MUENCHHAUSEN

AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,
RENEWABLE RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,
AND RELATED TOPICS

By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.
BETHESDA, MD
JJGREENBARON@CS.COM

===============================================================
JANUARY 31, 2007
===============================================================

WELCOME!

The Green Baron welcomes one and all who take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to “tell it like it is” as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions. There are enough of those to go around in other publications.


FUEL “FARMS”: HIGHER FOOD PRICES? A REPRISE:

The Green Baron wrote the following in Muenchhausen January 19, and repeats it just below:

Several articles in the engineering, science, and popular press have warned that the rush to produce ethanol as a motor and energy fuel could cause food prices to go up on a broad scale. Why? The quickest, most rational method of producing ethanol for fuel currently involves using corn or sugar as feedstock. The corn and sugar thus withdrawn from the food market will perforce cause that which remains to increase in price, perhaps dramatically.

It also has been proposed to use the dead plants that remain from the corn harvest (the “stover”) and other grain chaff as ethanol plant feedstock. Normally, such chaff is left in the soil to help it retain at least some fertility. Otherwise, the soil could become far less productive. Ethanol could be made from municipal waste, but a viable technology for that is still down the road; moreover, what needs to be determined for all modes of ethanol production is whether the fuel values obtained will be worth the energy input to derive them.

The Green Baron had the rare opportunity to express personally to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) his concerns about the reduction in food and feed production. Speaker Pelosi replied that Congress is bearing these concerns in mind, and that The Green Baron might wish to contact Rep. Collin Peterson (D, MN), who represents a rural district on this topic. Rep. Peterson has become Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. The Green Baron might just do so in the near future, but let him add this caveat (not in Muenchhausen’s January 19 issue): “perhaps with the possibly vain hope that he can get an objective answer from a politician.”

CONCERNS PERHAPS BORNE OUT

Let us continue our brief discussion about ethanol, fuel “farms”, and such. Here is one view by one of America’s foremost economics writers:

“President Bush joined the biofuels enthusi­asm in his State of the Union address, and no one can doubt the powerful allure. Farmers, scientists, and venture capitalists will liberate us from insecure foreign oil by converting corn, prairie grass, and much more into gaso­line substitutes. Biofuels will even curb greenhouse gases. Already, production of ethanol from corn has surged from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to 5 billion in 2006. Bush set an interim target of 35 billion gallons in 2017 on the way to the administration's ultimate goal of 60 billion in 2030. Sounds great, but be wary. It may be a mirage” (1)

Samuelson reminds us that ethanol yields about two-thirds (about 67%) of the energy of gasoline. He “does the math,” so to speak and shows how small the amount of imported oil displaced would be. Because of population increases in the United States and other factors, demand for fuel will rise sharply between now and 2030—about 7.5 billion barrels of oil in 2006 versus perhaps 9.2 billion barrels of oil or some equivalent in 2030. (Please remember that for oil, 1 barrel equals 42 gallons. Thus, 60 billion gallons of ethanol production per year, if at all achievable, would displace perhaps 1 billion barrels of gasoline; again bear in mind the lower energy yield of ethanol.)

The Administration’s goal is to produce 60 billion gallons of ethanol—that’s good old beverage alcohol—a year by 2030. The interim goal is 35 billion gallons by 2017. If all of this ethanol is to be made from corn, it is questionable whether the Bush administration’s goal is attainable.

For perspective, let us look at corn-to-ethanol production numbers for recent years. For 2000, the annual production of corn-derived ethanol was 1.6 billion gallons. For 2006, this figure rose to 5 billion gallons. This production increase led to increases in the price of corn, at $3 a bushel in late 2006, up from $2 at the end of 2005. Moreover, in 2000, perhaps 6% of the U.S. corn crop was used to make ethanol. As of 2006, about 20% of the corn crop went to ethanol. With corn-to-ethanol plants sprouting on the prairies like mushrooms, one might expect a doubling of corn-to-ethanol by 2010 (1).

Another reason for the rush to fuel farms and plants at the expense of corn grown for food and feed is that fuel plants can generate profits for investors faster than agriculture can. Actually, many farmers and agribusinesses would benefit. For example, the $3-per-bushel corn price in late 2006 was the highest in a decade (1).

