Over the last few years there has been a lot of destruction caused by a handful of very devastating hurricanes. In fact, six of the 10 costliest hurricanes to hit the United States have struck since 2004 (Katrina, Wilma, Ike, Charley, Ivan and Rita).
One of the consequences of global warming is that more energy is available in the ocean and the atmosphere to produce weather. Energy from the sun heats up the surface of the ocean. As that heat irradiates up and fuels storms, they can become ever more dangerous hurricanes. Reducing their destructive potential is possible if we could cool off the surface of the ocean.
A few years ago, Intellectual Ventures inventors, including wave energy expert Stephen H. Salter, an emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh, began work on a new approach that may offer a more feasible and affordable way to drain energy from hurricanes and typhoons.
As we head into this tough hurricane season, we wanted to answer some of the most common questions we receive about the Salter Sink.
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Because these are controversial areas of exploration, we are often misunderstood. We hope these clear statements will help us steer towards more scientific discussion.
1. What is geoengineering?
“Geoengineering” describes how the earth’s systems can be influenced by engineering solutions. There are many historic examples of how humans have used technology to change geological systems. From using fire to drive game to building irrigation for agriculture, seeding clouds during droughts, reversing the Chicago River to building the Hoover dam, the term can encompass all sorts of ideas. Today, options discussed often include large-scale engineering of the environment in order to combat or counteract the adverse effects of human-induced changes in the atmosphere and climate.
2. Why is Intellectual Ventures researching geoengineering technologies?
Intellectual Ventures looks at hard problems facing the world and brainstorms ideas and technologies that can lead to better solutions. Global warming is a very significant problem, but it won’t be solved with old ideas and old technology alone. We believe that the solution to this crisis will involve new ideas and new technologies.
Intellectual Ventures recognizes that the process of bringing new global warming ideas to the surface can be challenging and controversial. But as an invention company, we believe research needs to be done now, rather than after the full complications of global warming are upon us. Read more…
Energy from the sun heats up the surface of the ocean. As that heat irradiates up and fuels storms, they can become ever more dangerous hurricanes. Reducing their destructive potential is possible if we can just cool off the surface of the ocean. Even just one degree centigrade might be the difference between a category 4 or category 5 hurricane. This is a nearly ridiculous notion because of the scale involved. Thousands of square miles of ocean surface might need to be cooled off.
The Salter Sink is a simple idea, with massive potential. Two insights make it very compelling:
Everywhere there is hot water on the surface of the ocean, there is cold water down below.
This makes us think you just need to stir the ocean up a little bit. Of course, that too would take a staggering amount of energy, but…
There is a tremendous amount of energy available – in waves.
Wave energy is often dismissed as impractical to use because it is located far from people (where we need energy). It is also difficult to harness because of the harsh conditions equipment would have to sustain.
The Salter Sink works as a wave powered pump. Waves push hot water into the top of the cylinder, which pumps the water inside down. It comes out the bottom (around 200 meters below) and mixes with colder water. This brings the temperature on the surface down over time. A Salter Sink can move about a gigawatt of thermal energy! It may take thousands of these to protect America’s Gulf region (for example) but we estimate the cost would be much lower than the damage caused by one of these storms.
This concept is delightfully simple and singularly gargantuan. It has captured our imagination here in the lab for a couple years, and we hope lots of other folks will find it interesting as well. This movie illustrates the idea, and we also have a Salter Sink White Paper with more detail.
High quality m4v video.
“When you read the actual scientists’ reasoning for how [geoengineering] could work, and might need to work, it’s really hard not to come to the conclusion that it’s idiotic to discount it. Not to say it’s a slam dunk to do it, but idiotic to discount it entirely.”
A great quote from Stephen Dubner in this Guardian interview with him and Steven Levitt. We’re big fans of Freakonomics and delighted to have some of our climate science inventions featured in their upcoming sequel – Superfreakonomics. The new book is already starting to make some headlines even though it’s not due out until October 20.
Another U.K. paper, The Independent, also published a review that mentions our “hose-to-the-sky” concept. This is an idea for pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to cool the planet. The Independent calls it “the outer limits of freakonomics.”
We’ll post a lot more about our climate science projects soon.
As hurricane season gets rolling, we’ve been getting a lot of interest in our hurricane suppression technology, which could be a simple way to reduce the force of these massive storms. These inquiries are the result of press about Bill Gates being one of the (twelve) inventors listed on the patent. We often host “invention sessions” with a wide variety of experts in the same room exploring problems and ideas. In the lab, we call this invention the “Salter Sink” as it originates with ideas of Stephen Salter, who has worked extensively on wave energy. We’ve been working to validate aspects of this idea and research some of the big questions about how well it would work. We’ll continue to do so, and begin sharing some of this work in a few months.
In the mean time, I’d like to point out that we aren’t building this device, and have no plan to. We are exploring ideas to solve the world’s hard problems in energy and climate issues, and need lots of other folks to research them too before they can be considered for deployment.