[extropy-chat] No frozen Europe...

[Samantha Atkins]

Where is the salty ice coming from?  Normal sea ice is not very  
salty, much lower salinity than sea water.

- samantha

On Feb 6, 2006, at 1:19 PM, Robert Bradbury wrote:

> Sigh... (I thought global warming would be a cheap way to reduce  
> the number of European luddites opposed to GMOs :-|)
>
> At any rate, it appears that 8000 barges (@$50 billion) put out  
> into the North Atlantic to increase the quantity of salty sea ice  
> which forms (think snow making) every year could solve the problem  
> of keeping the Gulf Stream flowing.  (The salty ice melts in the  
> spring/summer producing cold & dense salt water that sinks acting  
> as a suction pump which draws the tropical water towards the  
> arctic.)  If anyone is ambitious and can find the actual article I  
> would love to know what fraction of this is the startup cost and  
> what fraction is the annual operating cost.
>
> Even if its an annual cost, it works out to ~$200/person(in the  
> U.S.).  I suspect that is cheap compared with other alternatives  
> (For example, I think the U.S. is giving away $2000+ tax credits on  
> hybrid cars which aren't even going to come close to solving the  
> problem the way the barges will).
>
> Oh yes, another article I ran across suggests that the Antarctic  
> Krill are sucking down more CO2 than had previously been thought so  
> one positive effect of increased atmospheric CO2 would be to  
> increase food supplies at the bottom of the oceanic food pyramid.
>
> Robert
>
> 1. http://www.physorg.com/news10579.html
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