[ExI] cure for global warming

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark
Subject: Re: [ExI] cure for global warming

 

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>Who cares? Myhrvold isn't a fool and he wasn't suggesting you do it that
way, he said have pumps every thousand feet or so "each one less powerful
than the one in my swimming pool".  John K Clark

 

 

Hmmm, that notion is a big yellow flag: if a pump every thousand feet,
clearly it requires SO2 in a gaseous form as opposed to a liquid, for
smallish pumps don't make anything like 1000 ft of head with the throughput
volumes needed for something like this.  Typically the water pressure to
one's house is a tenth that.  If he meant turbopumps for gaseous SO2, those
turbines would be heavy.

 

Does it need to be exhausted at 18 miles?  Would a pipe up the side of K2 or
Mt Everest (ending on top) be high enough?  What's that, nearly 6 miles up?
If the stuff is superheated and pressurized at exhaust, wouldn't it loft way
the hell up there?  I could imagine it reaching equilibrium at perhaps 10
miles altitude.  Another approach might be to freeze SO2 to a solid brick
perhaps the size of a typical Detroit and hurl the thing aloft with an
electromagnetic rail launcher from a high peak, with an explosive device
within which explodes at the apex, so that the bits evaporate upon descent.

 

Of course all this assumes one thinks it a good idea to dump SO2 in the
upper atmosphere to counteract global warming (which I do not) but it isn't
clear to me we need to hold aloft a pipe to do it.  If we decide to solve
all the engineering difficulties to erect an enormous pipe, Keith knows
better uses for it than pumping SO2 into the sky.  

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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