Rob
, 8/6/
. Environmental Defense Association. “Renewable energy from the ocean,” linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0308597X02000453.
Though fairly benign in environmental impact compared to traditional power plants,
OTEC poses
some potential environmental threats, especially if implemented on a large scale
. Data from existing electric generating stations on the coast provide insight into possible impacts of OTEC plants.
These stations impact the surrounding marine environment mainly through heating the water, the release of toxic chemicals, impingement of organisms on intake screens, and entrainment of small organisms by intake pipes
, all of which are concerns for OTEC.
Large discharges of mixed warm and cold water would be released near the surface, creating a plume of sinking cool water
. The continual use of warm surface water and cold deepwater may, over long periods of time, lead to slight warming at depth and cooling at the surface [6] .
Thermal effects may be significant, as local temperature changes of only 3– 41C are known to cause high mortality among corals and fishes.
Aside from mortality, other effects such as reduced hatching success of eggs and developmental inhibition of larvae, which lower reproductive success
, may result from thermal changes [14]. Increased nutrient loading resulting from the discharge of upwelled water could also negatively impact naturally low-nutrient ecosystems typical of tropical seas. Toxic chemicals, such as ammonia and chlorine, may enter the environment from an OTEC plant and kill local marine organisms. Ammonia in
closed-cycle systems would be designed not to contact the environment, and a dangerous release would be expected to result only from serious malfunction such as a major breakdown, collision with a ship, a greater than 100-yr storm, terrorism, or major human error
[6].The impact of chlorine will likely be minimal, as it would be used at a concentration of approximately 0.02 ppm daily average, while the EPA standard for marine water requires levels lower than 0.1 ppm [6].
Impingement of large organisms and entrainment of small organisms has been responsible for the greatest mortality of marine organisms at coastal power plants
thus far [14].The magnitude of this problem depends on the location and size of the plant; however, if marine life is attracted to OTEC plants by the higher nutrient concentrations in the upwelled cold water, large numbers of organisms, including larvae or juveniles, could be killed by impingement or entrainment
. For floating plants, victims of impingement would be mainly small fish, jellyfish, and pelagic invertebrates, while for land-based plants crustaceans would be the most affected [6].
L.A.
. PhD U Hawaii. “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC),” http://www.otecnews.org/articles/vega/03_otec_env.html.
OTEC plant construction and operation may affect commercial and recreational fishing. Fish will be attracted to the plant, potentially increasing fishing in the area
. Enhanced productivity due to redistribution of nutrients may improve fishing.
However, the losses of inshore fish eggs and larvae, as well as juvenile fish, due to impingement and entrainment and to the discharge of biocides may reduce fish populations
. The net effect of OTEC operation on aquatic life will depend on the balance achieved between these two effects. Through adequate planning and coordination with the local community, recreational assets near an OTEC site may be enhanced.
L.A.
. PhD U Hawaii. “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC),” http://www.otecnews.org/articles/vega/03_otec_env.html.
Other potentially significant concerns are related to the construction phase. These are similar to those associated with the construction of any power plant, shipbuilding and the construction of offshore platforms.
What is unique to OTEC is the movement of seawater streams with flow rates comparable to those of rivers and the effect of passing such streams through

the OTEC components
before returning them to the ocean. The use of biocides and ammonia are similar to other human activities. If occupational health and safety regulations like those in effect in the USA are followed, working fluid and biocide (most probably anhydrous ammonia and chlorine) emissions from a plant should be too low to detect outside the plant sites.
A major release of working fluid or biocide would be hazardous to plant workers, and potentially hazardous to the populace in surrounding areas, depending on their proximity. Both ammonia and chlorine can damage the eyes, skin, and mucous membranes, and can inhibit respiration.
Should an accident occur with either system, the risks are similar to those for other industrial applications involving these chemicals. Ammonia is used as a fertilizer and in ice skating rink refrigeration systems. Chlorine is used in municipal water treatment plants and in steam power plants. Chlorine can be generated in situ; therefore storage of large quantities of chlorine is not recommended.

Frances
,
. Ph.D. (University of Vienna, Austria) is Professor Emerita of Chemistry at
Hofstra University. “Alternative Fuels and the Environment,” p. 15, Google Books.
Although OTEC is looked upon as being
an environmentally benign
renewable energy there are environmental impacts
, believed to be small, that should be considered. Particular attention should be given to construction phases when large displacements of the surrounding environment will occur
. Also
, the effect of the discharge of large volumes of water, both cold and warm, is not totally known. The behavior of a mixed discharge plume at depth is being studied, but its actual effect has not been measured
. There is consideration of visual impacts and the potential impact on shipping and recreational activities.
Min-Shong
, 8/11/
. Department of Marine Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University.
“Maximum output of an OTEC power plant,” www.cyberiad.net/library/pdf/bk_ocm_articleaspublished.pdf.
OTEC is a much more sophisticated method of extracting energy
than the simple inertia pump demonstrated by Liu
[11] and Vershinsky et al. [15].
OTEC involves heat exchangers, which tend to have corrosion and fouling problems in a marine environment, and a low temperature heat engine which requires a volatile working fluid such as freon or ammonia, which tends to leak out unless seals are kept in good condition.
It is therefore suited more to large scale, large budget projects which justify the presence of skilled technical maintenance personnel, than to modest ‘‘proof of concept’’ projects.

, November 20
– freelance writer and former senior correspondent for BusinessWeek, where he covered science, technology, medicine and the environment (John, “Global Warming: Faster Than
Expected?”, Scientific American (November 2012), 307, 50-55, http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n5/full/scientificamerican1112-50.html
Scientists thought that if planetary warming could be kept below two degrees C elsius, perils
such as catastrophic sealevel rise could be avoided
.
¶
Ongoing data, however, indicate that three global feedback mechanisms may be pushing the earth into a period of rapid climate change even before the two degree C “limit” is reached: meltwater altering ocean circulation; melting permafrost releasing carbon dioxide and methane; and ice disappearing worldwide
.
¶
The feedbacks could accelerate warming ,
alter weather by changing the jet stream, magnify insect infestations and spawn more and larger wildfires.
¶ Over the past decade scientists thought they had figured out how to protect humanity from the worst dangers of climate change. Keeping planetary warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would, it was thought, avoid such perils as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing droughts. Staying below two degrees C would require limiting the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), up from today's 395 ppm and the preindustrial era's 280 ppm.
¶
Now it appears that the assessment was too optimistic.
The latest data
from across the globe show that the planet is changing faster than expected . More sea ice around the Arctic Ocean is disappearing than had been forecast. Regions of permafrost across Alaska and Siberia are spewing out more methane
, the potent greenhouse gas, than models had predicted. Ice shelves in West Antarctica are breaking up more quickly than once thought possible, and the glaciers they held back on adjacent land are sliding faster into the sea.
Extreme weather events, such as floods and the heat wave that gripped much of the U.S. in the summer of 2012 are on the rise, too. The conclusion? “As scientists, we cannot say that if we stay below two degrees of warming everything will be fine,
” says
Stefan
Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam in
Germany.
¶
The X factors
that may be pushing the earth into an era of rapid climate change are
long-hypothesized feedback loops
that may be starting to kick in. Less sea ice, for example, allows the sun to warm the ocean water more, which melts even more sea ice.
Greater permafrost melting puts more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, which in turn causes further permafrost melting, and so on.
¶
The potential for faster feedbacks has turned some scientists into vocal Cassandras.
Those experts are saying that
even if nations do
suddenly get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay under the 450-ppm limit
, which seems increasingly unlikely , that could be too little,
too late .
Unless the world slashes CO2 levels back to 350 ppm
, “ we will have started a process that is out of humanity's control
,” warns
James E.
Hansen, director of the nasa Goddard Institute for Space
Studies.
Sea levels might climb as much as five meters this century, he says. That would submerge coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok.
Meanwhile increased heat and drought could bring massive famines. “The consequences are almost unthinkable,” Hansen continues. We could be on the verge of a rapid, irreversible leap
to a much warmer world.
¶
– their impacts are alarmism, not supported by experts

