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Hyperion

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Stomping on the brakes, and steering away from the cliff.
« on: August 16, 2017, 12:20:14 PM »
A few proposals for remediation and recovery I have been working on over the last few years. Lets discuss. To my mind some hope, however tenuous is better for the soul than scrabbling for reasons to rejoice in, avoid thinking about, or even resign oneself to Calamity.

Lets start with one I was working on a couple of years ago to tame beasts like the ESAS amongst a whole emergent ZOO this approach now seems screaming for.

Kelp Farming and Ice dyking for habitat enhancement and negative Carbon fuels and chemical production.
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A purpose built craft like this Ground effect plane / hovercraft triphibian concept could be ideal.  The laterally rigid sideskirts with vertically flexable surface contouring  ski bottoms would allow transitions between air, water ,ice, snow, earth surfaces of all types and the waterscoop tail could directly hose the water onto the ice with foil effect to counter lateral reaction thrust.

 Snow making, firefighting, and ecology seeding also in its functionality.

At pumping of 10tons per second, 50m x 100m/s = 5000sqm,  10000kg/5000sqm = 2 kg per sqm per pass. About 2mm per pass.

If we assume conditions that will allow 2 mm to freeze in 30 seconds then 4mm per minute = 240mm per hour = 5760mm (near 6m thick) per day could be made of 50m wide by 100m/s x 30s = 3km long  of icedyke by a mobile spray vehicle at 100m/s.

3000m x 6m x 50m = 900 000 tons per day of ice making.

A fleet of 50 working for 100 days therefore could make 5000 x 900 000 = 45 000 000 000 tons or near 5 cubic kilometers of ice.

if we are looking at an average needed to ground them of say 30m thick then 50m wide is cross section area of 1500 sqm.

5 000 000 000 cubic m / 1500 sqm =  3.33333 million meters or 3333 km.
Ball park figure of 1000kw vehicle power My estimates deem adequate to do this.

Very likely a rope mesh reinforcement would need to be floated on the water and anchored in place to hold together the dyke been formed. Doing this work in polynyas seems the best way, then towing into position of sections to be anchored and further thickened.
If 100 such vehicles were used you've got near seven thousand km of icedyke which could be enough for such a layout as this below.

For methane plume hotspots to the surface hexagonal tiles would need to be formed and towed into place if they are too rich for ice to form inside the rings in situ.

Stationary pumping systems might have too high costs per area in most places with limits of small volumes per pump plausible due to area feasible to distribute the water to, and ice layup rates. Though in saying this high cost is often seen  as a benefit for commercial interests. They can make more money doing it the hard way.

The purposes of kelp farming in the less methane emissive areas is as follows:
  • Biomass for biofuels and biochemicals of around 500 ton per hectare per year can be harvested.
    The growing kelp oxygenates the water to support consumers of methane and riverine fluxes of organic carbon.
    The artificial kelp forests provide habitat and food for a diverse and rich ecology of which fisheries and abalone/ mussel/ crabs / lobster etc farming potential.
    Unlike micro algaes the kelp biomass is easily harvested and so does not rot and anoxify the water at the end of summer.
    sedimentation rates and water clarity are vastly improved by the kelp forests, thereby improving albedo and enhancing natural carbon burial in sediments.
    Simple and low cost infrastructure only is neccessary to process the kelp locally into liquids fror low transport costs to refinaries for further upgrading.
    It would be easy to use the CO from an initial  biomass pyrolysis to convert methane collected nearby to methanol for easy low cost transportation.
    Combining these systems would allow zero carbon emmission liquid fuels via the energy component of the fossil methane and biomass being used as hydrogen and the carbon turned into biochar and hi performance bioglues and recyclable polymers, allowing further longterm  C sequestration by wood, biofibre etc component for  construction materials, also replacing high C emmission steel, concrete etc.
Aaron Franklin.



Policy: The diversion of NZ aluminum production to build giant space-mirrors to melt the icecaps and destroy the foolish greed-worshiping cities of man. Thereby returning man to the sea, which he should never have left in the first place.
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Hyperion

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Oceanic Current breakdown remediation
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2017, 01:25:15 PM »
Or Stopping the AMOC going AMUC.

thereby flushing out the freezable low salinity surface layer. And ceasing Atlantic bottom water production. Which it probably already has, thereby whipping us down the road to deep and mix bathometric Anoxia and a Canfield ocean state Super greenhouse Anoxic ocean event.

