An Editorial By Paul Cochrane
The Earth’s man made problems are so enormous that even thinking about them gives us a desperate feeling. All of us in Connecticut are now involved in an aggressive recycling program, hopefully our efforts will lower our energy usage and mineral waste. I can recall that during World War II my father and mother put aside tin cans and metal items to help the “war effort”. I thought that like most things the government wanted to involve all of us in some effort so that we could feel the hardships others who were intimately involved in the fighting. The tearing up of wrought iron fences which surrounded the cemetery helped the next fence salesman more than it did the war effort. The removal of trolley car tracks and their non polluting chariots was a big hoax laid on the cities by “Detroit”, Standard Oil and the “Goodyear” people. All of our major cities now lie beneath blankets of smog. Our streets, lots and land fills are decorated with old and worn tires, which will serve as markers in some dig ten thousand years from now.
What can you and I do? As individuals a lot. I have switched from burning wood to heat my home (5 cords a year) and this has cleared the air above my “plantation”. My furnace is old and not efficient (60%) this summer I will install another more efficient one. Automobiles which get 12 miles to the gallon are not found on my drive way. Four cylinder cars which get 35 miles to the gallon are the rule. My next purchase will better that or I will become re-acquainted with public transportation. My real dream is for solar heat and a solar car within my life time.
The companies which now supply our oil, gas and electrical power are worried that we might be able to make our homes and automobiles interact with the Sun, without
them interceding on our behalf
. Industry wants to work out the “problems” of control and distribution of solar power and when that is firmly in
their
control, we will have our Sun powered automobiles and houses and factories. Industry is not about to give up the sweet deal they have enjoyed for the past hundred years.
In the August 91 issue of “Popular Science” there were some interesting articles. The first was on page 29 entitled “Global” Thermometer and it talked of the work of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. The question which they are addressing is how does one monitor changes in global warming? It is a fact that the speed of sound increases in warm water, so the institute has begun to send sound waves from a base in the southern most part of the Indian ocean. These high decibel low frequency waves will be sent out weekly and will travel up to 11,000 miles across oceans. These sounds and their speeds will be monitored at selected sites over the next ten years and hopefully will give us information on global warming.
Another article entitled “Purifying Water With Sunshine” is a discussion about the efforts of Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) out of Golden, Colorado, to reclaim polluted ground water. Some water which contains solvents and carcinogenic chemicals which were allowed to seep into the water supply. In general the contaminated water is pumped up from the ground, then fed through glass tubes which contain a photocatalyist. These tubes are suspended in parabolic troughs where the Sun can focus its ultraviolet rays on them. “This detoxification process...breaks organic wastes down into carbon dioxide, water and dilute acid”. Any activity such as this which will keep “love canals“ from occurring is more than welcome.
Sunlight Chandeliers an article by David Scott (page 28), tells of buildings which are lighted by sunlight. In this case the buildings are equipped with computer controlled heliostats. Heliostats are mirrors which have been fitted with mirrored infra-red filtering glass which focuses the Sun’s rays into other fixed mirrors which in turn send this cool light down into “sparkle tubes”, which in turn light the interior of the building. At night and on cloudy days the Sun is replaced with spot lights. Such an idea could provide great savings in energy usage for those industries which operated primarily in the daylight hours.
On page 78 of the same issue is, “Reversing The Greenhouse”, which describes some of the ideas put forth by students at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. “Scientists estimate that 225 billion tons of CO2 are removed annually from the atmosphere by forests and oceans. However 228 billion tons are added, of which 5.5 billion are from the burning of fossil fuels and 2.2 billion are released by deforestation”.
Project Pheonix was organized to address these problems. One idea that they came up with was to make a space platform which would be manufactured on the Moon and placed in a geosynchronous orbit 22,245 miles above the Earth. The proposed platform would span 5.6 miles, and would be designed to collect solar energy, put it into the form of micro wave energy, and through a series of energy bursts beam it down to waiting earth power installations for redistribution into power grids.
The Earth has 3.3 million square miles of deforested land and if these scientists could take control of 772,000 square miles of it for reforestation, special covers could be put in place which would insure optimum plant growth. Then these new plant life could absorb 1.1 billion tons of CO2 each year. There are a lot of “ifs” in that plan. The second part of their plan is to create series of man made floating vegetation platforms which eventually cover 386,000 square miles of ocean. These “rafts” would be fitted with mangrove trees (which grow in salt water), sargassum (floating algae) and mollusks. It is hoped that fish would flock to such a haven. In return for all of this effort about 0.6 billion tons of C02 could be pulled from the atmosphere. I would worry about one good old hurricane hitting one of these massive man made islands.
Nothing works like not creating the problem in the first place, but its a little too late for that kind of thinking. As an informed group we should do our reading and get to know about the technologies which will run tomorrow’s world. We should support the men and women who push for a cleaner, better and safer environment through donations, letter writing, voting and our own activity within our schools. We should support and encourage those who strive to protect and nourish “mother earth”.
Our students look to us for leadership, so lets become informed and lead. This space ship does not belong to us it belongs to future generations.Let us pass it on in good shape.