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

Lightning Capital

[awarrenfells]

Maybe this will finally rid Florida of the lightning capital of the world title.

Ben Franklin, eat your heart out. :-P

Major side benefit

[SuperKendall]

Great defense against incoming jetliners as the kites get sucked into engines, either from terrorists or major campaign donors out for a spin in Air Force One.

It'll be like the ending of Mary Poppins, only it never ends! Let's go fly a kite, up to the highest height...

Re:Major side benefit

[Jeremi]

Great defense against incoming jetliners as the kites get sucked into engines, either from terrorists or major campaign donors out for a spin in Air Force One.

America circa 1960: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
America circa 2009: "OMG terrorists!"

Honestly, will we ever get our national cojones back?

(not that I think kite-power is necessarily a realistic idea, I'm just tired of the knee-jerk genuflection towards our new Al Quaeda overlords)

Re:Major side benefit

[genner]

Honestly, will we ever get our national cojones back?

I would think that, having blown off the UN to invade half of the middle east, some might say we have too many cojones...

Yeah that took "balls". What are they going to do...pass a non-binding resolution to some day send us a strongly worded letter.

Re:Major side benefit

[jmorris42]

> America circa 2009: "OMG terrorists!"

Eh? Dunno about you but the Air Force One gag included made it pretty clear to me the original poster was making a joke out of it, which is the correct response.

> Honestly, will we ever get our national cojones back?

Forget the cojones, how about some sanity and common sense?

Now getting back to the topic......

Look folks, this isn't rocket science. Modern civilization isn't possible without large quantities of energy in some form. The current situation is clearly unsustainable, depending on oil from places that hate our guts and use our dollars to destroy our civilization is insane. Ok, if we can agree on that we can move to the question of what should replace foreign oil. And it is a pretty short list:

1. More domestic production. Nice short term solution, I support it even; but Drill, Baby Drill! ain't nothing but a stopgap measure at best.

2. Something Green. Ok, this kite thing is typical of the category. Pie in the sky, impractical, decades away and will cost multiples what we pay for energy now. Assuming it can even be made to work at all. Again, if one of these notions eventually pans out, great. For the record I'm all for Unicorns and kittens too. But do we really need to put all our hopes on one of these miracles arriving in time to save us?

Especially in light of the hate enviros start heaping on any alternative source that begins to become practical? Hydro? NO! Already got nutter enviros against geothermal. How in the wide wide world of sports can an enviro be against geothermal! There are other reasons it hasn't become commonplace, but environmental concerns? Got enviros lining up against large scale solar. Wind turbines, besides Sen. Kennedy not wanting to see em off HIS beachfront, are noisy, ugly and kill birds. Oh no, wind isn't green enough. And we are laughing now about kites but if actual production started lighting up the grid you can bet enviros would have objections and they wouldn't be joking. And laughing at THEM gets you branded a 'hater' who wants to destroy the precious earth.

I think we have enough evidence to draw a conclusion: By the time a green tech gets into actual production it isn't green anymore. The real world at work? Or perhaps we need to understand the underlying truth. Greens don't want us to find innovative new sources of energy to continue our lifestyle, they want to make energy scarce so as to reshape our society along lines THEY find more pleasing. We aren't to get a vote in this, we aren't even supposed to know we have other options because we can't be trusted to make the 'correct' choice.

And meanwhile, while we sit around and beat off over the latest green tech fresh from some research project we actually DO NOTHING other than continue to send cash to help destabilize the middle east a little more.

3. We build the crap out of modern safe designs for fission plants and let that hold us until fusion finally gets into production.

Re:Major side benefit

[radtea]

Greens don't want us to find innovative new sources of energy to continue our lifestyle, they want to make energy scarce so as to reshape our society along lines THEY find more pleasing.

It's important to be aware the puritans are NOT green, although they have managed to hijack the green movement for the past couple of decades. The only thing that has kept them going is the impracticality of most genuine green tech. They are under siege within the movement now, and over the course of the next couple of decades will become a footnote to history, precisely because most people are in favour of sustainable solutions to the power generation problem and are, of course, not puritans.

They are not puritans for a very simple reason: puritanism is not sustainable. The only way the puritans can impose themselves on the world is if no green technology actually works. Unfortunately everything from solar to wind is coming along nicely, and even nuclear and clean coal are talked about seriously.

So don't make the mistake of confusing the puritans with the greens. The puritans are on the way out. The greens are finally coming back from the debacle of the early '70's, when formerly scientific organizations like Greenpeace became marketing shills for the puritans.

Re:Major side benefit

[zippthorne]

2006 OMG Ponies!!!

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.

All together now ...

[dkleinsc]

With 2K for turbines and wires,
we can build a generating flyer.
With a line to the ground,
it's a turbine in flight!
With a bolt holding tight
to the string of the kite!

Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height
Let's go fly a kite
And send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let's go fly a kite!

Power line

[russotto]

A kite which can support a 30,000 foot electric line? I'm thinking there are some serious engineering challenges there. Probably involving unobtanium and other exotic materials.

OMG Think of the planes!

[mcrbids]

I see comment after comment like "What about teh airplanzes!?!" but such comments come from a severe lack of understanding of controlled airspace.

See, while it's true that the Eastern seaboard is one of the busiest airspaces in the world, it's also one of the most tightly controlled. Airspace is commonly restricted to 18,000 feet, above which *all* airspace is controlled. (It's called "class A(lpha) airspace at/above 18,000 ft) The only effect this would have on air traffic is that ATC would redirect commercial flights around the kites, which isn't particularly hard to do.

As a pilot myself, I've many times been diverted around hazards such as other planes, mountains, and even UAVs. (Un-manned Aeronautical vehicles, being tested by the military)

And obviously, these wouldn't be assembled on the instrument approach path for O'Hare airport. This makes the whole "Teh planezes are fallingz" as exciting a story as "Teh Internetz iz failingz" due to lack of router memory.

In short, it's just not a significant issue.

Re:Cool...

[Jeremi]

No doubt a fleet of electricity generating kites are going to cost a pretty penny.

Why is there "no doubt" about this? Is there some reason why kites have to be very expensive?

Second, why would you invest in a new technology when there are other (probably more-efficient) green technologies.

For the same reason you invested in the other green technologies even when there were older technologies already available then -- because it was a promising idea.

Now isn't the time to start innovating from scratch with the global recession.

Now is exactly the time. A few technological "game changers" could be just what it takes to boost us out of recession.

Lastly, where are going to put them, in the plains of the Midwest?

Sure, why not? Or any other place that has wind at 30,000 feet and isn't in anybody's flight path.

What happens when the kites start interfering with birds and such?

Not many birds fly at 30,000 feet, Einstein.

Hilarious!!!

[SuperKendall]

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

My god, I haven't laughed so hard in days.

Are they going to launch a strike from the secret UN base in a dormant volcano? Or perhaps the huge fleet of UN satellites in orbit armed to the teeth and ready to pounce on the slightest transgression!!

If you recall, the German invasion of Belgium was enough to get the British into World War I

I was not aware the british were the UN.

likewise, the invasion of Poland started World War II in Europe.

Wow, that was started by the U.N. too? I guess the books I read were all wet! Thank god we had you along to tell us the true chronicles of Captian UN, hive-mind savior of humanity with the first strike Fist Of Great Justice!

Ha!