SF fen have (I think because of the demise of the mags, as a market for short stories) gotten a bit wimpy about disasters. I don’t hear the kind of dialogue that used to go on at cons, ie, how do we geeky guys save the world from—be it asteroid impact or fuel shortage or whatever.
Time for some positive thinking, people. The planet’s got plenty of energy. But sf-dom has gotten seduced by the glitzy special effects of the movies into doing too much gosh-wow and not enough how-to.
Why do I say the planet’s got plenty of energy? Because it does. Wind, tide, gravity (water movement)…all these things are there to use: the Sun minute by minute blasts enough energy for all of human history past us, and someday we’ll retrieve a fraction of that. But what hits this atmosphere and what happens as a result of tidal forces is plenty for any application. We’ve been grubbing up the muck from the destroyed forests of dino days and boo-hooing that the world is coming to an end because we’re running out of it…
Worse, we’ve let the short-term pundits infect kids with that defeatist notion, and a lot of kids shooting up and partying like there’s no tomorrow are underinformed. Way underinformed. There’s plenty of energy for the third world; there’s plenty for us. What we need to do is use it. Global warming’s become an untouchable phrase on a lot of boards because it’s (shudder) political. Well, there’s nothing political about it. The planet’s ice caps are melting. We’re continuing a melt that started 13,000 years ago, possibly hurried on by an asteroid impact, but whether or not human activity has accelerated the final stages of the melt is really a silly debate. The fact there’s ocean where there should be ice is pretty incontrovertible. And again, if we stand pointing fingers at this side and that side instead of applying our ingenuity to the question, we’re fools. It is possible—just possible—that our pollution has actually staved off a faster melt. It’s possible it’s accelerated it. We don’t know that. And it doesn’t matter at this point. The question is whether we want to bring things back to where they were in, say, the 1890’s. And can we?
Possibly we can. There are techniques like cloud-creation. There are ways in which we can modify planetary weather. We kinda want to be right when we sink all our megabucks into doing one particular thing, but personally I think we need some sf folk talking about the problems without wearing political badges while doing it: just the badge that says ‘fan’ and convention member, eh? and quit stamping red or blue on certain ideas…(American fans will know what I mean). We need to do something outrageous like pick a course of action and actually kick the planetary machinery and see if we can budge the numbers; and if we succeed in budging them, see what other numbers react. That’s my opinion.
I think the problem with river and sea turbines is the problem you have been fighting since Winter: very high maintenance due to growth of algae etc. Such power is just indirect solar energy, so my thinking is why not go direct?
Solar cells, as a rough estimate, can provide a kilowatt per day per 20 square feet with current technology. That’s not peak, but average. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation
Large scale solar installations in deserts can provide day and night power by simply storing the heat much as you store hot coffee in a Thermos.
Ah, me, but without lawyers we would have to go back to whacking the miscreants with swords, which is just a constant job.
You can also convert this green plague into biomass to make fuel. They should put me in charge of that! I have a perfect system for growing algae!
I find it amusing to read in the various beekeeping magazines (I subscribe to two of them) each month, there’s a “cause/cure de jour” for colony collapse disorder. My studies and my questioning competently qualified authorities on beekeeping indicate that this has occurred before and it was called “absconding syndrome” or “disappearing disease” or something like that. I’ll have to go back over the articles and see if the evidence is supported by scientific research. My “girls” seem to be doing quite well in the returning home department. That hive is seriously full of workers, so that I need to do a split to give them more room.
