Just to fight a some small depressions here and there among you folks, I thought, if it makes me a little interested, so it may be the same for you.

Evaporation Could Offer Renewable Energy

US scientists have identified a new source of renewable energy: evaporation.

The flow of water vapour into the atmosphere – it happens wherever there is liquid water – could generate up to 325 gigawatts. This is 69% of the nation’s annual electrical generation. The same process could save about 25 trillion gallons of water every year. This is about one fifth of US water consumption.

And the same technology could be exploited as a natural battery to conserve renewable energy for those moments when the wind fails to turn the turbines or at night when the solar power plants lie idle.

There is a catch. The project has been demonstrated so far only in the laboratory.

...

The experimental technology exploits natural biology and physics. The evaporation engine controls humidity with the action of a shutter and the expansion and contraction of bacterial spores in response to this process is transferred to a generator that delivers current.

The study is yet another instance of the scale and range of ingenuity repeatedly demonstrated by the world’s laboratories in search of alternatives to the fossil fuels that so far have driven human economies, but now threaten to drive global warming and potentially catastrophic climate change.

US researchers have exploited computer studies and scaled up existing technologies to show, again and again, that the US could be fuelled by wind, sunlight and water power and that what works for the US could drive development in many parts of the world. The argument is that the knowhow exists: what is lacking is the political will.

What, no political will? Dare you not to have a political will. I think it's exiting and should be tested out in large scale experiments. It lifts some spirits. Makes me curious. I like stuff like that. Strange that it comes right at a time, when everybody is depressed. ...

Please click on the link at truthdig and on the links embedded in their article.