You know, the crocodiles have a four-chambered heart. They are also the top predators in their environment. The humans who could use the fire to support their body temperature got strong advantage over the mammoths. Hordes of pastoral nomads conquered the hunter-gatherers, then agriculturists forced the nomads out. The armies equipped with guns beat the archers and were then defeated by automatic guns. Aviation using 100000 hp engines made senseless the tanks, which use 1000 hp engines. Evolution goes its way. The countries and economical systems, which are able to use the energy in more intensive way usually have additional resources to control others and then enforce their own type of economic activity. So the human quest for the energy hardly will be stopped as the relationships between the countries and systems are still based on competition principles. Even after the open declaration of the state of global warming one of the main political tasks of main countries is still the search for new sources of oil and fighting for the access to these sources.
All the geoengineering options suggested by last Royal Society report mostly require additional energy or limit the using of energy, so they will go against main evolutional trend and so their political future is uncertain. Meanwhile, what we have is 1) problem: excess energy ( high surface temperatures ) 2) reason: humans' insatiability for energy Obviously the most natural way will be to feed the first to the second. In case of the planet the role of cooling system is played by the weather processes such as typhoons, tornados and cyclones, which move the hot air up. They use the temperature gradient between the surface and the tropopause. Their working body is simple wet air. If you want to create the slight typhoon your main problem is the size of the device. The higher it will be the bigger gradient you will use. 10000 meters height looks appropriate. At this point most of potential investors stop to respond. The device, which is bigger then Mount Everest looks impossible. This is a prejudice. Large Hadron Collider is almost the same size if has been put vertically. It was made for $4.5 billion only. Your device should cost about several times less, because it is in fact mostly the big toroidal balloon filled with wet air. The usual balloon about 50 meters high costs about $25000, $3 per square meter, so the torus with radiuses 250 and 5000 meters will cost about 150 million. It is similar to the price of oil tanker. You understand that you will be able to produce the rain and the cold snap within a radius of ten kilometers and more as the device will move to the next point with the wind. If the speed of the internal air flow will be 30 m/s then the device will contain about 3 Terajoules of energy. If it will be possible to consume 1% every 5 minutes then it will gives about 111 Megawatt with very humble $1350 per kW initial capital cost. It will be interesting to know 1) the minimum size of it 2) the minimum cost of it 3) the maximum output power for the minimal configuration 4) can it provoke the weather changes much bigger than its own size? 5) how many of such devices necessary to stop global warming? 6) how much to get the answers to the questions 1) - 5)? 7) which organization can calculate the answers to the questions 1) - 6)? Some initial sketches are still here: http://www.globalfrozing.com/Atmospheric_powerplant_synopsis.html --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