We have lost the historic thick Ice shelves and bergs that had the capacity to maitain well below freezing core temperatures throughout the summer, and over winter generated large hypersaline downwelling brinicles as they scavenged ice from the salty incoming Atlantic waters and created slugs of cold saline  bottomwater to ooze over the GB-FAROES-ICELAND-GREENLAND shallow portal to the basin and replenish the atlantic deep benthic waters with fresh oxygen and motion.

I'm Proposing that a no lose intervention at this point is:
- Rather than let the gulf-stream Increasingly colonize the entire Arctic basin with a counterclockwise upward helical spiral that appears to maybe have already exhausted all the cold hyper-saline bottom water it can squeeze over the exit ridge.

-To the Point that with pernicious low pressure over the Arctic we have an AMUC - Atlantic Meridional Under-turning Current, filling the basin with warm salty stuff from below and evicting our low salinity surface lens by wind, Coriolis and mechanical filtering thru primarily the CAA.

A good Idea May be to utilize large scale fluid-gas phase transfer heat pipe systems to extract the heat from the over 15C in places incoming water where it is sliding under the outgoing cold fresh stuff. The working fluid is heated in the lower heat exchanger/evaporator, travels up to the surface as a gas, generates vast amounts of energy  passing through a turbine before being cooled at the surface by a similar heat-exchanger/condenser, before returning as a fluid down to another turbine at the bottom and through the evaporator again.

Even better if some momentum exchange could be added in. Returning the fresh to the Arctic, and the salt to the Atlantic. Which may well happen if the Gulfstream can be cooled and sink south down the bottom incline off Newfoundland or south of Iceland. It wouldn't need to displace the cold fresh stuff south if it did not get in to the Arctic. There seems to be two areas of about 100km width where this could be VERY effective. With over 1m/s flow rates and the biggest temperature and salinity differentials. Bering Strait could be a candidate too.

-Needless to say there is a very large amount of money to be made from the energy this low level engineering challenge could produce.

-And the Storm feeding potential of the North sea and arctic would be greatly reduced. Not to mention sea-level rise, clathrate guns.....

Sorry about the scruffy paint drawn concept mock-up. No CAD at present.

A bit of a rundown on the north sea current dynamics I found in my archive:

The North Atlantic Current

Elizabeth Rowe, Arthur J. Mariano, Edward H. Ryan

The North Atlantic Current (NAC) as represented by the Mariano Global Surface Velocity Analysis (MGSVA). The NAC transports warm Gulf Stream water poleward. It feeds the Irminger current and the broad northward N. Atlantic drift.
The North Atlantic Current originates between the Grand Banks and Mid Atlantic Ridge near the Newfoundland Ridge at the branch point of the Gulf Stream. Mann (1967, 1972) using a reference level of 2,000 dbar found that the NAC (his "Atlantic Current") was made up of 20 Sv of water from the Gulf Stream and 15 Sv from the Slope Water Current bringing the total transport up to 35 Sv. Other transport estimates for the NAC include 35 Sv (ref leval 1900 m) (Krause et al., 1987); In his figure 15 the Gulf Stream is located at 40°N 50°W and the Slope Water current at 41°N 50°W. Fuglister (1963) considered this to be a typical situation and found a westerly countercurrent separating the two. Rossby (1996) estimates a transport of 40 Sv in his review of the North Atlantic Current. Mann (1967) notes that the currents are permanent but subject to meandering as demonstrated by International Ice Patrol observations.

The North Atlantic Current represents the bulk of the Gulf Stream continuation past its branch point. Mann (1967) shows the The North Atlantic Current as comprised of waters from the Slope Water Current and from the Gulf Stream. In his representation approximately 15 Sv are derived from the Slope Water Current with the remaining 20 Sv contributed by the Gulf Stream. The remaining 30 Sv head off to the north east. The NAC is strengthened by mixing interactions of the Gulf Stream and Labrador Current as well. Worthington had shown the NAC as part of a separate Northern gyre, however subsequent work later revealed that this hypothesis was incorrect and that the North Atlantic Current was indeed derived from the Gulf Stream. The North Atlantic Current is generally thought of as the end of the Gulf Stream, however it goes on to feed some of the major subarctic currents completing the poleward transport of tropical waters.

