Your point about a constant supply of new air is quite right.

The Whisson turbine still gets water out of the air by cooling it, it’s just that some of the cooling comes from aerodynamic processes rather than a compressor pump. It doesn’t reduce the energy requirements, it just gets them from a potentially lower-cost source which would otherwise be wasted.

I’m still very skeptical until we see an actual working, full-scale model on a roof somewhere.

In Whisson’s gadget you’ve got a constant stream of new air being funnelled through, so there’s be a lot more accessible water, wouldn’t there?

Tanks are going gangbusters, still being subsidised, but mostly people will be using them to do things that are not otherwise allowed like top up swimming pools, water the garden wih a hose, wash cars and wash off the driveway.

Inside you are only allowed to connect the toilet and the laundry.

We have a 10,000 litre tank for outside and are looking at one for those inside functions. We are currently averaging 163 litres pppday (compared with 300 before all this started.) Saving the last 23 litres each to get to 140 will not be easy but with an extra tank we reckon we’ll piss it in!

More to the point, given the global warming zeitgeist, might it not be time for a rethink on things like watertanks and whatnot?

Oh hang on, there’s a whopping great river over the border. Macquarie Bank Malcolm Turnbull will be having that thank you very much.

I understand that alcohol is a diuretic; it makes you put out more liquid than you consume.

Not so.

Coffee, tea, booze can be classed as mild diuretics.

But that only means that if you drink a cup of water you initially retain 100% of it (eventually you piss most of it out), if you drink the same cup of coffee or booze you tend to piss 30% or so of it out a bit quicker.

It’s nonsense, an old Uncles Tale, to claim that it makes you lose more than you drink.

You may retain 30% less of a cup of coffee than a cup of lukewarm water. I know what I prefer.

Robert, I’m not sure what to make of Whisson, but I gather it is not just refrigeration. There is something about the sudden uplift of wind on a smooth surface.

Of the 1200 emails Adams got there were some giving instances of a similar phenomena in ancient times including an African desert beetle a million years ago which used to hold its stomach up to the wind kind of upside down every morning whereupon a few drops of water would run down its back into its mouth. Phillip said he’d tried it but it didn’t work for him.

There were other instances of towers where the wind blew in the bottom and water ran down. Anyway the wind is obviously important, but I’m not sure how important. Whisson said he’d won all the arguments with clever people who said it wouldn’t work, so we’ll see.

Unfortunately the ABC only archive sound for a month and it was early February.

Meanwhile we have dams at 20%, reducing 1% every 5 weeks. At the end of next year we’ll if we don’t get solid rain we’ll have only 125ML pa new water coming in from the desalination plant whereas the need is with modest usage 450ML. I’m interested in anything that doesn’t depend on rain right now. And, yes, Don if I hear more I’ll let you know.

Not if you can get away with the alternative, o Anthropomorphical one. My humble apologies. Can I buy you a … er… drink?