Idea to save (rebuild) the polar ice caps

[Train]

Say we drill a hole in the ice way above the arctic circle, where the air temperature is well below freezing all year round.

We drop a tube down into this whole to pump up water from the ocean below. We then vaporize this water (create steam) and let it out into the atmosphere. My thinking is that this steam would quickly become water, drop onto the ice, and freeze, thus adding to the amount of ice on the surface.

Say we put a couple hundred of these pumps/humidifiers scattered around in the artic cirlce.

1) Would this work?

2) and if so how much water would have to be pumped up per year to equalize the current rate of the ice caps shrinking?

3) Would the energy needed (or more precisely, the heat generated) to vaporize the water be greater then the net benifit of having more ice on the caps?

 

[DrPizza]

That's a neat idea that had me thinking for a bit...
1. As far as vaporizing the water; At best, you are going to be doing something similar to what they do at ski-resorts when they make their own snow. Except, you're going to be doing it with salt water, and they get to build up their snow packs with fresh water. I'm sure this is going to make a huge performance dent, but I have no idea of the magnitude... Initially I was inclined to think it wasn't even going to work, but then I remembered all those pictures of ships up there with ice building up all over the decks from the ocean spray that's chopped off regularly.

However,
2. Even at the biggest ski resorts, I doubt they build up the snow pack on more than 1 square mile of slope. (if you put all their slopes side by side, the collective width of their slopes would need to be a mile, if all of the slopes were 1 mile long.) edit: all the slopes they use snow-making equipment on.
So, you're covering a couple hundred square miles of the polar ice cap at best... let's say a 25mile by 25 mile area...

How big are those ice caps again?

 

[DrPizza]

I have an alternate solution:
Screw all those "lets cover the moon in aluminum foil" folks from a previous thread...

Let's cover a portion of the earth in aluminum foil
If we carefully calculate where, and what sized areas, we could, conceivably, start to gain a bit of control of global weather patterns.
Of course, the system is so chaotic, I suppose it'd be safer to say, we could screw up the global weather patterns.

 

[Soccerman06]

1) What is the point of drilling out ice from the artic? You just replace the ice when if falls back to the ground, and when the rain its the ground, the rain would partially melt the ice and it would fall off into the ocean, defeating the purpose of doing this.

2) Remember energy cant be made out of nowhere, if the rain freezes in the air, the energy used to cool it comes from the ice on the surface so the ice would melt even quicker.

3) You could freeze salt water but you would have to get rid of the salt content. You would also have to freeze the water. Simple physics and chem here, cooling (energy) goes somewhere, where would you put this excess heat (or exhaust gasses which would increase the greenhouse effect).

not real feasible

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

imho, why not put a pump from the southern edge of the ice cap to the middle...might be less pumping/drilling

it doesn't solce the problem of the avg temps being higher, but it does take down the sea level

 

[DrPizza]

I want to reiterate that I actually think it was a reasonable idea, except for the scale.
Note: Ice is an insulator! Hence, the water below the surface isn't frozen as rapidly as it actually could be.

It's not a matter of drilling ice out and putting it on top.. merely pumping water out and putting it on top may cause the icepack to become thicker. It's not just going to melt the icepack more...

Up north (here), on quite a few lakes, they thicken the ice in a very similar way. They actually have "highways" across the ice where large trucks or heavy equipment can travel back and forth... They crack/push the ice down, let it freeze, break it a bit more, get more water in there, let it freeze again, and ultimately build up a layer of ice several feet thick - thick enough on one lake I'm familiar with that they were able to do logging in the winter (on a large island that has no bridge) and bring the trees across the lake without any trouble.

I think his idea would work, just not on the necessary scale... wayyyyy too many square miles up there to make it feasible.

 

[DrPizza]

Incidentally, you can build your own snow-maker at home...
All it takes is a good air compressor and a good pressure washer, along with a few fittings.
I'm curious about how cold it would have to be to turn the ocean water into a sort of salty snow.

Incidentally, salt water does freeze, at a lower temperature. I don't know the freezing point of the ocean's water or rather, the freezing point of the arctic ocean with it's particular salinity.

 

[Train]

I didnt know it was actually put to use up north, good to know.

As for the scale, I know there are millions of square miles up there, but think about the industrial water pumps we have today. On the news they said there are pumps in New Orleans that are moving 70,000 gallons of water a minute, thats 100.8 Million gallons a day. Spread out 1,000 pumps across the arctic, and thats 36.8 Trillion Gallons per year, assuming all of the water pumped up turns into ice anyways. Over several years its bound to make an impact.