Based on five years of NOAA satellite imagery (1980-1985) Krauss et al. (1987) identified two basic flow patterns for the NAC. The first is the "classical situation" where the NAC flows north past Flemish Cap, into the Northwest Corner (52°N), forms a loop, and turns east. In this case there are only minor extrusions of water on the current's offshore side. The other pattern is the "branching situation". In this case only part of the NAC continues to the northwest corner while large amounts of water are expelled from the eastern side of the current (between pressure cells). Evidence for these different regimes can also be found in hydrographic studies. Worthington (1976) identified and named the Northwest Corner even though he did not show the NAC as a continuation of the Gulf Stream. Krausse et al. (1987) show the NAC branching at 47°N, 41°W with waters from the eastern flank heading northeast and from the western flank heading northwest towards the Northwest Corner.

Clark et al (1980) published one of the most influential reports on this region. They established the branch point proposed by Mann (1967) and refuted Worthington's (1976) two-gyre hypothesis. Clark et al. (1980) found a transport of 53 Sv (2000 dbar reference) for a merged slope water current and Gulf Stream with maximum speeds of ~100 cm s-1. They only found peak velocities of 50 cm s-1 in the North Atlantic Current but noted that they had sectioned the current obliquely. A more typical maximum velocity for the North Atlantic Current is the 100 cm s-1 reported by Krausse et al. (1987). Clarke et al. (1980) found that 26 Sv of the combined Gulf Stream Slope current flow contributed to the North Atlantic Current with the remaining 27 Sv turning east. Although Mann (1967) too had noted the presence of a large clockwise eddy, he had not accounted for its contribution to the northward flow. Clark et al estimated a contribution of approximately 18 Sv (2000 db reference) from this "Newfoundland Basin eddy". The Labrador Current recirculation was shown "blending" into the North Atlantic Current although there was no estimate of transport contribution. Krauss et al. (1990) found that extensive mixing between Labrador Current and North Atlantic Current water produces caballing which too in turn strengthens the North Atlantic Current.

Worthington's two gyre hypothesis is the most influential rejection of the North Atlantic Current as an extension of the Gulf Stream (Wothington, 1962, 1976). Based on the higher oxygen content of waters off Flemish Cap Worthington concocted a new circulation scheme involving a separate northern geostrophic anticyclonic gyre in which the North Atlantic Current functioned as a western boundary current. He also felt that salinity differences between the regions were too great to be accounted for by mixing and used that as further evidence for this gyre. Lastly he cited the presence of a low pressure trough separating the gyres although his flow lines did not correspond well to dynamic height charts. Since so many other aspects of Worthington's circulation scheme were correct his theory was probably given credence for far longer than warranted. The two gyre hypothesis was finally laid to rest by Clark et al (1980) who were able to account for most of the water property differences which initially led Worthington to propose his two gyre theory. They also cited Worthington's departure from geostrophy as major flaw in the theory. Clarke et. al. (1980) confirmed Mann's findings which are that the Gulf Stream splits south of the Grand Banks and that the North Atlantic Current is a continuation of the Gulf Stream.

The other branch of the Gulf Stream was seen as a broad indefinite flow with part returning southwards contributing to the Gulf Stream recirculation (Clarke et al, 1980) and part turning eastward to eventually coalesce and strengthen forming the Azores Current (Klein and Seidler, 1989). During winter months Klein and Seidler (1989) showed a single current flowing from the source region near the Southeast Newfoundland Rise. However, the situation differed in the summer where they found the current from the source region branching into two current bands near 41°N 47°W. The northern branch was found to head almost straight for the Azores Current but the southern branch formed a cyclonic loop with only 70% of its flow crossing the Mid Atlantic Ridge. This may be evidence of seasonality in the source region or may result from the general variability inherent in the source region.

