IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Humidifying the West - Dick LaRosa

The many wildfires raging in our western states this summer testify to the fact that the normal rate of evaporation from oceans, lakes, and bays is not sufficient to prevent drying out of the soil and vegetation. This is because sunlight normally penetrates deep into water. The solar energy is absorbed by a large volume of water and the water temperature is increased only slightly, resulting in the normally experienced evaporation rate. I have experimented with black panels floating just beneath the water surface. The top surface of the black panel absorbs incident solar energy. Its temperature increases and heat is transferred to the thin layer of water above it, raising its temperature so that evaporation is greatly enhanced. Preliminary calculations show that the evaporation rate can be increased to a value sufficient to humidify neighboring and downwind areas.

 I have devised means of mass producing these floating panels, stringing them together on synthetic fiber ropes, rolling 100-ft lengths of these rafts onto reels that are mounted on workboats, transporting the reels to the raft site, unreeling the raft sections, mooring them to anchors at the site, and stitching adjacent strips of rafts together to form rafts about 100 ft square, leaving bare water between the squares so that ambient air can reach them to efficiently pick up water vapor.

 The rafts can be placed along the Pacific coast in locations that are sheltered from the surf, and inland lakes, such as Clear Lake in California and Lake Chelan in Washington. A large area is available in San Francisco Bay for evaporator rafts to humidify air that is drawn inland to replace the heated air that rises from the Mojave and Sonoran deserts during the summer. I would be delighted to share my construction and deployment sketches, and my preliminary performance calculations with interested people.

Name, address, phone, email address.

I have sent this and similar versions to two governors and several wildfire fighting agencies using snail mail when there was no email address listed. The only reply so far is a "mailbox full" notification from AOL about one of my emails. "Letters at  Newsday" did not send me the automatic acknowledgment that I used to get until a few years ago. Don't know what I did to merit their shunning. So what to do? Time to get serious about evaporation rate calculations showing how much benefit is derived from a given raft area in a particular location. My calculations are sketchy and spread out over many years, scattered in many folders, and applying to locations all over the world. There's lots of stuff that I haven't learned how to do, and I'm a slow learner. Get busy!

Pending Submissions - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

As a long time victim of LinkedIn's SWAM policy, my work has regularly been sequestered and sometimes outright blocked from many groups. A new SWAM problem has recently arisen however and with that discovery and my resultant inquiries, LinkedIn's so-called help staff strikes me as having met my call for help with intentional misunderstanding.

The following is my latest attempt to pierce that barrier. Of course, if anyone can shed some light on this issue, the input would be very welcome indeed.

From: John Dunn [mailto:jdunn4@optonline.net] 

Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 4:57 PM
To: 'LinkedIn Customer Support'
Subject: RE: Pending Sunmissions [Case: 150826-006169]

Sandra, as a LinkedIn rep, you should already know about this.

I am one of LinkedIn's many victims of SWAM (Site Wide Auto Moderation), an atrocious policy that has been the topic of written abuses and personal insults that came my way in the past from LinkedIn staff, most notably from Charles Caro, in response to my inquiries.

In essence, my postings to most groups are sequestered, held in abeyance, pending Group Manager review and approval, a process which might or might not actually take place. The result is censorship of my work by many individuals of genuinely dubious intent.

A typical scenario up until the last couple of weeks would go like this.

I would select a particular group such as this one.

After clicking on "Search", the following would appear.

To actually view my sequestered work, the next step is to click on "Pending Submissions" as shown here. Up until recently, doing so would yield a result as follows.   

I've superimposed a calendar to show that this particular item has languished in "Pending Submissions" in this group for nearly two years, thus demonstrating the folly of the SWAM policy.

Now though, the "Pending Submissions" function no longer works. It does not work on this PC with IE9 and Windows Vista and it does not work on my laptop with Chrome and Windows 7.  