It was not without good reason that The Green Baron expressed concern about fast-rising corn prices and the ripple effect that would have (feed costs go up, and so do those of, say, meat products, just for openers). Here is what The Green Baron came across on Jan. 27: In a small town in Mexico, Nezahualcoyotl, east of Mexico City, prices of tortillas, a staple food in Mexico, especially among the less-privileged classes, have been rising rapidly (2). Tortillas constitute a main protein source among Mexico’s poorer population; they have been made by the same method since at least Aztec and Maya times. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, via Bloomberg News, Ohio No. 2 yellow corn—yellow corn is the principal corn portion of most tortillas—sold at $3.82 a bushel as of Jan. 26, 2007. It should come as no surprise that prices for tortillas are soaring in Mexico, and leading to much discontent among poorer portions of its population.

The government of Mexico is tinkering with caps on tortilla prices. However, government-mandated price caps work spottily at best, and currently are being honored much more in the breach than in the observance (2).

ALTERNATIVES TO CORN

To be discussed in the next posting of Muenchhausen.


REFERENCES:

Samuelson, R.J. Blindness on Biofuels. The Washington Post, Jan. 24, 2007, A23.
Roig-Franzia, M. A Culinary and Cultural Staple in Crisis. The Washington Post, Jan. 27. 2007, A1.

WHAT IS BOOTSTRAP PRESS?

Bootstrap Press is a nonprofit organization founded in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., to promote the development and management of technology and businesses based on renewable resources. We also encourage the preservation of our Earth's natural habitats and its plant and animal species. So do a lot of other organizations, and more power to them for doing so!

Bootstrap Press is different because its members believe that the development of renewable resources and the preservation of habitats and species are receiving far more lip service than the financial and technical support needed to achieve these goals. We also think they will continue to be subjects of more talk than action until someone can show how renewable resources and the diversity of biological species can be the basis for potentially profitable businesses as well as a matter of ethics. Bootstrap Press intends to provide a forum for the discussion of how to build up such business, and of related topics.

There's one more thing we should mention about Muenchhausen and Bootstrap Press. We try to present only the scientific and technical facts that are correct to the best of our knowledge, belief, and good faith. It is up to Muenchhausen's readers to draw their own conclusions and make their own judgments.

NOTE: The mention of a product or service in Muenchhausen is in no way to be regarded as an endorsement of that product or service by Muenchhausen, Bootstrap Press, the Green Baron, or any other contributor to Muenchhausen. Also, the views expressed in Muenchhausen are The Green Baron’s own, and are based on the best of his knowledge, belief, and good faith.

MUENCHHAUSEN

AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,

RENEWABLE RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,

AND RELATED TOPICS

By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.

BETHESDA, MD

JJGREENBARON@CS.COM

===============================================================

JANUARY 19, 2007

===============================================================

WELCOME!

The Green Baron welcomes one and all who take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to “tell it like it is” as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions. There are enough of those to go around in other publications.

DISASTERS RAPID AND SLOW

Muenchhausen, Jan. 5, 2007, offers a brief (and admittedly sketchy) primer on tsunamis, which really should be caused seismic waves. The Japanese term “tsunami” essentially means “sea wave”, which is largely a generic term. However, for our purposes, we shall use the term “tsunami” as one of convenience.

Calling it “tsunami” or “seismic wave” in no way detracts from its destructiveness and lethality. A tsunami is a salient example of a rapid disaster. Hurricane Katrina, of which so much has been said and written that The Green Baron will not deal with it here very much, is another example of a rapid disaster, although not as rapid as that of the Dec. 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. There was at least some warning in advance of Hurricane Katrina, for what it was worth. Theoretically, there could have been some warning about the oncoming Indian Ocean tsunami, and the technology to establish a warning system exists, but it was not in place in time to prevent the deaths of more than a quarter of a million people. (An official figure, given by Mark Ward, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East at the U.S. Agency for International Development, was set at about 200,000. The Green Baron, however, believes this figure to be an underestimate.) Now, such systems are being installed in the affected area, but that is like the proverbial locking of the stable after the horses have been stolen.

