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Jonathan Katz, a Washington University physics professor, was appointed to Obama's oil spill investigation team. He really knows how to pick 'em. Some of the more apocalyptic fears about global warming resemble a secular doomsday cult. Rather than God dooming mankind for its traditional sins (robbery, lust, murder, disbelief, etc.), Nature is said to doom mankind for the secular sin of carbon emission. Some (Greenpeace, and even more radical groups) think any human effect on nature to be sinful, and regard "Mother Earth" as a deity that is violated by any use of its resources for the sustenance, comfort or betterment of Mankind. Needless to say, this is opposite to the Biblical grant of the natural world to Man for his benefit. full: http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/climate.html Hurricanes are powered by the latent heat of condensation of water evaporated from the surface of warm tropical oceans. They are heat engines driven by the temperature difference between the warm ocean surface and cool air at high altitudes. When a hurricane travels over land or over cooler water it rapidly loses strength. The reason for this is that the evaporation rate from land or cool water is much less than that from warm water. The power available to a hurricane depends on the temperature difference but is also proportional to the rate of evaporation... I therefore suggest that the evaporation from the warm ocean surface be reduced by applying surfactants. This is a very old idea. Even a monolayer (typically 0.0000001 cm, or 0.0000001 gm/square cm) of surfactant has been demonstrated to reduce evaporation from reservoirs by a large factor. Its chief drawback is that the surfactant is rapidly dispersed by the wind. However, surfactants may be effective when only temporary coverage (perhaps one day) is required while the hurricane passes. To cover a swath 100 km wide and 1000 km long with a monolayer of surfactant would require about 100 tons; ten monolayers (to allow for replenishment as the initial monolayer is dispersed by wind and waves) would require about 1000 tons. These are not large quantities; the surfactants are common industrial chemicals that cost a few dollars per pound (or less than $10,000,000 for the quantity required, a tiny fraction of the damage done by a hurricane striking populated land). full: http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/hurricane.html ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