@tyr, in politics, you have to remember that people are basically lazy. They don’t like to have to think and wold prefer their information be given to them a spoonful at a time, such as their daily installment of whatever horrible series they’re watching on TV. For thousands of years, politicians have known that “bread and circuses” will keep the population manageable. If you distract them with glitter and gaud, they won’t notice the corruption and filth that has set in behind the scenes. I would like to have seen the “Contract With America” that Newt (a small salamander) Gingrich “promised” during the ’96 elections. Once the Republicans got into office, the contract was no longer “operable”, and so was scrapped. I would also like to have seen term limitations take over, where no Congressman can serve more than 3 terms in office, and cannot run for Senator until having served a 6 year moratorium in political office. Campaign funds should be limited to a fixed amount, no candidate may use more than that amount, even if it’s out of their own pocket. All expenses must be accountable. That’s probably unrealistic, but holding accountable your representatives in office is not. The reason they vote the way they do is that individuals rarely write, call, email, their representatives. I can understand not being able to talk directly with my Senators, there are 2 of them, and at last count, about 11.5 million Ohioans. My Congressman sometimes calls me and asks me to participate in a “teleconference town hall meeting”, as well as actual town hall meetings in person. I don’t agree with everything he votes on, but he knows my views. The vast majority of people won’t do that because 1) they believe their voice doesn’t matter 2) they think they won’t be taken seriously since big money speaks louder than they possibly could Even the aiji and Master Emuin knew that the governed MUST have access to the governors without having to go through flunkies. Is it feasible? I don’t know.
If there were an inexpensive means of converting the energy from the sun or other alternative sources into the electrolysis of Dihydrogen Oxide and rendering its constituent elements separate, we could invest in fuel cell technology. The only product of which is some heat and water vapor. Yes, the hydrogen is highly flammable (so is gasoline), it’s bulky (so is a 13 gallon steel tank under my trunk), you can’t drive very far on a fillup (well, given the monsters like the Hummer H2, Cadillac Escalade, Ram 4500 pickup trucks, F450 pickup trucks, etc. that some people are driving at 75+ mph and getting maybe 2 gallons to the mile, maybe fuel cells, not having the characteristic internal combustion engine roar are much more calming and will convince people to conserve. You need to get somewhere in a hurry? Take the train. Rebuild the infrastructure of transportation so that it supports fewer cars. We always seem to think the solution to traffic congestion is to build more roads, wider roads, faster roads. I’ve seen where there were proposals to charge a toll for the use of the HOV lanes in some areas. To my thinking, that’s wrong. In order to get people to use the HOV lanes, charge a toll to the people who are driving solo on the regular lanes, and don’t let them drive on the HOV lanes at all. Inner cities that are being renovated for new high rise condominiums (the modern day equivalent of the tenement) should have the renovation diverted to more green space. Parks, playgrounds, gardens, arboreta, a small 9-hole golf course, whatever, but not more asphalt and concrete. Rooftop gardens on the buildings, and they would also attract honey bees to the flowers), use of turbines for generating auxiliary power in buildings, if for nothing else than to keep air conditioning machinery running.
As you said, the human species is not vital to the ecosystems of this planet. There are plenty of other species that can coexist on the planet without causing pollution, blocking off essential waterways, clearing swamps, generating toxic wastes that are more dangerous than the chemicals that were used to make the waste. You get my drift.
There’s no easy solution, there are no right or wrong ways, unless we choose to continue bumbling down the same path we started 160 years ago or so.
Just a factual point to correct first: It is possible to generate enough energy with solar power to meet the needs of a home. My brother’s home has solar panels on the garage that meet all the power requirements of the home. (In fact, since he no longer has a long-haired exchange student who spent a lot of time with the hairdryer, the place now puts more power into the grid than they use.)
Businesses have to adapt to reality, though they will also exploit market failures; if the government allows the assets of the commons to be taken by private industry without compensation to the community, that’s a loophole businesses can and will continue to profit from. Governments continue to, for example, subsidize industrial and agricultural uses of water without considering environmental impact. The Chinese are facing daunting environmental challenges, but the odds are they are smart enough not to commit self-genocide, so they will be forced to adopt sustainable economic practices. When they do, the amount of pressure they will bring to bear against environmental laggards will be signficant.
