Yankee ingenuity for the 21st century. by Jim Baird

Grace I am a Canadian tired of the Alphonse/Gaston - you first (as in America first) - routine my government has used for decades to avoid taking climate action. What I am trying to do with this entry is to reboot US action so that my country no longer has any excuses. The preamble to this section points out, “The United States of America is far from consensus on climate change. With a diverse population of over 300 million, and a broad political, economic, and ecological landscape, the U.S. has struggled for decades to agree on the science of greenhouse gasses. A financially powerful lobby for fossil fuel companies and related industries have contributed to dividing the United States Congress as well as the American public, 50 percent of whom remain unconvinced that humans have caused recent climate change. As a result, substantial proposals to reduce emissions - like the Obama Administration’s 2010 proposal for economy-wide carbon cap-and-trade - have failed.” As a result of this failure the Canadian government sees fit to do nothing, which is its preferred response in any case considering the huge influence the Alberta oil patch has on its leadership. Those opposed to taking action in both countries present the climate problem as a zero sum energy or the environment issue. Wealth however comes from the sale of extracted resources or manufactured products. Renewable energies, like OTEC, stem from manufactured devices that can harness the free energy Nature provides on a continuous basis. It is a way to harness the revenue stream of both the energy and manufacturing sectors. The US remains the largest manufacturing country in the world. It is considerably stronger in this sector than as a fossil fuel provider therefor I think it is missing the boat not capitalizing on it strength by taking the lead producing the renewable energy devices the world needs. As to freak out geoengineering, the World Health Organization points out climate change affects the social and environmental determinants of health – clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter. . . Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress. As an Aspy, I have long suspected I am an undiagnosed one myself, I would think your sense of social justice would be deeply offended by this. Mine is, doubly so, because I firmly believe most of these deaths and a lot of pain are needless. There are commercial uses for chlorine but there are also anodes that are selective for oxygen over chlorine and therefore the potential exists for electrolysis of ocean water without this problem. Bio fouling however is a problem in the heat exchangers of an OTEC system and the solution is to either chlorinate or ozinate to prevent it. In either case electrolysis provides the cure. Besides oxygen and hydrogen, electrolysis of sea water produces an acid stream (the chlorine side) and a basic stream which is the one that produces the carbonates that can sequester CO2. The acid side and the base side however normally cancel each other out so the carbonates either don’t form or are dissolved and that is why systems that try this approach to sequestering CO2 propose the weathering of minerals, like olivine, to neutralize the acid side of the equation so that the carbonate can precipitate out. There is also the possibility of using the ambient pressure at 1000 meters to desalinate water by reverse osmosis before electrolyzing it to produce only oxygen and hydrogen. I have a rendering of that kind of setup at http://www3.telus.net/gwmitigationmethod/100MWPlant.htm. As to the cost of the pilot project, it is hard to nail that down because a lot depends on where it takes place and what kind of facilities are available there. The biggest expense would be two tanks of about 5 meter diameter and 5 meters deep, one representing the ocean’s hot surface and the other its cold depths. If something of the sort already exists that would greatly reduce the cost, which would not be that great in any case. Especially in light of the potential for this approach to be a climate cure. Thank you very much for your interest.