A tall chimney to facilitate heat exchange in the atmosphere
Presumably you just lay a pipe that goes up the side of Everest and free power!<p>I wonder if the author asked the question &quot;Why don&#x27;t we have tornadoes all the time?&quot;<p>If they had, that would have lead them to the physics of tornadoes. In my case it was the physics of so called &#x27;dust devils&#x27; in the desert which are much smaller phenomena but based on the same ideas. Warm air rising through cooler air.<p>You might ask, but why don&#x27;t we have them all the time? And the answer is that as air goes up, it spreads out, and as it spreads out it becomes less dense, and the lack of density is perceived as a colder &#x27;temperature&#x27; even though the air molecules still have more kinetic energy and are thus &#x27;hotter&#x27;.<p>In the video the tube is supposed to constrain the air (which it will) and the warmer air will rise inside of it, but without an energy source the warm air rises until its &#x27;weight&#x27; is equivalent to the un-risen air underneath it, at which point it stops rising and the system is stable. If you were to cool off the bottom the air would start sinking again.<p>This has been experienced time and again by inexperienced makers of fires in their fireplaces. If you don&#x27;t put enough energy into the air to make it rise, it comes back down the chimney and fills your living space with smoke. A fireplace is a remarkable little machine, where the fire heats the air, which pulls in more air as the air above rises, which puts more oxygen into the fire and increases its energy output etc. But without the fire burning in the fireplace the air stops moving.<p>Tornadoes benefit from a mass of really cold air sitting on top of warm air. This does two things, one the cold air above pushes down on the warm air to pressurize it, and two when a &quot;hole&quot; begins forming in the cold air mass it operates like an inverted tub drain and the warm air starts draining out of the tub. The energy source for a tornado is the temperature differential that is set up by the result of moisture condensing out of the air and super cooling the air around it.<p>Similarly a hurricane is powered by the temperature differential between the ocean and the air above it.<p>All three systems (fireplace, tornado, hurricane) share a common theme, there has to be a source of energy for them to operate. Without it, the air reaches equilibrium and just sits there. No magic allowed.<p>That said, if instead you built a <i>tunnel</i>, then you could connect two different air masses and extract energy from two different pressure differentials. The most interesting ideas have a tunnel under the Rockies or under the Sierras between the Mojave desert on one side and the milder (and moister) climate on the other. To the delta you can get from that is linear with respect to distance and&#x2F;or a geographic feature that can inhibit the natural balancing of the air masses (like a range of tall mountains).<p>Sadly neither super chimneys nor lighter than air vacuum balloons are workable ideas.<p>Edit: It occurs to me that if you could make the chimney high enough you could put the top in the underside of the jetstream, then you could suck air up using the venturi effect.