Prof. Salter\’s cool yachts do have one major design flaw: They promise to save the planet for a pittance, and without making humans pay a dear price for their profligate ways. Fifty ships a year, built at a cost of some $400-million to $500-million, would remove the increased warming now attributed to all the fossil fuel burning.
That would never do now, would it? Stopping climate change without a radical change in our consumerist capitalism simply cannot be considered.
Why not retro-fit it to existing ships? So the next time we buy something from China we will be helping save the planet.
I knew Salter decades ago. I did admire the fertility of his mind.
My enthusiasm is appropriately constrained:
“TWO concrete blocks on the bottom of the sea off the north coast of Scotland are all that’s left of the world’s first attempt to build a commercial wave power station. When Osprey, a large yellow 2-megawatt generator, was wrecked by waves that were meant to power it, hope died. Before its steel ballast tanks could be filled, heavy seas scoured the sand from beneath them and they ripped open. The engineers who designed the machine were ‘absolutely gutted’ and Lloyds insurers had to pick up a bill for more than £1 million. . .
“But appearances can be deceptive. Wave power is not so easily scuppered. Even as Osprey went down, researchers had a number of other devices ready to be tested in the water. They learnt lessons from Osprey just as they had from other disappointments. They revised their designs and created new ones. . . ”
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg16021544.700-the-big-break.html
Just wait for the tide of excuses why this should not be done.
The idea is a great one, if only to expose the hypocracy and true intentions of the Environazis.
I would really love this to be the answer. That would be awesome.
Beyond lowering temperature, I do worry that the increasing percentage of CO2 (and other misc crap due to the modern age) in the atmosphere is bad for us, and that we should be studying the rises carefully to make sure that they are safe – so I don’t think the yachts address the whole problem but certainly the apparently most serious and urgent problem.
errm, isn’t water vapour itself a major greenhouse gas?