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Ashwin Kumar

Dec 1, 2012
05:43

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Thank you for the proposal.

Andrew Lockley

Dec 2, 2012
07:13

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This does not appear to be at all practical. The proposer implies that hurricanes can be induced directly. Even if this were possible, there is no indication of how these could be sustained. Hurricanes are naturally sustained by warm surface waters - they are effectively a heat engine for transferring heat energy from the sea surface to the tropopause. Furthermore, control of the hurricanes would appear to be difficult. Only very coarse control could be achieved, and significant damage to property would be inevitable. Furthermore, this idea does not appear to relate to methane releases - the stated goal of the exercise.

Charles Duemler

Dec 3, 2012
02:22

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(This does not appear to be at all practical. ) Depends on what you care about. The second best, easiest and most likely to be done method of ending global warming would be a SRM project of putting stuff up in the upper atmosphere. These will block the sun's rays reducing evaporation, storm creation and contribute to drought. If we get a couple of years like the one we just had of devastating drought i'm guessing a few billion will die. Being that the second best solution could cause mass starvation due to drought makes mine very practical to those who would otherwise die. My project should increase agriculture to feed up to 20 billion. How would you price that? It's easy to add ending starvation forever by growing food in space in caverns left over from mining the moon and mars. What's the price for no more starvation ever? Not to mention that i've heard estimates of the cost of global warming being well over a trillion dollars up to 200 trillion to become carbon neutral in 20 years. With a side benefit of cleansing the atmosphere in case of asteroid impact or super volcano I think it's very practical. (The proposer implies that hurricanes can be induced directly. ) You might want to check out a poorly done video of mine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey51keFnB0A&feature=plcp This is how to start one up in a low pressure area with a clear sky. Take a structure ½ height and width of an aircraft carrier and goes around in a circle 20 miles in diameter. Heat the water up on the inside of the structure using ocean vents. Steer the structure to the middle of a low pressure area. Shoot the water on the inside back inside via fountains. This heats the water up more and creates an area of hot mist. This hot mist will rise up and start a convection cycle (this may take a day or two to get a good convection cycle going). Shoot the water out of the fountains in the same directions that a hurricanes winds would go and an eye wall will form over the structure. At this point you'll have a man made hurricane over the structure being controlled by the lower part of the eye wall. In no way does any of this go against the laws of physics. (Even if this were possible, there is no indication of how these could be sustained.) With 75 degree or hotter surrounding ocean surface water the wind and evaporation from the ocean would be enough to sustain the hurricane. With cooler water the hurricane would rely more on the fountains for moisture and have less moisture in the convection cycle over all. In addition with all the space in the middle of the structure one could build a processing plant to collect the garbage in the ocean and make benches and stuff out of it. Steel manufacturing plants that could make more structures could also be incorporated. These are just a few possibilities that are not even necessary but would be common sense to do to increase the convection. (Hurricanes are naturally sustained by warm surface waters - they are effectively a heat engine for transferring heat energy from the sea surface to the tropopause. ) A classic mistake that every description of how a hurricane works is that the energy comes from the ocean. Sure to get a good hurricane you need moist air, the hotter the better. The sun beating down on the clouds heating them up, causing them to rise up and expanding them contributes most of the energy. With some of the hot ocean surface being evaporated and clouds blocking the rays from the sun from hitting the ocean surface, this is what cools down the ocean surface. (Furthermore, control of the hurricanes would appear to be difficult.) Not really, just expensive. I'm guessing the power consumption at max would compare to running a couple hundred 18 wheelers. Just make sure you have built the towers tall enough and shoot the water out fast enough and the eye wall will stay attached to above the structure. Using sandy as an example I would've steered it out to sea before it came close to the high pressure block that turned it to the left. (Only very coarse control could be achieved, and significant damage to property would be inevitable.) How much control you have depends on how high the towers go and how fast you shoot water out of the fountains. If the fountain structures went up to the clouds and water was shot out at 200mph you could move the structure at 60mph and the hurricane would basically re-form around the structure wherever it stopped. This would be very expensive and unnecessary though. A hurricane will want to move on a specific course, you just need to be able to alter the course 10-30mph and keep it away from other weather anomalies. (Furthermore, this idea does not appear to relate to methane releases - the stated goal of the exercise. ) You might want to re-read it: What climate-engineering initiatives might be feasible, especially to avoid methane feed backs caused by global warming? Quite clearly it asks what climate-engineering initiatives might be feasible. In addition reflecting the sun's rays back into space that would otherwise heat the arctic ocean will cool it down. The methane feedback problem in the ocean has to do with the ocean heating up more and more as more methane comes out. On a larger scale area wise, the earth is heating up and methane is being released from the tundra more and more. My method should slow then stop the excess methane being released due to global warming. Closing down the bering strait would have a greater effect and if I had my way would incorporate a huge door controlling the flow of water. I'd close it all up to stop the flow completely until the methane stopped coming out then open it up part way, if this were a possibility. People are so closed minded about controlling the weather and bringing up this method makes people think i'm more nuts. (significant damage to property would be inevitable) Yes, there probably would be damages from controlling the weather. Currently hurricanes cause way over $10 billion annually not to mention the cost of global warming itself. Damages and life lost due to the operation of the structures would be far out weighed by the damages and life lost from hurricanes and global warming that would otherwise occur.

