Some facts about ANWR

[Thinker]

Hell, Klenke, this is spray. I'm giving the most narrow possible snippet of information sprinkled liberally with innuendo, and asking YOU to draw the conclusions.

[chucK]

So...uh.... ANWR is already trashed... Drill Away!! ???

[klenke]

(I get turned off by the minutest piece of candy wrapper trash in the woods).***

and by cairns on summits that you thought were unclimbed, too

and by trails and logging roads and bolts and rappel slings and steps chopped into walls and bootpath highways up glaciers, and radio towers at summits, and powerlines, and dams, and...

 

Candy wrappers are there (usually) because people aren't careful with their garbage or are deliberate litterbugs.

 

Hey Thinker:

 

Okay, no more thread drift, back to ANSWRING THE ANWR THING.

[thatguy]

Ever walk a mile or more of railroad track?

After a beer or two ask a commercial fisherman/tugboat operator what happens to the oily bilge water?

Where ever industry goes it pollutes. I suspect the photos are the norm.

[AlpineK]

Interesting idea the sky turbine. Thanks for the link, Dru.

 

Seems at first blush like it would fall out of the sky (something for nothing like a perpetual motion machine). It would have to be a balance between weight, energy, aerodynamics (drag considerations), and structural integrity (at lowest possible weight). It would have to be like a kite in structure (to catch the wind) for purposes of keeping it up there with light-weight turbines taking in the additional energy to feed to the ground. Because simply having turbines up there and taking some of the turbine energy and putting it into flight maintainability is not possible (i.e., is a something for nothing scheme).

 

Well it isn't a perpetual motion machine because it's using an outside power source ie the wind up high. As long as the energy it absorbs from the wind is sufficient it'll stay up and provide power.

[Dru]

well, it isn't somethingfrom nothing, exactly. when you turn windspeed into power, you slow the wind down

 

and when you slow th wind down, what holds up the sky?

 

nothing. the sky will fall and crush us LIKE BUGS!

[selkirk]

Yes, but since the atmosphere is thinner near the poles than they sky will squish Canuckistan first!!

[klenke]

I guess what I'm trying to say about the sky windmill device is this:

 

You would still need a kite/sail/wing to create a lift force to counteract the downward force of gravity. The power generated by the turbines would not be enough in and of itself to hold the turbines up. You need the lift force else the thing will fall out of the sky. That's what I meant by something for nothing. As long as the device was designed in such a way that the energy required to keep it up did not exceed that which was generated by the device it could be done.

 

The problem created with the lift device is how one would disengage it and/or the turbines in a controlled manner (fold the sail, for example) so as to safely bring down the device for maintenance. You couldn't simply turn it off else it will fall out of the sky and/or sail away and/or break the tether/cable.

 

Regarding a perpetual motion machine: all it is is a device that outputs more energy than it consumes, an impossibility by the First Law of Thermodynamics. In theory it can still use an outside power source to generate more power than that outside source.