/12 – B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Cal-Berkeley, registered professional engineer (Paul, “Global Warming
Alarmism: At the Tipping Point of Credibility?”, http://smartenergyportal.net/article/global-warming-alarmism-tipping-point-credibility, CMR)
If we believe all we're told then there is no hope. Why change anything? But, to the frustration and anger of the alarmists, we don't believe all we're told about a global warming doomsday . There's a growing belief both in the lay and scientific communities that there's another side to the story. There's mounting evidence that the presuppositions about human-caused climate change are wrong or at the best, distorted . The earth is warming, yes (although that's not all that clear to some), but our planet has gone through warming/cooling cycles in the past.
Yes, there is a correlation with CO2 concentrations, but it's not clear which came first,
the warming or the change in CO2. And the CO2/temperature-rise pairing cycles have also occurred throughout the past . But isn't the global warming skeptic community pretty much a bunch of ignorant, untrained, flatearther types? Not at all, according to the study reported in Nature . (see The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks). It turns out that the more scientifically literate you are, the less concerned you are about climate change . Scientific literacy and training leads one to follow their own rationale rather than to follow the herd. "Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled. Widespread limits on technical reasoning aggravate the problem by forcing citizens to use unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. We conducted a study to test this account and found no support for it. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare." If something just doesn't smell right about the smug but dire predictions frantically pumped out by the media and platoons of alarmist bloggers, you're going to question it. Particularly if you have a fundamental understanding of science and experience with the vagaries of the science/politics/media triumvirate. In the long run, continued climatechange fear mongering, hyperbole and name calling will destroy what little public interest is left. We might even see a
'brown' rebound, and that would be tragic.
(Dr. Sherwood, President, former Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona and Dr. Keith, Ph.D. in Botany at Arizona State University, President and Vice
President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, CO2 Science, “Give Peace a Chance by Giving Plants a Chance”, Vol.
2, No. 19, 10-1, http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V2/N19/EDIT.jsp, CMR)
President Carter begins by stating that " when the Cold War ended
10 years ago, we expected an era of peace" but got instead "a decade of war
." He then asks why peace has been so elusive, answering that most of today's wars are fueled by poverty,
poverty in developing countries "whose economies depend on agriculture but which lack the means to make their farmland productive
."
This fact
, he says, suggests an obvious
, but often overlooked, path to peace: "raise the standard of living of the millions of rural people who live in poverty by increasing agricultural productivity
," his argument being that thriving agriculture
, in his words, " is the engine that fuels broader economic growth and development
, thus paving the way for
prosperity and peace
."
Can the case for atmospheric CO2 enrichment be made any clearer?
Automatically, and without the investment of a single hard-earned dollar, ruble, or what have you, people everywhere promote the cause of peace by fertilizing the atmosphere with carbon dioxide; for
CO2
- one of the major endproducts of the combustion process that fuels the engines of industry and transportation - is the very elixir of life, being the primary building block of all plant tissues via the essential role it plays in the photosynthetic process that sustains nearly all of earth's vegetation, which in turn sustains nearly all of the planet's animal life
. As with any production process, the insertion of more raw materials (in this case CO2) into the production line results in more manufactured goods coming out the other end, which, in the case of the production line of plant growth and development, is biosphere-sustaining food. And as
President Carter rightly states, "leaders of developing nations must make food security a priority
." Indeed, he ominously proclaims in his concluding paragraph that " there can be no peace until people have enough to eat."
Within this context, we recently completed a project commissioned by the Greening Earth Society entitled "Forecasting World Food Supplies: The Impact of the
Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentration," which we presented at the Second Annual Dixy Lee Ray Memorial Symposium held in Washington, DC

on 31 August - 2 September 1999. We found that continued increases in agricultural knowledge and expertise would likely boost world food production by 37% between now and the middle of the next century, but that world food needs, which we equated with world population, would likely rise by 51% over this period. Fortunately, we also calculated that the shortfall in production could be overcome
- but just barely - by the additional benefits anticipated to accrue from the many productivity-enhancing effects of the expected rise in the air's CO2 content over the same time period. Our findings suggest that the world food security
envisioned by President Carter is precariously dependent upon the continued rising of the atmosphere's
CO2 concentration.
As Sylvan Wittwer, Director Emeritus of Michigan State University's Agricultural Experiment Station, stated in his
1995 book, Food, Climate, and Carbon Dioxide: The Global Environment and World Food Production, "
The rising level of atmospheric CO2 could be the one global natural resource that is progressively increasing food production and total biological output, in a world of otherwise diminishing natural resources
of land, water, energy, minerals, and fertilizer. It is a means of inadvertently increasing the productivity of farming systems and other photosynthetically active ecosystems.
The effects know no boundaries and both developing and developed countries are, and will be, sharing equally."
So, let's give peace a chance. Let's give plants a chance
. And, while we're at it, let's give all of the world's national economies a chance as well.
Let's let the air's CO2 content rise unimpeded, and let's let the peoples of the world reap the multitudinous benefits that come from the God-given - and scientifically proven - aerial fertilization effect of atmospheric
CO2 enrichment. Let's live and let live.
And let's let CO2 do its wonderful work of promoting world peace via the planet-wide prosperity that comes from enhanced agricultural productivity.
(Julian Cribb, principal of JCA, fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and
Engineering, 2010, The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It, http://books.google.com/books?id=Tv0zXxbQ7toC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+coming+famine&hl=e n&sa=X&ei=RR_mT7OYFKeq2gXP5tHZCQ&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=the%20coming%20fami ne&f=false, CMR)
The character of human conflict has
also changed
: since the early 1990S, more wars have been triggered by disputes over food
, land, and water than
over mere
political or ethnic differences
. This should not surprise US: people have fought over
the means of survival
for most of history. But in the abbreviated reports on the nightly media, and even in the rarefied realms of government policy, the focus is almost invariably on the players—the warring national, ethnic, or religious factions—rather than on the play, the deeper subplots building the tensions that ignite conflict.
Caught up
in these are
groups of ordinary, desperate people fearful
that there is no longer sufficient food
, land, and water to feed their children— and believing
that they must fight
‘the others” to secure them
. At the same time, the number of refugees in the world doubled, many of them escaping from conflicts and famines precipitated by food and resource shortages. Governments in troubled regions tottered and fell.
The coming famine is planetary because it involves both the immediate effects of hunger on directly affected populations in heavily populated regions of the world in the next forty years— and also the impacts of war
, government failure, refugee crises, shortages, and food price spikes that will affect all human beings ,
no matter who they are or where they live. It is an emergency because unless it is solved, billions will experience great hardship
, and not only in the poorer regions. Mike
Murphy, one of the world’s most progressive dairy farmers, with operations in Ireland, New Zealand, and North and South America, succinctly summed it all up: “Global warming gets
all the publicity but the real imminent threat to the human race is starvation on a massive scale
. Taking a 10—30 year view, I believe that food shortages, famine and huge social unrest are
probably the greatest threat the human race has ever faced
. I believe future food shortages are a far bigger world threat than global warming
.”2° The coming famine is also complex, because it is driven not by one or two, or even a half dozen, factors but rather by the confluence of many large and profoundly intractable causes that tend to amplify one another.
This means that it cannot easily be remedied by “silver bullets” in the form of technology, subsidies, or single-country policy changes, because of the synergetic character of the things that power it.

