CAN OTEC NEUTRALIZE HURRICANES?

Yesterday, I suggested that ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) could well remediate global warming.  Today, I extend the benefit further with a contention that OTEC can also  neutralize hurricanes (and cyclones and typhoons).   I use neutralize, for the effect might well be two-fold:  prevent the formation of this damaging storm and diminish the severity if one forms.

It must have been twenty years ago that I gave a talk on this subject in Taipei, and a comment came from the audience:  But a typhoon is how we get most of our drinking water.  I made a snide comment about a future ability of scientists to reduce the storm so they got the rain, but not the high winds.  Well, just this past week, Typhoon Matmo stormed over Taiwan, and probably caused the crash of a TransAsia Airways flight, killing 48.

For global climate change, the concept sounds worthy, but the value is nebulous.  How much carbon credit should this process gain?  With hurricanes, the damage is definite.  Katrina (left) in 2005?  $125 billion! Sandy in 2012?  $50 billion.  In 1970 Cyclone Bhola killed, perhaps, half a million in India.  Last year, Super Typhoon Haiyan overwhelmed the Philippines, with maximum gusts up to 235 MPH.  Worse, these typhoons seem to be getting stronger and stronger.

Back again to a paper I co-wrote on Artificial Upwelling for Environmental Enhancement:

• More and stronger hurricanes form with warmer temperatures, and with global warming, it can only get worse.
• A 2 F drop in ocean surface temperatures can prevent the generation of a hurricane.
• In 1993 at the Department of Commerce (operates NOAA) in DC I co-chaired a summit to discuss the potential of OTEC systems to minimize or prevent hurricanes.
• In addition to the Feds and academics, representatives were there from General Dynamics and Lockheed.
• Ambitiously, we designed a plan to finance and operate up to 500 floating OTEC plantships, each at 1000 MW.

I won't even mention the cost, but you would think that, in light of regular multi-billion dollar damages, a few hundred thousand dollars to initiate a program could be warranted.  Nope...nothing happened.

What about the more limited task of using artificial upwelling to reduce the effect of a moving hurricane?  A decade and more ago, I was advising an individual in New Jersey on his efforts to accomplish this task.  After a few years I finally convinced him that the federal government would not spend significant funds for this purpose, and that no company would bother to try because there are no profits involved.

But, aha, along came Bill Gates and Ken Caldeira in 2009.  They, and their team, actually filed five patents to reduce the danger of approaching hurricanes. either by cooling ocean temperatures, as above, spraying seawater into the atmosphere (left), etc.  Hurricane luminaries, people like William Gray and Kerry Emanuel, belittled the plans.  The world is not yet ready for geoengineering.

In any case, they all missed the point.  The concept actually might work, but no one has tens of billions to carry out the full-scale plan.  UNLESS the hardware is but a portion of a floating platform also generating income.  Reduction of hurricanes will never be attempted as a stand-alone mega-project.  However, as a co-product of the Blue Revolution, that is exactly what I have been advocating for more than two decades.  Click on  any of my Huffington Post articles on this subject (there are four), or link to the Blue Revolution Hawaii site, especially the Pacific International Ocean Station.  Better yet, click on my 20 minute presentation to a gathering sponsored by the Seasteading Institute.

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Today, I walked the road to Mandalay, a Chinese restaurant:

There was a one-year old birthday party for Mason, but I was squeezed into a table at the window in a small side room.  Unfortunately, a loud band was playing when I entered (and continued playing until I left).  What was the problem?  I was sitting on the other side of the wall behind the drummer:

Fortunately, though, the meal was fabulous.  I ordered dried scallop soup, bok choy with oyster sauce and Shanghai dumplings, accompanied by a Tsingtao beer:

After three cupfuls of soup, I hardly changed the level of the bowl.  This combination was enough for three people, or more, but only cost me, with tax and tip, $33.  So I walked home a container of bok choy in scallop soup.  I'm already looking forward to my next meal of this delicious concoction.

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CAN OTEC REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING AND ENHANCE THE ENVIRONMENT?

