this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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There is a whole lot of sky, my dude. I don’t think it’s plausible that we could capture even 1% of the kinetic energy of wind currents if we wanted to.
But also, wind is ultimately solar energy: the sun heats up parts of the planet at a time, the temperature differences cause pressure differences, and pressure flows from high to low. If we could somehow capture most of that kinetic energy, the result would be that areas which heat up stay warmer, and areas which don’t heat up as much stay cooler.
But we’re talking about gravity-bound gases, here. If we tried to capture too much, the gases would just find an easier route to equalize, such as going above our turbine network.
Not feasible now. Project a hundred or four hundred years. What if some future Elon is building fully AI controlled factories that do nothing but push out wind turbines that are getting increasingly taller to find moving air.
See also: the ocean is too big to pollute.
How high are you right meow?
When I was in grad school for planetary sciences, my fellow grad students decided I was naturally high. Is looking at the big picture being high? If so, meow.
Feasibility aside, it’d be a lot more practical to get cracking on that Dyson swarm. Photovoltaics are a much more efficient way to capture solar energy, or even direct solar thermal (ie mirrors and steam turbines)
Dyson swarm is great, but only if it isn't beaming power back to the earth. If it's beaming back energy to earth, we're effectively pointing mirrors at the earth so it captures more energy from the sun. That's sort of the opposite of what we're trying to achieve.
But if we've got a Dyson swarm then we've got the power needed to do really intense weather modification, we could build a big facility in the south pole to refreeze it and beam the excess heat to Mars or one of the more distant space bases