Prunings XXXVIII

Richard Barnes / Animal Logic


On hydropower and why it doesn't count as clean energy.

On Sydney's ocean pools. In B&W but nevertheless absolutely fascinating Suprematist shapes carved into the city's rocky perimeter.

On Minnesota's sensible plan to generate $20 trillion in revenue by diverting water from Lake Superior to the parched Southwest, as reported by Garrison Keillor in 1995.

On Brooke Singer, a Yahoo! Pick profile on the creator of Superfund365.

On underground wind farms. A coalition of local utilities in Iowa is “building a system that will steer surplus electricity generated by a nearby wind farm to a big air compressor (diagram). Connected to a deep well, the compressor pumps air into layers of sandstone. Some 3,000 feet down and sealed from above by dense shale, the porous sandstone acts like a giant balloon. Later, when demand for power rises, this flow is reversed. As the chamber empties, a whoosh of air flows back up the pipe into a natural-gas-fired turbine.”

On ghost craters, uncharted territories, and the organic remains of a former world.