New "B.S." Blog on "Atmospheric Power."

[YLEKIOT]

Hello Dave, any desire to do a new "B.S. Blog" on atmospheric power? 

While it's fascinating to think the the atmosphere around us has such power, the practicalities involved in "replacing fossil fuels" with atmospheric power seems like BS to me!  The guy in this YouTube spot is claiming that even on a calm day they are generating "40 KV."  Well in real terms, what does that mean?

In Arizona on a dry day, it's possible to shock yourself on shag carpet with 40 KV too!  Maybe the future of power is tennis shoes and shag carpet?!?  They are getting ready to do a public funding scheme like kickstarter.  I guess they took a cue from the "solar roadways" project.  They have got a bunch of Frankensteinian electrical gadgets that look really impressive, but that smell like BS.  My knowledge is pretty limited, but either the guy in the video stepped in a cow patty on the way in or there is some serious BS in his "patented" process!  ?

He mentions "the biggie," the name everybody wants to link their project to, Mr. Tesla.  Well there has got to be a reason why Tesla went on to perfect AC power and not this. 

If you could take a look and maybe do a blog, lots of people may not be duped into giving a deluded dreamer -or worse- their money.   

[donotdespisethesnake]

Sorry, Grade 1 Free Energy Woo.

Of course, there is a real phenomenon there, everyone has seen lightning. The problem with these diffuse and/or high variable power sources is finding a cost-effective, predictable and reliable way of exploiting them. Simply adding the newest woo material (graphene) doesn't change the equation much.

The other problem is people vastly underestimate how much energy we use, and how much we would have to scale up these small exploits to be useful.  Spinning a small motor takes only a few watts, average US electricity consumption is about 13,000 kWh per capita.

There are probably hundreds of BS schemes out there, writing about all the failures is probably just a waste of time. More useful to talk about the ones that do actually work.

[FrankenPC]

This one is just too idiotic to even debunk.  If Dave addressed every free-energy nut, that's all he would have time to do.

[SL4P]

::
In Arizona on a dry day, it's possible to shock yourself on shag carpet...

Hang on - even in damp Melbourne I can shag myself on a shocking carpet!

[EEVblog]

While it's fascinating to think the the atmosphere around us has such power, the practicalities involved in "replacing fossil fuels" with atmospheric power seems like BS to me!  The guy in this YouTube spot is claiming that even on a calm day they are generating "40 KV."

Without even watching the video, if they are talking voltage and not power, then they have no idea what they are talking about.
As you said, walk across a carpet and you can build up 40kV.
But hey, the uBeam chick sucked 10's of millions of dollars out of investors based on such a bogus demo:

 

[Rerouter]

While i would like to see the law of thermodynamics defeated, for all of this voodoo bullshit, they should atleast try and say where the power is coming from, and provide some kind of verification,

That or should i repeat the experiment where algae emits a strong blue light for a few seconds after being pulse by strong UV, and sell the jars on ebay to make them feel part of the science...

[edy]

Wow! How do these uBeam and other crowd-funding people sleep at night, taking millions of dollars and with little solid science behind it. One the other hand.... How do the investors just pour money at people without any working prototype? KickStarter can be both good and dangerous at the same time. I lay the blame on both. You wouldn't have one without the other.... and any investor betting this kind of money on anything without a 3rd party independent engineering audit has to be out of their mind.