– Richard Miller, professor at Creighton University specializing in morality and public politics,
3-23-2012, “Global Suicide Pact,” Commonweal, http://commonwealmagazine.org/%E2%80%98globalsuicide-pact%E2%80%99, CMR
Because of the long life of CO2 , unless we immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 percent globally--that is, down to the level at which land vegetation and the oceans remove these gases from the atmosphere--we can expect more extreme climate impacts for at least the next thousand years. In fact, since we are clearly not going to reduce greenhouse emissions immediately by 60 percent, it is
probably already too late to save the summer sea ice in the Arctic
.
The Arctic in summer could be
virtually ice-free by
as early as
2015
, and totally ice-free by 2040
.
A dark, open Arctic Ocean will absorb a great deal more of the sun's energy, which will further increase
global warming
.
This
in turn will increase the melting of the permafrost
, which will release CO2 and methane
(a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO2). It is estimated that the complete melting of the permafrost alone could increase warming by 4°C
(7.2°F). Meanwhile, the Amazon suffered extreme droughts in both
2005 and 2010, losing millions of trees. As those trees decompose, they will release an amount of CO2 equivalent to nearly 42 percent of the world's emissions in 2009; such events, repeated over time, could turn the Amazon rainforest from a "carbon sink"--an important resource for drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere--to a significant source of CO2. These are but a few examples of "positive feedbacks," large-scale changes that will increase future warming. Increased greenhouse gas emissions can push the climate system or elements of the system to a tipping point where the dynamics of the system take over and cause very large changes that are completely beyond our control.
/12 (Jasper, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Stephan Harrison, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter,
Penryn, “The impacts of climate change on terrestrial Earth surface systems”, http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1660.html#/ref2, CMR)
The failure of climate change mitigation through emissions reductions and trading. At present, governments' attempts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions
through carbon cap-and-trade schemes and to promote renewable and sustainable energy sources are
probably too late to arrest
the inevitable
trend of global
warming 2
, 81. Instead, there are increasingly persuasive arguments that government and institutional focus should be on developing adaption policies that address and help mitigate against the negative outcomes of global warming, rather than carbon trading and cataloguing greenhouse-gas emissions. There are a number of reasons why we take this viewpoint. (1)
Earth-system feedbacks are an important component of climate forcing
, and therefore addressing greenhouse-gas emissions alone is an insufficient strategy
for managing global warming. (2) Different national and disciplinary
(that is, from the perspective of soils, forests, oceans and so on) schemes for calculating carbon budgets use different methodologies and assumptions, and have a different mix of natural and disturbed ecosystems and fossil-fuel resources82, 83, 84. This means that carbon management schemes are based on poorly constrained data and
on
budgetary sleights-of-hand that may have little relationship to the real world
. (3) The future impacts of global warming on land-surface stability and the sediment fluxes associated with soil erosion, river downcutting and coastal erosion are relevant to sustainability, biodiversity and food security.
Monitoring and modelling soil erosion loss, for example, are also means by which to examine problems of carbon and nutrient fluxes, lake eutrophication, pollutant and coliform dispersal, river siltation and other issues85. An Earth-systems approach can actively inform on these cognate areas of environmental policy and planning86. (4) Earth surface systems' sensitivity to climate forcing is still poorly understood.
Measuring this geomorphological sensitivity will identify those systems and environments that are most vulnerable to climatic disturbance, and will enable policymakers and managers to prioritize action in these areas. This is particularly the case in coastal environments, where rocky and sandy coastlines will yield very different responses to climate forcing, and where coastal-zone management plans are usually based on past rather than future climatic patterns87.
/12 (Jasper, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Stephan Harrison, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter,
Penryn, “The impacts of climate change on terrestrial Earth surface systems”, http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1660.html#/ref2, CMR)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed in its fourth assessment report that different biophysical environments are likely to exhibit different responses to ongoing climate change1. Generic properties of these environmental responses include spatial and temporal variability, nonlinearity, feedbacks involving different biogeochemical processes and time lags. The context for understanding these environmental responses is brought into focus by many recent studies show ing that,
irrespective of future
greenhouse-gas
emissions , a mean surface temperature increase of
2 °C
(over 1990 levels) is inevitable , and an increase of 4 °C or more is not unlikely by 2100
(refs 2,3). Biosphere responses to global climate change are relatively well understood. Studies show that climate change alters biospheric systems' internal dynamics and interconnectedness, for example, between plant phenology and insect behaviour4, 5. Biome and species' range shifts, both laterally and by elevation, are now taking place in response to climate forcing6, 7. The importance of such range shifts for ecosystem structure and function, biodiversity, endemism and gene flow has been widely recognized7, and there is much policy debate on management of biosphere responses to climate change8, 9.

– Director of the Center for the Study of Science @ Cato (Patrick J, “Global Warming
Apocalypse Canceled”, 1/17, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/global-warmingapocalypse-canceled, CMR)
My greener friends are increasingly troubled by the lack of a rise in recent global surface temperatures. Using monthly data measured as the departure from long-term averages, there’s been no significant warming trend since
the fall of 19
96
. In other words, we are now in our 17th year of flat temperatures
.
¶
Since 1900, the world has seen one other period of similar temperature stagnation (actually a slight cooling) that lasted for 30 years and ended around 1976. The current one is happening with much more putative warming “pressure,” because the atmosphere’s carbon-dioxide content is much higher than it was in mid-century.
¶ From the Industrial
Revolution to 1950, atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations
rose by about 15 percent. Today, the increase is up to 41 percent, making long periods without warming
either 1) increasingly unlikely, or 2) the natural result of
simply overestimating how “sensitive” surface temperature is to carbon dioxide
. My money is on the latter.
¶ Now, just for fun, let’s assume that on Jan. 1, another warming trend began, at the same rate that was observed in the last such period, from 1977 through 1998, or 0.17 C per decade.
¶ Running a large experimental sample reveals that, on average, the rate of warming will have to continue through 2020 before a statistically significant trend emerges in the post-1996 data. (Remember that a “trend” that does not meet the normal grounds for significance is one that cannot scientifically be distinguished from “no trend.”) ¶ In other words, it’s a pretty good bet that we are going to go nearly a quarter of a century without warming.
¶ In response, the climate establishment is becoming increasingly polarized, with a growing number of researchers calculat ing less warming this century, while the apocalyptics
, such as NASA’s James Hansen, simply edge out further on increasingly thin limbs
.
¶ This is quite a change.
In 2002, I published a paper, “Revised 21st Century Temperature Projections,” which used a variety of independent sources and generally predicted a range of 21st century warming of 1.0 to 3.0 C. In response, the 2009 “Climategate” emails revealed a number of surreptitious attempts and schemes to either get the paper removed, get the esteemed geographer who was the relevant editor of the journal Climate
Research fired from his University of Auckland professorship, or, if all else failed, destroy the journal itself.
¶ Formally, the “climate sensitivity” is the total amount of warming projected for a doubling in atmospheric carbon dioxide. In their last climate compendium, published in 2007, the
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave a “likely” range for the sensitivity of “2 C to 4.5 C with a best estimate of about 3.0 C.” Since then, it appears that a new “consensus” is lowering the forecast
. The reason I’m betting that the sensitivity of temperature to
dreaded carbon dioxide has been overestimated
is the number of recent publications saying just that. Here’s a partial list: ¶ Richard Lindzen gives a range of 0.6 to 1.0 C (Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 2011); Andreas
Schmittner, 1.4 to 2.8 C (Science, 2011); James Annan, using two techniques, 1.2 to 3.6 C and 1.3 to 4.2 C (Climatic Change, 2011); J.H. van
Hateren, 1.5 to 2.5 C (Climate Dynamics, 2012); Michael Ring, 1.5 to 2.0 C (Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 2012); and Julia Hargreaves, including cooling from dust, 0.2 to 4.0 C and 0.8 to 3.6 C (Geophysical Research Letters, 2012). Each of these has lower and higher limits below those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
¶ What commonly occurs when weather forecasts begin to go bad? As every child knows, if the forecast starts out calling for a foot of snow, and then is cut to six inches, that usually results in about three.
¶
Similarly, as projections
for warming are lowered, don’t be surprised if planetary temperature finally settles in the bottom half of the newly predicted ranges
.
¶ Science historians have repeatedly documented that we are particularly reluctant to abandon widely held views, or scientific paradigms. When professional advancement (i.e., research money) is particularly dependent upon a certain view (we wouldn’t spend billions on climate research unless it was important, right?), it’s even harder to let go, but that is what we may be seeing.
¶ People are beginning, cautiously, to dial back 21st century warming because there has been none. Because dreaded sea-level rise is also proportional, those estimates are going to have to come down, too.
¶ One of these years, the upcoming end of the world from global warming is going to be officially canceled
, to be replaced by a new apocalypse, which I predict will be called
“acid oceans,” or something like that.
- no warming for the past 10 years
- models don’t assume negative feedback & exaggerate C02
- their impact = bias alarmism
- no negative effects for 50 years

