Gott in himmel.
Under normal circumstances I'd dismiss this as the usual Silly Season padding - but for the fact that the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the representatives and standard-bearers of my profession, have pinned their name to it. So now it's no longer a farce - it's a tragedy. This is just the kind of moronic mega-engineering bloke-in-a-shed sort of stuff that we should be avoiding - one of these might be far more efficient than a real tree, but the technical problems are still vast, the outcome is uncertain, and the cost (both financial and environmental) is going to be high.
My message to the IMechE is: be ashamed of your pompous, overstuffed selves. Drag your sorry asses out of the Victorian era and recognize that the world will not be saved by giant steel structures, but by doing small, boring things on a massive scale - like, for example, insulating houses. The IMechE could do so much more by mobilizing its members to voluntarily go and install insulation in houses. But no, it pays academics to come up with dross like this instead. Lordy lord. Good grief. Engineers are supposed to be down-to-earth types! This is so typical of the IMechE - technically sexy but completely otherworldly. Idiots.