Michael Maccracken

May 3, 2013
04:42

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As the primary objective of doing this seems to be to provide water to dry areas (southwest North America, sub-Saharan Africa)--and there is no question that this is something that would likely be needed and beneficial--the question would seem to be how the potential for this approach would compare to alternative approaches, specifically, for example, desalination plants. With the new techniques for desalination emerging (e.g., see https://www.llnl.gov/news/aroundthelab/2012/Aug/ATL-080612_technique.html), it would be interesting to have a comparative analysis done of energy demands and amount of water potentially harvestable from the process. For the desalination plant, it would need energy constantly and would produce a well-controlled water stream that could be piped to where needed (one would not want to lose the valuable freshwater to evaporation, especially as much as would be likely to occur in dry areas). For the created hurricane, there would presumably be needed a very large amount of energy to get it started (to get to the right location and then to operate it), but it would be going for a relatively limited time (probably only a few time of year when it could get to a favorable location), hoping that the natural even kept going once started. In addition, controlling its location would likely be quite difficult due to the steering forces created by existing natural weather systems Finally, water would be spread over a very large are and much would likely be lost to initial evaporation and to sinking into the soils and later evaporation, etc. My guess, considering issues of reliability, water quality and more would be that the desalination plant would be most cost effective. Finally, I'd like to understand more about why it is thought to be so easy to construct a hurricane. The systems turn out to be very large, drawing energy from many hundreds (thousands) of kilometers distance. At present, while our modeling capabilities are pretty good at projecting track, our understanding of why hurricanes intensify is still pretty limited. The proposal seems to suggest that we could quickly identify plausible locations to undertake such efforts, but in reality it really seems to take quite specific conditions for hurricanes to develop, making me think that it would actually likely be quite difficult to get a hurricane going. Have there been any successful modeling studies showing that a hurricane can be developed in a particular location other than where they have actually formed?

