Inventor's 'refrigeration system' for planet shows promise, but scientists are skeptical (me too)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.physorg.com/news148887530.html

Inventor's 'refrigeration system' for planet shows promise, but scientists are skeptical

December 19th, 2008 in Space & Earth science / Earth Sciences

Ron Ace says that his breakthrough moments have come at unexpected times - while he lay in bed, eased his aging Cadillac across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge or steered a tractor around his rustic, five-acre property.

In the seclusion of his Maryland home, Ace has spent three years glued to the Internet, studying the Earth's climate cycles and careening from one epiphany to another - a 69-year-old loner with the moxie to try to solve one of the greatest threats to mankind.

Now, backed by a computer model, the little-known inventor is making public a U.S. patent petition for what he calls the most "practical, nontoxic, affordable, rapidly achievable" and beneficial way to curb global warming and a resulting catastrophic ocean rise.

Spray gigatons of seawater into the air, mainly in the Northern Hemisphere, and let Mother Nature do the rest, he says.

The evaporating water, Ace said, would cool the Earth in multiple ways: First, the sprayed droplets would transform to water vapor, a change that absorbs thermal energy near ground level; then the rising vapor would condense into sunlight-reflecting clouds and cooling rain, releasing much of the stored energy into space in the form of infrared radiation.

…

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. I like the idea, but hate the fact that he's trying to patent it

Why should he or the US Government own a patent on it?

[Richard D]

2. Will take a hell of a lot of energy to do that

Hopefully not from fossil fuels.

Something about conservation of energy comes to mind.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. It's not a thermodynamics conflict

…

Although it might sound preposterous, a computer model run by an internationally known global warming scientist suggests that Ace's giant humidifier might just work.

Kenneth Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, roughly simulated Ace's idea in recent months on a model that's used extensively by top scientists to study global warming.

The simulated evaporation of about one-half inch of additional water everywhere in the world produced immediate planetary cooling effects that were projected to reach nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit within 20 or 30 years, Caldeira said.

"In the computer simulation, evaporating water was almost as effective as directly transferring ... energy to space, which was surprising to me," he said.

…

[zbdent]

4. great ... then we'll have to face Global Humidity ...

[tridim]

5. Maybe they could use a solar chimney to get the vapor up to the atmosphere

[phantom power]

6. That won't float very well, but this might:

http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml