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After Fossil Fuels
By finnsawyer, Section Rants & Opinion Posted on Sat Apr 10th, 2004 at 10:54:52 AM MST
It seems we're missing the big picture.

All the energy the earth would need is going past it 24/7. And scientists say its good for 4 billion years. We could do it today. I'm talking about putting solar collectors in space, concentrating the sun's energy, converting it to a coherent form (microwaves), and transmitting it to an unpopulated region of the earth (say Death Valley across from Lalaland). There it's converted to sixty cycle energy and fed to the grid. So, use up the fossil fuels. The only question is what do we then use to run our cars? Hope? Think outside the box!

After Fossil Fuels | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 editorial)

Re: After Fossil Fuels (none / 0) (#1)
by bkrahmer on Wed Apr 14th, 2004 at 11:53:41 AM MST
(User Info)

Thinking outside the box is good. However, your big picture has a flaw in it.

> So, use up the fossil fuels.

Using up all the fossil fuels will put so much CO2 into the atmosphere that the weather cycles will be permanently altered and the oceans will rise 23-50 feet. I would ask that unless you truly believe that these results would be acceptable, that you dismiss this idea.

cheers

Re: After Fossil Fuels (none / 0) (#2)
by finnsawyer on Thu Apr 15th, 2004 at 11:51:34 AM MST
(User Info)

The ocean's rising doesn't bother me in the least. They've been rising since the last ice age. As far as the amount of CO2 that humans are producing, the last time I saw the figures I did a calculation of the amount per square inch over the earth. It was not significant compared to the fifteen pounds per square inch of existing air pressure. It appears that natural processes produce a lot more CO2 each year than humans do.

Anyway, at 93 watts per square foot collecting the sun's energy may ultimately be the way to go. I recently saw a TV program which discussed putting such power generators on the moon. The down side for that is 2 weeks of darkness. Getting the power to the earth is a problem. Perhaps a system could be developed that energizes the ionosphere allowing anyone to tap into the power without having dangerous beams impacting the earth. My purpose with my original posting was to suggest that the entire energy problem might be solved in ways that are not obvious today. That might also solve the problem of burning fossil fuels. The more I think about this the more I wonder why we haven't heard about research in this area.
GeoM
[ Parent ]

Re: After Fossil Fuels (none / 0) (#3)
by devoncloud on Fri Apr 16th, 2004 at 04:47:42 PM MST
(User Info)

I like your idea of thinking outside the box, but your outlook on using up the rest of our environmental hazardous energies is much more harmful than just the CO2 and the level of the ocean. You can see the differences in our weather patterns. Big deal, right? Wrong. These changes cause horrible dammage. First, an area has years of drought. After the years of horrible drought, all the sudden monsoon weathers. this creates floods that wipes out every bit of nutrient soil in the region. These kinds of changes dessimates the living ballance of the region. So everything that did not die in the floods will die anyway because the region no longer is able to sustain the natural ballance that keeps nature working. Areas that are low water per capita areas will all the sudden dry up completely, meaning no drinking water for entire Cities. California and Texas are both very susceptible to this and desalinization of ocian water can only go so far.

We still have not even gone into the fact that rich farm lands will be useless due to either bad drought, too much rain, or flooding. Let's not even mention the fact plowing the soil as often as they do kills the earth worms... this does not seem like such a bad thing right? Well, earthworms break down organic matterial so that the microorganisms in soil that create the nitrogen plants need to grow can digest it properly. All they would have to do is reintroduce more worms every year to combat the problem, but they don't... too much money. The chemicals sprayed on these plants speeds the process of killing this micro bacteria necessary for plant life 100 times faster...

We simply cannot just let fossil fuels run out. we need to show the government that a cleaner solution is the way to go. Completely organic plant growing techniques are proving to work better than chemicals, we just need the government to notice. Wind and solar farms can be put up to make clean energy... we can all conserve on the amount of energy and waste we create.

To think outside the box, you must first recongize what lies inside the box.
Devon

[ Parent ]

Re: After Fossil Fuels (none / 0) (#4)
by finnsawyer on Mon Apr 19th, 2004 at 09:09:37 PM MST
(User Info)

Some time ago I saw a posting by a person from India concerning the apparent effects of a large wind farm. According to him the area around the wind farm received considerably less rainfall after the wind farm was built. Cause and effect or coincidence? Who knows? The one thing that is sure is that taking energy from the wind stream reduces its speed. Do this on a large scale and ...? It's conceivable that these alternate energy systems can also have detrimental effects.
GeoM
[ Parent ]

Re: After Fossil Fuels (none / 0) (#5)
by anon123 on Sat May 8th, 2004 at 06:45:12 AM MST
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people seem to forget that if we use up fossil fuels we use up our most valuable resource. Fossil fuels are not just a source of energy they are a source of chemicals for medicines, plastics and a whole load of other important things. Your computer keyboard is probably plastic derived from crude oil, you probably can't count the number of plastic things you have got in your house. So after we have heated up the planet, thereby making it a cosy habitat for infectious diseases of all kinds (think typhoid and malaria) we won't have anything to make medicines to cure us and we won't have anything to wrap our sandwiches in. We need coal, oil and gas to make all sorts of things other than energy, so don't plan on using it up too quickly.

Re: After Fossil Fuels (none / 0) (#7)
by finnsawyer on Sun May 16th, 2004 at 10:20:33 AM MST
(User Info)

In many cases plastics can (and maybe should) be replaced by metals, mainly iron. Of course, given enough energy from space we can synthesize all the hydrocarbons we want. My original point was that the eventual depletion of fossil fuels might not be the disaster everyone predicts. If Haliburton suddenly starts showing an interest in space based systems take notice.

Think outside the box.
GeoM
[ Parent ]

Re: After Fossil Fuels (none / 0) (#6)
by Xavy on Sat May 8th, 2004 at 07:39:52 PM MST
(User Info)

Think of all the horse shi$! 5KW generators for each house require 10 HP or think Budweiser, Clydesdales!

Xavy

After Fossil Fuels | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 editorial)

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