It's still simply a matter of time.
Solar energy will dominate. It'll take a while, but it's enivitable that human civilization will come to draw virtually all its energy from the continuous stream of sunlight that has, after all, been the energy source for development of life on earth for the billions of years.
How's that for solar absolutism!
It's hard to argue that something like nuclear - fission or fusion - with barely 50 years of human experience could possibly be a better investment bet than learning ever better ways to use the the sun's energy more or less as it comes in.
Of course fossil fuels are a lost cause. We've known this was coming for a long time. There's a limited supply we're using up ever more rapidly, and the environmental pollution resulting from their use is a mounting disaster.
So what's left? Tides? Geothermal?
Tidal energy drawn from the gravitational interaction of the moon, earth and sun is fantastic - clean, reliable, and essentially inexhaustable. But tidal energy is goegraphically localized and compared to the sun or even to geothermal is not all that big.
So how big is the sun? In terms of energy. In a word: Big. SIt comes in 10,000 times faster than we currently use energy - all energy - all of us - worldwide - for everything - agriculture, transportation, electricity, commerce, industry, everything. 10,000 times. We oughta be able to make that work.
Geothermal energy - extracting heat from the molten core of the earth - is big all right, and even though it's also geographically localized to a good extent, it suffers from two long term problems. First, you can't use too much of it since the more heat you draw out of the center of the earth for use up here on the surface, the hotter it'll get up here on the surface. Not a problem until you've drawn up a lot of heat over a long time - kind of like the situation we've experienced with fossil fuel pollution. It didn't matter until it got too big. The second problem is that some seothermal energy extraction techniques also draw not-so-beneficial chemicals and compounds out of the bowels of the earth, which have to be contained or dealt with carefully. Again, not a problem as long as we're careful - you know, a bit more careful than we've been with fossil fuels or nuclear.
But all this stuff takes time. Time to discover the benefits and effectiveness of efficiency, time to wean from fossil fuels, time to let go of the nuclear fantasy, and time to get better and better at using the sun.
Yup, it's all just a matter of time.
So what does this have to do with cats?
How's that for solar absolutism!
It's hard to argue that something like nuclear - fission or fusion - with barely 50 years of human experience could possibly be a better investment bet than learning ever better ways to use the the sun's energy more or less as it comes in.
Of course fossil fuels are a lost cause. We've known this was coming for a long time. There's a limited supply we're using up ever more rapidly, and the environmental pollution resulting from their use is a mounting disaster.
So what's left? Tides? Geothermal?
Tidal energy drawn from the gravitational interaction of the moon, earth and sun is fantastic - clean, reliable, and essentially inexhaustable. But tidal energy is goegraphically localized and compared to the sun or even to geothermal is not all that big.
So how big is the sun? In terms of energy. In a word: Big. SIt comes in 10,000 times faster than we currently use energy - all energy - all of us - worldwide - for everything - agriculture, transportation, electricity, commerce, industry, everything. 10,000 times. We oughta be able to make that work.
Geothermal energy - extracting heat from the molten core of the earth - is big all right, and even though it's also geographically localized to a good extent, it suffers from two long term problems. First, you can't use too much of it since the more heat you draw out of the center of the earth for use up here on the surface, the hotter it'll get up here on the surface. Not a problem until you've drawn up a lot of heat over a long time - kind of like the situation we've experienced with fossil fuel pollution. It didn't matter until it got too big. The second problem is that some seothermal energy extraction techniques also draw not-so-beneficial chemicals and compounds out of the bowels of the earth, which have to be contained or dealt with carefully. Again, not a problem as long as we're careful - you know, a bit more careful than we've been with fossil fuels or nuclear.
But all this stuff takes time. Time to discover the benefits and effectiveness of efficiency, time to wean from fossil fuels, time to let go of the nuclear fantasy, and time to get better and better at using the sun.
Yup, it's all just a matter of time.
So what does this have to do with cats?
5 Comments:
You realize, of course, that all the energy that we have at our disposal (save nuclear) comes from the sun?
Tidal power: drawing power off the things orbitting the sun.
Petroleum products: plants and animals that died a long time ago, preserved as carbon chains. Plants draw from sunlight, animals from plants. Thus, oil is basically a chemical storage mechanism for the energy from sunlight.
Alcohol and biofuels: both are distillates from plants, which are nature's solar collectors
Wind power: solar heating generates wind
So like I said: basically any energy available on earth other than nuclear comes from Sol already.
(:
Yup. Just gotta get better at catching it on the way down.
Actually, my cats and I have hemmed and hawed over this whole classification thing for some time. I suppose ultimately it is a bit arbitrary. I draw my lines around four sources:
1. The sun (in the form of electromagnetic radiation)
2. Gravitational (ocean tides)
3. Geothermal (heat of the core)
4. Nuclear (fission and fusion)
You could say that the first three all more or less came out of the sun, but I tend to think this slice into four sources might have a bit more practical functionality at least on a conceptional level.
Has the invisible paw tapped a calculator to determine, or seen published results indicating, that bringing large amounts of geothermal energy to the surface of the planet would have a significant effect on climate? It seems perhaps the trickier part of geothermal is keeping the heat flow through to the surface stable. Exploiting heat close to the surface usually depletes the local hot finger resource or changes it, or you run out of water to bring it up with. Still, the thermal impact is an interesting question, but I am skeptical that it is much of a concern. The dynamics of thermal energy input and output at the Earth surface and through the atmosphere are likely more critical. I have been similarly wondering about the purely thermal (non greenhouse) impacts of fossil fuel combustion. Short of light and radio waves leaving the planet, the mechanical energy stored in orbiting satellites and massive objects moved against Earth's gravity, and the embodied energy in some materials (reduction of metal ore, etc.), pretty much all the petroleum we burn ends up heating the atmosphere (did I miss any other major energy sinks?). Even the 30% of shaft power we get out of a good heat engine usually ends up as heat at some point, through mechanical friction or electrical IR2 losses. Assuming world consumption per year is about 3*10^10 bbls oil, 3*10^12 m^3 of natural gas, and 6*10^9 tons of coal, and there are about 6*10^9 J/bbl, 4*10^7 J/m^3 , and 2*10^10 J/ton, we get: 2*10^20 J oil, 10^20 J natural gas, 10^20 J coal, for a total 4*10^20 J per year, or in an instantaneous sense, 10^13 W. There are about 10^17 W incident on the Earth, which is consistent with the assertion that solar is 10,000 times more powerful than the status quo energy generation (I guess nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wind, solar and tidal are all in the noise of my slightly sloppy calculation, since I only considered fossil fuels). Anyway, 0.01% more heat generation can be easily radiated into space without much impact on the temperature equilibrium, as long as CO2 buildup doesn't trap it before it can get away. You could bring the same amount of geothermal to the surface with less effect because it wouldn't contribute CO2 (assuming it's not one of the gases released from the bowels of the Earth). There could still be potential thermal impacts to the environment in areas where generation and heat dumping is concentrated. But the same issue pops up for solar, too. If we get our 10^17 W by covering 4*10^14 m^2 of the Earth with collectors designed to get good solar absorption and low long wave emissivity, we are locally decreasing Earth's albedo, requiring rejection of more heat by radiation elsewhere. This is not much different from the fossil fuel situation or a big installation of geothermal. Even if we had an Earth with an overall pre-human albedo, if we take our solar energy from wind and hydro (slowing down air and water), we have changed our environment, to what effect on the climate?. The important questions is what perturbations are most subtle and sustainable. Is it better to slow down some of the natural flows of energy, or invite a bit more energy on the planet knowing that energy will have to be rejected elsewhere to keep things in balance. Which system is more robust? Of course, the less we use the smaller the issue, so demand, is always the first step to controlling the problem.
The real beauty of invisible paws is that they are so completely transparent! . . . and transparency's good, right? Yet its so hard to see why people keep clamoring for increasing transparency, when ultimate transparency is invisibility. How will they ever be able to see what's going on then?
But to your well reasoned concern that increasingly large external injections of heat into the biosphere may not be so much of a problem . . .
Invisible research now believes that the sun plops about 176,000 TeraWatts onto the outer atmosphere of which roughly 120,000 TW hit the ground.
All that solar input eventually leaks back out into outer space sooner or later, since if it didn't, the whole place would just get hotter and hotter - which it doesn't - or at least not solely because of the thermal component of burning fossil fuels. We know that the earth does OK with this more or less constant solar input, and that it hasn't had substantial infusions of external thermal input lately.
Surely If any other non-solar thermal input like geothermal or nuclear started to dump enough heat fast enough, it could present a big thermal problem. Sure, the average temperature of the biosphere would rise and it'd all radiate into outer space faster, but then we're back to having to solve those same old "how big is too big" and "how fast is too fast" questions. Questions far beyond the capacity of a mere comment to handle!
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home