Tsunami approaching a Thai beach Dec. 26, 2004. Approach velocity could be as high as 400 mi/hour.

What is a “slow disaster”? Perhaps a more à propos term might be “neglected disaster”. Such a disaster is ongoing, has been ongoing for many years or decades, and seems to have no end in sight. They can be of natural origin or caused by human activity or neglect; at times, they are deliberately brought about (e.g., Darfur, Sudan; Israel—Lebanon; Kashmir; Iraq). Of natural origin, for instance, are tropic-wide malaria pandemics and other pestilence. The loss of agricultural or wild land through human neglect or greed, much caused by runaway development and poor land-use practices, is an example of a manmade non-war slow disaster. Many of these were discussed Dec. 13, 2006, at a National Press Club (NPC, Washington, DC) press conference, sponsored by the American Red Cross and Tufts University, which The Green Baron attended.

Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein International Famine Center at Tufts University (Medford, MA), cited climate change as another slow, ongoing disaster that can have very long-term, far-reaching, and mostly deleterious consequences for all mankind. This, too, has been discussed so widely that The Green Baron will desist from doing so at this time; he will, however, speak to the climate change often in the future. The Green Baron currently posits that climate change could have many natural causes, such as increased sunspot activity and other natural phenomena. He does not discount that human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels and environmental degradation—through massive deforestation, for example—does contribute.

Walker, however, added another most intriguing aspect to manmade causes of slow disasters. He proposes that they can arise from activities of governments that have no care for their people, in large part because of corruption. Neither Walker, the Red Cross, nor The Green Baron have any easy answers to the corruption problem.

WRENCHING READJUSTMENTS

Some countries that accede to membership in the European Union (EU) often must make wrenching readjustments to their internal economic and social modi operandi so they can meet many EU standards, including those of environment. A case in point is Bulgaria, which, together with Romania, joined the EU Jan. 1, 2007.

Bulgaria has a large nuclear power plant at Kozloduy, on the Danube River. It used to generate so much electricity that Bulgaria could export about 40% of its output to neighboring countries, Bulgarian Ambassador Elena Poptodorova told The Green Baron. This plant, however, had been built according to specifications similar to those of nuclear power plants in the former Soviet Union. Unlike nuclear plants one sees in the EU and the United States, which have containment structures or “cans”, usually dome-shaped, the Soviet-designed plants have no can. In the West, such plants are deemed unsafe.

The April 1986 catastrophe at Chernobyl’ Unit No. 4, now in Ukraine, certainly reinforced fears of nuclear plants without cans. Leaks discovered at a similar type of plant, the 1500-MW power station at Ignalina, Lithuania (also formerly in the Soviet Union), in 1994 must have done little to reassure EU authorities about the safety of “canless” nuclear power plants, even though the Chernobyl’ calamity was ascribed to human operational error. Ignalina, however, has been undergoing modernization and upgrading with help from several European nations.

Bulgarian Ambassador Elena Poptodorova (Photo by The Green Baron)

As a condition of admission to the EU, therefore, Bulgaria had to cease operation of the power plant at Kozloduy. This deprived Bulgaria of a major source of income and even caused a neighboring customer nation to ration electricity. Ambassador Poptodorova, however, told The Green Baron of her optimism that her country’s nuclear plants can be brought up to EU standards and at some time in the future—not specified—Bulgaria might one day be an electricity exporter again.

By the way, Bulgaria exports what is reputedly among the best vegetable produce in Europe.

FUEL “FARMS”: HIGHER FOOD PRICES?

Several articles in the engineering, science, and popular press have warned that the rush to produce ethanol as a motor and energy fuel could cause food prices to go up on a broad scale. Why? The quickest, most rational method of producing ethanol for fuel currently involves using corn or sugar as feedstock. The corn and sugar thus withdrawn from the food market will perforce cause that which remains to increase in price, perhaps dramatically.

It also has been proposed to use the dead plants that remain from the corn harvest (the “stover”) and other grain chaff as ethanol plant feedstock. Normally, such chaff is left in the soil to help it retain at least some fertility. Otherwise, the soil could become far less productive. Ethanol could be made from municipal waste, but a viable technology for that is still down the road; moreover, what needs to be determined for all modes of ethanol production is whether the fuel values obtained will be worth the energy input to derive them.