References :

Clarke et al., 1980: Current system south and east of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 10, 25-65.
Fuglister, F.G., 1963: Gulf Stream at 60, Progress in Oceanography, 1, 265-373.
Klein, B. et al. and G. Seidler, 1989: On the origen of the Azores current, Journal of Geophysical Research, 94, 4905-4012.
Krauss, W., E. Fahrbach, A. Aitsam, J. Elken, and P. Koske, 1987: The North Atlantic Current and its associated eddy field southeast of Flemish Cap. Deep-Sea Research, 34, 1163-1185.
Krauss, W., R. Doscher, A. Lehmann, and T. Viehoff, 1990: On eddy scales in the eastern and northern North Atlantic Ocean as a function of latitude. Journal of Geophysical Research, 95, 18049-18056.
Mann C.R., 1967: The termination of the Gulf Stream and the beginning of the North Atlantic Current, Deep-Sea Research, 14, 337-359.
Mann, C.R., 1972: A review of the branching of the Gulf Stream System, Proc. R. Soc. Edinb., B72, 341-349.
Rossby, T., 1996: The North Atlantic Current and surrounding waters: At the crossroads. Reviews of Geophysics, 34, 463-481.
Worthington, L.V., 1962: Evidence for a two gyre circulation system in the North Atlantic, Deep-Sea Research, 9, 51-67.
Worthington, L.V., 1976: On the North Atlantic circulation, Oceanographic Studies, The John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 6, 1-110.

Policy: The diversion of NZ aluminum production to build giant space-mirrors to melt the icecaps and destroy the foolish greed-worshiping cities of man. Thereby returning man to the sea, which he should never have left in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGillicuddy_Serious_Party

Hyperion

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Re: Stomping on the brakes, and steering away from the cliff.
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2017, 05:06:20 AM »
One more thing about transferring heat from subsurface northward gulfstream flows to the cap of southbound cold stuff above it south of Greenland. This vastly improves outbound longwave that is lost by this significant portion of the earths surface area being reduced in its capacity to radiate. Hansen 2015 calculated this effect as x10 of current greenhouse gas overburden to be expected shortly. And of course the thermal gradient with nearby far hotter Nth Atlantic waters creates serious storm breeding potential. So much advantage to enhancing the planets heat export capacity here.
And of course the Ice and snow building system also has big bonuses in the planetary energy export budget.
I am thinking also that ice dyking much of the through-flow channels of the CAA would be a big bonus in disabling the Garlic-press  and throttling down Halodecline by fresh surface water export here.
Policy: The diversion of NZ aluminum production to build giant space-mirrors to melt the icecaps and destroy the foolish greed-worshiping cities of man. Thereby returning man to the sea, which he should never have left in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGillicuddy_Serious_Party

Adam Ash

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Re: Stomping on the brakes, and steering away from the cliff.
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2017, 12:36:08 PM »
...
I am thinking also that ice dyking much of the through-flow channels of the CAA would be a big bonus in disabling the Garlic-press  and throttling down Halodecline by fresh surface water export here.

Rite, I will play 'your silly game'!  Attached image shows 'dykes' plugging all viable channels of the garlic press - each located at the narrowest point between bits of terra firma.  The total length of dyke required is 300 kilometres, with the longest span being about 100 km. 

Such a project would not be a 'bonus', it would be an engineering impossibility within the presently available resources and skills and likely a practical failure too, IMHO.  The environmental implications are poorly understood, and the potential unintended consequences (including the impact of the soot from the fossil fuel emissions of plant building the dykes on ice life) are likely to be too numerous to enumerate, with either forward- or hind-sight. 

Next!

magnamentis

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Re: Stomping on the brakes, and steering away from the cliff.
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2017, 05:37:38 PM »
i doubt that any humanly built barrier can withstand that kind of force, forces like ice-drift on a very large scale. doubt does not mean i say it's not possible, i'm not an engineer or architect but i'd guess that such barriers would simply be pushed away and if it were feasible, maintenance and construction would cost huge and then for what benefit. the ice would simply melt on the other side of the barrier very soon ;)
« Last Edit: August 18, 2017, 03:04:11 AM by magnamentis »

TerryM

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Re: Stomping on the brakes, and steering away from the cliff.
« Reply #5 on: August 17, 2017, 06:03:56 PM »
i doubt that any humanly built barrier can withstand that kind of force, forces like ice-drift on a very large scale. doubt does not mean i say it's not possible, i'm not an engineer or architect but i'd gues that such barriers would simply be pushed away and if it were feasible, maintenance and construction would cost huge and then for what benefit. the ice would simply melt on the other side of the barrier very soon ;)
If there had been any survivors, we could have asked those who once lived in the vast scab lands below the Lake Agassi ice dams. They might have told tales of the power of melting ice.