The simple answer is YES, OTEC, similar to all renewable resources, can reduce global warming.  But enhance the environment?  

Every kilowatt-hour of electricity of generated in itself avoids the need to burn any carbon-emitting fossil fuel.  However, it is possible that the process of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) provides additional mechanisms to improve conditions.  It is thus entirely possible that OTEC could actually ENHANCE the environment.  To the left is a current OTEC related experiment located at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA).

Let me first summarize a 1997 paper Stan Dunn and I presented in Singapore entitled ARTIFICIAL UPWELLING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ENHANCEMENT:

• An open-ocean artificial upwelled system, however, shows promise for both providing revenues and, possibly, positively impacting the environment. Properly managed, the high-nutrient deep waters can induce growth in the photic zone, on balance, although possibly with the need to add iron, uptaking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Much of the CO₂ formed will sink to the bottom of the ocean, where much of it will remain trapped for a long, long period. The carbonate cycle slowly transforms the gas back into the atmosphere, but those bound in silicate compounds remain in place for many millennia (Berner and Lasaga, 1989).

Above is an OTEC facility on Kumejima, Okinawa, actually producing OTEC electricity today.  To the right is the open cycle OTEC power plant built by the Pacific International Center for High Technology at NELHA, borrowed from the website of Ocean Thermal Development Corporation, one of the more progressive companies in this business.

• Two potential oceanic mechanisms to help mitigate global warming are (Phillips, et al, 1991):  
• enhanced carbon dioxide uptake via nutrient subsidy to marine algae and subsequent deposition in marine sediments and
• enhanced dimethyl sulfide production via marine algae to increase cloud formation and albedo.

(I couldn't find that 1991 article, but might add that I searched Google and found Victor Phillips, who is now Professor and Director of Global Environmental Management Center at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point.  I haven't seen him since he worked for me a 23 years ago...and he still looks about the same.  You can contact him for details.)

	The paper Stan Dunn, other colleagues and I wrote (incidentally, elimination of hurricane formation was another enhancive potential, which was detailed in that publication, but left out in this discussion today) went on to conclude that:

An international partnership of industry, government, and academia to design, build and operate a VLFS powered by OTEC and producing the range of co-products, while providing environmental benefits, would be a magnificent undertaking for the new millennium (Takahashi, 1996). As developed by a 1992 workshop in Hawaii of 50 participants representing six nations (Takahashi and Vadus, 1992), the Blue Revolution plantship would be a 1 hectare (100,000 square feet) grazing structure estimated to cost $500 million for full operation early in the 21st Century to:

	serve as an incubator for new marine industries,
	develop the package of integrated products, and
	test the upwelling concept.

While $500 million might seem staggeringly high, one might consider that this sum represents one tenth of 1% the cost of the 1991 Gulf War and one-fifth the current value of each B-1 bomber (left). Reports also indicate that the U.S. space station would have cost $50 billion and the Mars Project about $500 billion. Now that dreams have come back down to earth, this pioneering venture to develop next generation marine products for Humanity while, possibly, enhancing the environment, seems like a wise bargain.

Okay, that was nearly two decades ago.  What about today?  Well, Blue Revolution Hawaii has proposed the Pacific International Ocean Station (PIOS) to accomplish all of the immediate above.  In addition, I am part of a discussion group that began with an article by Jim Baird entitled:

     Carbon Sequestering Energy Production

It was about a year ago that I featured Jim in

IS OTEC THE MOST PROMISING FUTURE SUSTAINABLE ENERGY OPTION?

Basically, an additional step is inserted to remediate global warming, with hydrogen as a by-product.    This would mean additional costs, of course, with potentially significant benefits.  At the risk of terrorizing my readers, here is a schematic of the mechanism:

The discussion has evolved into a call of action to secure developmental funds to actually build and operate this system.  Who knows, depending on how financial support materializes, Jim's concept might someday sit on a PIOS platform.

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There are four tropical disturbances headed for Hawaii:

None should approach hurricane strength.  Which leads to the question of the day.  What was unusual about the hurricane season in the Atlantic a century ago, 1914?  ZERO HURRICANES.

