First, take a moment to appreciate one amazing NASA video. It's worth the price of admission.
... and they say 'Perpetual Motion' is impossible.
Perpetual Ocean
link to video
Ocean surface currents from the MIT/NASA-JPL ECCO2 collaboration and visualized by the NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio. The animation nicely highlights the energetic turbulent ocean surface currents that are present in the real ocean but are not directly visible to the eye. Numerous people have also remarked that the visualization evokes the Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. There are several similar animations by NASA's van Gogh team (Greg Shirah and Horace Mitchell) at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/... -- neither Greg nor Horace have severed their ears yet though.
According to a NASA release, ECCO's visualizations are used to better understand the the ocean's evolving role in the global climate.
The first person to turn those "giant eddies" into a "giant solar battery" -- is gonna win some sort of Branson X-prize.
Yet beside being the Planet's natural reservoirs for collecting and distributing heat energy, and the primary engine of the world's climate systems too, those amazing whirlpool eddies, also hold a few more recently discovered secrets ...
Those perpetual swirling eddies are a primary pathway for OUR excess CO2 to get sent to the deep dark sea ...
Massive Whirlpools Create Funnels in Southern Ocean that Sink Carbon
by Chelsea Whyte, isciencetimes.com -- July 31, 2012
Around 40 percent of the annual global carbon dioxide emissions absorbed by the world's oceans enter the water through the Southern Ocean that encircles Antarctica. Reporting this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, British and Australian scientists reveal that rather than carbon being absorbed uniformly into the deep ocean in vast areas, it is drawn down and locked away from the atmosphere by plunging currents a hundreds of miles wide.
Massive whirlpools create funnels in the ocean, where carbon sinks and is stored. It is the role of these eddies, the winds and the currents that carry warm and cold water around the ocean and helps in creating localized pathways or funnels for storage of carbon deep beneath, reports the French Tribune.
[...]
Antarctic Carbon Capture and Storage Whirlpools discovered
by Rolf Schuttenhelm, bitsofscience.org -- July 30, 2012
[...]
Data was collected by 80 floats across the Southern Ocean, which were deployed in 2002. The floats dive to depths of 2 kilometers.
The wider picture of the MOC system
The Southern Ocean is quite comparable to the North Atlantic, that other important zone of deep water formation -- and a driving engine to the MOC [Meridional Overturning Circulation]. The difference is the larger N-S component of water movements in the North Atlantic, while down south the masses of water have time to linger a bit more and circle around Antarctica before flowing back into the system. In the North Atlantic too recent discoveries show there are large phenomena science had thus far overlooked -- like the North Icelandic Jet.
Concerns relating to feared instability of the North Atlantic Gulfstream may also be mirrored down south as other recent research indicates that there may be a Southern Ocean MOC switch too and because there seems to be a decrease in the Antarctic deep water formation.
Deep ocean currents, have to
start somewhere ...
[Image source: bitsofscience.org -- MOC may have a power switch in Southern Ocean too.]
IOW, there's another conveyor in the Antarctica seas [AMOC] -- that mirrors the one in north. Studies are starting to think it may pick up the slack when the Gulf Stream lets off. But as per usual they need more studies; they need more instruments; IOW, we need more Science.
40% CO2 absorption -- that's a lot. Is the planet buying us time to get our industrial-age house in order?
Given that those deep water currents take thousands of years to re-surface again, who knows.
Of course humans, are not well known for taking our 'second chances' when we get them. And the 40% sink is still leaving the other 60 for the skies to absorb.
If only we had more time. If only we had more Carbon Sinks ...
Heavy lifting: Scientists say oceans and forests are still soaking up about half the greenhouse gases we emit
by Daily Mail Reporter -- 1 August 2012
[...]
They found that while CO2 emissions had quadrupled in the last five decades, natural carbon "sinks" that capture the greenhouse gas doubled their uptake.
This had lessened the impact of man-made CO2 emissions on the Earth's climate.
'What we are seeing is that the Earth continues to do the heavy lifting by taking up huge amounts of carbon dioxide, even while humans have done very little to reduce carbon emissions,' lead researcher Dr Ashley Ballantyne, from the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder), said.
'How long this will continue, we don't know.'
A total of 33.6 billion tons of CO2 were emitted globally in 2010, climbing to 34.8 billion tons in 2011, according to the International Energy Agency.
Much of this carbon is absorbed by the oceans and soil, or captured by green plants.
[...]
If only we had more time. If only we had more respect for Science, and what it can teach us.
If only we had more commonsense than a hog rolling in slop.
Then we might actually appreciate the 'Perpetual Motion' systems, that our Planet has virtually given us.
And start to understand and appreciate them for the amazing spinning tops -- the boundless energy collectors -- that they truly are ...
link to video
Before it's too late. Every top runs down eventually --it's just Entropy -- unless of course, it can somehow get naturally recharged from its surrounding environment ...
Hmmm? Any suggestions. Afterall, we're smarter than the average hogs ...