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Generating Power From Ocean Buoys and Kites
cheezitmike writes "Researchers at Oregon State University are testing a new type of wave-energy converter to generate electricity from ocean waves: 'Even when the ocean seems calm, swells are moving water up and down sufficiently to generate electricity. ... For decades the challenge has been to build a device that can withstand monster waves and gale-force winds, not to mention corrosive saltwater, seaweed, floating debris and curious marine mammals. ... In the most recent prototypes, a thick coil of copper wire is inside the first component, which is anchored to the seafloor. The second component is a magnet attached to a float that moves up and down freely with the waves. As the magnet is heaved by the waves, its magnetic field moves along the stationary coil of copper wire. This motion induces a current in the wire — electricity.'"
Meanwhile, researchers at Stanford are working to design "turbine kites" that operate at 30,000 feet, where air currents flow much faster than they do close to the ground. Ken Caldeira, a Stanford associate professor, said, "If you tapped into 1% of the power in high-altitude winds, that would be enough to continuously power all civilization."
Someone got the wiring wrong. Poor fishies.
Health Freedom is almost as popular as Freedom itself.
Can you suggest a source of energy that has no potential downside whatsoever? No? Then, kindly, stop whining.
I swear, this attitude has got to stop. "Oh solution X for problem Y has a (potential) downside, it's clearly unsafe, we should abandon it". Happens every single fucking time power generation comes up on slashdot. Since when did people start thinking like Pierson's Puppeteers?
If a solution to a problem (in this case power generation) offers fewer downsides than the existing solutions (fossil fuels mainly), then please, by all means, implement it. This goes for passive power collection (ground based, sea based or orbital), fusion energy, biomass energy, even fission. Worry about the consequences, but don't let those dangers blind you to the very real danger of staying the course with what we already have.
Zero point energy has no downsides, I'm going to attach one to my flying car when the Government stops suppressing the technology.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Surely that would require no significant amount of resources to be tapped. Maybe just an area the size of Australia? Not sure about that though. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
"I like it when the red water comes out.."
Nature itself uses tech. similar to solar panels (green leaves) to get the energy it needs, not the wind or waves.
My bet is on more efficient solar panels, a solid state power collectors.
The challenge with this plan is how are they going to transmit the energy from 30,000 feet? How much does 40,000 feet of cable weigh? That's about 7 miles. Perhaps they could use lightweight tether and beam the energy using microwave like the space energy proposal but that adds complexity. BTW, The design referred to in the article uses a series of helicopter-like blades to sustain lift and generate electricity.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Here in Oregon the greenies have been fighting against the energy buoys for a while. They are concerned that electromagnetic cables on the ocean floor could affect sea life, and that buoys could interfere with whale and fish migration. We've also been tearing down hydroelectric dams because it disturbs the salmon. We got Washington DC jacking up the price of non-enviro friendly electricity on one end and the greenies on the other end kicking the green energy in the balls.
I'm interested in this topic partly because of its connection to "seasteading" or sea-surface colonization.
As with other forms of "alternative" energy, though, the problem is cost. Generating energy from renewable sources certainly sounds nifty. But does it make sense for the kind of low-budget settlement that could plausibly exist anytime soon, or even for conventional markets on land? The article summary is about making an energy generator that will work, period, not making something that can compete with existing energy sources. Right now, alt-energy proposals all seem to rely on governments heavily taxing fossil fuels and heavily subsidizing the new sources, creating a very unfree market. I've even heard the claim (though I've not looked into the numbers) that some of these systems cost more to build and maintain than the lifetime expected value of the energy they harvest.
Rather than a big, durable system, why not some kind of cheap low-energy system? I've heard of some tiny wind (?) energy generator developed for use in the Third World that costs next to nothing and produces a tiny but useful trickle of electricity. If you've got a bunch of those, it doesn't much matter if some break in a big storm.
Revive the Constitution.
First off these are by no means perfect solutions themselves. They're expensive for the power generated, are subject to the whims of nature and of course, could affect surrounding nature in unforeseen ways. What happens when you cause large dead spots in the ocean or wind currents? Have any real life tests been performed?