Instead, on both computers, upon clicking "Pending Submissions", the display goes to this: 

Note the message: 'There was an unexpected problem that prevented us from completing your request."

I have underlined the key phrase of "... unexpected problem ..." which is quite apt in the present situation.

John

The Stranger - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

We often take walks around the neighborhood. It's a nice place to do that with lots of trees, a couple of creeks (one dry and the other one running) and stuff like that. We typically go out for walks of thirty or forty minutes during which we sometimes meet somebody we know or with whom we just happen to strike up a random conversation. A chance conversation is especially likely if that neighbor is walking a dog that wants to make friends. 

One day though, this man approached us much like someone living nearby except that he was carrying a clip board and he started talking to us. He eventually got around to asking if we had cable TV service. I thought that was rather an odd question so I asked him why he was asking.

He said he was a field sales representative for the local cable TV company and would we mind if he would accompany us home to our house to explain the cable TV offerings.

If it hasn't yet happened, let that one sink in slowly for a while.

I'll wait.

I told him "I mind very much. I have no intention of discussing that or anything else with you." and we left him behind.

Now, whether this guy really was with the cable TV company, which I very much doubt, there was no way this side of Heaven or H... that this guy going to get inside our home. No WAY!!

Caveat walker.

Evaporator Rafts on Lake Chelan - Dick LaRosa

Three firefighters were killed in Washington State when their vehicle got stuck on a narrow road and they were unable to escape. The fires were assumed to be caused by lightning strikes to dried vegetation in the vicinity of Lake Chelan, which is in a long valley between two mountain ridges. This area is about 100 miles from Seattle, where the Pacific Ocean intrudes into the coast to provide sheltered locations for evaporator rafts. I was still obsessed with the idea of distilling water vapor out of the ocean, and explained the idea to my grandson's fiancee. She had lived in the Seattle area and wondered how water vapor from Seattle could travel over the mountainous terrain between Seattle and Lake Chelan. I explained how water vapor could go just about anywhere, pushed up and down mountains by the wind, and spreading by diffusion. Then I realized that yup, that's exactly what it would do: spread out and be pushed every which way, with very little reaching the critical fire areas.

Instead, what we need to do is moor evaporator rafts at appropriate locations on Lake Chelan. High temperatures and low humidity during the wildfire season allow high evaporation rate, compared to the lower temperature and higher humidity at the ocean. A brief internet search shows several wineries at the southern end of the lake. Many recreation areas are advertized. These commercial interests should welcome evaporator rafts, which would increase humidity and reduce the incidence and severity of fires. I will try to promote the idea and will incorporate the appropriate parameter ranges in my performance calculations.

Evaorator Rafts Face Competition - Dick LaRosa

I believe that solar-heated evaporator rafts can increase the humidity in northern California and reduce the desiccation of soil and vegetation that increases the risk of wildfires. While rafts could be placed in the fresh water lakes in fire-prone areas, this should be viewed as an emergency measure because it depletes a valuable resource. A better long-term solution is to evaporate water from the Pacific Ocean at a coastal location near Mendocino. A casual web search indicates that the sea level changes about 6 ft from high to low tide. The estuary of Big River might provide a location to accommodate this tidal amplitude while sheltering evaporator rafts from the pounding surf, but the web pages come alive with human activity. There are ads offering to rent kayaks, wet suits, flotation jackets, paddles, and other necessary equipment to enjoy the white waters of the river descending from the coastal mountain range, and to explore the estuary and the coastal bays. One hour of instruction followed by two hours of free time is offered. There are many other deals offered, including outrigger kayaks, tours, and many opportunities to enjoy the natural wonders of the area. With all this joy, enterprise, commercialism, nature preservation and exploitation, the idea of an evaporator raft just floating in a sheltered location performing an invisible task just seems out of place.

