Yesterday my friends and I were discussing possible ways to clean up the planet on a global scale. We came up with some very simple ideas that we realize we could not have been the first to come up with. So I will put it to people much smarter then me. Why are we as a people not using these ideas to make this dirt ball a better place?
Landfills could be placed in active volcanoes or shot into the sun.
Solar powered carbon scrubbers (like on the space shuttle) could be placed in unmanned blimps and flown virtually 24/7 over city’s with heavy pollution problems like LA and Tokyo
A large portion of uninhabited desert could be converted to solar farms. (Not using solar cells but using mirrors to direct light at a tower to heat water.) Even being inefficient it will still provide some clean power to the grid
These are just some of the ideas that we came up with. As you can see it’s nothing revolutionary but why isn’t it being done? Any thoughts?
Moving things into volcanos is a real pain in the arse. It’s just not economical. COnsidering it costs billions to build even a simple rocket, it would never be economically feasible to shoot landfill contents into the sun. You could only fit a few tons on each rocket.
I don’t think a few blimps are going to make a significant difference in the atmosphere. Even if they did, what’s the point of removing carbon? There are far more volatile things up there.
Solar power (absorbed and reflected) is just not economical enough. You would never produce enough power to cover the cost of the equipment and space. A better use would be to convert uninhabbited deserts to spaces for nuclear power and waste storage.
I applaud your intentions, but I see a few flaws in some of your suggestions.
1.)Are YOU going to drive that truck up to the ACTIVE volcano? I’m sure not. Besides, we have trash incinerators already, the problem is when you burn trash you release mercury and other toxins into the atmosphere. And until space travel becomes significantly cheaper, shooting the stuff out into space (why does it have to go the sun?) is far from economically feasible. Landfills are a cheap, easy way to get rid of the trash. And in most parts of the country the space is available. If they’re designed correctly (a problem with many of the older landfills) they won’t leach toxins into the groundwater.
2.) Those would have to be some mighty big carbon scrubbers to have any effect. Who wants a bunch of blimps flying around? Why not put them on the ground? I think you’re confusing the ozone layer with ground level ozone, which is what you find in cities. The two things are very different, someone else can explain the difference.
3.) Solar farms and wind farms are an excellent idea! It’s too bad our government isn’t inclined to give those industries even a small portion of the subsidies they grant to the oil, coal, and natural gas industries. If we had to pay the TRUE cost of filling up our gas tank, there’d be a lot more windmills around. Here’s a good article on windmills if you’re interested - http://www.tompaine.com/features/2000/11/15/
As far as the space option goes, even if someone were willing to foot the bill for it, remember that rockets produce a lot of pollution, too. Even if you’re using pure hydrogen as fuel (which produces nothing but water when it burns), you’ve got to get that hydrogen from somewhere, which means getting energy from somewhere, which means burning coal or oil or uranium (yes, I know that uranium isn’t strictly burned. It still produces undesireable by-products). The end result is that, even assuming a perfectly efficient rocket (yeah, right), you’ll still produce more pollution from launching the stuff than you would from just burying it here on Earth.
I’ll let Anthracite explain the problems with solar or wind farms. As I understand it, the problems with them might be correctable someday, but not any time soon.
Burning of trash is blasted in green circles as “turning the sky into a dump.” The economic cost of hauling trash around has been pointed out elsewhere.
The subsidy argument usually gets extended to nuclear as well. The reply is that it is in the best interest of any government to ensure a power supply.
My semi-educated guess is that most if not all of the alternate forms of power that have been mentioned have actually received more subsidies per power unit generated than any of the standard power generation methods.
Again it is in any government’s (and the power producer’s too-they certainly don’t want to get caught flat-footed when coal, oil or natural gas become too expensive to compete) best interest to ensure a future power supply.
Windmills have certainly improved with better technology but no windmill technology can make up for a calm day. Windmills are in use in the US (sorry but I can’t find the article) but the generation is not cost efficient compared to other types and mainly exists because of government tax incentives.
As for the idea of nuclear power why are most environmentalist so against it? It seems to me like it is better then a majority of the power plants we have today. I understand that there is some waste that is created but it seems like it is minimal compared to other forms of power generation.
As for sending our garbage into space I now see the flaw in my plan, Why couldn’t we just shoot the radioactive stuff into space? I understand there is risk involved but surly there are steps that can be taken to bring those risks to a more satisfactory level. Maybe I’m an optimist but I think there has to be a way for people as advanced us to continue our growth while not killing our planet.
As a summation:
The limitations of solar power
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Power Density-the sun’s energy is only so strong at the earth, current (no pun intended) technology just doesn’t make it cost efficient to use as a primary power source.
Efficiency-this compounds the power density problem.
Storage-we use energy around the clock; the sun only provides energy during the day. Batteries can (and do) store power but they have massive efficiency problems of their own and quickly wear out.
Cost-All of the above adds up to the huge strike against solar: it costs too much.
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Power Density is what it is. Efficiency and Storage are being worked on and are improving but still not enough to overcome Cost. Someday maybe this will change but for now we can only keep working on the problem.