Personally I don't like the idea of off shore power generation, I'm sure it would expand and screw up the laws for sailors and the sea. Not to mention the large zones a few miles off shore that would be off limits to the public.
You also forgot to mention nuclear power, which beats everything else atm. If power companies want to experiment with this stuff i say go for it, but to realistically solve power needs with reliability America needs to get its nuclear ass in gear.
Isn't the ZPE what supports the universe and provides a place for all those little superstrings to play? You might collapse the false vacuum or something. ;-)
Google already did this and patend it
"If you tapped into 1% of the power in high-altitude winds, that would be enough to continuously power all civilization."
And if you tapped into 1% of the power in the heat of the earth's core, that would be enough to power all of civilization on Zeti Reticuli, and if you tapped into 1% of the solar output by building a tiny Dyson sphere that would be enough to power all of Known Space. But let's first ask ourselves, is it practical and cost-effective?
Boondoggle: n. work of little or no value done merely to keep or look busy.
Political favor is unfortunately a far more dominant motivation to develop sustainable energy technology than sustainability itself. I've seen too many boondoggle projects get huge grants because they are the most visible, like big wind farms within sight of a large population, in favor of more suitable locations. If we can't implement a centuries-old technology effectively today at ground level, what good is a new technology in one of the most foreign environments known to mankind? Ignorant energy harvesting is what got us in this mess in the first place!
I have a strong respect for academic studies, but minds aimed at sustainable living are wasted on these implausible contrivances. There's enough dorks on Star Trek forums trying to prove useless theories. Don't waste our taxes on them.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
The simplest idea I've seen uses a kite on the end of a tether. The tether is paid out, generating energy, and then pulled back in, requiring energy. By changing the kite's angle of attack during the recovery phase, a net energy output can be obtained.
The energy output is supposed to be around 20kW per square metre... is there any reason why this wouldn't scale to 20GW for square-kilometre kites?
www.win.tue.nl/casa/meetings/special/ecmi08/pumping-kite.pdf
Nonsense. Of you are looking to switch power generation because the current method will kill your grandchildren, then it's perfectly reasonable to point out that the purposed solution will kill your grand children.
There is no reason to switch to something more expensive, complicated, or convoluted if the end result is the same even if just by another means. We are looking to get off fossil fuels because it effects the environment and has the potential of destroying a lot of life, switching to something that does the exact same thing is fucking stupid.
It seems to me that you are getting your panties in a know because someone asked about the effect on the weather. Wouldn't that be the same as worrying about the consequences? Just because you don't see any serious consequences doesn't mean there isn't any or the potential for any. Hell, if they are spotted early, then scams like this kite business can be avoided and money invested into real solutions can be more effective.
Jet Airliners already catch free rides in the jet stream to save fuel,
and as there are thousands of planes up around the world
with likely hundreds of them doing it no problems so far
that we can detect.
Also, there are huge current underwater like the antarctic circumpolar
current that has about 140 times the flow of all the rivers on Earth.
A minor tap on it would power the southern hemisphere most likely.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
That is right, hot air can power steam turbines. Using 1% of the comments here could provide enough power to power the world. This one in particular would generated a LOT of power.
(Reminds me of the "Scream Floor" on Monsters Inc.)
Can you suggest a source of energy that has no potential downside whatsoever?
American Blubber (TM) - very high energy density, suitable for use in conventional power stations. They're gonna die anyway so use it or lose it. Also will result in a significant reduction in Global Stupidity (TM). Unlike Global Warming, there is no doubt that Global Stuipidity (TM) has an anthropogenic origin.
An airliner flying in the jet stream doesn't slow it down significantly. There is a small effect when the airliner enters the jet stream (and accelerates), but I think in cruise flight the effect is very small. A power generating kite extracts energy from the jet stream. The description of enough energy to power civilization is surprising to me (though it may be true), are they sure they have counted that the kites will slow down the jet stream? Also the jet stream moves around and changes direction a lot, it can flow anywhere across the US (I don't know the pattern over the rest of the earth), mostly west to east, but can be due north or south. I don't know how you would move the anchorages for the kites around quickly enough to keep up.
