Tiny Bubbles in the Water
by Shervin Saedinia
Jeez, this article in ScienceNow begs a ton of questions:
A Harvard University physicist has come up with a new way to cool parts of the planet: pump vast swarms of tiny bubbles into the sea to increase its reflectivity and lower water temperatures. “Since water covers most of the earth, don’t dim the sun,” says the scientist, Russell Seitz, speaking from an international meeting on geoengineering research here. “Brighten the water.”
In a nutshell, this will help global warming by reflecting more sunlight from the Earths water surface and it will also help conserve water by reducing water evaporation. This microbubbble strategy seems so simple, but the things that will be affected haven’t been taken in to consideration.
For example: how much do ships and oil rigs currently contribute to bubble production? If we stop current ship movements, how much will the temperature of the water increase?
How about the most obvious question, where is all that energy going to come from? Oil. Duh. Doesn’t it seem like we are going backwards? I don’t want to correct one problem to only cause another.
How many boats will it take to do this? Where will they come from? Where will they be positioned? And what if needs to be in China’s sea, but the US is funding this program, will they let us in to do this? Maybe, maybe not.
Is anyone thinking about how the temperature drop will change the underwater environment? This article in Livescience jumps about how an active underwater volcano has caused a boom in ocean creatures:
"The hydrothermal venting from the volcano allows bacterial filaments to coat the rocks and provides a growing food source for many of the nearby creatures," said Verena Tunnicliffe, a biologist from the University of Victoria in Canada.
Technically isn’t this hydrothermal venting? It's cooling (and not heating) the underwater environment, but it's still going to change the way underwater creatures live. How? Do these scientists have any idea? Uuuuuuuuuuuugh!
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