Stumble it!Imagine a vat of liquid cow manure
posted in Global Warming, Politics, Society by themaiden |I’ve written here and there about climate change and I also think that I’ve mentioned my fetish for technology. The problem, rather obviously, is that technology requires power. I like power. I do not wish to return to those halcyon days when long distance travel meant going to the next town and ingrown toenails were a serious medical condition. Not my bag, baby.
The trick then is to generate power without killing ourselves in the process. And that is quite a trick, but I don’t think it is impossible. I’ve made a few offhand comments on the topic.
Restricting carbon emissions does not equate directly to reducing the production of energy. More efficient engines mean the same power and less carbon, for example. I also happen to like nuclear power, especially the metal cooled hot reactors. Solar is minimally viable right now and we have enough wind to completely replace the fossil fuel plants, but the infrastructure required for the latter would be expensive.
The trick is going to be in a large scale restructuring of our power infrastructure. We are going to have to abandon massive ‘point’ power production like we currently have with coal and oil burning power plants and spread the power generation over many smaller facilities that can exploit resources heretofore overlooked. Such as?
On a dairy farm in the Golden State’s agricultural heartland, utility PG&E Corp began on Tuesday producing natural gas derived from manure, in what it hopes will be a new way to power homes with renewable, if not entirely clean, energy.
The Vintage Dairy Biogas Project, the brainchild of life- long dairyman David Albers, aims to provide the natural gas needed to power 1,200 homes a day, Albers said at the facility’s inauguration ceremony.
California cows start passing gas to the grid | U.S. | Reuters
Another example of the same strategy:
Two square miles of Californian rooftops will be blanketed with the country’s largest solar installation - a collector cell array that could power the equivalent of about 162,000 homes by 2010 - if Southern California Edison’s $875 million bid is approved by state regulators. Governor Schwarzenegger has already endorsed the project, praising it for its potential to “set off a huge wave of renewable energy growth,” reports Reuters.
Californian Utility to Blanket Rooftops with Nation’s Largest Solar Collector Cell Installation
Biofuels like Ethanol, as it is currently produced anyway, are not the solution. It is idiotic to burn as fuel what you can eat as food. Its a bit like raising cattle so you can throw them in the furnace for winter heat. Dumb. Burning old grease from a restaurant as biodiesel? Great. Fermenting wood chips from a sawmill to produce alcohol fuels? Fine. Commiting cropland to raising corn so that you can make ethanol? Stupid.
What these strategies mean, by the way, is that people are going to have to stop whining and crying about how ugly the wind farms are and about how the solar panels ruin the ‘feel’ of the neighborhood. Sorry folks but unless you want to re-enact the 1700s, get over it. That, though, is another story for another time.
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