[eykanal]

> Sorenson notes there is more than three quadrillion gallons of water in the air, which is essentially a massive untapped resource.

For what it's worth, air with low humidity can be pretty damaging. Lots of materials would become excessively brittle at very low humidities, causing them to break easily. This interesting white paper [1] suggests that, for most materials, the optimal humidity is between 40-60%.

Still, this is a very cool concept.

[1] http://www.descoenergy.com/pdf/Humidity%20How%20it%20affects...

[james4k]

This might be true, but the atmosphere is also very good at reabsorbing water. Especially if humidity levels would be lower than normal.

[mylittlepony]

I thought that would happen, it's kind of intuitive.

[ars]

Any water you capture will just be sent back into the air later. Think of what you drink - all of it end up in the air or land again later.

[ajuc]

The important thing is the speed of capturing and returning the water to the air, not only the fact that it will be eventually returned.

When we change one or both of the speeds - the balance shifts, and the effective humidity of air changes to new stable value.

[ars]

But there is a feedback loop - the faster you take the water, the slower you can get it.

And the more water is returned the faster it ends up in the air. My estimate from wind speeds is that everything will stabilize within 2 days.

i.e. taking water from the air will have no impact. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4816580 where I expanded on the topic a bit.