Professor Salter and Geoengineering List
1. Thanks for the leads at your "site below...signature". One
problem - I could not get the one labeled "McNeil Downtube" to open, so
you might check. It was nice to see that Nathan Myrhvold is/was a
sponsor for this interesting work. I look forward to reading more at
your site.
2. In 1981, newly elected President Reagan killed (along with most
everything else related to RE/EE) a quite promising Ocean Thermal Energy
Conversion (OTEC) program, with the bald-faced lie that further R&D was
not needed - claiming that OTEC was commercially ready - which no-one
believed then or now. There has been a small amount of continuing work
- especially in Hawai. Emphasis was then on electricity production and
now is on low cost air-conditioning and aquaculture for land-based
systems. I have a call in to the former head of that program (Dr.
Robert Cohen of Boulder Colorado) to see if he might offer some Salter
Sink thoughts from the point of view of the OTEC technology that he is
still pushing hard. He and numerous contractors tried hard before the
program was killed to ensure that the mixed hot and cold water that was
expelled at a proper depth so as to minimize impacts on aquatic life. I
think the down-tube was one of the main study areas. I doubt they
ever considered trying to cool the surface - but Bob Cohen would know.
They had many ideas on how to bring various useful commodities to shore
- that may prove helpful to you That program also supported
considerable research on wave generation, but that is probably of less
interest now as wave technology has progressed a lot in 29 years. My
point is that there may be a history of ocean-based energy generation
that was claimed to be cost effective that could subsidize what you
would like to test.
3. By chance today, I found that you were one of several dozen
panelists for the new Royal Academy program to fund geoengineering -
both CDR and SRM, with its first report out (last week?) that can be
downloaded at
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ResearchFunding/Programmes/Energy/AdviceConsult/GeoengineeringWorkshopReport.htm.
I haven't tried yet to totally understand your group's conclusions that
might be different from the September report, but I was impressed by
some high-ranking words that I don't believe were in the September RS
report (governability -12 votes, public acceptability - 11 votes,
controllability -22 votes, side effects - 31 votes, etc). But the
suggested 2 or 3 major themes still seem a lot like those in the
September report.
Are you able to tell this list anything to suggest how the next
RS report may be different because of your one day meeting? I ask
because I did not feel that the previous panel of 12 had much experience
with Biochar and therefore was pleased to see that several of your new
panel associates had published in that area. Were all the
Geoengineering technologies represented well? Were votes cast with a
pretty good knowledge of every technology's potentials? Anything to
report on the new RS request for a new set of volunteers that I see are
being recruited - and will you and others on this last panel be eligible
for that as well?
Thanks in advance for anything more you can add on any of the above. Ron
Stephen Salter wrote:
> Hi All
>
> The oceans are a big thermal store so the scheme would give us time for
> a quiet think. However we can bring nutrients up to the photic layers
> and grow more phytoplankton giving more dimethyl sulphide for cloud
> nuclei and converting lots of CO2 to non acidic biomass, some of which
> we can eat.
>
> There is a paper called /Hurricanes carbon and fish and a picture called
> /MacNeill downtube in the /Hurricanes folder at the site below my
> signature. /Chlorophyll comparison shows how empty most of the oceans
> are for most of the time. Click through at about one a second for a
> month-by-month animation. We need lots of permanent, private la Nina events.
>
> 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
>
>
>
> Mike MacCracken wrote:
>
>> Just a note that while pumping heat down into the ocean can lead to
>> local cooling, storing heat in the ocean is adding and retaining
>> energy, so will eventually emerge as warming. And, of course, it will
>>
<snip remainder>
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