 

[BBock7271]

What is powering these pumps? Most will cause a greenhouse like effect and effectively just cause the whole melting process to get worse.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

Why does everyone assume Polar ice cap melting is not 100% natural? I'm not saying we haven't totally screwed up the planet, because we have. But it is natural for climates to change. It used to be a lot colder on Earth. For that matter, it used to be 10,000 degrees hotter, too.

 

[Peter]

A brief look at the historical temperature records makes it quite obvious that there's an absolutely unnatural steep incline starting last century. Natural temperature changes of a couple degrees up or down occur over many millenia, not in half a century. No debate there, unless you're Mr. Bush.

Back to the topic: Unless you're inventing a perpetuum mobile there, you'll always bring more energy into your physical process than you're extracting from it. Will say, your apparatus will warm the ecosystem, not cool it down.

 

[chcarnage]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
I have an alternate solution:
Screw all those "lets cover the moon in aluminum foil" folks from a previous thread...

Let's cover a portion of the earth in aluminum foil
If we carefully calculate where, and what sized areas, we could, conceivably, start to gain a bit of control of global weather patterns.
Of course, the system is so chaotic, I suppose it'd be safer to say, we could screw up the global weather patterns.

Some town in Switzerland is trying to prevent ice melting with foil: Text
I'm not up to date here, though, maybe they abandoned or delayed the project...

 

[Atomicus]

Originally posted by: The Boston Dangler
Why does everyone assume Polar ice cap melting is not 100% natural? I'm not saying we haven't totally screwed up the planet, because we have. But it is natural for climates to change. It used to be a lot colder on Earth. For that matter, it used to be 10,000 degrees hotter, too.

It is a widely accepted assumption because there is a trend of increasing global temperature and melting of glaciers as greenhouse gas emissions increased.

Oh yea, and check out the ever-increasing hole in the Ozone layer. Thank you man-made chemicals.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: chcarnage

Originally posted by: DrPizza
I have an alternate solution:
Screw all those "lets cover the moon in aluminum foil" folks from a previous thread...

Let's cover a portion of the earth in aluminum foil
If we carefully calculate where, and what sized areas, we could, conceivably, start to gain a bit of control of global weather patterns.
Of course, the system is so chaotic, I suppose it'd be safer to say, we could screw up the global weather patterns.

Some town in Switzerland is trying to prevent ice melting with foil: Text
I'm not up to date here, though, maybe they abandoned or delayed the project...

No f'in way!!! LMAO, look at the 3rd post in this thread... It was meant to be a joke.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Peter
A brief look at the historical temperature records makes it quite obvious that there's an absolutely unnatural steep incline starting last century. Natural temperature changes of a couple degrees up or down occur over many millenia, not in half a century. No debate there, unless you're Mr. Bush.

Back to the topic: Unless you're inventing a perpetuum mobile there, you'll always bring more energy into your physical process than you're extracting from it. Will say, your apparatus will warm the ecosystem, not cool it down.

That applies to a closed system. I believe the Earth radiates heat into space.
But, the energy from the pumps is negligible anyway, unless the OP is suggesting refrigerating the water. The air is cold enough to freeze the water? (this is the big question - at what rate can the air gain the energy from the water to allow it to freeze - it will be radiating much of that energy into space, while gaining very little energy from the sun for 6 months of winter) Therefore, the lack of ice could conceivably be rectified simply by exposing more water to the air. IIRC, many areas up North can be considered deserts because they have so little precipitation. It's not a problem with energy transfer, it's a problem getting the water to the air; it's under the ice - insulated.

 

[Train]

Originally posted by: Peter
A brief look at the historical temperature records makes it quite obvious that there's an absolutely unnatural steep incline starting last century. Natural temperature changes of a couple degrees up or down occur over many millenia, not in half a century. No debate there, unless you're Mr. Bush.

by unnatural you mean not linear, which is false. Temp changes going into, and out of, ice ages are exponential. Going into an ice age the polar caps expand torward the equator, covering the earth in more white, causing more sunlight to be reflected off the earth, as the ice caps grow, the more light gets reflected, the faster the earth cools. And as the ice caps recede, the opposite is true.

While I dont think that the rate of increase over the past 100 years is totally natural by any means, it still would not be linear. And green house gasses are not the only factor at play here. Think about how many billions of square miles we have in asphalt alone, which absorbs much more heat than say trees or grass. The temp on a sunny day on blacktop is easily ten degrees higher than nearby patch of grass. This is the opposite effect of going into the ice age, where much of the earths surface turns white.

Back to the topic: Unless you're inventing a perpetuum mobile there, you'll always bring more energy into your physical process than you're extracting from it. Will say, your apparatus will warm the ecosystem, not cool it down.