Since when did people start thinking like Pierson's Puppeteers?
Since they became pampered, overfed first world types with a vast environmental footprint? Of the course the fact that vast areas of the planet are populated by people dying early and painfully because they don't aren't allowed to have technologies considered 'environmentally damaging' is conveniently not mentioned.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Consider the effect of coastlines on waves. That should give you a little bit of insight as to why there is no worry at all about consequences. As for the kites, consider the effects of trees mountains and buildings and how they and kites are all tiny specks in comparionson to a high pressure system covering half of the continent of North America. You are quibbling about farts in hurricanes here.
Changing the jet stream by 1% impacting weather? I would put money down that it varies by more than 5% over the course of a year. 1% of anything is RARELY an issue, and I doubt that it will be here.
The problem comes when you depend on one thing and increase the percentage more and more. For example, the world current depends on Coal, oil and natural gas. It is adding FAR more additional CO2 than all the natural processes such as Volcano's, space, etc. Had we added only 1% new CO2, we would not have issues.
In the end, what is needed is a DIVERSIFIED energy matrix from various sources, ideally, geo-thermal, solar, wind, kites, tidal, nukes, etc. Once we no longer depend on one source, then we will not be so insane as to deny actions that are visibly, let alone scientifically, occurring.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Various ideas are tacking center thought of producing green energy here are books about producing http://www.ebooksresearch.com/alternative-fuel-and-energy-1.asp" target="_blank"> alternative energy many guys trying to produce electricity or power for personal useâ¦.
Just how small do you think the oceans are?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Various ideas are tacking center thought of producing green energy here are books about producing <a href="http://www.ebooksresearch.com/alternative-fuel-and-energy-1.asp"> alternative energy</a> many guys trying to produce electricity or power for personal use….
In addition to half-submerged loose containers, which infest navigable waters nowadays, we will have these generators, drifting around after a storm.
Damage to boats, caused by these extremely dangerous items in the oceans, will cancel environmental gains thousand times over.
America needs to get its nuclear ass in gear.
You clearly have no idea what fission is so why are you here and who is paying you?
These well-meaning schemes still founder on the basic problems of working in a salt-water environment and the issue of a very dilute energy source.
You can't make a generator that works directly off ocean-swells-- the swells come by so slowly you'd need a coil inductance of about ten thousand Henries.
A simple loop of wire, as postulated, has about a millionth of that.
Plus you need considerable iron to channel the magnetic flux. No way around it.
Regarding the kites, figure out what the very lightest generator weighs, per watt. Hint: not under 30 kilos per KW. Now assume you want to power 100 houses, say 50 KW.
Figure out the size of the kite needed to lift than many tons. Now at a 30 degree kitestring angle, the pull on the string will be twice the weight of the kite. Figure out how
much 60,000 feet of kite string that will take that kind of stress weighs. Now you need another large kite just to hold up the kite string.
And BTW, the "high speed" winds up there are not a panacea. They're high speed but low in density. The energy is, again, very dilute. You need to at least double the size of the kite to get the same amount of lift and pull as you can get at low altitudes.
.
Uh, no. You can't get any energy out of the pressure difference in the atmosphere or ocean. The pressure difference is there because the medium has already adjusted to the lowest energy state. You cant milk any more energy out of a system that is already at lowest equilibrium.
I say we just keep burning old tires to heat our homes and be done with it...
I'm sick of all the bogus reasons people come up with why something isn't going to work when they have no fucking idea what the are talking about.
It's not cost effective - No shit because no one is making 50 million of them yet.
It's going to change the weather - Ahh yeah and so does standing outside on a windy day jackass.
It's going to hurt the sea life - Ahh yeah and so does all the trash we dump in the ocean every day and don't forget about all the dead zones from algae overgrowth caused by fertilizer and raw sewage.
Get some fucking prospective people.. We already are killing the planet.
Step 1 is to learn to kill it sloooower.
Step 2 is improve step on step 1.
Step 3 is to get the fuck out of here.
