[Wild Weasel]

Inventor paints mountains white to combat climate change

An inventor has set out to paint the peaks of the Andes white in an attempt to combat the effects of climate change.

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

The painters who have already completed two hectares of a planned 70 have been recruited from Licapa village, which depends on the run-off from the mountain for its water

By painting the mountains, Eduardo Gold hopes to replicate the effect of Andean glaciers, which reflect back sunlight and hence heat back through the atmosphere.

Idiots.

The £135,000-project is funded by the World Bank after Mr Gold won a "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" competition last year

Figures. We paid for it in other words.

Inventor paints mountains white to combat climate change - Telegraph

[johntheexpat]

From here


DM2009 Project Summary
Project Number: 4311 Booth Number: 85
Saving Glaciers: Artisanal Industry Aims to Stop the Melt and Save Water
COUNTRY: Peru
ORGANIZATION: Glaciares Peru
FUNDING REQUEST: $200,000
OBJECTIVE: To create jobs in impoverished areas by establishing a sustainable artisanal industry aimed at
slowing glacial melting as a proactive adaptation to climate change. The approach, if successful, will not only
save tropical glaciers from extinction, but may also be able to regrow glacial mass, the most important form
of freshwater storage in the high Andes (and the world). If this approach decreases local (microclimate)
temperatures sufficiently to regrow glaciers, local water supplies will be enhanced and socioeconomic
benefits will follow. (Note that when freshwater stored as glacial mass melts, it constitutes the majority of
available dry-season flow in the region.)
RATIONALE: Increases in global temperatures due to climate change are creating large environmental
changes. One of the most serious is the melting of the world’s largest freshwater reservoirs—glaciers.
Tropical glaciers are the most at risk, as they are located at latitudes where small temperature changes can
have large impacts, such as the loss of the only current source of reliable water supply.
INNOVATION: The project proposes to build a production facility to create a paintable white cover material.
The cover material will then be applied to exposed rock surrounding the glacier, or within recently glaciated
areas, in order to increase surface reflectance (albedo). This, in turn, will decrease microclimate
temperatures enough to stop glacial melting and may even allow for the regrowth of glacial mass. The
project also will attempt to have the change in albedo over a “unit” surface area equated with carbon credits
in order to generate a sustainable source of revenue generation for future project applications.
CONTACT: Eduardo Gold
egold@glaciaresperu.org





So, actually its not a plan to save the world, its a local experiment in microclimates to see if the local water supply can be maintained and possibly enhanced for a cost of £135,000 (which seems pretty good value to me)

It is, however most definitely more utter gobshite from the Telegraph who seem to have got pretty vitriolic in their adoption of non stories to support their hidden agenda. It seems they are trying to win Daily Mail readers.

[Wild Weasel]

Are you saying he defrauded the World Bank's "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" contest?

[johntheexpat]

Originally Posted by Wild Weasel

Are you saying he defrauded the World Bank's "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" contest?

No, I'm saying on the scale of things its a tiny little project which, if it works, will have interesting repercussions both locally and globally.

£135,000 quid, a fortnights salary for a premiership footballer or perhaps the price of maintaining water supplies for goodness knows how many people.
Just to put things into perspective.

But if that is too high a price for your tastes, then feel free to say so.

[Wild Weasel]

It's the most ridiculous boondoggle I've ever heard of.

[johntheexpat]

Originally Posted by Wild Weasel

It's the most ridiculous boondoggle I've ever heard of.

Why? Is the thinking behind it fundamentally flawed?

The cover material will then be applied to exposed rock surrounding the glacier, or within recently glaciated
areas, in order to increase surface reflectance (albedo). This, in turn, will decrease microclimate
temperatures enough to stop glacial melting and may even allow for the regrowth of glacial mass

Is that wrong then, or so fundamentally flawed that it isn't even worth trying?

[DPinBucks]

I guess it's worth a try for the money, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it working.

It seems to me that the mechanism they want to disrupt is warm rocks heating the air which in turn melts the ice. They'd do this by cooling the rocks.

For it to work, you'd have to be sure that the microclimate is robust enough to cause and maintain a particular average temperature in the face of external influences, eg wind, and that surrounding rock temperatures themselves have a significant influence.

It's a good bit of lateral thinking, though.

[Pinko]

What next, a £100,000 for a rain dance

[Wild Weasel]

^ LOL. Don't tempt them.

Primary school forced to turn off wind turbine after bird deaths

A primary school has been forced to switch off a £20,000 wind turbine because it keeps killing passing seabirds.

Published: 04 jul 2010

The rotary blades on the 30ft (9m) structure have struck at least 14 birds in the past six months.

The turbine, at southwell community primary school, portland, was installed 18 months ago thanks to a grant from the department of energy and climate change.

It provided six kilowatts of power an hour, but its performance was overshadowed by the number of birds killed - far higher than the one fatality per year predicted by the manufacturer.

Headteacher stuart McLeod was even forced to come into school early to clear up the bodies before his young pupils spotted them.

School governers consulted seagull eyesight experts and investigated bringing in bird-scaring plastic owls to solve the problem, but to no avail.

Mr McLeod said they had tried everything to stop the carnage but had no choice but to shut the turbine down.

Gosh, they're so environmentally friendly. I wonder how he cleaned the blades.

Primary school forced to turn off wind turbine after bird deaths - Telegraph