The political issue in the US (and it is mostly a US problem) is not so much about costs as about admitting error at all. There are factions that can’t ever admit that, say, “liberals” are ever even a little bit right, and those factions are going to scream and block progress as long as they can. Given this problem, some people see a need to address the political issues first in order to be allowed to implement technical solutions. The desire for non-partisan or bi-partisan solutions is understandable but is just being exploited as an opportunity for delay and obstruction by the anti-environmentalists. If compromise can’t be achieved, revolution is preferable and more logical than extinction.
Here’s an alternative view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1D4OE1kUIo
This has quite a following among the youngers.
Politics is all about compromises, but it is also about getting elected.
A lawyer (most of our elected officials in USA) who makes enough money
to get elected is a terrible choice to make technical decisions in an
age when every decision requires some understanding of the problems.
Housing: straw bales stacked for walls and plastered with local dirt
mixed with a binder are a building material that is cheap, plentiful,
cooler in summer, warmer in winter, easy to repair or modify than the
normal house. Try running down to your government to get a permit when
the whole civil engineering, real estate and construction industry
has written the codes to deliberately block innovation. Then go to
your elected lawyer and explain you want to tamper with this holy writ
because of some idea about making the world a better place to be.
The whole webwork of society is tangled in things like this some with
badly interpreted Roman law leftover from the renaissance. Possibilities
exist, but implementation has to start where it will do some good.
Municipalities routinely exterminate bee swarms and keepers are always
having problems with fools who would starve to death without the pollination
done by those humble creatures. Trying to explain this to a creature
whose life has revolved around torts, liabilities and lawsuits is an uphill
struggle even if they happen to be marginally intelligent.
This year I have eaten pomegranates, cherries, plums, tangelos, lemons, oranges,
nectarines and grapefruit from trees on a suburb lot. We have also grown onions, garlic,
strawberries, beets, chard, beans and tomatoes. Hard to believe that most of the
plants in the yard are flowers, but it is true. So this saved gasoline hauling
food, removed CO2, produced O2 and good healthy food too.
The individual human being is the center of importance in their life. Grandiose
schemes done by giant corporations and governments to repair the damage done by
the individuals is how we got into the current mess where everyone can pick out
a scapegoat or point to a villain. So global awareness is fine but local actions
is where the real cutting edge of the solution is.
What truly annoys me is the squabbling over limited energy, limited resources and
the idea that if we could just go back to neolithic scrounging nomads it would
be Rousseaus paradise. We are supposed to be building the core of a starship at L5
and using the tech to mine the asteroid belt, collect energy from space and get
our hydrocarbons from the gas giants.
One other recommendation: instead of an hour of TV, try authors@google on YouTube
or just type something at random into the YouTube search. If you are getting your
worldview from the consensual reality built by the infotainment media corporations
you are being cheated out of more than just the ecological future.
GRIN and I just found a nine volume history of India on archive.org, since they are
the most populous country on earth maybe we need to know how 2.4 billion of us got
where they are, it has pictures too.
My thanks to the gracious hostess here for use of her soapbox again.
I saw an article that suggested the bee problem was caused by nicotine in pesticides,and that, perhaps in Europe, once they figured that out and stopped using that particular pesticide the bee population recovered.
We looked into solar panels a while back but we would have had to have cut down some huge old trees to have had enough sun to make it feasible. I am hoping the technology will improve to permit us to do it later.
But in the sun states perhaps all new construction should be required to incorporate solar power. [I know you all hate lawyers and laws but sometimes they are beneficial, and not all lawyers are hidebound stick in the muds]
I am a firm believer in technology…but I am also a firm believer in making it low-impact while we’re at it. Like the Ruwanda situation. Long-life batteries are doing harm to the environment and exacerbating a situation in the country. I don’t know what can be found to replace the minerals in question, but I would say exploration for other sources is top of the list, and Canada is a good bet. Recycling is a good bet.
The model where we make big smokestacks and dump everything in the river has been replaced, but not all over the world: that’s got to go.
And in general—technology should make things efficient, small, low-impact, and recyclable. Disposable is one of the stupidest ideas going.