– former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris
(Claude Allegre; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International
Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism,
Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National
Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics,
Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University;
Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former
U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World
Federation of Scientists, Geneva, “ No Need to Panic About Global Warming”, 1/17, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html, CMR)
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed
.
In September,
Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Ivar
Giaever
, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the
American Physical Society
(APS) with a letter that begins: "I
did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the
[APS policy] statement
: 'The evidence is incontrovertible:
Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?" In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year
.
The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment,
as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where
so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2
.
The lack of warming for more than a decade
—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) began issuing projections— suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause
. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2. The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse.
They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position.
Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job. This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim
Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death. Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism
also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet
. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them. Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a

message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy.
Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically. A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls.
This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more
CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet
. If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review
. Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense
at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence
.
(John Stossel, Award-winning ABC News correspondent, 2007 The Global Warming Myth?, http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=3061015&page=1, CMR)
Dr. John
Christy
, professor of Atmospheric Science at
the
U niversity of
Alabama
at Huntsville said
: "I remember as a college student at the first Earth Day being told it was a certainty that by the year 2000, the world would be starving and out of energy. Such doomsday prophecies grabbed headlines, but have proven to be completely false."
"Similar pronouncements today about catastrophes due to human-induced climate change,"
he continued,
"sound all too familiar and all too exaggerated
to me as someone who actually produces and analyzes climate information ."
The media, of course, like the exaggerated claims
. Most are based on computer models that purport to predict future climates. But computer models are lousy at predicting climate because water vapor and cloud effects cause changes that computers fail to predict
. In the mid-1970s, computer models told us we should prepare for global cooling.
Scientists tell reporters that computer models should "be viewed with great skepticism."
Well, why aren't they?
The fundamentalist doom mongers
also ignore scientists who say the effects of global warming may be benign.
Harvard astrophysicist
Sallie
Baliunas said added CO2
in the atmosphere may actually benefit the world because more CO2 helps plants grow
.
Warmer winters would give farmers a longer harvest season
, and might end the droughts in the Sahara Desert.
Why don't we hear about this part of the global warming argument? "It's the money!"
said Dr. Baliunas.
"Twenty-five billion dollars in government funding has been spent since 1990 to research global warming. If scientists and researchers were coming out releasing reports that global warming has little to do with man, and most to do with just how the planet works, there wouldn't be as much money to study it."

[Dr. Indur, independent scholar who has worked with federal and state governments, think tanks, and the private sector over 35 years, former representative to the IPCC, former Julian Simon
Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, a visiting fellow the American Enterprise
Institute, part of a chapter from “Climate Coup: Global Warmings Invasion of Our Government and Our
Lives”, page # below]
Proponents of greenhouse gas controls frequently proclaim
that global warming will reduce crop productivity in the developing world,
thereby exacerbating hunger and famine
." But contrary to global warming hype
, as shown in Figure 6.1, crop productivity and production have clearly increased
in the least-developed countries, as well as globally, even as average surface temperatures have risen.
Because of the increase in agricultural productivity and trade in agricultural and food inputs and outputs,12 the portion of the developing world's population suffering from chronic hunger declined for decades. From 1969-1971 to 2003-2005, it declined from 33 percent to 16 percent
.11 However, it has started to rise once again, at least temporarily (Figure 6.2). It increased to about 17 percent in
2008 and is projected to be higher for 2009. But as shown in Figure 6.1, productivity clearly has not declined
. Therefore, the recent increase in hunger cannot be because of any loss of productivity due
[end page 161] to global warming
. In fact, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations ascribes the increase in hunger to the surge in food prices, the global economic slowdown, insufficient investment in agriculture, and biofuel production, which has diverted crops from food to fuel production.'1 [162]

Warming doesn’t hurt crop yields and CO2 offsets any effect it might have
Carter et al. 11
—lead authors are Robert Carter, Ph.D., Adjunct Research Fellow at James Cook University – AND – Craig Idso, Ph.D., Chairman at the Center for the Study of
Carbon Dioxide and Global Change – AND – Fred Singer, Ph.D., President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project; contributing authors are Susan Crockford, Joseph D’Aleo, Indur
Goklany, Sherwood Idso, Madhav Khandekar, Anthony Lupo, Willie Soon, and Mitch Taylor (© 2011, Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, The Heartland Institute, http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf)
A final flaw in the analysis of Schlenker and Roberts (2009) is their acknowledged ― inability to account for CO2 concentrations
,‖ the increasing levels of which, in their own words
, ―might spur plant growth and yields
,‖ such that ―yield declines stemming from warmer temperatures therefore may be offset by CO2 fertilization
.‖ This has been found to be the case by many different studies, as we recount in Section 5.5 of this report.
The negative impact of warming on agriculture is highly exaggerated – warm-weather crops are silverlinings in climate change.
Mendelsohn ’94 [Robert, PhD Medicine from University of Chicago, “The Impact of Global Warming on
Agriculture: A Ricardian Analysis,” The American Economic Review, JSTOR]
The striking difference between the crop-revenue and cropland approaches is a useful reminder of how we can be misled by our mental images.
The specter of global warming calls up the vista of corn blistering on the stalk or desiccated wheat fields. Yet the major grains so vulnerable to drought—wheat and corn—represented only $22.5 billion of the $143 billion of farm marketings
in 1982.
Our results suggest that the vulnerability of American
agriculture to climate change may be exaggerated if the analysis is limited to the major grains.
A broader vision should also include the warm-weather crops such as cotton, fruits, vegetables, rice, hay, and grapes in addition to other sectors such as livestock and poultry
. Whereas past production-function studies focus ominously on the vulnerable cool-weather grains, the comprehensive crop-revenue Ricardian model reminds us that the irrigated warm-weather crops be a silver lining behind the climate-change cloud
.
/12 – PhD in ecology from the Institute of Animal Resource Ecology, U of British Columbia
(Patrick, former environmental activist, known as one of the early members of Greenpeace, in which he was an activist from 1971 to 1986, co-founder, chair, and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies in
Vancouver, “Patrick Moore on the facts and fiction of climate change”, http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/conscience-realist/2012/aug/9/patrickmoore-facts-and-fiction-climate-change/, CMR)
I believe that a 2.0C in global average warming, or even more , would be in balance beneficial, partly because most warming occurs where it is now cold and very little occurs in the tropics
.
This would make northern Canada and Siberia fertile, and it would increase the number of frost-free days for food production in the temperate zones
. The polar bear might be reduced in numbers but the only reason they evolved in the first place was due to the present Ice Age. Polar Bears are not even a distinct species, they are a variety of Brown (Grizzly) Bear. Some penguins that live on ice might dwindle but there are plenty of penguin species that do not depend on ice, In the Galapagos, Australia, and South
America, for example.
Tech will allow us to benefit from increasing C02 – aff/neg studies are wrong
Idso ‘10
Sherwood, Bachelor of Physics, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees are all from the
University of Minnesota, **Keith, B.S. in Agriculture with a major in Plant Sciences from the University of Arizona and his M.S. from the same institution with a major in Agronomy and Plant Genetics. He completed his Ph.D. in Botany at Arizona State University, and **Craig Idso, B.S. in Geography from

Arizona State University, his M.S. in Agronomy from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, and his Ph.D. in
Geography from Arizona State University,” Will Global Warming Reduce Crop Yields?”, Volume 13,
Number 16: 21 April 2010, http://www.co2science.org/articles/V13/N16/EDIT.php
The seven Dutch scientists began their critique of Schlenker and Roberts' study by noting that yields of
the crops
in question will continue to increase in years to come, because of "the development and adoption of new tech nologies and improved farm management,"
citing in this regard, the results of Ewert et al. (2005), which indicate that continuing advances in tech nology have historically been the most important driver of productivity change, even outweighing the negative effects of detrimental climate change
. And in further illustration of this phenomenon, they report that between 1961 and 2007, "average US corn yields increased by 240%, from 3.9 tons per hectare per year to 9.4 tons per hectare per year (FAO, 2009)," while noting that some researchers have predicted that "advances in agronomics, breeding, and biotechnology will lead to an average corn yield in the US of just over 20 tons per hectare per year in 2030," citing Duvick (2005). Meerburg et al. also make note of the fact that farmers in Brazil successfully increased the productivity of soybeans, maize, and cotton during the last decade, despite the fact that the cumulative number of days of exposure to temperatures above the three crops' optimum values "is far greater than in the US." In the
Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, for example, they say that "maximum average day temperature exceeds 35°C for 118 days per year, of which 75 days are in the average soybean-growing season." Nevertheless, they report that in 2008 average production of soybeans was about 3.1 tons per hectare per year in Mexico, while the average yield in the US was 2.8 tons per hectare per year. Similarly, they note that the mean cotton yield in Brazil in 2006/2007 was 1.4 tons per hectare per year, while in the US it was only 0.9 tons per hectare per year. The seven scientists thus conclude that " temperatures higher than currently experienced in the US do not necessarily need to coincide with lower crop yields and that already existing tech nology and future advances
(new varieties, optimized farm management, biotechnology, etc.) can overrule the negative effect of increasing temperatures on yield
," as has in fact been observed to be the case in the historical crop yield data of the US.
A final problem
with the analysis of
Schlenker and Roberts
(2009) is their acknowledged "inability to account for CO2 concentrations," the increasing levels of which, in their own words, "might spur plant growth and yields," such that "yield declines stemming from warmer temperatures
therefore may be offset by CO2 fertilization
," as has indeed been found to be the case by many of the studies we have discussed on our website, reviews of which are archived in our Subject Index under the several sub-headings of Growth Response to CO2 with Other Variables (Temperature). In light of Schlenker and Roberts' stated admissions and the facts cited by Meerburg et al. -- which should have been known by the two US researchers, as well as the esteemed communicator of their paper to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the appropriate editorial staff of the prestigious journal -- it is clear that their paper should never have been published, especially with a title that proclaims as fact that "nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe damages to U.S. crop yields under climate change." This has got to be a prime example of "peer review" and unwarranted publication at their very worst!

