Cool Global Warming

People that used to make home made ice cream in the past would put salt on ice, and the ice would partially melt and the salty water would become very cold, much colder than 32 degrees, and it would freeze ice cream.
That is because adding salt to water lowers the freezing point temperature. This causes the ice to melt. It usually takes heat to melt ice, but since you are forcing it to melt without applying heat, what happens is that the melting ice will absorb heat from the salty water, to change from solid to liquid, causing the salty water to get very cold.
Now, applying this principle to help cool global warming:
Air drop, salt all over the polar ice caps, and on glaciers. This should cause a layer of salt water to be on top of the ice that is colder than 32 degrees. This much colder salt water would be in contact with the air and help cool off the air. Also, this colder layer of salt water should stay on top of the ice cap. As it evaporates, more ice should melt to replace it. The salt should stay there. In some places it might not ever need to be replaced.

Any comments!

 

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well, one of the problems with global warming is that as the ice caps melt, they dump a lot of cold water into the oceanic conveyor system, which threatens to stop it. if the conveyor stop, global climate would change, and they is what is bad about global warming. creating more cold water might add to the problem.

 

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Well, salting the largest resovoires of fresh water on earth would probably have some serious adverse affects on anything that likes fresh water (trees, animals, crops, us...).

 

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Don't salt the areas where the ice or snow is going to seasonally melt and run into streams. The fresh water at the poles and permanent glaciers that are frozen are not useful to animal life very much. Salt those areas.

 

Or just wait for the next ice age. You KNOW it's coming.

 

I have seen on Tv that idea that the melting ice cap is going to interfere with the gulf stream by making the water colder.
In physics class I was taught that as a phase change occurs in water (going from solid to liquit or liquid to solid) the temperature of both the water and the ice stays at 32 degrees. This is true for all melting or freezing substances. Adding heat to the ice, causes it to change to liquid, but will not raise the temperature. Taking heat from water, causes it to change to a solid, at 32 degrees, but will not lower the temperature. Temp. don't change until the phase change is complete.
So, if you have fresh water ice caps melting, because the air temperature is getting warmer, the temperature of the water entering the ocean should be the same as the temperature of the ice. There should be no colder water dumping into the ocean. Actually, because salt lowers the freezing temperature of water, the surrounding ocean water, which is salty, should be colder than the fresh water that melted off of the ice.
Guy on TV don't know what he is talking about.
Scientists found the water around the melting ice cap near antartica to be warmer than expected.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0221/p14s02-sten.html
Go to that website and read about it.
Melting ice cap is not going to dump colder water. It should dump warmer water, which I believe is what they are observing near antartica.

 

it would if you lowered the melting point of the water, by, say, putting salt on it.

 

There's not enough salt in the world to do this, and it only works temporarily. Such interference only increases the problem. The melting of ice in the north has already altered the gulf stream, not through temperature, but through salinity, which drives an underwater current bringing colder, denser, saltier water down south. When this current stops, the North Atlantic might freeze, and the climate of Europe will become more like Siberia.

 

yeah, I don't recommend living in Iceland. I wonder how it will effect America.

 

It will continue to work as long as there is ice to melt. It might only work temporarily in a closed system like that used to make ice cream. But ice caps and glaciers are not closed like that. Heat can come into and go out of the region around the ice caps and glaciers.
You would effectively be increasing the speed at which the ice melts to achieve colder air above the ice.
That there is not enough salt in the world to this, - I would say there is enough salt to lower the air temperature somewhat.

An alternative is that the human race could learn to migrate like birds do.
Going south in the winter and north in the summer in the northern hemisphere. Jobs could be set up waiting for them, or people could leap frog into other people's jobs as a whole population is on the move.
The region around the equator might become almost unbearably hot year round.

I heard about this prediction concerning the gulf stream. I don't believe it. The ice caps are melting slow enough that the salinity should spread around and even out, and things continue as they have been.

 

The Gulf Stream is just part of a much more complex conveyor belt which encircles the globe. Even slight changes in the salinity or temperature can cause drastic changes to where the heat will be transported ... even a slight shift can cause a significant alteration to local climates.

The atmospheric-oceanic interaction is a fragile open system ... any changes to any part of the physical processes governing the atmosphere or ocean results in a worldwide chain reaction. Sure, this idea may work (personally, I don't think it would) but what may be a solution to one problem will most definately result in another problem. We can't just manipulate the weather/climate as we see fit just by fixing one variable to our liking. Nature will compensate for our actions, regardless of our well-being, into a system which is in equilibrium with itself ... even if it means frying most of the global population.

And the idea about the human race migrating like birds would be unsustainable (especially in our current economic state).

 

Sorry to burst any bubbles here, but the original idea simply won't work.

A little basic review of the principles involved shows why: When salt is added to ice, the lowest possible temperature that can be achieved is very near zero degrees F. In fact, that's exactly what old Fahrenheit did to establish the zero-marker on his scale.

Since the temp at the polar ice packs never rises to zero F, absolutely nothing would happen - the salt would simply lie on top of the ice like so much ineffectual dust, nothing more.

 

It isn't the temperature of the water melting off the ice caps that effects the gulf stream, it is the salinity.

Gulf stream water goes north and evaporates, leaving it saltier and denser, so it sinks, creating the undersea currents going south again. The volumes of water involved are emmense. The volumes of salt to make any meltwater into saltwater would be enourmous, and it wouldn't mix very well.

To think about this, imagine trying to turn the Hudson river into saltwater, every minute of every day for years.

 

One of the problems with Antarctica is that when the ice shelves began to break up around the Antarctic Peninsula, the glaciers have now started moving down to the oceans about 8 times faster than they were before because of the absence of anything to stop their progress. That created the problem of much greater friction and melting from the floor of the glaciers. I'm suggesting that most of the melt-water will come from the glacial floors because of that friction, and that the upper surface of the glacier would remain comparitively cold because it's exposed to the chilly air.

 

Actually, there's another major problem, which has been noticed by Russian scientists in Siberia for the past few years. It was mentioned in the latest New Scientist magazine. The tundra permafrost of Siberia is melting, and releasing large amounts of stored methane into the atmosphere. They say in the article that the amount of methane in the permafrost is about 70,000,000,000 tons, which is a fair bucketload of marsh gas. Release that all and you're going to have major problems with the climate. Ironically, the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet is very likely going to stop the thermohaline circulation, i.e. no Gulf Stream, so Britain and northern Europe will become iceboxes.