10 audacious ideas to save the planet. (From Popsci).
Solar panels in space:
“Each station would produce one gigawatt of electricity—enough to power 500,000 homes.
Personally, I’ve seen this for a while as being one of the better ways. Its only a matter of time until costs collapse for solar panels, and for launches.
Plant hairy plants:
When he increased crop reflectivity by 10 percent, Doughty found that distribution of the hairy plants between 30 degrees latitude and the poles produced optimal results, yielding a reduction in regional temperatures of two to three degrees Fahrenheit.
It would take too long to plant the globes surface with hairy plants. I’d prefer planting trees. The extra oxygen, and wood can be used. More commerical benefits.
Turn CO2 in air to baking soda:
Finally, catalytic processes combine the hydrogen and carbon into methane, gasoline or jet fuel, all without toxic emissions.
Not cheap. Needs ‘gas to rise to $4 a gallon’. Hey, we already pay more than that over here!!
Sinking Carbon in the Sea:
“The basic physics is simple,” Keith explains. At ocean depths below two miles, liquid carbon dioxide is denser than seawater, so it sinks. In fact, for decades, scientists have suggested injecting liquid CO2 into depressions in the deep ocean so that they form lakes, an option that environmentalists have resisted because some of this CO2 would eventually dissolve and acidify the water. But contain that liquid in a corrosion-resistant material, like an organic polymer or titanium, and it could sit, safely, on the seafloor for several thousand years.
I’m skeptical. The energy required to cool that amount of CO2 to liquid, and then to sink it, not to mention the cost and energy required in making the bags, and various safeguards. Will it benefit? It may, but it would be pretty minimal. They can’t do much to the worlds CO2 production.
Brew beer quicker, use less energy:
Earlier this year, Shepherd Neame, Britain’s oldest brewery, began making its popular Spitfire lagers and ales with a powerful new “wort boiling” technology that cuts the brewery’s energy usage by 10 percent.
They may be driven to it, although not established brands. Newer breweries may investigate this further.
Use body heat:
he’ll use a car-size heat exchanger to absorb air made warm by more than 250,000 daily commuters and use it to provide up to 15 percent of the heating needs of a building next door.
Make your own tornadoes:
Now Canadian engineer Louis Michaud says he has figured out a way to trap a twister and make it spin indefinitely, generating a cheap, virtually limitless source of energy. His creation is a 13-foot-wide tornado-making machine that produces a powerful spinning column of air to drive electrical turbines. Last year, Michaud showed off a smaller prototype that produced a 6.5-foot-tall cyclone [see “Twister Power,” Headlines, November 2007], but this new one—due to have been tested in Sarnia, Ontario, in May—should produce the biggest artificial tornado yet
Assuming this works, and you can find somewhere safe to put it, that’ll be handy.
Biogas Buses Powered by Sewage:
In a pilot project conceived by Warren Weisman, a consultant who heads the Oregon Biogas Cooperative, the nation’s first biogas bus would get its fuel from a wastewater-treatment plant in Eugene, Oregon. Weisman believes that sewage, supplemented with crop stubble and restaurant leftovers, could eventually power all of the city’s buses.
Whats the world coming to! A good political point perhaps, but the logistics of converting the stuff is not ideal IMHO.
Pig pee to plastic:
Capture 90,000 tons of urine every day from the world’s billion pigs and recycle it into plastic plates.
ETA Thomsen expects the company’s second plant to be in Iowa or North Carolina, home to some of the largest pig farms in the U.S. With farmland and gas prices at a premium, he envisions building “pig cities”—efficient, land-conserving skyscrapers that would house the pigs while processing their waste into plastic and fertilizer.
Perhaps.
Mini nuclear reactors:
Generate heat and electricity for small-town America using pint-size nuclear reactors that will run for 30 years with no refueling, maintenance or noxious diesel fumes.
Some have dubbed it a “nuclear battery” since it will run without refueling for its entire 30-year lifetime.
Assuming these can be made without major maintenance being required, it seems to be very good indeed.
Which is your favourite?
