Amazing. Scientists Work to Buy Planet Time.

I just watched an amazing show on Discovery about Scientists working on creative ways to create man made climate cooling, if need be.

One group worked on ways to seed the clouds or even just the atmosphere with microscopic salt particles, so small they rise, and, absorb water. They want to be able to do so from boats. The other team worked on developing a carbon neutral boat that could be operated remotely and deliver the particles to the atmosphere.

The particle group had trouble developing a method to deliver small enough particles, until they tried particle flares, used by climatologists who study clouds.

The other group stumbled when attempting to create a carbon neutral particle delivery boat. They found the design of a ship, powered by vertical rotors, created in the late 1920's. The rotors look like giant wind turbines, in a way. But the rotation is used to create movement, not power. The rotors extend upward from the boat's deck looking like tubes. The spin creates suction at the front, which propels forward, and push on the backside of the tube, also propelling the boat forward. They are electrically powered and also use natural wind to operate.

The vision is to use fleets of these boats, that suck in salt water, from the ocean, atomize the salt water and then deliver tiny salt particles into the lower atmosphere, that whiten clouds, increasing reflectivity of sun rays, lowering the temperature of the planet.

The second team located a recycled trimaran they modified to hold twin rotating towers. They made sure the vibration and weight of the rotor tubes was equally distributed to the three hulls, but had their doubts the boat hulls would withstand the vibration of the rotors when run at high rpms.

The first team rigged 300 salt flares to a boat, in South Africa, to attempt their part of the experiment. They wanted to prove salt particles, if shot from boats, would rise and reach the altitude of reflective cloud layers, between 200 and 300 feet.

Their experiment was put into jeopardy, however, because the day they chose, and they had only one day's use of the research plane, that would take readings at a variety of altitudes once the flares were shot off, there were no clouds in the sky off the coast. However, they decided they did not need clouds to prove the point, only the readings from the plane to determine if the particles in fact did rise to at least 200 feet after being fired off in flares from the boat.

Firing 300 salt particle flares from the special rack created on the boat produced a spectacular cloud of particles. And what happened, they rose, not just to 200 feet, but they formed a white cloud a mile long with substantial readings at even 300 feet. The scientists were jubilant. They proved seeding clouds was possible from boats and that the salt particles could reach appropriate altitude and collect moisture to form clouds where none existed. The research plane also noted the whiteness of the cloud created from above and measured its reflectivity.

The second part of the experiment, testing the rotor method of propelling a ship, also was successful. The boat achieved good rpms with no damage to the hull from vibration. Much larger ships would be needed as particle seeders.

The question left with viewers at the end of the show was a good one: We have proved we can mitigate earth's warming. Should we manipulate the Earth?