <b>90%</b> (fresh snow). Which means that the snow is only absorbing about 10%, while charcoal absorbs 96% of the energy and only reflects 4%.

Ocean ice reflects somewhere from 50% to 70% of the sun’s energy, but painting it black could theoretically double the energy it retains.

[SpyOne]

@vislor

I have a friend who works for NASA doing meteorological work. (snip)
I was not sure if global warming was happening or if it was influenced by humans. He convinced me it was.

Assuming that what you have presented there is all true, what you have is proof that the climate is changing, but not proof that humans are in any way responsible.

Which doesn’t mean you are wrong: it is entirely possible to be right and just have failed to <i>prove</i> it. But the only thing you presented that even <i>implies</i> that humans are responsible is that change has taken place (presumably during a period that corresponds with our increased industrialization, and therefore increased CO2 output). I don’t believe that is a coincidence, but it might be, and you have provided no evidence that it isn’t.

[Hussman32]

@Deeg

Am I correct in understanding that Essenhigh’s article was published in 2001? There’s been a lot of research since then.

Now that you’ve read the date, read the rest of the article. He simply poses a different explanation that the current literature has not refuted. The scientific method requires that all other explanations must be refuted, ptherwise the hypothesis is not a theory.

[Deeg]

First, all other theories do not have to be refuted. There are often competing theories in science; take, for instance, Quantum Mechanics and Relativity which are both quite useful.

Second, just because Essenhigh raises an objection does not make him right. Here is one response. Of course that doesn’t make Essenhigh obviously wrong but ongoing research seems to be heading in that direction.

In short, a 10-year-old opinion piece by a mechanical engineer isn’t enough to convince me.