At 11:18 AM 12/24/2012, James Bowery wrote:
From NextBigFuture:
<http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/12/peter-theil-funds-atmospheric-vortex.html#>GoatGuyÂ
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<http://nnextbigfuture.com/2012/12/peter-theil-funds-atmospheric-vortex.html#comment-746370017>18
hours ago
Oh well... guess this one's worth chiming in.
First - its nice to believe that the vortex
would remain "attached" to the guidance tower.
However, tornadoes and dust-devils are well
known for "taking off" ... and traveling great distances.
That's extrenely unlikely unless one operates this thing in tornado weather.
Second - the local weather would definitely be
changed ... namely a lot of thermal cloud
formation and spawning of man-made
thunderclouds. Now, being a down-wind resident,
I might not be so amused with an alarming number
of cumulonimbus clouds ceaselessly coming my way.
This, again, depends on how the device is
operated. I'm assuming now that this is merely a
vortex turbine running off of a local heat
artificial heat source (or it could be some
natural heat source.) That heat source is already generating updraft.
Third - then there's the opposite effect - the
perception of "stealing my rain", for people
outside the wet-shadow. Politically a can or
worms. Reparations. Fees, fines, levies, levees (other kind).
Just not so. This argument would apply to any
power plant with waste heat being dissipated to the atmosphere.
Fourth - and what about the "invisible
vortexes", known as parasitic or scion vortexes
... that powerful cyclonic updraft-winds are
WELL known to form? No condensation to make them
visible ... easily "unhooked" from the main
updraft stream ... and planes passing through?
The alleged danger depends on operational
details. Those phenomena are powered by specific
weather conditions. A vortex turbine would
presumably not be operated under such conditions,
because then -- and only then -- it might trigger
some effect fueled, not by the fixed local heat
source, with a vortex maintained by turbine
assistance, but by the natural weather conditions.
Fifth - noise? Tornadoes - from
first-hand-across-the-field-experience ... are
generally pretty noisy, whether "big" is defined
as a loud one, or not. And we think
wind-turbines are noisy. These could be real howling Tasmanian Devils.
That is purely speculative. If these machines are
built and tested, we would know about noise, and
that could easily affect siting. I'd expect them
to be loud, but *how loud*, I don't see how one
could predict. These would not be "tornados."
In areas with low peak annual winds, the least
capital-intensive technology to turn E-Cat heat
into baseload electricity is likely to be the
<http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml>Atmospheric
Vortex
<http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml>Engine. With
an exhaust temperature of nearly -60C, the
Carnot efficiency can be very high with virtually no thermal pollution.