Charles Duemler

May 4, 2013
12:42

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The primary objective is to end “global warming”. Generate enough clouds over the ocean to reflect enough rays back into space to counter the rays trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses and you end “global warming”. One hurricane out in the doldrums should do the trick. Secondary objectives would be to end starvation forever, prevent hurricanes from hitting land, providing “clean” transportation, reduce frost and heat damage on crops, reduce thunderstorms preventing tornado's, moving some steel mills and factories out of cities on to my structure, cleaning up the plastic trash in the ocean, reducing carbon levels, reducing ocean acidification and providing a platform to replenish the reefs. I'm probably forgetting a few. I'm just guessing that the energy needed to control the hurricane would be equivalent to 200-500 18 wheelers. Keep in mind the energy used is only to control where the eye wall starts and to move the structure around, the sun provides the energy used to keep the convection cycle going along with having heated up the ocean surface just like in nature. Hurricanes want to go to the area of lowest pressure which would be in the middle of my structure. Weather systems like the one that pushed Sandy into New York would still mess with the controlled hurricane. For situations like that you would have to steer the hurricane east out to see ahead of the pressure zone and dissipate it out at sea. If what you wanted was just water desalination then a plant to do just that would be far more cost effective I'm guessing. Well, first off I do not think like others, I imagine the earth as a little sandbox or fish tank. I created this structure in my mind to house a section of a fresh water waterway while speeding it up using my wave energy conversion routine. When I scientist put me down stating that a hurricane would wipe out my structure I thought of how I could attach an intake pipe 200' down where the water is around 40 degrees and shoot that out of fountains at the oncoming hurricane. This should reduce the hurricane and is basically what is done to turn one off using the structure. Then in messing around with it in my mind I put the intake pipe inside the structure and shoot the water back inside via fountains. This heated the water up more and created a large area of constant hot mist. With the sun beating down on the hot mist it has no choice but to rise up starting a convection cycle. Leave that going for a few days with over 75 degree ocean surface temperature and you'll have a tropical system. Shoot that water out of the fountains in the same direction a hurricanes wind would go with enough fountains and high enough, it'll control where the lower part of an eye wall starts up. Of course one does not need to generate a hurricane from scratch. Just position the structure in the middle of a tropical system coming off Africa and turn it on. Just as simple as capturing one by turning the fountains on and driving the structure into the middle of an oncoming hurricane. The hurricanes eye wall will expand and wrap around the structures eye wall. There have been no studies on generating hurricanes that I know of. I'm the only one working on generating and controlling them that I know of and I happened upon this by accident.

Charles Duemler

Jun 8, 2013
06:42

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I'm going crazy wondering if you understand my project. Is it not all logical? Does it not fall in line with all physics? I can make another video describing anything about it that you want. I've put together a 20 or so page plan on what to do to end global warming you might also want to check out. http://projectcharles.org/ I know it sounds daunting playing with hurricanes so to start you off on something simpler you might check out my "tornado killer" which drains the clouds of their moisture. It's the first link on the website. This will also drastically help with flood control, ending droughts and goes great with the hurricane structure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovZQcc_kFiU If you have extra time (haha) you might check out the next two links on website. 2nd link is ending starvation forever followed by turning lead into gold and the third link is my failed attempt to re define gravity. If this is right and we can end starvation forever for the sake of the 100's of billions yet to be born (more life + better quality of life = more value of life) not to mention the ending of possibly the worst death starvation at least go public in stating that this needs to be looked into and that it doesn't defy the laws of physics in any way that you can tell.

Charles Duemler

Jun 16, 2013
12:47

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in reference to mike maccracken comment. In thinking about it one might do a study on cost of running my hurricane structure. Once built in addition to ending global warming and controlling hurricanes so they do not hit land will be to provide water for drinking and agriculture around the world. It's my guess that if you do not add construction costs delivering fresh water via a hurricane providing clouds that would rain it down would be far cheaper than other processes. There also needs to be an environmental impact study on it. I have to re-do putting everything down in a nice format. Last time i did that it was over 200 pages without being saved properly when it got destroyed by a hard drive crash.

