Christmas Day Phone Call
Jan. 3rd, 2009 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helwenDuring my call to my brothers and niece (while they're all over at my mom's), had some interesting conversations. They all live in the same general part of California.
One of my brothers is a Sierra member so I expect some environmental stuff, but my other brother was talking about solar energy, how well does it work in New England, etc. And my niece and I talked about some of this too. Very interesting... Of course solar doesn't work as well here as in sunny California -- although they have their own problems -- lots of sun but not enough water, but that's another topic. And this far north the active solar systems work better than the passive ones.
Which is not to say one shouldn't employ passive solar. In fact without the convenience of affordable electricity and fossil fuels, powering a home in New England takes a fair amount of creativity and variety. Geothermal works all right as long as it isn't too cold -- then you need a backup system (it's hardware problem). Solar panels either need to be cleaned up after it snows or you have to wait until the snow melts (or why some folks prefer setting them up on the ground). Wood is only sustainable if it comes from well-managed forest. Wind power depends on your location (it can't be just windy, it has to have sustained winds at some reasonable height above your location). Hydropower also depends on what's geographically available.
In all cases, the better insulated your home is, the less energy it will need for heating and cooling, leaving more energy for lighting, electronic equipment, etc.
Even in Sunny California where solar could become king in the energy scene, there probably still wouldn't be enough energy to charge transportation vehicles. Although it might be able to do _some_ of that if people also cut back on how much energy they used (dryers are a huge one -- even if you decided to hang dry just your underwear, socks, and t-shirts, you'd start to see a difference in your electric bill).
And there's a limited amount of materials available to make solar panels. Or geothermal piping. Or industrial-size windmills. It isn't just fossil fuels that are limited, but all kinds of materials. One of the important parts of recycling nowadays is that limited materials need to be retrieved for re-use in new computers, etc.
It's tough to work on developing alternative energy because the answer isn't just plug one energy source in to replace another. On the other hand, isn't it nice to have options? I wouldn't mind having a bit of everything (assuming I could afford it), because then it would be more likely I'd have at least some power no matter what -- esp. if I had some decent batteries for storing some of the energy for later :D
One of them, I think it was the brother who never really talked about this stuff before, also talked a bit about global warming. ??!! Well, that's complicated and we weren't going to get in-depth, but I talked about biochar and soil erosion, and mentioned a recent study where scientists were figuring that people accidentally contributed to the Little Ice Age. When the Spanish came to South America, they brought various diseases with them that wiped out 80% of the indigenous population. These folks had a lot of land under cultivation -- an area a little larger than the state of California! Nearly all of that land became forest again, helping to cool off the planet -- in combination with some other things happening at about the same time.
So he says flippantly, well then all we need to do is plant a lot of trees -- we agreed that with the increased levels of pollution we'd probably need enough to cover two Californias -- as if planting all those trees would be that easy :D Granted there's plenty of land here in the U.S. where trees _could_ be planted, but for instance the Southwest is too hot and dry. He mentioned some state up north (Iowa? Idaho?) that was experiencing flooding, since obviously having enough water wouldn't be a problem for them. Yeah, the family sense of humor can be a bit on the dark side on occasion.
Still, I do have a couple of cards from the Arbor Day Foundation waiting for me to send them out. I'll be donating to get some trees planted and then send the cards out to a couple of folks telling them I had trees planted in their names.
One of my brothers is a Sierra member so I expect some environmental stuff, but my other brother was talking about solar energy, how well does it work in New England, etc. And my niece and I talked about some of this too. Very interesting... Of course solar doesn't work as well here as in sunny California -- although they have their own problems -- lots of sun but not enough water, but that's another topic. And this far north the active solar systems work better than the passive ones.
Which is not to say one shouldn't employ passive solar. In fact without the convenience of affordable electricity and fossil fuels, powering a home in New England takes a fair amount of creativity and variety. Geothermal works all right as long as it isn't too cold -- then you need a backup system (it's hardware problem). Solar panels either need to be cleaned up after it snows or you have to wait until the snow melts (or why some folks prefer setting them up on the ground). Wood is only sustainable if it comes from well-managed forest. Wind power depends on your location (it can't be just windy, it has to have sustained winds at some reasonable height above your location). Hydropower also depends on what's geographically available.
In all cases, the better insulated your home is, the less energy it will need for heating and cooling, leaving more energy for lighting, electronic equipment, etc.
Even in Sunny California where solar could become king in the energy scene, there probably still wouldn't be enough energy to charge transportation vehicles. Although it might be able to do _some_ of that if people also cut back on how much energy they used (dryers are a huge one -- even if you decided to hang dry just your underwear, socks, and t-shirts, you'd start to see a difference in your electric bill).
And there's a limited amount of materials available to make solar panels. Or geothermal piping. Or industrial-size windmills. It isn't just fossil fuels that are limited, but all kinds of materials. One of the important parts of recycling nowadays is that limited materials need to be retrieved for re-use in new computers, etc.
It's tough to work on developing alternative energy because the answer isn't just plug one energy source in to replace another. On the other hand, isn't it nice to have options? I wouldn't mind having a bit of everything (assuming I could afford it), because then it would be more likely I'd have at least some power no matter what -- esp. if I had some decent batteries for storing some of the energy for later :D
One of them, I think it was the brother who never really talked about this stuff before, also talked a bit about global warming. ??!! Well, that's complicated and we weren't going to get in-depth, but I talked about biochar and soil erosion, and mentioned a recent study where scientists were figuring that people accidentally contributed to the Little Ice Age. When the Spanish came to South America, they brought various diseases with them that wiped out 80% of the indigenous population. These folks had a lot of land under cultivation -- an area a little larger than the state of California! Nearly all of that land became forest again, helping to cool off the planet -- in combination with some other things happening at about the same time.
So he says flippantly, well then all we need to do is plant a lot of trees -- we agreed that with the increased levels of pollution we'd probably need enough to cover two Californias -- as if planting all those trees would be that easy :D Granted there's plenty of land here in the U.S. where trees _could_ be planted, but for instance the Southwest is too hot and dry. He mentioned some state up north (Iowa? Idaho?) that was experiencing flooding, since obviously having enough water wouldn't be a problem for them. Yeah, the family sense of humor can be a bit on the dark side on occasion.
Still, I do have a couple of cards from the Arbor Day Foundation waiting for me to send them out. I'll be donating to get some trees planted and then send the cards out to a couple of folks telling them I had trees planted in their names.