So, in addition to showing scientific, technical, and economic feasibility, it will be necessary to accommodate established enterprises and activities, as well as educate the public and gain acceptance. Without sufficient buy-in, the evaporator raft effort will be doomed by sabotage, vandalism, and indifference, in addition to competition. May we live in interesting times.

Solution Matches a Problem (?) - Dick LaRosa

My interest in solar-heated evaporator rafts comes from the observation that there is too much water in the ocean and too little clean fresh water on the land. It would be nice to use solar energy to distill water out of the ocean and somehow get it to fall on the land. I have figured out how to make black solar energy absorber plates float just below the water surface so that they heat a small amount of water to a high-enough temperature to achieve a useful evaporation rate. But even if the water vapor is carried inland, California seems to lack geographic and topographic features that force the moist air to rise, expand, cool, condense water vapor, and deliver rain, particularly in the warm months from May through September. However, persistent wildfire activity indicates that increased water vapor content without precipitation may be able to reduce the drying out of vegetation and decrease the ignition of wildfires.

The Rocky Fire near Clearlake, CA caused me to examine the coast from the northern border of California down to San Diego. The National Geographic World Atlas 10th edition is sufficiently detailed to show the following sheltered salt water bodies, listed from north to south:

Lake Earl

Klamath River estuary

Big Lagoon

Arcata Bay

Humboldt Bay

Bodega Bay

Tomales Point

Drakes Bay

San Pablo Bay

Sacramento - San Joaquin Delta salt water intrusions

San Francisco Bay

Estero Bay

San Diego Bay

There is a big separation between Bodega Bay and Tomales Point. The Clearlake fire area is located between these sheltered salt water bodies, but Clear Lake is a very large recreational body of fresh water that could provide a location for evaporator rafts. There is some evaporation from the unmodified lake surface, but it is obviously not sufficient to prevent dessication of the local vegetation. We would rather evaporate water from the ocean, but we lack sheltered coastal bodies in this region. Besides, all the coastal features must be studied to insure that the wind flows inland. The wind direction could be a problem, even with a local water source like the lake.

Much data collection lies ahead, and I have made zero progress in setting up the evaporation rate calculations so I don't have to look stuff up in charts and tables.

IEEE Aliases - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I wanted to change the forwarding address for my IEEE alias of ambertec@ieee.org and for the life of me, I could not find my way through the IEEE pages to where I could get the job done. The system was upgraded back in 2013 such that what had once been a simple procedure now totally eluded me.

After much struggle and travail, I found a phone number which I called (1-800-678-4333) where I received some guidance that I will now try to paraphrase and offer as follows.

Using the Chrome browser and only the Chrome browser, enter "email.ieee.org" exactly as written here into the URL line. Be sure that you enter nothing more and nothing less. 

Press "Enter".

If you have done this before, you will get a presentation of whatever e-mails there are that lie waiting for you in your IEEE inbox.

On the other hand, if you have not done this before, a small window will appear asking for your User ID and your password. Type in your alias e-mail address as your User ID which in my case was ambertec@ieee.org and then type in your own password for everything you do on line via IEEE. Then press "Enter".

Whichever way this last step goes, you will come to a display with a "gear" over on the right upper corner and a "down arrow" just to the right of that "gear".

Left click on the "gear" icon and use the "down arrow" to view the drop-down menu. 

Scroll down the menu and then left click on "Settings". You should see the following.

On the horizontal tool bar, left click on "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" and you will see the following.

The page that is now in view is the work area from which you can control and revise your alias parameters as desired. It was here however that I ran into some problems that are a bit more complex than I can quickly describe.

To change my forwarding address, I first had to delete the forwarding address that I had previously been using because I couldn't find a way to just simply select my new one from a list. Once I did that deletion, the forwarding address that I wanted became my "in use" forwarding address seemingly by default.

Was I screwing up somehow? Probably yes, but by having to potchke with this page one way or the other, I finally got the forwarding address to be what I wanted.

The last step is to click on the button for "Save Changes".         

Good luck!