GOLDSTEIN: We’re paying money for nothing to ‘fight’ climate change
Breadcrumb Trail Links Columnists Canada The Trudeau government’s carbon pricing regime and climate change policies are adding to the financial hardships faced by Canadians Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill…
Jerry Shenk: The Gospel of ‘Global Warming’
People, generally, acknowledge that climate changes, but most remain skeptical that it’s man-made or apocalyptic. Rather than “settled science,” global warming activism has become a cult-like evangelistic movement outside normally-accepted skeptical approaches to the rest of science. In fact, pagans…
A big El Niño is looming. Here’s what it means for our weather.
El Niño is the warm phase of the Pacific Ocean’s temperature cycle, and this year’s El Niño is poised to be a big one, sending shock waves into weather patterns around the world. It’s likely to set new heat records,…
NOAA: How Greenhouse Gas Pollution Amplified Global Warming in 2022 – CleanTechnica
Greenhouse gas pollution from human activity trapped 49 percent more heat in the atmosphere during 2022 than those same gases did in 1990, according to an annual NOAA report. This graphic shows the increasing warming influence over time of CO2…
Generating Electricity Out of Moisture in the Air Is Becoming Increasingly Possible, Even in the Sahara Desert
A totally science-fiction device developed by scientists in Massachusetts would allow people to pull electricity out of thin air.
Back in 2020, GNN reported on an exciting experimental technology called Air-gen.
It used a protein nanowire film derived from the bacteria species Geobacter sandwiched between two electrodes that could generate electricity via the humidity absorbed within the fine pores of the film.
Now, the team from Univ. of Massachusetts Amhurst has made another breakthrough in this Air-gen technology.
“What we realized after making the Geobacter discovery is the ability to generate electricity from the air—what we then called the ‘Air-gen effect’—turns out to be generic,” explains Amhurst Professor Jun Yao.
“Literally any kind of material can harvest electricity from the air—as long as it has a certain property. It just needs to have holes smaller than 100 nm (nanometers)—or less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair.”
These Air-gen devices could generate kilowatts of electricity that would be non-polluting, renewable, and low-cost. They could generate power even in areas with extremely low humidity such as the Sahara Desert, and have significant advantages over other forms of renewable energy including solar and wind, because unlike these, the Air-gen does not require sunlight or wind, and “it even works indoors.”
For readers curious as to how such a small setup generates power, it relies on the ‘mean free path,’ or the distance a single molecule of water travels in the air before it bumps into another.
Whatever material a manufacturer or engineer might use, provided it’s as small as Dr. Yao explains above, it should allow water molecules to pass from the upper to the lower part of the material.
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Each pore is so small the molecules would easily bump into the edge as they pass through, meaning the upper part would be bombarded with many more charge-carrying water molecules than the lower one.
It creates a charge imbalance, like that in a cloud, as the upper part increased its charge relative to the lower part. This would effectually create a battery that runs as long as there is any humidity in the air.
“You could imagine harvesters made of one kind of material for rainforest environments and another for more arid regions.”
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Since humidity is ever-present the harvester would run 24/7, rain or shine, at night, and whether or not the wind blows. Because of its thinness, thousands can be stacked on top of each other so that it can efficiently be scaled up, increasing the amount of energy without increasing the footprint of the device.
Such an Air-gen device would be capable of delivering kilowatt-level power for general electrical utility usage anywhere on Earth.
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The Dark Side Of Biden’s ‘Climate Justice’ Agenda
President Biden recently issued a 5,400-word executive order directing all federal agencies to emphasize “environmental justice” in every decision they make. After ducking questions for weeks on what remediation, remuneration, and environmental justice the administration is providing East Palestine, Ohio,…
Kuenssberg: Why ‘boomer’ Schwarzenegger won’t wait to tackle climate change
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Our Psychological Problem with Global Warming (See: Mount St. Helens) & What To Do – CleanTechnica
Perhaps the most iconic photo of the Mount St. Helens eruption is one with a Ford Pinto in the foreground. Sure, there are some more amazing photos of the destruction and of the volcanic explosion itself, but this one tends…
If swing voters were terrified of the climate crisis, ministers would take it seriously | Gaby Hinsliff
The end of the world is nigh, again. And as usual, it’s being greeted largely with a shrug. Perhaps you felt a prick of unease as you scrolled the headlines, or half listened over breakfast to some radio debate about…
NYC skyscrapers turning to carbon capture to lessen climate change
NEW YORK — From the outside, the residential high-rise on Manhattan’s Upper West Side looks pretty much like any other luxury building: A doorman greets visitors in a spacious lobby adorned with tapestry and marble. Yet just below in the…
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