- Law Clerk to United States District Judge Sim Lake for the Southern District of Texas. J.D.,
University of Texas School of Law, 2009; A.B. and A.M., Harvard University, 1997 (Ryan, “ Flipping
Daubert: Putting Climate Change Defendants in the Hot Seat,” Lewis & Clark Law School’s Environmental
Law Online, 2009, http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/401/flipping_daubert_putting_clima.html, CMR)
Sherwood
Idso would make a good test case of
such an expert
. Idso, who has served as a research physicist with the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and as an adjunct professor in Geology and Botany at Arizona State University, is the president of the Center for the
Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, an organization that promotes the view that heightened CO2 levels are a good thing because of their beneficial effects on plant growth.[143] Idso has energy industry connections: The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global
Change has been reported to have received funding from ExxonMobil,[144] and in 1991 Idso produced a video extolling the agricultural benefits of heightened CO2 for the Western Fuels Association, a coal industry association.[145] While Idso’s connections to energy interests have led some to question his work as biased,[146] his research
on the effects of CO2 on plant growth has been published several times in peer-reviewed journals
. His research on the effects of heightened CO2 in boosting growth in eldarica pine trees (Pinus eldarica), for example, was published in the Journal of Experimental Botany, an Oxford University Press publication.[147] He published peer-reviewed papers in 2001 and 2004 on the long-term effects of CO2 on growth of sour orange trees.[148] Since Idso is a published scientist who has publicly promoted the benefits of CO2 and has shown a willingness to accept money from energy companies, it is not unthinkable that climate change defendants could turn to him for expert testimony about his research. But would he be allowed to testify?
It is likely that Idso would pass a Daubert reliability challenge. First, there is little question that Idso would qualify as an expert in some aspects of climate change: He is a published scientist who has worked specifically with the biological effects of heightened CO2.[149] Idso’s acceptance of energy company money is irrelevant to this question, as no part of Rule 702 or Daubert suggests that corporate funding diminishes an expert’s qualifications or the reliability of his or her work.[150] While some might argue that this is a blind spot in Daubert,[151] it would probably be unreasonable to institute a rule that prohibits scientists from testifying on behalf of their employees or sponsors. The Committee
Notes to the Rule 702 amendments do allow judges to consider whether an expert is “proposing to testify about matters growing naturally and directly out of research they have conducted independent of the litigation, or whether they have developed their opinions expressly for purposes of testifying.”[152] This analysis would likely weigh in favor of admitting Idso’s testimony, since he began researching the effects of
CO2 on plants years prior to any climate change litigation. And even if Idso is a paid shill of the energy industry
in some aspects of his career, he has
also published several papers in independent, peer-reviewed journals
. To the extent that Idso’s testimony is based on the results of his peer-reviewed studies and other similar publications, it would be difficult to challenge his testimony on the Daubert five-factor reliability test. Testability can be established because the publications describe the tests that Idso conducted to advance his theories.[153] The fact that the papers were accepted for publication in respected journals suggests that the methodologies of the tests involved—including error rate and control standards—were sufficiently rigorous that other scientists would accept them as reliable for publication. While all of Idso’s conclusions may not be widespread in the scientific community, it is generally accepted
among ecologists that heightened CO2 can promote plant growth
.[154] If Idso’s testimony sticks to the information contained in his peer-reviewed publications, a Daubert challenge to his reliability would probably fail.
[Patrick (Environmental Science Professor at Virginia) & Robert (Professor of
Geography at ASU), The Stantic Gases, p. 181]
But basic plant physiological research largely contradicts such concerns. In a comprehensive analysis of 42 different experiments, appearing in
1994 in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology,
Keith Idso and Sherwood Idso found that the percent growth enhancement resulting from a 300 ppm increase in the air’s CO
2 content actually rose with increasing air temperature going from dose to zero at 10 0 C (50 0 F) to 100 percent at 38 0 C (100 0 F)
. This increase in relative growth response arises from the fact that the growth-retarding process called photorespiration is most pronounced at high temperatures but is effectively inhibited by atmospheric CO
2 enrichment. So powerful is this effect of elevated CO
2
. in fact, that the optimum temperature for plant growth and development typically rises with increasing CO
2 levels.
Dozens of researchers in plant physiology have duplicated this result
.

Chris
, 7/27/
. Software Engineer and Technical Writer. “The Hydrogen Economy: Fuel Cells are No Panacea,” Energy and Capital, http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/hydrogen-economyfuel+cell/480.
To build out a "hydrogen economy," we would need to start over with everything. Hundreds of thousands of miles of pipeline, 90,000 new pumps at service stations, 210 million vehicles, everything.
Given what we know about the peak oil situation, one wonders just how much of the remaining fossil fuel energy would be needed to replace all that stuff
. Let's just say it would be a sizable chunk
, a chunk we'd probably be better off using for food and shelter, and making solar panels and wind turbines. And then there is the old chicken-and-egg problem: who's going to pony up the hundreds of billions (actually probably closer to the low trillions) of dollars to build all that infrastructure
until the cars are in the showroom, and who's going to put hydrogen cars into a sufficient number of showrooms until the customer has easy access to a refueling station
? There are a few other alternative hydrogen infrastructures, but each has daunting challenges associated with it: Hydrogen could theoretically be produced on-board a vehicle from liquid methanol or gasoline, but it's going to be difficult, inefficient, and expensive. Big R&D money needed for that direction. Hydrogen could be produced at local centers, but then we're back to the aforementioned problems of storage, transfer, and the lack of infrastructure. It could also be produced right at the fueling station, from methane gas or from water via electrolysis, but the cost of building such stations will be enormous and the infrastructure needs would be great (either to ship natural gas to the stations or to upgrade the grid to handle all that extra electricity). And again, who's going to make that investment before the cars are there?

, 2/26/
. Becca Friedman. “An Alternative Source Heats Up, Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion,” http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternativesource-heats-up/
Moreover, OTEC is highly vulnerable to the elements in the marine environment. Big storms or a
hurricane like Katrina could completely disrupt energy production by mangling the OTEC plants. Were
a country completely dependent on oceanic energy, severe weather could be debilitating. In addition, there is a risk that the salt water surrounding an OTEC plant would cause the machinery to “rust or
corrode” or “fill up with seaweed or mud,” according to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory spokesman.
. Ggroup that focuses research on clean alternative energies.
“Other Powerful Alternatives,” Chapter 6, http://www.scienceclarified.com/scitech/Energy-
Alternatives/Other-Power-Alternatives.html.
A drawback to OTEC systems is the cost of building and operating them
.
Because all maintenance must be done on-site, a crew must be housed wherever the equipment is located
. Crew headquarters and maintenance facilities are built right into the unit's structure, making it much like a small city at sea.
The cost of feeding, housing, and paying a crew can offset the profit a utility company may derive from building an OTEC system
.
In theory, an OTEC system could continuously generate upward of 160 million watts of electricity. This amount of electricity could supply one hundred thousand homes with all of their energy needs on a daily basis. Yet, a large portion of this electricity needs to be used by the system itself to pump the cool water to the top of the structure. Many scientists feel this makes an OTEC system a poor choice for energy production.
Presently, the concept of OTEC systems is being heavily researched. Japan has shown great interest in developing them to power its coastal cities. The United States has researched sites where an OTEC system may be effective, but plans to construct one are not yet underway.
Some energy analysts believe OTEC systems will never become truly competitive with other renewable resources because of the high cost of building and maintaining the units
.
This, coupled with a low energy output, in comparison to the amount of energy used to run the system itself, may help to explain why OTEC systems have not yet been fully developed, although the concept has been researched for over fifty years.