Michael Maccracken

Jul 3, 2013
05:39

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Dear Charles--In that you asked for a few more comment, here are a few more specific comments: 1. The cloud fraction is not really determined by the amount of water--were that the case, there would not be clouds in cold areas where there is little moisture in the air, and there would not be clouds at high altitude where there is little moisture in the air. Rather than depending on absolute humidity (so the amount of moisture in the air), they tend to depend on relative humidity--so where the humidity is pushed about 100%, 2. Relative humidity tends to be dependent on the circulation of the atmosphere, such that the humidity goes up in air that is rising and cooling, with the excess precipitating out as rain. Air coming out of convective clouds near their top tends to have a low absolute humidity, but can have a high relative humidity. This can lead to formation of cirrus clouds, which tend to let a lot of the solar radiation through (often scattering the light so things look white and bright, but energy is coming through), and, very importantly, cirrus clouds tend to absorb up-going infrared radiation and radiate it back toward the surface; so cirrus clouds tend to cause overall warming (even though they can make peak daytime temperatures a bit lower). Thus, you would not be wanting to increase cirrus clouds with deep storms like hurricanes as that would increase IR trapping. Indeed, one proposed geoengineering approach is to seed cirrus clouds with ice nuclei as a way of trying to get rid of them. 3. So with convection pushing air up, there must be a balancing of air coming down. And this air, starting from a low absolute humidity, will be compressed and warm, and the relative humidity will drop. This is what happening in the subtropics--dry air coming down over the Sahara Desert, etc.--and there won't be clouds in those regions over land. Over the ocean, one can form a near surface inversion and get decks of low-lying stratus clouds that are quite reflective (e.g., out off the west coast of US, etc.). These clouds can be helpful in cooling the planet, and there are proposals around, although not in this contest, to seek to brighten these clouds by pumping up a mist of sea salt particles (do Google search on Salter and Latham and cloud brightening. 4. In that as much air has to come down as goes up, and air tends to go up in narrow columns (convective clouds) and come down (be pushed down) over broad areas, and it is very hard to change this basic atmospheric circulation, and thus to change cloud cover. 5. Further, the amount of moisture that evaporates from a surface is dependent on several things. One is the temperature of the water, a second is the wind speed (which you are proposing to increase), and a third factor is the moisture gradient between the surface (so 100% relative humidity at the surface temperature) and the moisture content of the air. In your proposal to increase the moisture content of the air, this would tend to reduce the rate of natural evaporation (this is one reason the water being given off by combustion of fossil fuels is not so important--it just changes which process is causing the moisture loading in the atmosphere. 6. You suggest starting a hurricane or two could make a difference. I am trying to recall, but there are already something near to 100 hurricanes/typhoons/tropical storms per year, and there are some variations on this, so it is not at all clear why creating one or more should make a big difference. 7. You note that hurricanes tend to bring colder waters to the surface, leaving a tail. Agreed. Note, however, that the colder waters brought up from below are presently supersaturated in CO2, and so when they come to the surface, the waters will give off the extra CO2 to the surface, tending to increase global warming rather than reduce it. Now, pulling up colder waters in low latitudes does lead to some colder water in high latitudes being pulled down, and it will have atmospheric concentration of CO2, so that helps a bit, but the water will not be as cold as could be were the water to be formed by the freezing of sea ice, so it is not clear if enough CO2 will be pulled down to balance the amount coming up. 8. I'd urge you to rough out an estimate of how much energy a hurricane is processing. One can do this by assuming a size and precipitation rate and then using the latent heat of condensation. What one finds is that a big hurricane--the type you are trying to generate--ends up processing a megaton of energy (so energy equivalent to a one megaton nuclear explosion) every few seconds--it is a tremendous amount of energy and any proposed structure would have to be very strong--winds can get up to well over 100 miles per hour. 9. In that a hurricane is one of Nature's ways of transferring heat from low to higher latitudes, and the amount of energy that is transported is proportional to the latitudinal temperature gradient, it is not at all clear that your creation of a man-made hurricane would not be offset by Nature forming one less hurricanes. 10. On top of all this are quite a number of practical problems with the proposal--it is not at all clear that hurricanes can be moved by anything we do, given the limited amount of energy we have available. There have been ideas about how to steer hurricanes (e.g., away from a vulnerable city) and virtually no indication this is possible. Yet getting a hurricane to go where you want it to seems to be essential for your proposal to be meaningful. I hope these responses are the type of scientific criticisms that you were looking for as a way of continuing to think through your proposal and how it might be improved. Regards, Mike MacCracken

