Re: Mother Nature

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
17 Sep 1999 13:30:44 +0200

The vacuum sphere approach likely doesn't work, but it reminded me of Vinge's bobbles. He mentions in _The Ungoverned_ that projecting a stasis bubble around a tornado was a good way of dealing with them; it would likely work for hurricanes too. Too bad bobbles are just sf (and there isn't much in physics that suggests that they are possible in any form, unlike "real" stuff like wormholes and beanstalks).

ronkean@juno.com writes:

> I takes relatively little energy per unit volume to pump deep ocean water
> to the surface, because of buoyancy. The energy to run the pump could be
> obtained from the temperature difference between the cold water and the
> warm water. That method of energy production has already been
> demonstrated in a 100 KW project (OTEC or FLOTEC).

This is likely the way to do it. Much neater. Although I had this nice idea of seeding the caribbean with nanotech weathervanes, that start pumping up cold water as soon as the windspeed picks up, neatly self-regulating things :-)

> If the pumping were
> done on a large enough scale to prevent hurricanes, there would be
> serious consequences. For example the Gulf Stream's flow would be much
> reduced. That would produce a drastic climate change in Western Europe,
> especially in Britain and Ireland. The EU would complain to the UN, and
> if they did not obtain satisfaction the French would send saboteurs to
> disable the pumps.

Why not make a deal? We move down to the carribeans, europan climate isn't that great anyway. (said by a Swede awaiting the long autumn and winter months :-)

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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