<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Where is the salty ice coming from? Normal sea ice is not very salty, much lower salinity than sea water. <DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>- samantha</DIV><DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Feb 6, 2006, at 1:19 PM, Robert Bradbury wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">Sigh... (I thought global warming would be a cheap way to reduce the number of European luddites opposed to GMOs :-|)<BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>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). <BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>Robert<BR><BR>1. <A href="http://www.physorg.com/news10579.html">http://www.physorg.com/news10579.html</A><BR><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">_______________________________________________</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">extropy-chat mailing list</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat">http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat</A></DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>