Step 4 ????
Step 5 Profit FOREVER.
Of the course the fact that vast areas of the planet are populated by people dying early and painfully because they live in inhospitable areas like deserts and/or war among themselves is conveniently not mentioned.
FTFY
Nonsense. Of you are looking to switch power generation because the current method will kill your grandchildren, then it's perfectly reasonable to point out that the purposed solution will kill your grand children.
There is no reason to switch to something more expensive, complicated, or convoluted if the end result is the same even if just by another means. We are looking to get off fossil fuels because it effects the environment and has the potential of destroying a lot of life, switching to something that does the exact same thing is fucking stupid.
So what happens of the consequences are better, but some idiot who can't tell the difference is still angsting in public? Should we not switch? As I see it, that's this current thread with an anonymous troll playing the role of the idiot.
Most large dams are there also for water storage and flood control, to even the supply out over the year, and we really don't have much in the way of alternatives for that.
Nonsense. Of you are looking to switch power generation because the current method will kill your grandchildren, then it's perfectly reasonable to point out that the purposed solution will kill your grand children.
There is no reason to switch to something more expensive, complicated, or convoluted if the end result is the same even if just by another means. We are looking to get off fossil fuels because it effects the environment and has the potential of destroying a lot of life, switching to something that does the exact same thing is fucking stupid.
I am not convinced that burning fossil fuels effects the environment. The complete combustion of hydrocarbons releases energy, water, and carbon dioxide. The amount of energy, water, and carbon dioxide released is so minute compared to that of the sun and sea life that I do not believe it is causing any thing detrimental to the environment. Water and carbon dioxide is what plants need to live, by burning fossil fuels we are essentially fertilizing the earth.
If we assume for the moment that carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas (I think it is a greenhouse gas, just not as potent as people claim) then we can also assume that methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas. Right now we have oil and natural gas fields off the coast of California bubbling methane into the air and oil slicks onto the beaches. If you want to improve the environment then it would make sense to bottle up that methane before it reaches the atmosphere and convert it to a lesser greenhouse gas by burning it. That oil that is washing up onto the beaches could likewise be harvested before it pollutes. It doesn't have to be burnt, that oil could be used for the production of lubricants, tires, and plastics.
I'm not against fossil fuels nor am I really for it. One thing I dislike is seeing our nation's wealth being siphoned off for energy that we can produce ourselves. We can drill for oil here. We can build nuclear power plants, windmills and solar panels. The reason we need to get off fossil fuels is because it will not be economically viable in some future date. Until that time comes I see no need to artificially enforce the movement to an alternative. If people want to see the world stop burning fossil fuels then come up with a viable alternative FIRST then people will move naturally. By forcing people away from fossil fuels before a viable alternative exists is suicide. We need that energy to keep our standard of living, by reducing that standard of living people will die.
Every summer we hear about the large number of people that die from heat exposure with the implicit or explicit blame on global warming. First, I don't believe global warming is happening any more since, for example, Iceland has seen polar bears for three years in a row after a 25 year absence. Second, we have things like running water, shelter, and electricity in "civilized" society. Why is it that people are dying of heat in France when the temperature has reached 90F? That is not "hot" by my standards. I see that every summer around here, or at least I used to. The last few summers have been rather mild in comparison. The only reason I can fathom that people are dying from 90F heat in France is either from their own stupidity or because of poverty. With clean running water, shade, and an electric fan I would think that most anyone can survive 90F outdoor temperatures.
I don't believe that continuing to burn fossil fuels will kill your grandchildren. I do believe that not burning fossil fuels, before a viable alternative exists, will likely kill you before they are born.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I think the idea of lifting a generator on a kite is absurd, however, the Ladder mill concept, or any other scheme involving a reciprocating airfoil or flight path can be utilized by a generator on the ground to take advantage of variations on the tension of the tether to generate electricity. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/aug/01/electric.kite
Are they really better or just different? All to often people use egg headed accounting to justify an action without actually looking at the downsides, Take my Ebaying neighbor for instance, made tons of money selling things on Ebay until you realize he was spending more to buy the stuff then he was getting from Ebay, but all he would talk about is his "profit".
