[ExI] ai is all that's needed to reign in a smart president: RE: Trump Says a Smart President Is All That’s Needed to Rein In A.I.

[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2026 at 11:06 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

>
>
> *From:* Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Trump Says a Smart President Is All That’s Needed to
> Rein In A.I.
>
>
>
> >>…"Hurricanes are heat engines of a sort.  They run on heat at the ocean
> surface… the temperature differential is lower, so the hurricanes, even if
> they don't get sheared apart, have less fuel and as a result they aren't as
> violent and energetic."
>
>
>
> >…Spike, look at the numbeds. This is as silly as trying to disrupt a
> hurricane with a bomb…
>
>
>
> Sure but we wouldn’t disrupt it so much as reduce its fury, even a
> little.  El Nino is doing that for us, out there in the Atlantic right now.
>

Little is correct

"This is equivalent to about 200 times the total electrical generating
capacity on the planet! NASA
<https://science.howstuffworks.com/nasa-planetary-protection.htm> says that
"during its life cycle a hurricane can expend as much energy as 10,000
nuclear bombs!" And we're just talking about average hurricanes here, not
Katrina/"

Waste heat from a really big coal power plant is going to be around a GW,
Since human energy use is around 15  TW the heat release of a coal power
plant off the east coast of FLwould release about a GW, one part in 300,000
of the energy of a hurricane. Translated into hurricane intensity, that is
way below our ability to measure, perhaps a reduction of 1/1000th of a
mile/hr for a 100 mph hurricane.

>
>
>
> >…"OK then.  What if... we build power plants out on the continental shelf
> east of Florida?  …
>
>
>
> >…Again, silly. The cost to build anything offshore is crazy.
>
>
>
> Keith
>
>
>
> The offshore wind farm people somehow make the economics work.
>

You are the one who has been gripping about the cost of offshore wind
power. but look at the size of the platforms. They are tiny compared to the
footprint of a data cemer. Not to mention what salt air would do to the
hardware.

  Looks to me like we could build coal burning plants on land, float them
> out there, use seawater as coolant, deliver heat to the upper atmosphere,
> possibly discouraging hurricanes slightly.
>

Think this through. If you are cooling with seawater, the heat is not going
into the upper atmosphere unless a hurricane comes along. Then it would be
worse, though not much worse.

>
>
> This oddball year, hurricanes have been sheared off by a naturally
> occurring cycle in wind currents.  If nature can do it, we aughta be able
> to do it better.
>

No, just NO. The scale is off by several orders of magnitude.

Or if not, then somehow take advantage of existing atmospheric currents to
> carry heat over where hurricanes form and grow.  They need cold air up
> there.  We give them warm air, they can’t grow as big and strong, ja?
>
>
Nope.

Keith

> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20260918/14b81952/attachment.htm>