Solving Forever Our Energy Needs

Lightning, they say, is produced by static electricity. However, I thought that static electricity requires a very dry environment … which doesn’t exist in rain storms. Also, lightning is also produced during violent volcanic eruptions which involve lots of water vapor as well as other conducting gases and particulates. In thinking about magnetism and how it can produce electricity (mechanically moving a electrical conductor perpendicular to the flux lines of a magnetic field), I have been struck by how lightning might be produced by this very same process. Think about it … rain storms involve the rapid uprising of thunderheads high into the Earth’s atmosphere (many above 50,000 feet) and volcanoes, the rapid rise of the volcanic plumes to equal or higher elevations. Both these uprisings involve an electrical conductor (mostly water vapor) traveling rapidly through the lower-level flux lines of the Earth’s magnetic field. Why wouldn’t this process mimic a generator? Once this electricity is produced it seeks to ground itself … thus lightning.

If this does more accurately describe the process of lightning generation, then why could mankind not also mimic this process to generate forever all of our Earth’s electricity needs? All we would need is to drag large electrical conductors across the Earth’s magnetic flux lines. Since the Earth itself provides enormous mechanical movement with its spinning, large conductors suspended from geo-synchronous orbiting satellites might well supply unlimited amounts of electrical power to the termini of these conductors down on terra firma. And this electrical power generation process would be greener than green … no carbon emissions, no nuclear waste, no acid-rain producing sulfur emissions, no more Al Gore pontificating. Yes, I expect that there would be enormous engineering difficulties to be overcome to build such a geo-generator, but surely it would be worth it. Tell me if and where I am off the mark.