Unmanned sailing ships cure for global warming

Imagine an enormous fleet of  wind-powered ships that silently cruise the world's oceans.

Like the old ghost ships of bygone days, British engineers and scientists are proposing a vast fleet of unmanned ships that might help reduce the impacts of man-made global warming.

According to the authors of the report, the ships will be powered by an early twentieth-century technology that uses tall, rotating cylinders instead of sails. When the wind blows across the rotors, the ship moves ahead and sucks water into turbines, which then spray seawater into the air.

These  "Flettner-style" rotor ships will intensify the moisture content of the clouds -  which in turn will increase the reflectivity of the atmosphere, thus reducing the amount of sunlight being absorbed by planet earth.

The concept of rotor ships was proven in  the 1920’s by Anton Flettner, a German aviation engineer and inventor. Flettner abandoned the concept because they proved to be so slow.

But modern technology and materials has changed all that and the new versions might be capable of reaching speeds of over 20 knots, the authors say.