Edward S.
Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Polytechnic University,
Brooklyn, New York. “Prospects for Sustainable Energy: A Critical Assessment,” p. 197.
The world's oceans store enormous amounts of energy in the form of water since about a quarter of the solar radiation reaching the earth into them. If this heat could be used in some way, there would be another superabundant energy resource just as solar radiation is itself. There several difficulties with utilization of ocean heat, however
. First. it 11.1 be recognized that the resource is dispersed over vast areas and operations of any energy conversion technology
in all seasons and weather presents daunting challenges.
Second, any attempt to convert ocean heat into a useful form must face the limitations imposed by the basic thermodynamics of the small temperature
differences to be found in sea water anywhere, as reviewed below. Power plants, using the same thermodynamic principles as conventional fuel-fired power plants, can operate on the small differences of water temperature between the surface and the bottom of the ocean (Sanders, 1991). Whereas the temperature differences found in conventional, fossilfired, steam plants are several thousand degrees - taken between the hot gases of the boiler and the cooling water of the condenser (Cassedy & Grossman, 1990, 1998) - the temperature differences for ocean thermal plants are far less. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plants must function on differences of only about 20°C
(36 OF) and magnitudes even of this size are found only in tropical waters.
OTEC plants must use volatile compounds, such as ammonia, as working fluids instead of the steam/water working fluids of conventional power plants. These compounds pass from a liquid state into vapor when heated only 10 °C (18 OF) by the warm ocean water in a heat exchanger. The heat energy gained from the warm ocean water is then expended by the vapor as it turns the blades of a turbine, which itself is coupled to an electric generator. After coming out of the turbine, the vapor returns to the liquid state when it passes through a condenser cooled by water taken from the ocean bottom. The liquid working fluid is then put under pressure to enter the warm-water heat exchanger again in a classic thermodynamic closed cycle. Even though the operation of a thermodynamic cycle on such small temperature differences is novel, thermodynamic principles tell us that the efficiency of energy conversion will be very low (Cassedy & Grossman, 1990, 1998). This follows from the principle that the maximum achievable conversion to usable energy is proportional to the temperature difference in the cycle.
Given the small differences in temperatures between the warm surface waters used to heat the OTEC cycle
, and the cool bottom waters used for condensing, actual conversion efficiencies of prototype plants have been in the region of 5%;;,. This should be compared with 35% and higher for conventional power plants.
R&D programs leading to small demonstration facilities have been carried on in several countries in recent years, including France, Great Britain, India, Japan, the Netherlands,
Sweden, and the USA. Most of the programs are government supported, but a few are privately sponsored, such as by Westinghouse. The DOE supported an OTEC program with annual funding levels reaching several million dollars by the late 1980s, but this was cut in steps in the early
1990s and then terminated in 1995 (DOE, 1992, 1995). Before termination of the US effort, a small working prototype was demonstrated in
Hawaii with an electrical output of 15 kWe. Construction of a 40 kWe, open-cycle, onshore plant was started in 1993 with support from DOE and the State of Hawaii and was scheduled for demonstration in 1995 (Greer et al., 1995). Designs for larger prototypes in the output range
100--400 kW, have been produced but never built. Plants of this size, if successful, could make limited contributions to electric grids or serve isolated communities in some tropical, coastal regions. The construction of even a modest size (100 MWe) OTEC plant, however, would present huge engineering challenges (Cavanagh, 1993). If it is a floating plant, it would be a vessel with a displacement of
250000 ton (230000 mt) and would likely require mooring in 1000 m (3000 ft) of water
. Its cold water pipe would have to be 20 m (65 ft) in diameter, extending to the ocean bottom and carrying over 100000 gallons per second of water.
Unless an appropriate ocean site can be found, with deep water near a shoreline and with electrical load demand nearby, long lengths of undersea cable would be required to reach land. Finally, as with wave-energy generators, offshore OTEC plants must be able to withstand major storms and their costs would have to reflect robust designs. (Again, experience with offshore drilling platforms should be useful.)
If technical requirements for full-scale OTEC plants are achieved,
cost will be the critical issue for commercial viability. Since experience to date has been limited to small prototypes, only estimates are available for full-scale plants on capital costs, operation, and maintenance. Estimated capital costs appear high, however, in the range $6000-10000/kWe
(Sanders, 1991; Cavanagh, 1993). Therefore, even with low operation and maintenance costs (less than $0.01/kW-hr), the levelized cost of energy would reach values exceeding $0.25/KW-hr, using moderate discount rates. Such costs of electricity are not competitive, of course, in most regions of the world today.
With little development effort in progress, the prospects for OTEC technology moving closer to economic feasibility seem dim for the foreseeable future. Even with commercialization, OTEC plants would be restricted to particular sites in

tropical regions. The prospects for major impacts on world electric generation seem remote at present. Ocean energy sources do not appear to have the potential to make a major impact on energy markets worldwide
. They may, like geothermal sources, come to have importance in local areas if there are further technological development and cost reductions. It is with these prospects in mind that these technologies have been given less treatment here, since our emphasis is on those sustainable sources that can make major displacements offossil fuels.
William
. B.S. in chemistry from Pomona College and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in physical chemistry from Harvard, “Renewable energy from the ocean: a guide to OTEC,” p. 7-8.
There is a theoretical limit,
1'/(max), to the maximum efficiency of an OTEC system in converting heat stored in the warm surface water of the tropical oceans into mechanical work.
As first defined by the French engineer, Sadi Carnot (1824), T w
- I;; 1'/(max) = -T- , w, where 1'/(max) = Carnot efficiency; Tw = absolute temperature of the warm water; Tc = absolute temperature of the cold water.
For the ocean regions most suitable for OTEC operation
, the annual average surface temperature is 26.7 to 29.4°C (80 to 85°F). Cold water at 4.4°C (40°F) or below is available at depths of about 900 m (3000 ft). Thus, the maximum OTEC thermal efficiency will be 7.5 to 8%
(22/295 to 25/298); however, this ideal efficiency, even without unavoidable reductions caused by friction and heat losses, could be attained only at infinitesimal rates of power production
. Maximum power production per unit water flow requires both a high rate of heat transfer in the heat exchangers and a large pressure difference across the turbine. Without discussing details at this point, we may state that maximum power output will occur when the total temperature difference (ilT) between the warm and cold water is divided roughly equally between (I) the ilT required to promote a large difference in vapor pressure in the ammonia between the evaporator and condenser, and (2) the ilTs required to induce a high heat transfer rate from warm water to ammonia in the evaporator and from ammonia to cold water in the condenser. An analysis is presented in Wu (1987).
Only the ilT associated with the pressure difference across the turbine is associated with the production of mechanical work; therefore, in practical operation of an
OTEC power system, the gross power efficiency is only about half the Carnot limit. This requirement reduces the maximum practical efficiency of OTEC gross power production to 3.5 to 4.0%.
Finally, analysis shows that 25 to 30% of the gross electric power generated by a floating OTEC plant operating with a f!.T of 22 degrees Celsius (40 degrees Fahrenheit) will be required to operate the water and ammonia pumps and to supply power to meet auxiliary needs for plant operation and ship station keeping
. Thus, the net efficiency of conversion of the thermal energy stored in the ocean surface waters to net electric energy available at the on-board bus bar will be between 2.5 and 3%
.

(Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, State Energy Program, “Natural Energy
Laboratory of Hawaii Authority Returns to Its Energy Roots”, January-February, http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/state_energy_program/feature_detail_info.cfm/fid=79?print)
The Siren Call of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion
Where ocean thermal energy is concerned, no place is more capable than Hawaii
. The volcanic eruptions that have been creating the Hawaii Island chain for 7 million years still continue to create new lands below sea level.
The most remote island chain in the world, the Big Island, is essentially a mountain that starts 20,000 feet below the surface. As a result, pristine, deep-sea currents pass near the shore.
These submarine flows perpetually transverse the globe at a snail's pace, unaffected by pollution, bacteria, or pathogens on the surface
(see map).
The Big Island
, relatively young in geological terms at only 800,000 years old
, has
a bathymetry (underwater topology) that is very steep, making access to deep sea water available a short distance from shore
. At Keahole point, a distance of 8,000 feet offshore takes you to a depth of 3,000 feet, allowing access to deep ocean water with less expensive piping.
Even though deep-sea currents are frigid, the Hawaiian archipelago has a tropical climate with consistently warm year-round surface temperatures. This consistent temperature difference of 40°F enables electricity generation from ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).
Warm surface temperatures and cold deep-sea temperatures are available across a wide area of the Earth's equatorial oceans (see maps). Thus,
OTEC taps an inexhaustible source of renewable energy.
The only byproduct is reservoirs of clean, fresh water. The possibility of producing electricity from OTEC has intrigued scientists for more than a century. French scientist Jacques d'Arsonval first proposed the concept of OTEC in 1881. Unfortunately, his experiments were not successful. Fifty years later, the first attempt to produce electricity from OTEC in
Matanzas Bay,
Cuba, consumed more energy than it produced.
(Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, State Energy Program, “Natural Energy
Laboratory of Hawaii Authority Returns to Its Energy Roots”, January-February, http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/state_energy_program/feature_detail_info.cfm/fid=79?print)
Experiments Produce Net Electricity In 1979, scientists at NELHA
(originally known as the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii) successfully produced electricity from OTEC for the first time.
The NELHA scientists used a closed-cycle system that takes advantage of a conventional Rankine thermodynamic cycle. This is the same cycle that is used on conventional power plants, but OTEC operates at a much lower temperature differences (40°F at Keahole Point, Kona). The NELHA Mini-Barge produced 10–15kilowatts (kW) of net electrical power.
These first successful OTEC experiments at NELHA established the practicability of the technology and outlined its challenges.
For example, the cold-water pipes must be large enough to handle high volumes of cold water, making the interface with a small barge problematic. By the same token, a sea-land interface is vulnerable to wave action near the shore and to catastrophic events such as hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes.
For example, an earthquake in
October 2006 destroyed the interface between the sea- and land-side sections of a cold-water pipe that supplies NELHA tenants; it is still under repair.
The requirements of the OTEC energy conversion cycle dictate that temperatures and pressure conditions be closely controlled. This is because surface seawater on the warm side of the thermodynamic cycle is turned into steam by lowering pressures to almost a full vacuum, resulting in a low pressure difference across the turbine. OTEC equipment must therefore meet very high control and

reliability requirements while it moves large volumes of seawater. NELHA scientists have also experimented with open-cycle systems
to document performance. Open-cycle OTEC is attractive because the condensed vapor collected is pure, fresh water, which is an extremely valuable commodity in Kona and on most tropical islands (in closed-cycle OTEC, the condensate is recycled and reused). A 1 MW open-cycle system, like the one planned to be built at NELHA, can produce 600,000 gallons of fresh water per day.
However, open-cycle OTEC still faces materials and design challenges, and the technology is still classified as "under development" by the World Bank.
Costs remain a challenge for OTEC. Seventy-five percent of the cost is for installing the cold-water pipe. This pipe must reach an ocean depth where there is a surface temperature differential of 40˚ F. The costs of such an installation are high enough that they cannot be recovered with energy payments at today's prices. This leads to the pursuit of multiple uses for the cold seawater. In 1981, NELHA scientists moved their OTEC testing equipment from the barge to dry land. Then, as oil prices began to decline during the 1980s, so did interest in OTEC experiments. By
1984, NELHA began to use the class AA seawater to aggressively pursue other economic paths.

(Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, State Energy Program, “Natural Energy
Laboratory of Hawaii Authority Returns to Its Energy Roots”, January-February, http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/state_energy_program/feature_detail_info.cfm/fid=79?print)
What began as a breakthrough in a small-scale ocean thermal energy experiment 34 years ago has matured into a full-fledged commercial epicenter
. In response to the oil embargo in 1974, the Hawaii Legislature established the Natural Energy
Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA)
on the Big Island of Hawaii to investigate alternatives. As a state agency,
NELHA combines research facilities and a technology park, as well as enterprise and free-trade zones
. The complex now stretches from the seashore to the Queen Kaahumanu Highway, occupying 870 acres bordering the Kona International Airport.
NELHA has established the technical baseline for ocean thermal energy and a multiplicity of uses for cold, pure, deep seawater. And it has become a prestigious center for ocean research and world trade in aquaculture products.
But the high energy prices that afflict Hawaii—the highest in the United States—have returned, and the state now depends on petroleum more than ever. Analysts at the Hawaii Energy Office, which manages NELHA, estimate that per year, the State of
Hawaii spent $4-7 billion, with the Big Island spending $750 million, to pay for oil imports. However, the Big Island—blessed with renewable resources like geothermal, solar, ocean, hydro, and strong wind—provides abundant and diversified renewable energy potential.
As a result,
Hawaii business and political leaders
, including Governor Linda
Lingle
, are once again examining the extensive renewable energy resources of the Big Island of Hawaii
. *
Champions of Economic Development on the Big Island * Gateway Center Reaps National Honors * Floating the Green Energy Zone

(Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, State Energy Program, “Natural Energy
Laboratory of Hawaii Authority Returns to Its Energy Roots”, January-February, http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/state_energy_program/feature_detail_info.cfm/fid=79?print)
Creating Business Opportunities These tenants now include companies that grow specialty fish for export to aquariums worldwide, bottled water
(popular in Japan), spirulina for North American health food stores, and fresh fish for local restaurants and markets across the Pacific
.
NELHA researchers have developed breakthrough methods for breeding popular high-value species to reduce pressures on wild stock.
These include species that are popular with epicures such as prawns and clams, which grow more quickly and to a larger size in cold water. But it also includes species such as abalone and halibut that inhabit deeper waters.
Companies geared toward sustainable industry development also saw the potential that NELHA had to offer.
One such company, Indo-Pacific Sea Farms, Inc., is developing technologies for sustainable commercial production of reef-dwelling organisms, including giant photosynthetic clams and reefbuilding corals. In total, almost 30 diverse commercial and pre-commercial companies recognized NELHA's diverse potential and made the move to Keahole Point.
Partial List of NELHA Tenants
NELHA's current tenant list
, upward of 25 enterprises, generates $30 to $40 million for the Hawaiian economy annually. Commercial tenants include:
* Big Island Abalone Corporation – Created the PolyGrow® culture system * Black Pearls, Inc. – Developed specialized hatchery technologies for black-lip pearl oysters * Cyanotech Corporation – Produces high-value microalgae-based pharmaceuticals * Koyo USA
Corp. – Bottles Hawaii Deep Seawater Pre-commercial tenants include: * Moana Technologies, Inc. – Perfecting shrimp farming productivity *
Pacific Planktonics – Developing methods to culture marine fish and shrimp for scale-up to commercial production Research tenants include: *
The Oceanic Institute – Developing new aquaculture industries and markets * University of Hawaii – Monitoring atmospheric infrasound signals
* University of California – Sampling dissolved organic nitrogen compounds from surface and deep seawater
Hawaii's initial promotion of economic development has not diminished in the last decade; in fact, the drive for external collaboration has swelled
.
Among the newcomers to the NELHA campus is the Hawaii Natural
Energy Institute, which has discussed plans for onsite hydrogen production and storage.
Sopogy, a solar thermal developer, has also leased space that will be dedicated to 7 acres of its 1 MW solar thermal collector system. Cellana, a joint company formed by Shell and Hawaii-based HR Biopetroleum, will also be located at NELHA. Cellana will grow high-lipid algae strains that are native to
Hawaii or approved by the Hawaii Department of Agriculture marine algae to produce vegetable oil for conversion into biofuels.

(Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, State Energy Program, “Natural Energy
Laboratory of Hawaii Authority Returns to Its Energy Roots”, January-February, http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/state_energy_program/feature_detail_info.cfm/fid=79?print)
Additional Support from the State and DOE In 1998, the Hawaii Energy Office published the Hawaii Climate Change
Action Plan, which stated that the OTEC experiments needed, "additional research, component cost reduction, and funding of a utility-scale plant to create a viable commercial technology." To facilitate these needs, the Hawaii Legislature passed new legislation allowing NELHA to expand and bring in new organizations to help supplement the cost of its experiments and expansions.
You can read the plan the on the energy office Web site.
The influx of renewable energy developers to the NELHA site is being bolstered by the
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
In January 2008,
Hawaii and DOE announced creation of the Hawaii Clean
Energy Initiative, which lays the groundwork for Hawaii to be energy independent. The initiative is founded on the idea that Hawaii must combine its abundant natural sources with the latest renewable energy advancements to accelerate its clean energy future
. In so doing, Hawaii could become a model for the world, demonstrating what can be accomplished by developing renewable energy. In her 2008 State-of-the-State Address on January 22, 2008, Hawaii
Governor Linda Lingle stated that her administration is devoted to, "a direction that encourages personal responsibility, transforms the economy, focuses on energy independence, preserves our cultural and natural resources, and enhances our overall quality of life." You can read the address online..

(Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, State Energy Program, “Natural Energy
Laboratory of Hawaii Authority Returns to Its Energy Roots”, January-February, http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/state_energy_program/feature_detail_info.cfm/fid=79?print)
Floating the Green Energy Zone
NELHA's plans involve creating a Green Energy Zone on the Island of Hawaii
.
Currently in the planning stages, this Green Energy Zone would increase tenant diversification at NELHA, create numerous high-tech jobs, and go from producing very little renewable energy to being energy selfsufficiency in a very short time.
Will Rolston, manager of the Hawaii Gateway Energy Center, is determined to see the Green Energy
Zone happen. Governor Lingle is very committed to renewable energy as well, and Hawaii's administration is complementing NELHA's vision with its own by creating the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative with DOE. "NELHA is doing an outstanding job in furthering our administration's efforts to foster the growth of renewable energy," Lingle said.
The Green Energy Zone would become the focal point for all of NELHA's renewable energy undertakings. A comingling of renewable energy, infrastructure, and economic development is already underway. The DOE National Renewable Energy Laboratory recognized this potential in 2004 and has provided funding to further advance distributed generation technologies.
With a plan in place to build roads connecting the Kona International Airport, adjacent highways, and NELHA, there is also a long-range vision to create an offshore OTEC. This new facility could produce 50-100 megawatts of electricity, millions of gallons of fresh water, and a sizeable amount of hydrogen for use in hybrid vehicles. "NELHA is doing an outstanding job in furthering our administration's efforts to foster the growth of renewable energy."
—
Hawaii Governor
Linda Lingle.
Because
three miles worth of pipes from the original
OTEC infrastructure is already in place, NELHA's research tenants will be able to use it as a springboard for advances in renewable energy development
. In fact, the 55-inch deep-seawater pipe was designed with future OTEC technology and experiments in mind.
The Green Energy Zone has also developed economic incentives for startups considering tenancy at NELHA, including fast-track permitting, tax incentives, and favorable lease arrangements
. When one considers the economic benefits NELHA has to offer, it is easy to see why it is an exceptional research and commercialization facility for renewable energy.

(Hawaii Governor Lingle Announces New Ocean Thermal Energy
Partnership, Wednesday, November 19th, http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/index.php/OTEC-
News/HAWAII-GOVERNOR-LINGLE-ANNOUNCES-NEW-OCEAN-THERMAL-ENERGY-PARTNERSHIP.html)
Aloha, In energy news from Governor's trip to Asia, we are excited to update you on a new partnership launched today between the Taiwan Industrial Technology and Lockheed Martin Collaboration, involving the development of a 10 megawatt Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) pilot plant in Hawai'i.
The new partnership supports efforts by the Lingle-Aiona Administration to strengthen our economy through increased renewable energy development.
Please see below a news release and a photo taken at the announcement of the new partnership. HONOLULU — Governor Linda Lingle today announced a new energy partnership to develop a 10 megawatt (MW) Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) pilot plant in Hawai'i between the Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and the Lockheed Martin Corporation.
During the Governor's official state visit to Taiwan, the ITRI agreed to join in a feasibility study and will collaborate in the initial pilot plant in Hawai'i. OTEC agrees to provide clean renewable electricity generated from the difference in temperature between the ocean's warm surface and its chilly depths. Unlike many other renewable energy technologies, OTEC can provide consistent baseload power.
The ocean temperatures and the subsea terrain make the waters surrounding both Taiwan and Hawai'i superior locations for this technology. Lockheed Martin Corporation has developed and studied OTEC technology for over 30 years. Its plans for a 10 MW OTEC pilot plant in Hawai'i are already underway. "As island economies in the
Pacific, Taiwan and the State of Hawai'i share very similar challenges of overdependence on imported petroleum for their energy needs,"
Governor Lingle said. "Taiwan and Hawai'i also share a common vision and plan to increase renewable and clean energy generation based on indigenous energy resources." Hawai'i currently relies on imported fossil fuel for about 94 percent of its primary energy; the balance is from renewable resources. Taiwan is even more dependent on imported fuels than Hawai'i, with less than one percent of its primary supply derived from indigenous renewables. The Bureau of Energy of Taiwan is working to increase conservation and energy efficiency, and to develop renewable energy so that it accounts for 12 percent of Taiwan's total installed capacity by 2020.
Most OTEC research and development in recent decades has been performed at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai'i
Authority (NELHA), located at Keahole Point, Kona.
Huge pipelines bringing cold, deep ocean water to the surface enabled the demonstration of a variety of OTEC components and pilot plants. Mini-OTEC, the first closed-cycle, at-sea OTEC plant to generate net electricity, was deployed in the waters off NELHA in 1979. Lockheed Missiles and Space Company was a partner in that effort as well as subsequent research at NELHA.
This latest agreement with Taiwan complements the Hawai'i Clean Energy
Initiative, a partnership between the State of Hawai'i and the United States Department of Energy which will decisively move the state away from its dependence on fossil fuels and toward a clean energy driven economy that will be a model for other states and regions.

Tundi
,
. Ph.D in Biological Sciences and Masters in Marine Affairs from the University of
Rhode Island. “An Ocean of Energy There for the Taking,” World Ocean Observatory, http://www.thew2o.net/newsletter.html.
There are three factors
that currently constrain us from using ocean energy
to meet our needs. First is the lack of investment in researching new energy sources and technologies. Costs of developing and then utilizing these new technologies are prohibitive; investors cannot be assured of returns on investment for small scale experimental projects, but larger scale economically viable projects cannot be developed without the small scale prototypes.
Few governments are progressive enough to sufficiently subsidize
R&D in ocean energy technologies
. And the few stalwart private sector companies who have embarked on the exploratory trail are understandably not willing to share their trade secrets with other companies or with government energy agencies. The solution thus lies in strong public private partnerships.
The second obstacle is insufficient education of the public at large
. For too long the people of the developed world have taken energy for granted; it is only in times of high energy costs (particularly rising costs at the fuel pump or on home heating bills) that the public is even conscious of the fact that supplying energy is a costly, and sometimes unpredictable, endeavor.
The sudden surge of interest in the effects of global warming
, and increasing geopolitical tensions between oil supplying and oil consuming countries has opened many people’s minds to considerations of new sources of energy
, as well as to issues of energy conservation.
But even those open minds have had difficulty accessing good information about the costs and benefits of ocean energy
. Public education and outreach which is based on the best available science, and uninfluenced by vested economic interests or political ones, is a top priority. The last constraint is related to the first two.
The public sector must find ways to increase incentives for the private sector to research and develop cost-effective and environmentally sensitive ocean energy ventures
. And in order for that to happen, there needs to be political will
– political will built on the realization of ocean energy potential, and political will driven by the demands of an increasingly educated and informed public.
Such political will cannot blossom if politicians continue to yield to the enormous political pressure being brought down upon them by the lobbyists and spokespeople of conventional energy corporations
, so developing this political will requires courage.
Under the direction of good political leadership, we may soon realize the enormous potential that the oceans hold in meeting our energy needs
.
2/26/
. Becca Friedman. “An Alternative Source Heats Up, Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion,” http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternativesource-heats-up/.
Even environmentalists have impeded OTEC’s development
. According to Penney, people do not want to see
OTEC plants when they look at the ocean. When they see a disruption of the pristine marine landscape, they think pollution.
Given the risks, costs, and uncertain popularity of OTEC, it seems unlikely that federal support for OTEC is forthcoming
. Jim Anderson, co-founder of Sea Solar Power Inc., a company specializing in OTEC technology, told the HPR, “Years ago in the ’80s, there was a small [governmental] program for OTEC and it was abandoned…That philosophy has carried forth to this day. There are a few people in the Department of Energy who have blocked government funding for this. It’s not the Democrats, not the Republicans. It’s a bureaucratic issue.” OTEC is not completely off the government’s radar, however. This past year, for the first time in a decade,
Congress debated reviving the oceanic energy program in the energy bill, although the proposal was ultimately defeated
. OTEC even enjoys some support on a state level. Hawaii ’s
National Energy Laboratory, for example, conducts OTEC research around the islands. For now, though, American interests in OTEC promise to remain largely academic. The Naval Research Academy and Oregon State University are conducting research programs off the coasts of Oahu and Oregon , respectively.