No, we should discuss it and make sure it's understood about what will happen, what can happen, what is likely to happen, how that is different from what we already have and if there is any real improvement. From there, we should make the decision to use or not to use.
Of course you are free to use the crap all you want. Just don't expect to force others onto it without a clear and competent discussion.
With a 1MW trial set for next year.
mark
Ya know the old trick of putting a square of paper on a kite string so it rides up the string to the top?
(Also done more elaborately so it drops a parachute toy once it hits a trigger at the top, or carries a candle up at night, and many other variations).
I'd love to see huge "flying wing" kites tethered at 30K feet -- that'd mean tether material strong enough to handle the forces involved (or else when the string breaks it drags across Oregon from Portland to Pocatello tearing up everything in between, before the kite hits the ground somewhere in Wyoming).
Heck, it's a small step toward the space elevator.
That's why I use only fuel obtained from 100% organic crude oil, flowing the goodness of Mother Earth . I'm confident Exxon fuel comes from free-ranging, happy dinosaurs.
I wouldn't even think of filling my Prius with fuel that was from living matter trapped and enslaved on some industrial agri-business and force-fed chemical fertilizers.
The problem comes when you depend on one thing and increase the percentage more and more. For example, the world current depends on Coal, oil and natural gas. It is adding FAR more additional CO2 than all the natural processes such as Volcano's, space, etc. Had we added only 1% new CO2, we would not have issues.
You might want to check the veracity of that statement...
1% of anything is RARELY an issue, and I doubt that it will be here.
You probably also should note that CO2 is 0.0383% of the earth's atmosphere.
Mind the frickin' laser...
The complete combustion of hydrocarbons releases energy, water, and carbon dioxide. The amount of energy, water, and carbon dioxide released is so minute compared to that of the sun and sea life that I do not believe it is causing any thing detrimental to the environment.
That's just an argument from personal incredulity. You need to think about what's being added to the system, not what's already there. If the bathtub is mostly full, why should I care that the tap is dripping? It's a tiny effect compared to the size of the bath. Or, as Einstein may have said, there is no force in the universe more powerful than compound interest.
.evom ton seod gis eht
Are they really better or just different? All to often people use egg headed accounting to justify an action without actually looking at the downsides, Take my Ebaying neighbor for instance, made tons of money selling things on Ebay until you realize he was spending more to buy the stuff then he was getting from Ebay, but all he would talk about is his "profit".
I don't see unprofitability as a problem. Someone isn't going to lose my money with a stratospheric kite. Instead, I only see the various externalities like pollution, air traffic crowding and collisions, the sort of thing that affects other people either in reality or theory. And frankly, the only real way to figure out all the problems of a new technology is to try that technology out in the real world.
No, we should discuss it and make sure it's understood about what will happen, what can happen, what is likely to happen, how that is different from what we already have and if there is any real improvement. From there, we should make the decision to use or not to use.
We can rule out the absurd consequences mentioned by the initial poster, namely, drag on the jet stream. Yes, there will be drag and yes, we will slow down the jet stream some. Even if we're running current society off of the jet streams, we probably won't see any change in them. The energy loss is insignificant compared to the energy of the jet streams. I can't be bothered to entertain every lunatic fantasy that comes around.
Even if we consider the threat legitimate, it's just another cost, one that grows as we increase the number of kites. Since we're going from zero change at zero kites to a modest change at a lot of kites, we can add some number before problems become significant. Even if a trillion kites cause too much trouble, we can still fly a thousand or a million kites. There's some balance between whatever harm an additional kite can do and the benefit of that kite. Given that the benefits and costs for power generating kites are different from other power generation sources, it means that we have expanded the options available to us even if kites do not prove to be that useful in the long run.
Finally, your suggestion reeks of the Precautionary Principle. If it were beholden to itself, we'd never apply the principle simply because it is a far from optimal risk management technique that except under lucky circumstances, cause more harm than it prevents.
