[ExI] how to tame hurricanes

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Sun Dec 15 17:32:57 UTC 2013


Storms get their energy from the warm water on the ocean's surface, so if
you could cool that surface layer you could reduce the power of a
hurricane, one interesting idea for doing this is called a "Salter Sink".
You make a circle of cheap used tires about 100 meters in diameter, that
structure supports a tube made of thin plastic sheets 200 meters long that
goes down into the ocean's depths. Waves splash over the tires so the warm
water level inside the circle of lashed together tires is about 8 inches
higher inside the circle than outside, so the weight of the water column
forces the warm water down the tube to the cold depths 200 meters below.
Salter says just one such sink could transfer 150 cubic meters of warm
surface seawater every second and rob 9.5 gigawatts of power from a
hurricane; Salter says because these things are so cheap to build and use
no fuel to operate you could make hundreds or even thousands of them.

  John K Clark
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