Charles Duemler

Jul 4, 2013
07:31

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Clouds over land have a warming effect. Clouds over the ocean have a cooling effect. Clouds reflect the sun's rays back into space between 80 and 95%. The type of clouds that a hurricane makes are Cumulonimbus clouds. The top of these clouds are where the rain drops form into ice and drop back down into the clouds. These clouds reflect between 90 and 95% of the sun's rays back into space. The ocean reflects between 10-20% of the sun's rays back into space. Enough clouds over the ocean to reflect enough rays and you end global warming. My "ring" uses fountains shooting heated water out at over 100mph to dictate that the eye wall of the hurricane doesn't go outside the structure as well as act like a turbo charger and make the hurricanes eye wall naturally want to stay over the structure. The fountain structures will increase the moisture and rain produced above the structure. There will be way more rain coming down on the 'ring' compared to what happens next to a natural hurricanes eye wall. The wind rushing inward causing the evaporation will still be there doing the job of cooling the ocean surface due to the heat loss effect of evaporation as well as providing the heat and energy to the hurricane just as a natural hurricane does. Most hurricanes last a week or two. One hurricane parked in the middle of the Atlantic ocean left going all year would produce enough cloud cover to end global warming. It'd be best however to have several 'rings' positioned around the world preventing hurricanes from hitting land and producing extra clouds that when they do drift over land the excess storm water would be collected in flood control channels and transported and stored to be later used for drinking and irrigation. I do not know how much circulation of the ocean water acts to bring up co2 but understand that rain will bring carbon in the atmosphere down to the ocean surface. This is where I would do plankton blooms but add the type of plankton that would be best for blooming along with iron bits. It's my hope that this along with forests of seaweed could reduce the ocean acidification problem though the real solution is to reduce the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The strength of the towers could be a problem if they fail. The ring should be tested far away from land, possibly upwind of china(just kidding), just in case. The constant 80' waves will demolish any current ship out there except the 'ring' which should do just fine. The 'ring' has an internal waterway pressing against the outer hull that's held together like a cable stay bridge, the waves only relieve the pressure on the cables. If nature counters by producing one less hurricane then I'll just have to produce another. There are many factors affecting hurricane development. One cannot expect to know all the factors concerning weather modification but if one concentrates on increasing the polar ice packs, cooling the planet, eliminating droughts/floods/some frost and some heat damage to crops in order to feed up to 20 billion people, stop most hurricanes from hitting land and such then it will make any mistakes very acceptable. Do not think of the “ring” moving the hurricane. It's only able to change the course where the bottom of the eye wall forms 10-30mph in any direction depending on the how high the fountain structures are, how fast the water is shot out and how hot the water is shooting out. Being able to move the hurricanes is beneficial for many of the effects. If a "ring" was placed in the middle of a tropical depression coming off of Africa it could still be used as a 'turbo charger' to intensify them. Intensifying enough tropical storms and turning them into category 5 hurricanes by keeping the "ring" in the middle where the storm system wants to go could increase cloud cover over the ocean to reflect enough rays to end global warming. Storms drifting towards the poles could be "turbo charged" in order to produce more clouds to replenish the ice cap depending where the storms are. If every storm in the Atlantic, pacific and Indian ocean were to be "turbo charged" there might be less storms but they should last longer and have way more cloud cover. Any chance to go over my solution with an expert is highly appreciated. For MIT and you to have this contest and to go over not only my solution but to have it open to everyone so that anybody can enter and get their ideas evaluated is a great, great service and needs to be commended. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!! I was hoping and continue to hope for a response of "great, this should work, lets get it done" along with help getting it done for mine or another solution to global warming and/or ending starvation forever. Best Regards, Charles Duemler