The Game of Thrones is fiction, great ice walls exist only in the fetid recesses of the author's mind.
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Hyperion

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Re: Stomping on the brakes, and steering away from the cliff.
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2017, 01:36:44 PM »
...
I am thinking also that ice dyking much of the through-flow channels of the CAA would be a big bonus in disabling the Garlic-press  and throttling down Halodecline by fresh surface water export here.

Rite, I will play 'your silly game'!  Attached image shows 'dykes' plugging all viable channels of the garlic press - each located at the narrowest point between bits of terra firma.  The total length of dyke required is 300 kilometres, with the longest span being about 100 km. 

Such a project would not be a 'bonus', it would be an engineering impossibility within the presently available resources and skills and likely a practical failure too, IMHO.  The environmental implications are poorly understood, and the potential unintended consequences (including the impact of the soot from the fossil fuel emissions of plant building the dykes on ice life) are likely to be too numerous to enumerate, with either forward- or hind-sight. 

Next!

Adam. I am ashamed to be a fellow New Zealander when I see this response. You obviously did not read my analysis above showing that 50 of these 5m wingspan, 5 ton payload, hover-skimmer drones, which my estimates show could be built for as little as $ 10000 each (I AM a world champion high performance Design Engineer by the way), could build over 3000km of 50m deep Ice Dykes in 100 days. Not to mention each blanket 1000s of sqkm of land in snow, and dump several tons of water per minute from a lake or river 5km away on a permafrost, or Boreal forest fire if you are worried about soot.
 And by hydrothermal Pyrolysis of Kelp the biofuel can be made up to 10x carbon negative, and very clean burning. This is work done in collaboration with the likes of Prof Emeratis of the Edinburgh engineering and design school Steven Salter, Prof Wadhams, and AMEG Chair John Nissan in 2013. And a number of NZ world champion engineers and fluid and Thermo- dynamicists contributing also.
 
I first Modeled and discarded the idea of wind-turbine pumps, as Nasa has this year released their oh so exciting plan to save us all using, back then. I'm sure they got copies of my designs from the NSA. Their analysis mirrors what we decided. That millions would be needed, you can't distribute more than about 30L per second from a stationary unit before overwhelming the local atmospheric capacity to dissipate the latent heat, and all you really get in the end by this route is a salty junk floe that has little structure and little chance of achieving a low enough core temp for bottom growth and HyperSaline brine subduction. And the fossil fuel use and costs for deployment and maintenance would be unacceptable.

And by the way I would not suggest completely sealing all the CAA channels. Grounding fast Ice Shelves to replace the ones that were there, restrict flows, and thereby try and stop all the halocline failure that seems obvious to be mostly happening by that route is of prime importance to the entire Arctic Ecosystems. And Kelp-farming on rope grids would be a big help too. As for it being unfeasible, and they would just melt or get pushed away? Got that covered.
Here's a concept pic. Stationary versions of this heat pipe system would be very cost effective, capable of either generating lots of green electricity with part of the energy being evicted, or set up absolutely fail-proof with no moving parts. Versions like pictured could be used to actually stir the Beaufort Gyre back into good health so it preserves its low salinity lid, As well as building deep keeled burgs in the 20+m range with super cooled cores for hyper-saline down-welling brinacle production like we had all around that area a couple of decades ago from now lost thick ice-shelves. The system that feeds oxygen to the deep benthic zone which is 80% of the oceans volume, and contains the vast majority of its species. Most as yet not even discovered.
Killing that because choosing not to try, avoids the chance of failure is not ethical. And as Confucius say....
Policy: The diversion of NZ aluminum production to build giant space-mirrors to melt the icecaps and destroy the foolish greed-worshiping cities of man. Thereby returning man to the sea, which he should never have left in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGillicuddy_Serious_Party

Tom_Mazanec

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