[saganite]

I wonder if Teddy will find an aesthetic objection to this?

[Westlander]

The swimmer will do the dog paddle, thus generating enough juice to light up the East Coast.

[Enchante]

I wonder if anyone's trying to do this for the Bay of Fundy (New Brunswick, Canada) or any of the other places that have really intense tidal surges? At the Bay of Fundy billions of gallons of seawater charge in and out of the narrow bay with each change of the tide.

http://www.bayoffundy.com/highesttides.aspx

"The force created by these mighty waters is equal to 8000 locomotives or 25 million horses at the Minas Channel."

[GSlob]

"I wonder if Teddy will find an aesthetic objection to this?"
Nope. The whole thing is critically dependent on him - he generates tides each time he takes a plunge in water for a swim. It has been designed to flatter his vanity and make him useful, at least for something.

[goodnesswins]

"...but submerged to harvest power from the flow of the tide."

Now, that would be fantastic.....with ALL THE OCEANS we have....sheesh....it would be good to put them to work giving us energy besides rain, hurricanes, and such.

[capt. norm]

Oh no! They're messing with the tides.

Where are all the enviro-whackos on this?

Interfering, even in a small way, with the flow of the tides will have an effect.

Newton's third law: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".

A modern day corollary is: "There's no such thing as a free lunch".

The whackos are having a negative effect on the very things they are trying to "save".

On a related note, I was noticing that the portion of the Valdez spill in Alaska that they "cleaned up" is in bad shape while the places they didn't get to have recovered just fine.

[Jean S]

I'm betting that Ted Kennedy is behind this. He and his family have been fighting the proposed wind farms, those would ruin their view. This is a perfect alternative for them, they won't have to look at windmills but they're still "saving the environment".

[randog]

"The way the world is right now, we're going to have to find some way to collect natural energy and convert it to something that people can use."

I think someone beat you to the idea, Einstein:

[rottndog]

PHOTO: Verdant Power LLC

Tidal energy turbines work like windmills underwater, using the daily motion of the ocean to produce electricity. This scaled drawing shows three of the six turbines Verdant Power hopes to test this summer in New York City's East River where the speed of the tidal current reaches 6 miles per hour.

What they are working on for New York City

[VeniVidiVici]

"I don't want to get into a contest with wind," he said, ...

Thank God as there is already enough from the politicians in Mass.

[nutmeg]

bookmark

[timer]

Proposed this same basic idea to the U of HI a couple of years ago, ignored of course. A fundamental plus is that the tides(and electricity)flow no matter WHAT surface conditions are(like nuclear winter). Did you know that the Denmark Strait Cataract(cold polar water spilling into the abyssal north atlantic)is 25 amazon rivers worth of undersea current? It flows in a submarine canyon 50 miles wide between iceland and greenland, enough to power all of scandinavia, much of europe. Info is in an old Scientific American article.