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LAST MONTH WAS THE HOTTEST EVER FOR PLANET EARTH

USA Today had an article last week entitled:

     Rieder:  The Danger of false balance in journalism

To quote:

Which brings us to the BBC Trust and climate change.

The Trust, which oversees Britain's prestigious public broadcasting operations, recently issued a report chastising the Beeb's journalists for devoting entirely too much time and attention to climate change deniers.

Since 2010, the BBC has provided training to staffers to help them do a better job of covering science properly. But apparently the lessons haven't sunk in.

The report found that thanks to the "over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality," the BBC continues to give "undue attention to marginal opinion" when it comes to climate change and other scientific concerns.

Even I'm guilty of perhaps unnecessarily bending over backyards to be fair.  See WE MUST TAKE ACTION ON GLOBAL WARMING NOW! to the right by scrolling down.  Surely enough, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser this week published a rather long article, Climate scientist gets cold shoulder.  And this was from the 15 July 2014 issue of the New York Times.  The skeptic is John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.  Here, I'm doing it again, actually showing  his photo.

The fact of the matter is that Planet Earth is heating up.  Our globe set an all-time high temperature in May, then, exceeded that record last month.  Now, 61.2 F seems kind of cold to me, but this temperature is 1.3 F higher that the average of the entire 1900's.  All 12 of the monthly heat records were set after 1997.

Worse yet, the world's oceans last month attained the hottest temperature yet in recorded history (1880):  62.7 F.   This presentation wasn't clear if it was only the ocean or overall average, but last month was the 352nd straight hotter-than-average month in a  row!  

Why is this bad?  Hotter oceans produce more severe hurricanes.  Further, there are also now more cyclonic storms:

Two years ago, ABC News said it may be too late to stop global warming.  The scary thing is that ONLY 54% said no.  But one of the noisiest, and reputable, fear monger, James Hanson, of NOAA, said, we still have time if.....  Unfortunately, China and India are waiting for the USA to do something, and our Congress is not interested.  Incredible.

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THIS IS HUMP WEDNESDAY

I was planning to spend today making fun of things on Hump Day.  But there is the reality of  our world, so let me start with...:

• ...the tragedy of MH 17, and that 50-hearse procession today from a military airport in Eindhoven, Netherlands with tens of thousands standing in solemn respect along the roads, bringing tears to viewers.

• And, surely, there has to be a better solution for those waves of migrant children crossing our border with Mexico.  Nearly 100,000 will come this year and 150,000 more expected next year.  While the percentage of minors is increasing, they still represent less than 20% of the total.  Compared to 2000, though, the number of arrests  have dropped by a factor of almost five since 2000.  Males represent 94% of the total and most are from Central America, not Mexico.  And Congress is doing essentially nothing.  Two hours ago Republicans accused Democrats of stalling.  All the stalling before that involved Republicans.  In 59 immigration courts across the country, 243 judges are presiding over these cases.
• Plus, that Gaza War, where the death toll is 25 Palestinians to 1 Israeli.  Give some credit to Secretary of State John Kerry for trying to end this craziness.

Otherwise, I love that Geico camel.  Here is a minute and a half re-mix of Martin the Camel.  The voice, incidentally, is that of Chris Sullivan.

How many of you know that the new president of Indonesia is 53-year old Joko Widodo, a child of the slum?  He beat Prabowo Subianto (left), a retired army general and son-in-law of former authoritarian president Suharto.  Prabowo called the election a fraud.  In excess of  135 million Indonesians cast ballots, more than Americans voting in the 2012 American presidential election.  Obama spent his first, second and part of third grades here.

In another tragedy, the pine tree dedicated to Beetle George Harrison was killed by beatles.  No, make that:  The pine tree dedicated to Beatle George Harrison was killed by beetles.  In a decade, the tree had grown ten feet tall.  But bark beetles and ladybugs did it in.