I do believe in “think globally, act locally.” One reason we’re going, if not xeriscape in the front yard, at least typical-ecosystem for the Washington wilds—is we’re tired of pouring money down the drain, we’re tired of flinging multi-gallons of water on the front lawn, plus all the chemicals. We figure living in our own little woods would be good, right smack in the middle of the city—so we’ll be sopping up some of the emissions from Ash Avenue, which is a major N-S arterial right at our curb. Our back yard uses water, but it will use less and less of it as we have to wash the filter less, and as conditioned ground and mulch and developing shade protect the water we put on. As for what’s in the pond—it stays there.
And we’re getting a lot of interest from the neighbors, who are looking to see what we’re developing and realizing it can be a DIY. Our urban front/side yard has or will have:
3 40-50 foot hemlocks, 2 baby Canadian hemlocks, a 6′ blue spruce, 4-5 blue spruce seedlings; 8 big junipers, 20 more baby junipers, 6 rhody-azalea types; 3 dogwoods, including red-twig dogwood and 2 trees, several low-water bushes, 6′ barberry, 6′ mock orange; a dawn redwood; a magnolia, and various cypress, roses, and pointatillas. The thing I find poetic—I’ve excavated for Stone Rose museum up at Republic, and the species we’re putting in are what existed in the Eocene around that ancient lake. We’re just puttin’ back what wuz here before there were people.
I live more or less next door to a long closed nuclear recovery plant. It has the dubious honor of having one of the few, if not only, civilian plant to have an accident with death resulting. I say accident but it was in reality due to human sloppiness and stupidity. With that in mind I think that the military with all it’s nitpicking regulations is the only agency that has any qualification to run nuclear power. That said I still don’t know what we do with the waste.
At present the Southern New England coast is caught up in NIMBY wars over off shore wind turbines. I see photos of wind turbines in other countries; they seem to have an austere beauty that is not at odds with the land.
I live in an electric house out of necessity, but am looking at solar for lot water and to power electricity for the pool and the pond (Yes, we are getting closer. 🙂 ) My pond guy lives completely off the grid, powers his car on waste oil from restaurants. He’s great for brain picking.
Tile making in the heat of the day. Waiting to fire the kilns until we get some cooler nights.
Sign seen by friends in three languages many years ago in France. Picnicers, Keep Grounds Clean. Throw Trash in River.
Buckminster Fuller: The only reason we don’t have solar power is that the utility companies haven’t figured out a way to put a meter between the sun and the customer.
One thing that is in the works, but I haven’t heard much about is solar paint. It would turn the surface of what’s painted into solar cells. Imagine the roofs of large buildings being a power resource? I don’t know the details, but that’s the concept. Various groups are working on it.
There is also an insulative paint rumored to be used on tanks, etc.
And a rumored solar cell window: ie, sun hits your window and gets converted to electricity.
Here’s the thing about technology: it takes dirty stuff to get it high enough to be clean again. Once the industrial/consumer base is high enough, you can produce the kinds of things that will reduce its harm and actually benefit the environment. The 20th century was the roughest era, and the dirtiest. The job of science fiction is to tell people it doesn’t stop there: that we are now in a period in which we can use our miniaturization and exotic energy-gathering to live within the planet’s proper solar budget…including shaping the whole planet so it doesn’t crash into another inhospitable era of heating or cooling.
It’s like being in a cave and having the decision whether to make it nice and, more, make nice durable—or continue to live at the mercy of whatever comes. “Natural” is a tricky word. Human-friendly conditions are natural. So is an ice age: so is a global hothouse. However—if we can use our collective smarts and become good sensible stewards of the planet, we can, I am firmly convinced, trim its extremes and maintain its circulations of heat and cold in the nicely balanced way our species likes. There is nothing destructive about being sure the thermohaline conveyor (which maintains even heating/cooling of the oceans) continues to run nicely, and run as long as the plate tectonics/geology support that configuration of ocean currents. By the time the plates have shifted enough to do something else, at the rate your fingernails grow (the speed of plate movement) we will have ample time to do something else—or watch a new circulation grow.
