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Tapping Trees for Electricity?
dr_agonfly writes "Despite many skeptics, a Massachusetts company is getting investor interest in developing a process to tap electric power from trees. MagCap is looking to boost the current power from just under 2 volts to a more useful 12 volts with investor funding." From the article: "Jim Manwell, director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Renewable Energy Resource Laboratory, questioned the potential of MagCap's plans. 'I'm wildly skeptical,' he said. 'I would need to see proof before I believed it. It strikes me as pretty questionable for a number of reasons.'"
You missed: does this mean all those tree hugging hippies were right?!?
but seriously, if it does pan out, rapidly disappearing big old growth forest regions like Siberia, BC, upper Canada and south America and Africa would have yet another power authority after them to plug in and another hassle to the eco environment that is already precariously endangered if it does. I don't think big dollar old (billion year under ground type) forest decimation oil companies will treat a new resource with any more respect than they do the one they are already draining.
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
...forest fires, ice storms, lightning strikes, and the over all impact on the enviroment? I would love to know how birds and squirrels and ewoks are supposed to live in trees that are being tapped for electricity. This would probably do more damage to the enviroment, AND as far as infrastructure safety goes, it's horrible. Trees are not immortal. I would love to see how British Columbia or Quebec will survive, when someone chucks a lit cigarette out of a car and it sparks a massive forest fire and suddenly no one has power left?
Trees are going to be targets of nature more and more as time progresses since weather is quite obviously becoming more severe. Bigger storms, more snow, more ice, more extremes, essentially, more conditions where forests are at risk of being destroyed. Yes, I know, that can be a benefit, but not when you rely on a forest as an energy resource.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Bah. Everybody knows 640k trees is all the world really needs...
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