The Green Baron had the rare opportunity to express personally to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) his concerns about the reduction in food and feed production. Speaker Pelosi replied that Congress is bearing these concerns in mind, and that The Green Baron might wish to contact Rep. Collin Peterson (D, MN), who represents a rural district on this topic. Rep. Peterson has become Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. The Green Baron might just do so in the near future.

WHAT IS BOOTSTRAP PRESS?

Bootstrap Press is a nonprofit organization founded in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., to promote the development and management of technology and businesses based on renewable resources. We also encourage the preservation of our Earth's natural habitats and its plant and animal species. So do a lot of other organizations, and more power to them for doing so!

Bootstrap Press is different because its members believe that the development of renewable resources and the preservation of habitats and species are receiving far more lip service than the financial and technical support needed to achieve these goals. We also think they will continue to be subjects of more talk than action until someone can show how renewable resources and the diversity of biological species can be the basis for potentially profitable businesses as well as a matter of ethics. Bootstrap Press intends to provide a forum for the discussion of how to build up such business, and of related topics.

There's one more thing we should mention about Muenchhausen and Bootstrap Press. We try to present only the scientific and technical facts that are correct to the best of our knowledge, belief, and good faith. It is up to Muenchhausen's readers to draw their own conclusions and make their own judgments.

NOTE: The mention of a product or service in Muenchhausen is in no way to be regarded as an endorsement of that product or service by Muenchhausen, Bootstrap Press, the Green Baron, or any other contributor to Muenchhausen.

MUENCHHAUSEN

AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,
RENEWABLE RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,
AND RELATED TOPICS

By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.
BETHESDA, MD
JJGREENBARON@CS.COM

===============================================================
JANUARY 12, 2007
===============================================================

WELCOME!

The Green Baron welcomes one and all who take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to “tell it like it is” as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions. There are enough of those to go around in other publications.

GERMANY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY

Germany is working very hard on research into the more feasible use of renewable energy, German Ambassador Klaus Scharioth told The Green Baron this morning. He agreed with what The Green Baron heard upwards of 30 years ago, when an energy expert from an environmental advocacy group said that using energy from fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas is like living on capital. Using energy from renewable sources, however, is like living on the income that the capital generates. And The Green Baron certainly would not argue with that. BUT. . .

Also, upwards of 30 years ago, at meetings about coal, The Green Baron heard this one: “The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We could have enough of a supply for hundreds of years, even if we quit using oil entirely. The problem is, we don’t know how to mine it, we don’t know how to transport it, and we don’t know how to use it.” The Green Baron presumes that his readers will know what that quotation is driving at environmentally, but if a clarification is desired, please contact him at jjgreenbaron@cs.com.

As a parallel, if The Green Baron may be permitted to paraphrase the last quotation somewhat, he will propose that: “Renewable sources of energy are so abundant on Earth that there is, and will be more than enough for human needs far, far into the future. However, they are very diffuse, and nature has not distributed their sources evenly. Thus, the problem is that we generally don’t know how to accumulate it, store it, and distribute it in an economically viable manner.” (As an aside, The Green Baron is not now including hydro power in this assessment. Yes, it is renewable, it is economically profitable, and we do know how to distribute its electricity “product”, but power dams have, more often than not, played hob with river environments.)

Thus, the challenge is to direct scientific and engineering research in renewable forms of energy, such as biomass, solar, wind, and so forth, towards economically viable—which our French friends would call “rentable”—systems for accumulation, storage, and distribution. Many efforts in that direction have been undertaken, but the challenge remains formidable. To Ambassador Scharioth, The Green Baron respectfully suggests that the German Research Service [or its successor(s)], The Max Planck Institute, and other such organizations in his country will have enough, in this regard, to keep them busy for a substantial time to come. However, knowing the excellence of German research and engineering work, The Green Baron also is confident that Germany will come up with many workable answers.















Ambassador Scharioth (Official Photo)


AND À PROPOS COAL. . .

