Climate change, Ocean temperatures and the Energy Crisis - Discuss.
 

The news these days consistently brings up the topic of Climate Change; More hurricane damage, melting glaciers, wildfires and rising sea levels. I was surprised to find out that 93% of heat accumulated in the Earth's atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans.

93%!

The oceans are acting like a vast store of heat energy and their temperatures are predicted to increase by 1 - 4 degrees Celsius by 2100.
Renewable energy sources at present are mainly confined to wind turbines and solar power, what about this vast amount of energy stored in the oceans? (I'm excluding wave and tidal as it's the thermal stuff which intrigues me.) I've found a few articles about recovering the thermal energy in the oceans but it seems pretty small beer compared to other renewable methods.

See "Clean Renewable Energy with Dr Patrick Takahashi" as a taster. This raises the topic of Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) which I didn't know existed. Seems a bit of a well kept secret, it certainly doesn't seem to be highlighted as a major source of energy capture and, I would assume, a method of (eventually?)lowering the oceans temperature, and hence reducing excessive rainfall, monsoons, hurricanes, ice shelf and glacial melts, etc. Plus... as a secondary effect, mitigating the need for migration of people in danger of being forced to flee to higher ground as sea levels rise, much to the annoyance of the people already living on the higher ground!

Just a thought. There are probably lots of reasons why OTEC doesn't have a higher profile. Scientific? Political? What are your views?

Play Bonny!

:hattip:

Pulling energy directly from the ocean is problematic in several ways. Pulling energy from it INDIRECTLY is much better, and that means using wind and wave. Since those involve kinetic transfer and that technology is very mature and relatively safe: we should go with that.

Related to wave, it is easy to design wave power collection to fit into the ecology of the area in a non-disruptive way. Being idiots, we can also craft it to disrupt both the sound and physical environments and cause problems. We need to act wisely so that we do not solve one problem by creating several more!

Related to wind, hanging huge spinning blades out for things to run into sounds pretty primitive. This is why there is discussion of bird kills and a reluctance to have that kind of wind farm in migration paths. The chimney or stack wind collector has several advantages: less and easier maintenance, the blades are a turbine that is fully enclosed and safe for wildlife, excellent efficiency, automatic protection from being over-driven to damage, and it generates some power even in a dead calm. Other than the higher initial cost, it is a superior option in every way. Also, it can look a LOT prettier than those "windmill farms". I expect it to be the wind power option of the future.

I can tell you this. When Germany introduced prohibition on diesel engines. All relatively new diesel cars landed here in Poland. So German can enjoy now fresh air. And demand form others similar prohibition. Once they sold their diesel cars. Simple: hypocrisy.

I'm a carbon based life-form, carbon based life-forms should leave carbon footprints and I am going to leave a massive carbon footprint.

It is my destiny...

In the far distant future, happening right now, there is a Tour Guide...

Personally, I feel that if it was left purely to us, the earth will go down. I don't expect it to be, but that's not for this thread.

I haven't seen a prediction for 3º - 4ºC temperature increase, but there's too many powerful folks making too much and living too well for anything else to happen. I very much doubt if the predictions for +1ºC warming (or whatever we have now) was as dire as the facts are showing- 49.7ºC in Canada today! Big Business owns politics in the Excited States, and those business interests will slow things down so much that nothing meaningful will get done.

What holds true for you personally does not hold true for all the stuff & machinery mankind has added to that equation.

Interesting how posts have so far been about generating some renewable energy by wind and wave power and now appear to be veering off topic.

Any thoughts at all regarding the main point; lowering the oceans temperature in order to mitigate climate change and unwanted population migration due to rising sea levels? OTEC energy recovered from the oceans would effectively be an added bonus which might also go some way to alleviating the climate crisis.

Comments?

Play Bonny!

:hattip:

The problem is the second law of thermodynamics. You can't concentrate dispersed energy without doing some kind of work (which takes energy!). Once energy has been dispersed into the vastness of the ocean, we can't easily get it back again.

It's the added heat that's coming at us from all quarters.

Even if the powers that be were serious about Global Warming, (Which imho they are not yet) there's not much can be done about the oceans. we can exchange heat, not remove it absolutely. We can't transfer ocean heat to the atmosphere, or to outer space, because outer space doesn't want it either.

BTW the occupants of Lytton, Canada's hottest place are all being evacuated because of wildfires today!

UE refunds clean energy projects. So smart people buy in Europe worn out wind turbines. Almost for junk price. Install here in Poland - and take that money from UE. No one really care. UE bureaucrats are satisfied with reports they got. Numbers, statistics, etc.

It's worth knowing that in any real wind over 11¼kph (7 mph) those wind turbines cut out and stop generating.

That was the plot line in Southland Tales, a movie I recommended here a month or so ago, where they harnessed the Oceans Energy into a near perpetual motion machine and generated "liquid karma" that was like Tesla's plan for wireless distribution of energy.

Only there was a little more to it.

If that was the limit for the midwest US states wind generators would almost never run... The typical upper limit is about 55 mph.

This doesn't reduce the temperature of the ocean overall (you wouldn't be able to extract energy from a process like that, as hazel pointed out), but rather equalizes the temperatures of the upper and lower water of the ocean (that is, the deeper colder water would be heated up, while the upper warmer water would be cooled somewhat).

That actually depends upon the turbine, blade assembly, configuration, and installation details. Also, stack or chimney turbines have a far broader range of effective use, generating power in winds from 0 kph (dead calm) to around 166 kph. Higher wind speeds are rare, and the problem then is if the structure will fail.