*tuts like an expensive plumber or garage mechanic*
“Well, there’s yer problem, innit?”
“See, what you’ve got ‘ere is that Sarf Atlantic ‘igh forming a ridge of raised pressure, which is cuttin’ off that low pressure area, isolatin’ it over the Cape coast, innit?
I’d say you’re buggered, squire.”
I’m already planning how I can get a FloWave into my back garden ready for use next summer.
“What’s A FloWave?” I hear you ask (I have an acute sense of listenage).
Here’s all you need to know:
Conceived for cutting edge academic research into wave and tidal current interactions, the FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility is also an amazing tool for commercial developers to ensure their technologies and projects perform ‘right first time’ and are de-risked as much as practical before cutting steel or going offshore.
So why do I need one in my back garden? Because, well – look at it – JUST LOOK AT IT!
Yes, it starts slowly, but how good is that single spout (aka a “Concentric Wave Singularity”) going to look in the Cape Town sun? And how big, as well? There’s not much in that video to give a sense of scale to the FloWave, but given that the diameter of that pool is 82 feet (25 metres), that water spike must be somewhere around 15 metres in height. Imagine the freefall.
So yes, I’m going to need a new, bigger back garden (or I suppose I could just remove a bit of house?), but it’s got to be worth it. I’m off to find a tape measure and a loan company.
Longer demonstration video here, and some technical stuff here.
There was a hint a few years back about a new law in SA which prevented anyone – well, anyone without appropriate qualification, anyway – from publicly commenting on upcoming bad weather. This was obviously a hugely important step in a country where the discussion of upcoming poor meteorological conditions has topped the lists for both most serious and most prevalent crimes for the past decade. Time to end this heinous behaviour.
Here’s Ivo’s view on it.
To be honest, I’ve no clue if that law was ever passed, and thus I’m not willing to stick my neck out and suggest that there may be excessive precipitation headed towards Cape Town on any particular day in the near future. Like, Wednesday, for instance. Simply, I can’t say if that’s going to happen.
It would surely be even more foolhardy of me to do some rudimentary calculations by adding up some apparently random numbers…
…perhaps including 6.4, 10.7, 13.3, 12.7, 4.6, 6.6, 7.1 and 5.6, and then gasp in amazement and concern that the total of those digits is 67. And were that the number of millimetres of rain to fall in any given 24 hour period, that would be quite a bad thing for wherever it fell on. Especially if some of that place was already at high risk for landslides following large veld fires earlier in the year.
Not that I’m saying that’s what’s going to happen, of course. In Cape Town. Throughout Wednesday.
Because I’d be risking arrest if I told you that.
Yeah – after this, that might come as a surprise. But wait, there’s more. This massively disappointing volcano is also in Iceland, home of exciting stuff like whale-hunting tourism, puffin pie and the Best Landscapes In The World™.
Iceland doesn’t do “massively disappointing”. Or rather, it didn’t, until now.
Imagine my excitement upon reading this headline:
The view from inside Iceland’s Thrihnukagigur volcano
Thrihnukagigur – still way up in the top 50% of Icelandic volcanoes listed by ease of pronunciation. And now they’re going inside it:
I’m being lowered through the dome of a subterranean cathedral-like space. Above me, the volcanic crater is a small bright circle in a thin tube. Beside me rainwater runs down ripples of frozen lava and cascades into the quiet depths.
OMG! How cool? How HOT? But then anticipated amazement turns into that crushing, massive disappointment.
Because what it turns out to be is just a big cave.
Ugh.
And I’m not alone in thinking this way; even its discoverer – a local opthalmologist – was rather unimpressed:
On Midsummer Eve 1974 Mr Stefánsson was lowered down into it with the help of nine friends. He was really disappointed.”I dreamt about finding a drainage channel with lava falls, lava pits and formations, never seen by a human eye before,” he says.
Instead he found an expanse of bare rock with a pile of rubble at the bottom, “like a stone quarry”, he said.
And, over the intervening 41 years, bugger all has changed.
Still, there’s a video of this expanse of bare rock with a pile of rubble at the bottom, so click that link above and go and play.
Just don’t expect to be impressed.
I followed a Braam Malherbe vehicle in the traffic this morning. I have no idea if it was the Braam Malherbe vehicle or if there are other Braam Malherbe vehicles, but given that Braam Malherbe describes himself as:
A South African international motivational speaker, extreme conservationist, extreme adventurer, philanthropist, writer and educator.
you’d imagine that he’d probably have at least a jetski and an assault helicopter as well as a bakkie.
Basically, we’re looking at Lewis Pugh-lite here.
I’m concerned though. Is he not spreading himself a little thinly? Wouldn’t it be better to cut back on the range of activities he does and do them a bit better. Not, I hasten to add, that I’m suggesting that he’s not doing them well right now. Just that surely if he devoted a little more time to, say, the writing and the speaking, he could probably improve them both. Makes sense, no?
Also, what is “extreme conservation”? I find the idea rather discriminatory against less extreme, but equally endangered species.
“OMG Braam, the Lesser Spotted Beagle Owl has just been added to the red list!”
“That’s terrible, Penelope. What’s its primary habitat?”
“Well, the remaining 2 pairs live in the mountains just outside Somerset West.”
“Pfft. That’s nowhere near extreme enough. Let them die. Now, you got any more news on that Antarctic lichen? And get me a coffee – use those beans I brought back in that handmade snakeskin bag from that mountain in Mongolia.”
I’m guessing that’s probably what it’s like in his office most days. And that’s also why you’ll never see a Lesser Spotted Beagle Owl in Somerset West.
One of the reasons, anyway.
I’m sure that Braam Malherbe is a great guy, doing great things. I’m sure that he’d be even more famous than he already is if he’d only add “cold water swimmer” to his CV. And I’m sure that if he did do cold water swimming, he’d be more than willing to answer questions about the massive carbon footprint of his recent Seven Seas Expedition.