http://www.recycle.net/cgi-bin/exview.cgi?wscg=01-130101
You may have to pay $2-3 each to purchase used tires in bulk. Transportation is probably the largest hidden cost, so obtaining them as close to the point of manufacturing is the best option. If the Gulf of Mexico is the initial location, then Texas and Alabama are good choices since the transit distances are much less than say, from the northeastern U.S. Alabama also still has large stockpiles remaining to be recycled. For your application, the tires have to be in good shape and probably uniform in size which will require a more selective approach than for use as fuel or road paving. Nearly 300 million used tires are generated each year in the U.S., so there's no shortage. I estimated each of your floating "vessels" at around $100K USD, including labor and transportation. If the estimates you provided about how many are required are correct, the cost of the devices is nominal. It is the performance that is in question. Regarding the issue of bringing up CO2 with the colder water that Stuart mentioned, you wrote that the deeper water has the pre-industrial level of CO2. The depths you are talking about, from the surface to 1000 ft (assuming that water gets drawn upwards to some density equilibrium level) is still very shallow and would probably have about the same CO2 content as the surface. Light penetrates almost to 600ft, so this is still almost within the photic zone. So it would have no impact on increasing or decreasing surface or atmospheric CO2 levels via the mixing. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Salter" <[email protected]> To: "dsw_s" <[email protected]>; "geoengineering" <[email protected]>; "Casey Tegreene" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 6:02 AM Subject: [geo] Re: Hurricane Insurance We do not often get the chance to use material with a negative cost but this may be one of them. Figure 2 shows that the two top rings are made by lashing used tyres. We have to pay for the rope but people pay us to take the tyres away. The site http://press.wrap.org.uk/article/18502/ quotes amounts up to £8.21 each for truck tyres. Does anyone have figures for the US? I agree that we should study the biological effects of the first few sinks very carefully and try to adjust spacing for the best balance between oxygen, CO2 and nutrients. I would hope that the effects will avoid those of the deluge of fertilizer coming down the Mississippi. I do not think that we will be trying to cool a thick layer of the ocean. We preferentially remove the warmest water from the surface, say 10 to 20 metres depending on our choice of valve wall depth and take it down to the thermocline at say 200 metres. Nathan Myhrvold's model suggests that the mixed water rises to the level where it meets water of its own density and then spreads sideways like a fairly thin rock stratum. Oil slicks with a higher viscosity spread out quite fast. We have some control of this depth below the surface by choosing the mixing ratio though a shape change of the exit. Ken wants us to get it up to 100 metres below the surface where there is enough daylight to get the phytoplankton started. As hurricanes provide lots of useful rain we do not want to stop all of them, just shift the Whitney-Hobgood figure a chosen amount to the left instead rather than letting it creep to the right. See http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/Papers_data_graphics.htm Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design School of Engineering and Electronics University of Edinburgh Mayfield Road Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland tel +44 131 650 5704 fax +44 131 650 5702 Mobile 07795 203 195 [email protected] http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs dsw_s wrote: >> I hope that they will have a negative material cost. >> > > How does that work? Are they made out of some kind of waste material? > > >> It seems better to stifle them early. >> > > They're what cools the sea surface farther down their paths, and warm > Europe. If you stifle them early, you'll presumably do the opposite. > That could mean that when you finally don't stifle one, it will have > warmer water at the latter part of its trajectory, and potentially do > more damage. > > >> We do not need to cool the whole Atlantic basin but what goes around >> comes around. >> > > If you warm the whole Atlantic at depths around 100M, doesn't that > come around too? > > >> What we are trying to do is replicate la Nina events in a permanent form >> and we know that these are very effective at stimulating fish growth. The >> artificial upwelling should steadily deliver the full cocktail of all the >> natural nutrients in the same way as the natural upwellings which are >> unfortunately rare. >> > > The ecology of a food source with occasional mastings or population > explosions is likely to be different from that of a smaller but steady > food source. The more often we remake the ecology of the oceans, the > more extinctions will accumulate. On the other hand, artificial > upwelling may help stop extinctions in some specific cases. We need > to learn about the ecology that we're already pervasively affecting. > Interventions made in near-total ignorance are more likely to do harm > than good. > > >> You write that hurricane formation needs hot water down to 150 feet. If >> this is right it should make them more vulnerable to deliberate cooling. >> > > A thick layer of water is harder to cool than a thin layer, so if the > development of hurricanes is dependent on the temperatures of a thick > layer that should mean they're less sensitive to deliberate cooling. > > > >> > > -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