Thats the thing, I'm not trying to extract any energy, or to cool the earth, I'm only increasing the amount of ice in the caps, which is more temperature stable than water. The water being pulled from the arctic ocean is already below freezing.

 

[Peter]

By unnatural I meant unnatural. Don't twist my words. Have you looked at the stats yes? The temperature rise from the early 1900's until now is orders of magnitude steeper than anything that occurred ever before.

Regarding your apparatus, it'd still be doing nothing at best. You're just pumping a cold substance around. You're missing the point that the problem isn't the dwindling amount of ice, it's the temperature increase that's causing it. By operating an apparatus, you're adding to the problem. End of story.

 

[Tiamat]

clearly the solution is to radiate more heat energy into space.

Dunno how tho

 

[Train]

Originally posted by: Peter
By unnatural I meant unnatural. Don't twist my words. Have you looked at the stats yes? The temperature rise from the early 1900's until now is orders of magnitude steeper than anything that occurred ever before.

Yes I've looked at the stats, and its hardly magnitudes.

THE ENVIROTRUTH: The hypothesis that rising CO2 levels result in a direct increase in temperature originated in 1896 with Swedish chemist, Svante Arrhenius. However, the concept was abandoned in the 1940s because global temperatures had not even remotely matched the 1°C rise predicted by the theory. Since then, the rate of global warming has slowed despite the acceleration in industrialization and CO2 emissions.

Considerable evidence now supports the carbon cycle modelers' assumption that atmospheric CO2 levels respond to temperature changes, not the reverse:

http://www.envirotruth.org/myth3a.cfm

Regarding your apparatus, it'd still be doing nothing at best. You're just pumping a cold substance around. You're missing the point that the problem isn't the dwindling amount of ice, it's the temperature increase that's causing it. By operating an apparatus, you're adding to the problem. End of story.

I never stated my goal was to reduce the global temperature. Only to increase the amount of ice held in the caps.

 

[Train]

you'll probably also want to read this, it was confirmed by a 2003 Harvard study.

http://www.envirotruth.org/myth2.cfm

..

 

[Peter]

The amount of ice held in the caps is irrelevant - and besides, you need rainwater for that, not salty seawater. So much for flawed ideas.

 

[chcarnage]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: chcarnage

Originally posted by: DrPizza
I have an alternate solution:
Screw all those "lets cover the moon in aluminum foil" folks from a previous thread...

Let's cover a portion of the earth in aluminum foil
If we carefully calculate where, and what sized areas, we could, conceivably, start to gain a bit of control of global weather patterns.
Of course, the system is so chaotic, I suppose it'd be safer to say, we could screw up the global weather patterns.

Some town in Switzerland is trying to prevent ice melting with foil: Text
I'm not up to date here, though, maybe they abandoned or delayed the project...

No f'in way!!! LMAO, look at the 3rd post in this thread... It was meant to be a joke.

It's not a hoax.

http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/e/articles/sciencelife/gurschenvlies.html

The ETH University exists, I've seen it!

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Peter
The amount of ice held in the caps is irrelevant - and besides, you need rainwater for that, not salty seawater. So much for flawed ideas.

Agreed: amount of ice held in caps is irrelevant.

But, you don't need rainwater. At the salt concentration of the arctic ocean, it will easily freeze if brought to the surface. Example to remind you this is true: Seals have to keep their breathing holes through the ice open, otherwise they would get stuck under the surface. Why? Because it's raining all winter? No, because salt water freezes too. It's f'in cold up there... far colder than needed to freeze the salt water.

Now, an interesting thing occurs in the ice as the salt water freezes... you end up with pockets of liquid with much higher salt concentrations. The deeper into the ice you go, the more there are; near the surface, the total volume of this brine is lower.

So,
1. train's idea *would* work to increase the mass of ice above the arctic circle
2. only on a relatively small scale.
3. Unless he's going to build very powerful pumps, he's not going to have enough pressure to "vaporize" the water; i.e. force it out in a fine enough mist as they do at ski resorts. There's more to it than just volume.
4. Train's idea screws up the ecosystem up there

 

[Soccerman06]

The main thing is you would have to get rid of the salt. A simple example is this: what material is used when the roads get all snowy and icy? Salt. Now the salt might freeze at the temps up there, but we dont know the freezing temp of the different water/salt saturation. You would have to use electrolisis or evaporate the water to get rid of the salt.

 

[DrPizza]

Actually, the freezing temperatures of various salt concentrations are fairly well known and are also calculable. If you live in western NY, and I'm sure many other northern cold locations in the winter, you'll discover that it gets cold enough some days that the salt used on the roads is ineffective.