Salter S. 2020 Sea Level Rise and Ice Recovery
Description
This is a MathCad worksheet which calculates the number of spray vessels needed to reverse the rise in sea levels using John Latham's proposal for marine cloud brightening. I was surprised at the result and would like the arguments and assumptions checked. Any initial engineering calculation to assess feasibility has to make use of many approximate assumptions with questionable accuracy. These are marked with red text. If there is any chance of a feasible outcome it will be necessary to increase confidence in them. Single lumped numbers should be replaced by multi-decade variables. Blue is plain text. Black is live algebra with automatic unit handling. I can easily adjust the final spray vessel calculation for any other assumptions and would like to know your values. Key points are that the power to cool ocean water is about 25 times the power needed to save the ice and nearly 600 times the peak electrical generating capacity of the United States in 2018 and just over 35 times total world energy use.