After leaving the press conference with Ambassador Scharioth, The Green Baron had occasion to pass by a desk at which Congressional statements concerning coal liquefaction were being handed out in the form of press releases. Among those “speaking” in those releases were Senators Mike Enzi and Craig Thomas (R-Wyoming), Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky), and Congresswoman Barbara Cubin (R-WY). Coal liquefaction is seen as a potential economic boon for Kentucky and Wyoming Ah, how we go back to the future!

Coal liquefaction to synthetic oil and motor fuels on a commercial scale harks back to the early 20th century. Many are the approaches that “The Green Baron” has read and written about during his last full-time employment “incarnation” as Associate Editor of Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) a publication of the American Chemical Society. Commercial-potential coal liquefaction systems evolved from the original process of F. Fischer and H. Tröpsch, who discovered the process in Germany in 1923; it is known as the Fischer—Tröpsch Process. This process has since been modified as more knowledge and know-how was gained.

Generally speaking (and based on admittedly sketchy knowledge) coal liquefaction is said to produce “clean” fuels. Perhaps the resultant liquid fuels are indeed cleaner-burning than those derived from petroleum cracking, but query: Does the processing of coal not produce considerable air and water pollution that needs to be controlled?

In April 1974, The Green Baron visited a pilot plant that produced solvent-refined coal (SRC) just south of Birmingham, Alabama. The principal solvent was anthracene, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH). The product was named SRC I, and in this case was a solid carbon fuel stripped of its principal contaminants, which were mainly pyritic and organic sulfur and ash-producing solids. If coal from the mine yielded perhaps 11,000—12,000 British thermal units (Btu) per pound, SRC I would burn cleaner and yield 16,000 Btu/lb. However, burning SRC I would still not surmount the problem of large amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) generated by burning such coal. At the time, however, products such as SRC I could be looked upon with favor, because America was just emerging from the shock of the Arab oil embargo of October 1973—March 1974.

As it happens, on the flight from Washington, DC to Birmingham, The Green Baron met an engineer from the Birmingham office of Rust Engineering. Rust was a partial contractor for an “SRC II” clean liquid-fuel project, being conducted at Fort Lewis, Washington. This engineer enthusiastically told The Green Baron (then just the beginning of his ES&T career incarnation), that he would gladly receive The Green Baron at Rust’s Birmingham office to discuss SRC II. However, when, after his visit to the SRC I plant, The Green Baron arrived at the Rust building, he was denied admittance. He might add that the SCR II project eventually was terminated.

In the spring of 1977, The Green Baron went to a short symposium on solar energy held at the Executive Offices of the President in Washington, DC. On that occasion, Denis Hayes was installed as the first director of the newly constituted Solar Energy Research Laboratory (SERI), located in Boulder, Colorado. SERI is now known as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

At this symposium, Amory Lovins, then British representative of Friends of the Earth, addressed the topic of synthetic (i.e., “clean” liquid and gaseous) fuels from coal, also known as synfuels. Said Lovins, “Synfuels are an idea whose time has passed.”

The South African authorities at the time would have been intrigued by Lovins’s statement. They were producing synfuels from coal, under a modified, proprietary Fischer—Tröpsch process known as SASOL (South African State Oil). You see, South Africa was under an oppressive apartheid regime and was under a quasi-total oil embargo imposed by the United Nations and largely enforced by the international community (South Africa could purchase limited amounts of crude oil on the Rotterdam spot market for extortionate prices). It became economical for South Africa to gasify and liquefy coal; the process evolved to a fairly efficient one known as SASOL III.

Anyhow, with coal, synfuels could come under serious consideration again. If global climate warming is “for real”, synfuels would do greenhouse gas control efforts little good. Perhaps the real motivation to go backward to go forward (?) is to lessen America’s dependence on unstable and hostile foreign sources of crude oil.

WHAT IS BOOTSTRAP PRESS?

Bootstrap Press is a nonprofit organization founded in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., to promote the development and management of technology and businesses based on renewable resources. We also encourage the preservation of our Earth's natural habitats and its plant and animal species. So do a lot of other organizations, and more power to them for doing so!

