To my astonishment late yesterday I received a delayed response from Kiplinger's Customer Service dept. This was in regards to a query I made concerning a paragraph the newsletter published back in March where they claim there is on-going R&D going on in the concept of "Power Trees". (Artificially manufactured mechanical "trees" that extract electricity from both sunlight/photosynthesis as well as available wind.) I thought for sure this topic had to have been an April Fool's joke.
Apparently not. Their response: *************************************************** Dear Mr. Johnson, In assisting another subscriber this evening whose email also did not reach us on March 27 (we had a system crash), we found your posting online and your question re the "Power Tower" item in The Kiplinger Letter. We have forwarded your online posting to the editors, who'll see it tomorrow. In the meantime, here are two links that we ran across this evening that you might find interesting until the editors respond. http://www.green-energy-news.com/arch/nrgs2008/20080072.html or [http://tinyurl.com/df5qeg] http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Rick_Dickson:Wind_Tree or [http://tinyurl.com/2gn77u] If we can be of further assistance in any way until the editors respond, please let us know. [address omitted] *************************************************** I hope a few brain cells from the Vort collective might feel curious enough to review the links supplied. A cursory glance myself tells me that I ain't smart enough to assess the conclusions, other than that the data supplied still strikes me as sketchy. Therefore, I'm still inclined to agree with Stephen Lawrence's previous comment, that the alleged claims of being able to extract a sufficient amount of useable electricity, particularly to power a home from a single "tree" (as they claim) would seem highly doubtful. I sympathize with Mr. Lawrence's previous assessment, considering how little data we had to work with. But hey! That was before Kiplinger supplied me with these two links. BTW, I've received numerous private queries from individuals equally curious about this subject asking me to clue them in if I ever did receive anything interesting. I sympathize. Inquiring minds want to know!!! Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