In the meanwhile, it IS possible to prevent an asteroid impact. It is probably possible to break up an F5 hurricane or tornado, or at least to steer one. It is possible to predict tsunamis far enough in advance in most cases to give people a chance. Ultimately we will know enough to preserve our own ideal conditions pretty nicely, and give ourselves time to study the cycles enough to know what needs to happen to have a healthy planet. Nature itself is not kind to planets. We have dead worlds in our solar system to teach us that. So let’s use our smarts and take care of the nice one that gave us birth.
It would not be economical to power my house with solar. I have a very large maple tree in the southwest corner that provides afternoon shade. Since the tree would block the sunlight to the panels, it’s not feasible. I will not sacrifice the tree to save money on electricity. I’m not sure the correct term is generate more energy. The energy we receive from the sun was there since the Big Bang, it’s just been converted into different forms of energy or matter. The energy we receive from our star is converted here on planet Earth to other forms of energy, be it heat, light, photosynthesis, etc. We need to use the energy we have wisely, but if we’re robbing the planet of fossil fuels, we’re not being very wise.
Sorry, it’s Monday, I’m not coherent yet.
No,no, Joe, your 50 year old giant carbon recycler and solar radiation absorber is shielding your house during summer and admitting solar heat during winter, and it IS saving you money on cooling systems while reducing your carbon footprint on the earth. 🙂 The best time to install solar is at the inception of a house, before you have sunk thousands into a furnace/ac unit—but recycling an older house and simply making it as efficient as possible by using electricity and water wisely and NOT cutting down a 50 year old giant carbon recycler is a positive.
And on the act locally front, don’t forget the humble solar cooking oven. Great in the summer when you don’t want to heat the house by cooking. Cooks beans, veg, chickens, bread … I just carted the one my mother made thirty years ago out to my place in the country that has a big open field next to the house so I can use it again. Her house, where I live mostly, does simply have so many trees that the oven is not very feasible. In the seventies and eighties we had it in an old Safeway cart and moved it around the yard to follow the sunny areas, but the trees have grown even more, so that there hardly are any such ares for more than a couple of hours. (ummm, I’m not just quite sure how we acquired the Safeway cart 😉
CJ, I don’t want that tree removed, trimmed, pruned, groomed, or shaped. It’s fine the way it is, and I’ve only lost a couple of limbs during an ice storm and they fell across my power lines, ripping them out of the house and then off the pole, too. No, I like my trees.
On the beekeeping side, we melt the wax from the cappings on the honey supers we harvest. I am currently building a solar wax melter, but there are even cheaper ways, take an old picnic cooler chest, you don’t need the lid. It’s recommended you use plastic containers that are wider at the top than the bottom, put a half-inch of water in them, cover with a paper towel, and place the wax on top of the towel, put the glass over the top, and let it cook. The paper towel strains the wax, it’s a nice canary yellow if you use new cappings, and it’s easy to get out of the containers when it cools. The water prevents it from sticking to the sides of the containers. You can then take the paper towels and give them to friends who camp, and they can be used as fire starters. The wax is then ready for whatever you want to do with it, candles, gifts, etc. There are tons of recipes for natural cosmetics made with beeswax, look at Burt’s Bees for an example.
I deplore the loss of any tree in the yard, as much as I deplore the loss of the farmland around me as it is put up for sale for more houses, more stores (and parking lots), and more heat buildup in the area. I have to find the receipt for the cherry tree in the yard that didn’t make it, and get a replacement from Lowes. The other one is doing well in its spot.
In the series Blue Planet, or maybe it was Planet Earth, they said that the evergreen forests of the Northern Hemisphere were the largest source of oxygen for the atmosphere. Even the sea does give up oxygen as well as absorb it.