What was wrong with my statement? The amount of CO2 that Man puts out YEARLY is far far more than all the volcano's of the last century. I have checked it. Keep in mind that it is not recycling CO2 that is the issue. IT IS ADDED co2 that is the problem. And Co2 has increased more than 1% under man. Just because the total concentration is .0383 of the earth's atmosphere has absolutely NOTHING to do with man's influence. Care to remove your red herring?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Small enough that slowing down currents and water motion for several miles might screw with the local marine life... or alter the gulf stream... or erode the ocean shelf.. who knows the exact affects?
Aside from making it illegal to boat anywhere nearby.
The complete combustion of hydrocarbons releases energy, water, and carbon dioxide. The amount of energy, water, and carbon dioxide released is so minute compared to that of the sun and sea life that I do not believe it is causing any thing detrimental to the environment.
That's just an argument from personal incredulity. You need to think about what's being added to the system, not what's already there. If the bathtub is mostly full, why should I care that the tap is dripping? It's a tiny effect compared to the size of the bath. Or, as Einstein may have said, there is no force in the universe more powerful than compound interest.
If the planet's ecosystem is that delicate then we are one Mount Vesuvius or solar burp away from annihilation. The climate changes, always has. The scare used to be "global warming" but the powers that be found out that trying to carry that scare for too long would be counter productive because, wait for it... the globe is no longer warming. Now the scare is "climate change" which can be carried on in perpetuity because the climate will always change and every hurricane or snowstorm is evidence of it.
For every increase in the carbon dioxide output humanity has on the environment the plant life on earth adjusts by increasing its mass and efficiency. The atmosphere is not a "bathtub" that can overflow, it is a tank with all kinds of pipes going in and out. As the level in that tank rises so does the pressure, as the pressure rises the output increases and the input decreases. When the carbon dioxide increases plant life can grow in places it could not before. As that plant life grows it takes up more carbon dioxide.
So, yes, my argument may be out of personal incredulity but it seems to be backed up by at least a minimal amount of evidence. The primary evidence is that we have survived a number of solar burps and volcanic eruptions. The problem with testing many of these theories on "global warming" or "climate change" or whatever scare words are used this month is that people will die if we are wrong. Even if we are right people will die, that is because people die. I'm not willing to bet my life on the theory that by stopping the use of petroleum fuels we will save the environment. Without those petroleum fuels a lot of people will freeze to death this winter. Worrying about our grandchildren is rather pointless if we don't live long enough to have children of our own.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Have to disagree there. Long term drought is a real possibility for several areas of the nation. My own state of Georgia got down to a pretty darn low amount of water in our dammed up reservoirs the last two years due to severe summer drought. It was nip and tuck there whether or not atlanta metro would be able to have any water at all. Luckily it finally rained, but man it got close. They've determined we really do need more reservoirs and I would have to agree with them. When you have entire cities just slap running out, no river water, low reservoirs, ground water table dropped to ridiculous low levels, etc you only have one option, build more reservoirs so in wet years you can store more, and that will mean dams, and as long as you are building dams, might as well have some hydropower with it.
You can't just tell 5 million people in a state tough luck, no water for you, buh bye! Or 35 million people in California or elsewhere. this isn't a joke anymore, it is completely serious business.. And similar is happening all over, not only in the US but all over the world.
The only way around it is better water management (try to not contaminate sources, make sure the infrastructure isn't leaky, charge a fair but reasonable price for mass water delivery, educate the populations better, etc), better conservation (variety of methods), and *more storage*. If you need water and let it all run down to the ocean without adequate storage and use first, you will just run out, and that causes a bit of social messiness it does.... You need all three avenues to be taken, just one or the other won't be enough.
Home cisterns and storage is cool too, nothing against that, I do it myself here with water barrels as a backup, but tons of people live in apartments and so on and there are industrial and agricultural uses of water that just require reservoirs, the quantities needed just cabn't be met with man made containers other than earth, rock, concrete and river valleys. We simply can't build stand alone vessels to the scale we need, in size or quantity, it would..aw heck, who knows, a few hundred gallon plastic stock tank cost a few hundred, so scale it up from there. It would cost buhzillions, some huge number, to take the place of reservoirs, it just couldn't and wouldn't be done. That leaves dams and reservoirs as the only other viable option. Mankind has struggled with this since we have been mankind, reservoirs are the option everyone has come up with.
