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

MASS

[Merovign]

Go ahead, build the lightest turbine you can, then tether it with the lightest 20,000-foot-long cable you can make that can transmit the electricty, and you won't be anywhere NEAR an amount of weight you can lift with anything short of a MASSIVE thinwing glider, which will catch the wind wrong for a second, the lift will slide off the wings and it will death-spiral along with that cable, beelining for a residential neighborhood near you.

Even if they had micro-nanotubes that could support the weight and deliver the power, or wireless power, or whatever, you'd still have mechanical failures and huge turbines plummeting into buildings (or ships if you put them over water).

This gets proposed every year somwhere, and it's just as dumb. There are a lot of good ideas out there and it's somewhat infuriating that perpetual-motion machines and microwave diamonds keep getting the attention.

Science journalists need to start INVESTIGATING things, not just mindlessly reporting the same nonsense every year.

Re:All other considerations aside

[krnpimpsta]

Do you realise just how much energy is being circulated in the upper atmosphere....? Yep the kites will steal some of that energy, but to make any real impact you would have to have so many kites that you would encounter other bigger problems a long time before you managed to reduce the jet stream by any significant ammount.... Hell what happens when you fly planes in the jetstream?

That's what we said about automobiles and smog.
1900's: Automobiles produce smog, but it would never have an impact on the environment... why, you would need MILLIONS of automobiles in one city to produce smog that is noticeable. We're just talking about a few thousand cars..
2000's: Examine LA auto-related smog levels. Also, it's no longer ridiculous to consider having millions of automobiles in one city.

2000's: Do you realize how many billions of kites you will need to even cause a dent in the gulf stream? We're just talking about a few kites over one city.
2100's: Damn, who knew flying billions of kites in the air would have catastrophic unpredictable effects on our climate?

Re:Major side benefit

[jmorris42]

> The 5th largest economy in the world, and the 2nd largest EU economy.

> How dare they have any say!

Nope. First it isn't just about economic power, and they certainly weren't (they were a smoking ruin along with everything else in Europe) #5 when they were given that veto wielding seat; it was a pure legacy thing. Germany was and is far more inherently powerful but for obvious reasons was not offered a permanent seat. Second they should have lost it along with GB when the EU became a political (vs the Euro economic only stuff much earlier) Union and been replaced with a single UN seat for the EU. Otherwise the US needs to get 50 General Assembly seats, along with one Security Council seat with a veto. Then the fifth permanent seat could go to a new up and coming nation, perhaps India?