The power of evaporation
There's an up-and-coming form of energy that might join solar, wind and geothermal in the alternative-power pantheon: evaporation. It works, as you might guess, by capturing water rising off the surface of lakes and reservoirs. This week, new estimates of the energy to be harvested from evaporation suggest the potential is huge: just in the US, 325 gigawatts, or roughly 70 percent of the power produced in this country today. The tech is still in the lab at this point, and it comes with complications -- not least of which is that such large-scale interference could alter local weather, prevent boating and swimming on local lakes and, potentially, disrupt ecosystems. (Which is something one can always say about burning fossil fuels, note.) But the upsides are worth considering: evaporation can create power on cloudy days or when the wind doesn't blow, and it might even help conserve water in places where it is scarce. Perhaps it’s time to take evaporation engines out of the lab and trial them in the real world.
Evaporation.
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Evaporation.
Everyone who lives dies, yet not everyone who dies, has lived. We take these risks not to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping us ...
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Our crucial world weather systems depends so much on evaporation so I hope this new science does not screw with it ? but then again we have screwed up the planet anyway...
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