21 ms·
That doesn't quite add up to me. After all, we extract energy from heating differentials all the time in the form of windmills. This really just seems like a sc
by acjohnson55 9y ago
That doesn't quite add up to me. After all, we extract energy from heating differentials all the time in the form of windmills. This really just seems like a scheme for channeling what is basically the same air circulation. The argument being that ground-warmed air doesn't typically rise in a straight line, and so by preventing lateral convection, you'll get a much faster flow up the chimney.
The use of it for wind energy is less interesting to me, though, than the idea of getting hot air radiating further from the surface of the Earth. If that is indeed significant in how the greenhouse effect works, that alone seems worth considering.
- yorwba 9y agoMy layman's understanding is that wind is caused by pressure differences that result from different regions on the ground heating up differently in the sun. But the pressure difference between the ground and air higher up is just right to balance out gravity, so on average you should expect no movement at all. Additionally, windmills work without any kind of tunnel, so you should expect this tower to work just as well if you just pointed a few wind turbines downward on a pole. But I think the horizontal winds would be much stronger, so you should readjust the direction a bit, which leaves you with a really tall windmill.
- acjohnson55 9y agoMy understanding is that this balancing out with gravity would be true, but for horizontal mixing that occurs, as well as downdrafts of cold air and radiation (which is significant enough to motivate the chimney idea, according to the author). So you have this very complex voyage of ground-heated air upward, which is responsible for most of what we think of as local weather. I understand the idea is to streamline the updraft, essentially controlling weather in the immediate vicinity.