Bootstrap Press is different because its members believe that the development of renewable resources and the preservation of habitats and species are receiving far more lip service than the financial and technical support needed to achieve these goals. We also think they will continue to be subjects of more talk than action until someone can show how renewable resources and the diversity of biological species can be the basis for potentially profitable businesses as well as a matter of ethics. Bootstrap Press intends to provide a forum for the discussion of how to build up such business, and of related topics.

There's one more thing we should mention about Muenchhausen and Bootstrap Press. We try to present only the scientific and technical facts that are correct to the best of our knowledge, belief, and good faith. It is up to Muenchhausen's readers to draw their own conclusions and make their own judgments.

NOTE: The mention of a product or service in Muenchhausen is in no way to be regarded as an endorsement of that product or service by Muenchhausen, Bootstrap Press, the Green Baron, or any other contributor to Muenchhausen.

MUENCHHAUSEN

AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,
RENEWABLE RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,
AND RELATED TOPICS

By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.
BETHESDA, MD
GREENBARON@CSI.COM

===============================================================
JANUARY 5, 2007
===============================================================

WELCOME!

The Green Baron welcomes one and all who take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to “tell it like it is” as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions. There are enough of those to go around in other publications.

WE’RE BACK!!

Muenchhausen and The Green Baron are back after a long hiatus during which he published several articles in Environmental Health Perspectives (National Institute of Environmental Health Science) and Environmental Science & Technology (American Chemical Society, at which his past career “incarnation” lasted 20 years. To anyone who might read Muenchhausen, HAPPY NEW YEAR 2007!!

A WAVE THAT CAN’T BE SURFED

A tsunami, as one knows well from reports of events of Dec. 26, 2004, is a vicious wave. It can travel forward at speeds upwards of 720 kilometers/h (450 mi/h). A tsunami is a wave that can’t be surfed by even the best surfers in Hawai’i. As one who has taken a course in waterways and harbor engineering, The Green Baron well appreciates what force a wall of water traveling at such velocities can bring to bear. Once that force is computed, the destruction it wreaks, calamitous though it may be, should not surprise anyone.

(Actually, “tsunami” means “sea wave” in Japanese, and thus, though in common usage, really is a misnomer. A more apt term is “seismic wave”. However, for the sake of convenience, The Green Baron will use the term “tsunami”.)

Before discussing the events of Dec. 26, 2004 (Boxing Day), The Green Baron will offer an oversimplified description of how tsunamis travel and why they become so destructive.

Please make no mistake. Storm waves and surges, and waves and swells at sea can be quite destructive in their own right. The Green Baron will not much discuss these “conventional” types of waves except to note that their action normally does not extend much below 183 meters or 600 feet (100 fathoms). In contrast, the action of a tsunami can be “felt” to the uttermost depths of the ocean. Glance at a hydrographic or bathymetric depth chart of the ocean, and note that the depth of the continental or insular shelf rarely goes below 183 meters (600 feet). An exception may be shelf area that has borne the weight of ice coming off the land, as in the Arctic Ocean.

True, when a wave or swell is big enough to affect undersea terrain down to 183 meters, and it approaches shallower sea bottom and land, it will build up to sometimes to great heights before breaking, and can severely damage property and natural areas. The Green Baron has seen images of sea waves topping a 90-foot (27.4-meter)-tall lighthouse. Some waves at sea can be taller than a large ship’s masts, and can and do pack a powerful punch. Nevertheless, such waves do not travel at anywhere near the velocities that tsunamis can achieve.

If you were aboard a ship in mid-ocean and encountered a tsunami whose forward velocity was, say, 450 mi/h, you would see a very fast-moving wave perhaps 0.5—1 foot tall. You would feel perhaps a quick nasty jolt, or perhaps a series of them (tsunamis usually propagate in batches), but then the jolts would cease. You likely would not have been aware of what had just passed.

The Green Baron must repeat the fact that effects of tsunamis are felt all the way to the deepest ocean bottom for this reason: Instead of gathering its height and force along the continental shelf, the tsunami begins to increase in height and destructiveness as soon as it reaches the continental or insular slope. For example, after being generated by the volcanic blast of Krakatau in 1883 (now in Indonesia), a tsunami initially reached the height, trough to crest, of 150 feet or 46 meters. Imagine the destructive power of such a wall of water moving even at 300 mi/h [~ 480 kilometers (km)/h]. That wave, incidentally, swept around the Earth, its remnants being recorded in San Francisco, CA, and even as far away as Le Havre, France.

TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEMS

Efforts to develop tsunami warning systems may have been inspired first by the effects of a sharp undersea slump that occurred just south of the Aleutian Islands (a part of Alaska) in 1946. This slump generated seismic waves that wreaked horrific havoc on the city of Hilo, HI, the county seat of the Big Island of Hawai’i. There was no warning—well, that’s not quite true; there was a warning in the form of a huge withdrawal of ocean water, uncovering sea bottom that almost never is exposed. (If you are ever on a beach and observe such a withdrawal, run, don’t walk to the highest ground you can reach!) Then came a series of high-velocity waves, the highest being perhaps 54 feet (16.46 meters), if The Green Baron’s memory serves him well. There was considerable loss of life and tremendous damage to property.

Several other such waves have struck Hilo previously and subsequently. But Hilo is by no means the only locality so attacked.

On Good Friday, 1964, there occurred an earthquake that heavily damages the city of Anchorage, AK, with loss of life and much property damage. This earthquake generated a tsunami that slammed into the Oregon coast and, especially, into Crescent City, in northern California, that caused considerable damage and killed several people. This, too, was a major stimulus in developing the tsunami warning system that now encompasses a large portion of the Pacific Ocean.

The Boxing Day 2004 earthquake/tsunami catastrophe in Indonesia and other portions of the Indian Ocean has led to a large project to install a tsunami warning system in that ocean, and to enhance preparedness for future events of this sort. The Green Baron heard Mark Ward, Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Asia and the Near East, at the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID, Washington, DC) and Eric Schwartz, now with Open Society, describe India as being on the forefront of preparedness by countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

A BIBLICAL SPECULATION

One can find many historical and current records of tsunamis worldwide. Here is a speculation about a Biblical tsunami:

Most of know, from the Book of Exodus, how the Israelites, escaping from Egypt, crossed the Red Sea (more likely, the Sea of Reeds), which had parted so that they could cross on dry land. After the Israelites had made their crossing, the Egyptian army, led by Pharaoh himself, gave chase. The parted waters then returned in a rush, drowning the Egyptians, and leaving no survivors.

It has often been debated whether the explosion of a volcano on the Mediterranean island of Thera (also known as Santorini) in the Dodecanese Islands generated a tsunami in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Green Baron previously noted that before a tsunami strikes, the sea’s waters retreat a considerable distance and expose sea bottom that normally is never open to the air. If the Exodus and the volcanic explosion coincided, did the sea withdraw long enough for the Israelites to cross and then return in the form of a Mediterranean tsunami to drown the pursuing Egyptians? Some students of Biblical history speculate that this may be the case; in any event, it is food for thought!

More on tsunamis and their aftermath in future editions of Muenchhausen.
WHAT IS BOOTSTRAP PRESS?

Bootstrap Press is a nonprofit organization founded in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., to promote the development and management of technology and businesses based on renewable resources. We also encourage the preservation of our Earth's natural habitats and its plant and animal species. So do a lot of other organizations, and more power to them for doing so!

Bootstrap Press is different because its members believe that the development of renewable resources and the preservation of habitats and species are receiving far more lip service than the financial and technical support needed to achieve these goals. We also think they will continue to be subjects of more talk than action until someone can show how renewable resources and the diversity of biological species can be the basis for potentially profitable businesses as well as a matter of ethics. Bootstrap Press intends to provide a forum for the discussion of how to build up such business, and of related topics.

There's one more thing we should mention about Muenchhausen and Bootstrap Press. We try to present only the scientific and technical facts that are correct to the best of our knowledge, belief, and good faith. It is up to Muenchhausen's readers to draw their own conclusions and make their own judgments.

NOTE: The mention of a product or service in Muenchhausen is in no way to be regarded as an endorsement of that product or service by Muenchhausen, Bootstrap Press, the Green Baron, or any other contributor to Muenchhausen.