Ya, if you area tiny nation that is rich as snot and have ocean front property you can setup some nuke powered desalinator, but we have to get real on mass scale here for mass quantities of people, we aren't desalinating the ocean to the scale we need anytime soon. So..catch rain water and slow down river water, that's it more or less.
We have three different fairly large man made ponds/reservoirs here on the farm and I am real glad we have them. The last two summers when it didn't rain my cows had *nothing* to drink except that pond water, stored up rainwater. The normal "year round" creek they drink from dried up to hard rock and sand with a few muddy patches left. It would have wiped us out without that pond, and it dropped more than ten feet! Luckily as well we had enough stored hay, because the pastures just went to brown dust mostly. This spring though has been wet and the pond has come half way back up, but still, much lower than it was some years ago now. This is all over the south, do you remember all the fgire stories from last year? It's not just outwest that has been getting nailed, the southeast has been off and on for a few years now and longer range predictions have us for less water, with a higher demand. The feds own and control most of the reservoirs here, so now the state is thinking of building their own, so they can control them themselves.
Hi all,
What about attaching underwater buoys that bob up and down and operate a pump that pushes high pressure seawater onto land. A few hundred buoys and you've got some serious water pressure that can push the turbine on land. This was developed by one of Australia's oil exploration men, who took advantage of the oil industry engineer's experience of pumping fluids in the marine environment. So instead of expensive electronics out at sea, it's just underwater buoys (that don't interfere with shipping) and pipes pumping water in to the mainland.
Apparently the cost advantages of doing it this way with only plumbing at sea and all the generators and electronics on land are significant. http://www.ceto.com.au/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CETO_Wave_Power
ABC news video illustrates bobbing / pumping action of CETO wave power buoys (no sexual puns intended)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V27ZBODcv0c
Profit was just an example of someone not paying attention to the details. But yea, I can see someone being unprofitable with a stratospheric kite. The tether will have to be so strong, there will be issues with commercial and private air transportation, there will be some extreme liability if it doesn't stay in the air and falls the 6 miles into the middle of a city. I'm sure they are going to let just anyone string 6-7 miles of cable into the air without a bunch of reassurances and liability insurance.
You should be bothered. I will show a few other lunatic fantasies that weren't bothered with until after the damage was done. How about sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions, levels of mercury in emissions, or how about Co2 which wasn't even thought of as a negetive emision some thirty years ago.
Well, that's the reason discussion is needed. Is the harm or potential harm the same as what we are attempting to avoid in the first place? Can it be mitigated or controlled, who has the authority to do that? Is there better solution without these problems.
There is nothing wrong with being precautions. I mean I certainly wouldn't want you to drill a hole in the bottom of the life raft/boat to let a few inches of water out. dealing with the water in the boat isn't worth it.
You should be bothered. I will show a few other lunatic fantasies that weren't bothered with until after the damage was done. How about sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions, levels of mercury in emissions, or how about Co2 which wasn't even thought of as a negetive emision some thirty years ago.
What about these examples? We found out and are sufficiently informed now, if we chose to deal rationally with activities involving these chemicals. Even now, we don't have evidence that CO2 is a sufficient negative emission to regulate its emission. It's been broadly assumed that it is so, but the evidence we currently have doesn't support that. The current state is that there is considerable evidence that CO2 content of the atmosphere contributes to global temperature, that human activities are greatly responsible for the current increase in CO2 levels from before the Industrial Revolution, and some vague indications that further increases in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will result in harm to some societies and ecosystems over very long periods of time.
Well, that's the reason discussion is needed. Is the harm or potential harm the same as what we are attempting to avoid in the first place? Can it be mitigated or controlled, who has the authority to do that? Is there better solution without these problems.
