Jet Stream Kites Could Power New York City

Damien1972 writes to tell us that researchers from the Carnegie Institution and California State University claim that a fleet of kites could harvest enough energy to run New York and other major cities, especially if they are affected by polar jet streams. "Using 28 years of data from the National Center for Environmental Prediction and the Department of Energy, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and Cristina Archer of California State University, Chico compiled the first global survey of wind energy available at high altitudes in the atmosphere. They found that the regions best suited for harvesting this energy align with population centers in the eastern U.S. and East Asia, although they note that 'fluctuating wind strength still presents a challenge for exploiting this energy source on a large scale.'"

Comments

Re:Major side benefit

[jmorris42]

> Um, they could have threatened nuclear war for violating the UN charter.

Another poster has already ridiculed you over the silly notion that the UN has the capability to nuke anyone. I want to ridicule you over an even more obvious problem. We have a veto. That is the problem with the UN, it was designed to ensure nothing actually got done. The fricking French have a veto.

And besides, Saddam was in flagrant violation of an sackful of UN Resolutions and they couldn't be stirred to react. So the worst case scenario is they could have attempted to pass a sternly worded Resolution against the US... which we would have vetoed. And had Bush been in a mood to demonstrate the uselessness of the UN he could have instructed our Ambassador to let em pass their silly Resolution and then walked to the nearest lectern and said "Screw em, they refuse to enforce the decade old Resolutions against Saddam so they can sit and spin while I ignore this one as well."

In the end that is the problem with the UN, everyone designing it knew they were designing a Parliment of Tyrants so they made sure it was toothless, thus turning it into a mostly harmless masturbatorium. Yes, really. Do the math; Far more than half the nation states in the UN were and still are obviously unfree but political correctness demands one nation one vote thus Evil must carry the day. Thus it was rendered ineffectual.