I’ve also read that hurricanes exist for a good reason, they promote circulation of vast masses of air. The constant flow of cold water from the Southern Ocean to the Arctic and the subsequent upwelling is a 1200 year cycle, but without it, the Arctic would be a barren desert.
I’ve taken an Oceanography course in college, you learn a lot about other things than the ocean, because having 7/10 of the planet covered by the seas, there’s a lot going on there that we don’t see. Sir Arthur C. Clarke said in one of his essays that he was not as interested in exploring space in his later years as he was interested in exploring the oceans. Life began there, we need to remember that and protect what we have. Not by chanting slogans, or protesting, but actually getting involved and working with all parties involved to come up with a solution that benefits everyone. Too many times I see people complain about something, but offer no suggestions for a solution. The old saying, “If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” might be applicable for a lot of those people.
‘Nuff ranting.
One of our friends is involved in designing and making those ever-more-efficient solar panels, and has even offered to help us set up an initial set. Cost for the first 2 panels and associated hardware to make a viable system? About $6k. It’s expandable, so any time we have an extra $3k we can add another panel, but at those scales of economy, it’s hard to justify. That type of initial outlay would substantially clean out our savings, even if we could jiggle a tax rebate out of the government for it. Another hurdle is getting permits to set up the hardware, inverters, etc., which even in this enormously eco-friendly state is difficult. It will take years for the payback. I think many people would like to do more and bigger green things, but the initial cost threshold is very high for an individual.
We have a line of windmills along one ridge producing about 10% of our island’s power. The main objection came not from the power company, but from well meaning activists who swore they would lead to bird kill the likes of which God had not seen, from birds flying into the blades, and that “where they are, they’re ugly”. Birds ain’t that bright, but they are smarter than that. So far, there are no huge piles of dead birds around the windmills, and there are plans for another chain. I personally find the windmills futuristically graceful.
I find something leisurely and graceful about the big windmills. On Crete, cloth-sailed windmills rotate endlessly, like so many moths on the mountainsides, and I’d be happy to see them here. I’d far rather windmills than smokestacks. No matter what you want to put up, there’s always somebody to pose the negative. If we listened to them we’d get nothing done. NIMBY. Not in my backyard. Lemme tell you, there’ll be lots more birds around those windmills than in the effluent from coalfired stacks. And our lungs will be better for them. A bird that can’t miss one of those is dim, Jim, dim.
I think that an individual household contemplating solar should also take a look at a domestic wind turbine, both traditional and vertical (helical). Wind generation has been around for many more decades, and can be a good alternative where sunshine is less reliable. There are potentially noise issues with a windmill: those also have to be taken into account. Community push at a utility to go over to the big wind generators is potentially more cost-effective.
Hurricanes absolutely have a positive value, although of course it would be hard to find anyone in New Orleans or Galveston to agree. Without them, north Texas would have pretty much no rain at all in the summer; they fling that Gulf moisture up here so the heat-spawned convection thunderstorms can dump it on us. (right now would be nice, please…)
Not to mention Mexico, etc. Diverting a storm that is about to become a serious danger or lessening one before it arrives is conceivable. This lets areas get the rain, as it breaks up, but not the tremendous destruction. I spent many years in Oklahoma hoping for a hurricane to hit somewhere harmless and head straight for us…it’s the relief in summer heat and drought.
Thought about what I would do to help the create energy and change the environment. Here is what I came up with:
Solar powered stills that could either create alcohol for fuel or separate water into its base elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen could be used for fuel and the oxygen being released might help air quality like trees do.
Of course there are drawbacks. Though fairly simple, the stills could be dangerous to the average user. Producing hydrogen is not for the layman. Alcohol production would be regulated by the ATF, which has many problems. That is why ethanol never caught on with farmers, the ATF limited the size and made them jump through too many hoops.
Then there is exchanging one problem for another, water shortages. If water produced hydrogen caught on, water would be a scarcer commodity. Unless you lived next to an ocean. Then you would have lots of salt too.
There is no easy solution, but that was the best one I could think of on my own.