I brought a Zippy's Kokua Pac to my University campus office today and after taking a photo, noticed yellow flowers on the lawn outside my window:

There are a dozen of these Gold Trees around my building, but only one is blooming.  There are also numerous rainbow shower trees in my parking lot:

Over the next few days I still plan to blog on:

global climate change, 

the latest on the risk of niacin, plus another medical reversal having to do with not needing to fast for your blood lipid test, 

progress on battery storage, and

a pathway for reducing climate change through ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).

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215TH "COUNTRY" TO VISIT THIS SITE: Saint Barthelemy

Welcome Saint Barthelemy, the 215th entity to visit this blog site.  How can this number exceed 196 (193 United Nations members, plus Vatican City, Kosovo and Taiwan)?   Google uses country codes, and best as I can tell, there are 260 CCs, so I still have 45 locations to go.  Antarctica, Guam and various island communities are included.

Saint Barthelemy (good luck finding it above) has had an interesting history.  Discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493 (and named after his brother Bartolomeo), this Caribbean island was first settled by the French in 1648, sold to Sweden in 1784, then repurchased by France in 1877 and placed under the administration of Guadaloupe.  However, the street names remained Swedish.  In 2003, the people voted to secede, becoming a French overseas collectivity.

Saint Barthelemy, also known as St. Barts, is one-eighth the size of Washington, D.C., has a population of 9,000, speaks French, features high-end tourism, and, lacking freshwater, imports almost everything.  The most notable individual was Eugenie Blanchard, who passed away in 2010 at the age of almost 115 as the oldest person in the world.

Hotel Guanahani and Spa starts at $694/night:

140,000 of their 200,000 tourists visit by cruise ship.  Good thing, for watch this You Tube clip of why their airport is considered to be dangerous.  Another clip.  However, this is a safe island.  No one has ever been mugged.

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SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME THIS WEEK

What interesting things in history happened this week?

• Yesterday in 1969 Neil Armstrong first walked on the Moon.  That was 45 years ago, when he reported, "Houston, Tranquility Base here.  The Eagle has landed."  This was a huge relief at the Space Center where they were worried that the lander only had seconds of fuel remaining.  While Buzz Aldridge was originally scheduled to make that initial step on the Moon, the logistics of the seats sent Armstrong down first, where he declared, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."  Watch that 5-minute clip from liftoff to Moonwalk.  Perhaps the proudest moment in American History.  He later taught at the University of Cincinnati in the College of Engineering, and I met him on my only visit to that campus.  As he only had a master's degree, he left in 1979 and lived away from the public eye, passing away two years ago in Ohio.

• Further back in time, on this day in 1911,  Machu Picchu was found.  When I visited in 2011, I reported:  

It was a hundred years ago that Hiram Bingham III, a  Hawaii-born Yale professor, became the first Westerner to view Machu Picchu.  After half a millennium since abandonment (possibly because of smallpox), the city had become a jungle, with a few locals farming the edges.  The  Spanish Explorers never found it, and neither did a swarm of other explorers.

Quite a family, for his grandfather, Hiram Bingham was a missionary in Hawaii who designed Kawaiahao Church, II was also a Hawaiian missionary, and IV was a World War II hero and saved Jews.  III also went on to become a U.S. Senator and Governor of Connecticutt.

• Yesterday, Caroline Wozniacki and Rory McIlroy both won their tournaments in impressive fashion.  When a couple, their play suffered.  After they called off their engagement in May, they began to dominate tennis and golf.  And they had already sent out wedding invitations!

• What about the future?  Here is a virtual shopping center in South Korea:

Looks like any market doesn't it?  Well, those are LCD screens, you touch what you want, pay by credit card at the register, and, in time, will be able to either take your bag with you or arrange to send it to your home.  Clearly, you will also be able to shop from your home computer.  In the USA, Amazon has proposed to deliver by drone.

I'll later this week be reporting on 

• global climate change, 
• the latest on the risk of niacin, plus another medical reversal having to do with not needing to fast for your blood lipid test, 
• progress on battery storage, and
• a pathway for reducing climate change through ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).

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Typhoon Matmo, now at 80 MPH, will trundle across Taiwan south of Hualian as a Category 2, then head for China.

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