Source: Murakami et al. (2018)
In a 2017 “Today Show” interview The astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson counselled, “Instead of running away from hurricanes we should work toward harnessing cyclonic energy and turning it into electricity — even though it's beyond the realm of modern technology”.
Modern technology has arrived in the form of Thermodynamic Geoengineering (TG).
The 2017 North Atlantic hurricane season saw six major storms—nearly two standard deviations above the normal number, 3 of which made landfall over the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean, causing major damage and loss.
It has been predicted the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season could be equally as devastating as 2017.
Storms of the size of Harvey, Irma, and Jose produce as much as 600 terawatts (TW) of energy, about 20% more the total radiative forcing of global warming. About three-quarters of this comes from the latent heat of evaporation of the ocean’s surface water and the balance from the storm’s winds.
As the following graphic from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution demonstrates, hurricanes derive their energy from warm sea surface waters. As the lower strata of the mixed layer of the ocean warm up along with the rest of the planet, deeper waters once cool enough to weaken hurricanes at the surface, become warm enough to strengthen them.
Although hurricanes temporarily cool the surface beneath their path, most of their energy is consumed as the latent evaporation that falls in the form of a rain over a vast area. Less than 1% of a hurricanes heat is dissipated into space.
TG derives its energy from the same source as hurricanes but instead of using only the sensible heat of the ocean’s surface to produce evaporation, it uses the latent heat of a low-boiling-point to boil about 3 meters worth of the working fluid to produce power. And whereas less than 1% of hurricanes heat is radiated into space, 31,000 one gigawatt TG plants, using heat pipes, can relocate 92% of the heat of global warming deep into the ocean to a depth of 1,000 meters while producing 31 TWs of power. Over twice what we are currently deriving from fossil fuel. These 31 TWs are an extraction of heat from the ocean in the form of work that is undertaken of land. And when these 31 TWs are consumed, they produce about 20 TWs of waste heat, as the same as any other source of energy including fusion, which has to be radiated to space. But since TG is an endothermic and baseload source of energy that reverses the offgassing of CO2 from the ocean, 31,000 one gigawatt plants would reduce the greenhouse blanket by 10% a year. And since this is zero emissions energy, the greenhouse blanket will be depleted naturally allowing the waste of heat TG energy production to dissipate unimpeded into space.
Exergy efficiency is defined as the ratio of the thermal efficiency of a system compared to its idealized Carnot efficiency. The 92.4% of the heat of global warming sent to a depth of 1,000 meters, which, under normal circumstances would be considered waste heat, becomes a new input for a new TG heat engine in 226 years. As soon as the original heat returns to the surface at a rate of 1 centimeter/day below the mixed layer of the ocean and 1 meter/day through the mixed layer. This process is repeated 12 more times, until all the heat of warming has been converted to work and the waste heat of those conversions is dissipated to space. Since it is estimated that somewhere between 20 to 50% of energy inputs are lost as waste heat in the form of exhaust gases, cooling water, and heat lost from hot equipment surfaces and heated products, only between 6 and 16 TW of the current warming of 409 TW would ever become true waste heat. Which makes TG, at between at 96.6 to 98.7% efficient, the closest thing to a reversable process as can be found in nature and the closest thing to a perpetual motion machine as we will ever know.
As the following table shows, 1 gigawatt TG plants would cost 40% of the energy equivalent replacement cost of oil. And when you factor in the $7 trillion the IMF estimates is the environmental cost of doing business burning fossil fuels, TG is over 80% cheaper.
In other words, TG is too cheap to meter.
The Earth’s heat engine, the thermohaline circulation, is a perpetual machine driven by the push of salty water falling from the surface to the ocean floor as the sea water freezes annually at the poles, and the pull of water heated at the equator seeking the polar heat sink in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. This heat engine will operate for as long the sun continues to shine and the polar icecaps freeze every winter. It transfers about 6 petawatts of heat each year from the equator to each of the poles.
The thermohaline and poleward heat transport are both too massive to be harnessed intact, but they can be exploited piecemeal by using the same forces that drive the thermohaline circulation as well as the accelerating thermal stratification of the ocean.
Since 1982 the global surface has warmed at a rate of .20° C/decade. The heat capacity of the ocean is 1,000 times greater the atmosphere, therefore the ocean is warming at a rate of .0002o C/decade, so the OTEC gradient is increasing accordingly. TG would decrease the surface gradient by about .08o C/decade and the deep-water gradient by .00008o C/decade but there will always be that gradient because the tropical surface is constantly warmed, and the cold-water resource is constantly replenished by the freezing of the poles every winter regardless of the impact of warming.
TG would utilize the same resources. It is 8% energy production, 92% surface cooling with 10% atmospheric GHG reduction thrown in.
It is the cheapest energy available extant with the cooling and GHG reduction a no cost byproduct.