Chicanery in Renewable Energy

We all need to take umbrage with hot, new ideas in renewable energy that are either scams or simply asinine ideas promoted as important breakthroughs.  Here’s a textbook example: a device that is supposed to create clean drinking water in areas where it’s scarce, e.g., deserts, by condensing ambient desert air by pushing it into the cool ground beneath. 

But guess what?  When you calculate how much dry air at 30 degrees C is required to produce a liter of water when cooled to 10 degrees C, and then realize that this feeble flow only works during the hot summer daytimes, you conclude that this is a truly ridiculous idea.  Sadly, they’ve raised $77,000 of crowdfunders’ money, with more pouring in every day.   There’s a reason that the pic above is an illustration and not a photograph: real implementations of this device do not and will never exist.

I would also point out that the real problem to be solved isn’t the absence of water; it’s the absence of clean water.  Anyone who honestly is trying to create a breakthrough here should be working on purification.