Discussion doesn't inform in the absence of evidence. It simply doesn't make sense to worry about the effects of a million kites, if not even one is in the air now. All the potential problems of the technology will become apparent when you implement the technology. And it's not all or nothing. We can slowly build up to a million, if that turns out to be viable, testing the consequences of the technology along the way.
And FYI, the Precautionary Principle is an extreme of precaution. Namely, it is the idea that a new technology, procedure, or activity must be proven not to cause more harm than its benefit to society and the environment. And that the burden of proof falls upon the would-be implementers of the technology, procedure, or activity. It's suboptimal because of two things. First, cost and benefit are subjective. The implementers are obviously going to have a great deal more benefit than society or the environment as a whole would. And not everyone is going to agree (especially given that there is massive disagreement on the consequences of actions once self-interest enters the picture). Second, the legal precedent of modern society is that the parties harmed (or a proxy like government) have the burden of proof to prove that harm occurred. This is a reasonable approach IMHO because it actually is a legitimate way to determine whether harm is occurring. If I'm doing some activity that no one is willing to sue or arrest me for (assume here that I can solidly be connected with the activity and it's not something fairly anonymous like spamming email or secretly dumping toxic waste in the dead of night), then it's reasonable that I continue the activity.
Though you have phrased your post as a joke you are absolutely right! Playing about with harvesting zero point energy is the most dangerous thing ever and has a good change of destroying the universe as we know it.
Eero point energy are usually based on the idea that the vacuum of space it not at it's lowest possible value. Instead it is at a local minima. If that is the case it may be possible to push a region of space from the false vacuum to a lower energy state and there by releasing energy. Observe that it is not as such energy from nothing, but the energy released by changing the state of space itself. Unfortunately the affect of this is likely to be an ever expanding bubble of space which will move at the speed of light creating the end of the universe .
ZPE enthusiasts are not only kooks but a danger to everything. Universes which create such beings are luckily naturally selected against.
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Yes the oceans populated with sand bars, coral reefs, outcrops of rocks and islands has been seriously adversely affected.
Luckily we are working on removing these obstacles to ocean currents by raising sea levels and killing coral reefs. Soon our oceans will be the healthiest oceans ever!
You make a good point about the erosion of ocean shelf we need to find some way of removing energy from destructive waves and wind. Maybe even harvesting the energy? Then everything will be solved.
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Its a good thing you know exactly what removing energy from a localized marine environment will result in. To the best of my knowledge even the PhD's in the field don't know - because it hasn't been done.
You watch Jurassic Park? Read the book?
that's why I said this "The only way around it is better water management (try to not contaminate sources, make sure the infrastructure isn't leaky, charge a fair but reasonable price for mass water delivery, educate the populations better, etc), better conservation (variety of methods), and *more storage*."
I agree, water delivery, especially to big cities, is way undervalued and cheap. So are most of the other things they need to import. The US in particular has been using the rural "flyover" areas as a form of external exploited colony, that's why there are such wide diverse wage pay scales and cost of living, etc. Food, electricity, water, natgas, etc is all being sold way too cheap and the original owners, where this necessary stuff comes from, have been getting almost bupkis for it, so cheap the big cities waste it constantly and are extravagant with it.
In other words, I'll take the complaints of urbanites about our big trucks and mileage more seriously when I start to see them shut off those ludicrous advertise to the space aliens huge corporate lit up signs at night, and they get real on commuting and let a few million more people stay home to sit in front of a computer screen and work, as opposed to commuting back and forth twice a day to go sit in front of a computer screen in a totally unecessary huge corporate ego "office tower". What a freeking waste of resources and energy. Moving electrons on a data wire is loads cheaper than moving humans all the time. Along with all the wasted water and so on, Ya, golf, if it is a drought, let them play on all sand and dried dirt. When we are shutting down farmland because of lack of irrigation water, but golf courses are being watered, something is just *wrong*.
We also need a national water pipeline "grid", pipelines and deep reservoirs, to help balance out excess water in some areas to lack of water in other areas. As a nation we get enough water, we just don't yet have the means to really shift it around where it is needed better. I would have much rather seen them do something like that rather than bailout the casino bank wealth skimming "industry"