I guess the Arctic icebreakers are doing such a good job there’s new plans to refreeze it back up? I just hope it’s not the US taxpayers footing the bill since we really don’t have much of an icebreaker fleet.
1 Like
Sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut to preserve at least some illusion of knowledge.
edit: Yeah, I overreacted to a funny post. I’ll work on it and hope to do better in the future.
1 Like
Ouchy…
And sometimes it’s better to lighten the heck up & not take yourself so serious to not be an asshole. Happy Holidays to you btw.
1 Like
Let’s just say I have heard that joke a few times too many times and I didn’t find it particularly funny even on the first time.
Since this is a professional forum, let’s add some useful information about icebreaking and its impact on ice loss:
- Most icebreakers in service worldwide operate in seasonally freezing seas. That means that the ice that they break is first-year ice that will melt completely during the following summer season regardless of whether it is broken by a ship or not. Only a handful of ships — namely large polar research vessels, Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers and one French luxury cruise ship — are even capable of venturing deep into the polar multi-year ice pack. You could as well blame the US Navy submarines for surfacing through the ice every now and then.
- With the exception of landfast ice zone where icebreaking ships can actually have a devastating local effect on the ice cover (been there, done that), sea ice is primarily drift ice that is continuously deformed by environmental processes (wind, waves, tide, etc.); it is already broken. While a ship operating in such conditions will certainly split some floes, it is not breaking some kind of pristine ice sheet.
- While breaking ice into smaller pieces makes it more susceptible to melting, during the freezing season the same mechanism actually accelerates ice growth. This is apparent on frequently-used shipping lanes and harbor basins where brash ice can be five times as thick as the surrounding unbroken ice. Icebreakers assisting other ships sometimes have to break new channels because the old channels become too “heavy”.
- Icebreakers rarely seek out ice to break intentionally. Most icebreaking vessels operate on commercial or near-commercial terms, so their crews will always look for the easiest path through the ice pack since it results in lower fuel consumption. In seas with frequent winter navigation, a lot of effort is put into coordination and communication to maximize the overall efficiency of the whole transportation system.
Of course, fossil-fueled icebreakers do contribute to global warming and ice loss through their greenhouse gas (namely CO2) emissions. Older ships may also deposit black carbon on the ice surface, reducing albedo and accelerating melting. I once even calculated the ice-melting effect of their sea water cooling systems, but if I recall correctly that was negligible thanks to the considerable amount of heat required to melt the ice.
However, in terms of cumulative engine power the global non-nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet is roughly comparable to a single class of US Navy destroyers and several orders of magnitude smaller than commercial ships. Their contribution is therefore pretty small compared to the rest of the shipping industry even if you factor in the local amplification from operating in the high latitudes.
edit: …and in order to stay on topic, I can’t help but compare refreezing the Arctic as proposed to painting over mold. Or rust, since we are on a maritime forum. It doesn’t really feel like a long-term solution that would address the underlying problem.
That’s the reason I take this thread, the articles & concept so lightheartedly. One of the articles said they wanted to refreeze an area twice the size of California. Any tankerman or tankerman assist who’s ever waited forever for the bottom of a giant barge to get 2 inches on it realizes how ridiculous this plan is. If it takes 6-12 hours to fill a freaking barge with the pumps wide open it’s going to take a hundred years for a thousand pumps to get a 1" coat across the surface of an area the size of California.
1 Like
And due to a miscalculation of scale, the entire battlefleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
Some people just don’t understand just how big the Arctic is and how much ice there is to be dealt with, be it breaking or restoring. Every month my icebreaking technology patent summary includes a few applications for some kind of giant circular saw or other mechanical contraption to break the ice. They just don’t work. There’s too much of it.
Anyone thinking about refreezing the Arctic should start by freezing a square-kilometer (or -mile, as everyone is bigger in America) ice skating rink and then consider the surface area of the polar ice pack…
Does anyone remember how long those artificial ice islands they created for drilling oil in the Beaufort Sea persisted? Or that huge ice massif that accumulated around the SSDC? Did they all melt during the following summer?
1 Like
Scene: a state college physical science dept. lab supply room.
2 grad students are slumped in cheap folding chairs, passing a bong back and forth in front of an open window. The men are undernourished and wearing noth eaten thrift store sweaters. It is June, and warm, and between them they have $14.72 in their checking accounts.
Person 1: ‘So what if we… takes massive bong rip like… pump water up and freeze it on the ice surface?’
Person 2: sniggering, nodding in agreement while holding in smoke and trying not to cough. ‘Totally,’ he says in a strangled voice before collapsing in a fit of giggles.
Suddenly, an English major who writes for the campus newspaper barges in through the door. ‘Say, what are you guys talking about?’
And that, friends, is how science news articles are made.
3 Likes
reading much more of this would drive me to the nearest bong!!
Several years ago, i read about a plan proposing building a fleet of ships that would “spray” a fog into the air to “cool” the atmosphere" and lower the earth’s temperature. I’m not certain about my describing how this was supposed to work but wondering if anyone else heard about this.
I first read about it in Popular Science 20 or 30 years ago. I think it was gold dust? I did not find that ancient article but here’s one from Forbes from 2021.
Spraying dust into the stratosphere? Volcanos do a pretty good job at that.
Some may remember the Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991?:
A huge cloud of volcanic ash and gas rises above Mount Pinatubo, Philippines, on June 12, 1991. Three days later, the volcano exploded in the second-largest volcanic eruption on Earth in the 20th Century. Credits: USGS
All you have to do is inducing selective volcanos to erupt at suitable intervals to maintain the dust cover.
Now if we can only find a stable genius to figure out how to start eruptions at will.
Dropping nuclear bombs into the craters may work to start volcanos as well as stopping hurricanes
PS> I remember dust in the air for weeks after the Mt, Pinatubo eruption, even in Singapore. Spectacular sunsets were popular among photographer, who flocked to lookout points like Mt. Faber and East Coast Pier.
1 Like
Suspect spreading dust by planes is a lot easier then inducing volcanoes. And it has been done already ( chemtrails). He who controls the weather controls everything. But if the things go funky who will control the funkiness?
1 Like