All so called Natural Generation methods have consequences …

[RonA]

hey.

That was the whole point of this thread.

collecting energy…. Means a hotter earth

Non sequitur, The amount of energy falling on the earth is determined by Suns activity, once it’s here some gets re-radiated back into space. It only gets hotter if something prevents it from doing so, like clouds, CO2, man made aerosols etc.
If we were to redirect the Suns energy toward the poles, then there would be no need to burn fossil fuels to keep us on the move, keeping us all warm etc. That would prevent the green house effect
RonA

 

[MattF]

collecting energy…. Means a hotter earth

?In what way?

 

[hotponyshoes]

My array is doing the earth more harm than good, but individually, we as a family are doing well out of it.

that is THE big problem, or actually one of the many small ones

Much like the vast majority of the people on this planet (myself included) , your very existence is probably doing more harm than good.

The problem with greenvenergy at the moment is the feel-good factor of using it.

My mother has a eco house and loves to tell each and every visitor how everything they built and furnished it with was upcycled or reclaimed in some way.
She will also mention how she exports more power into the grid than what they use and how she is not only generating enough electric for her own use but also enough to power half of somebody else's at the same time.
Some of the stuff like the heat generated by the decomposing horse muck pile is pretty impressive but the visitors are normally glazing over by the time she gets onto the reed-bed sewerage and the bore hole water.

What she fails to mention is the fact that the only reason she built an eco house is because it was the easiest way to get planning for a listed building in a conservation area.
There is also the fact that 6 of them were living in her last house and that's been bought by an old couple for retirement and they still go through the same amount of heating oil between 2 as the previous 6 did.

Most of her dinner parties seem to include at least one exotic ingredient and she's also found of chucking horses into a 7.5t lorry and driving around the country to show them off.

I think that's the thing that worries me most with green energy. People only seem to need to do a few small things and that seems to be enough to justify them not working about anything else they might do.
To be fair the "save the planet by using a bag for life" type marketing makes us all think we are making a difference, and, obviously, every little helps, but I think we are in danger of over-marketing green power as companies will only push stuff they can make good profits on.

 

[Miranda]

?In what way?

Cuz energy cannot be created or destroyed. We use more of it here on earth , collected in a way that is more “efficient” than naturally it was over history, by nature. In the past/present we’ve harvested energy stored in all sorts of forms harnessed trapped and stored over multi millennia.

To stop using the stored energy, and continue using energy at the same pace, we need to trap more energy…. The only place is from extraterrestrial sources solar, tides, wind, everything Inevitably that means there is more energy here on earth and that we are drawing energy resources from somewhere else. Remember….. first law of thermodynamics.

There are a finite number of forms that energy can take, most of which are superficial when it comes to the effects of collecting additional solar energy, over and above that which would normally have been radiated from the earth back into space … although not, of course, when it comes to storage of energy over short/long term which may involve chemical or other such methods.

ultimately, we need to access that excess of energy and use it to perform work of some sort. That releases the excess energy stored into our wider world ….

 

[Munkul]

ultimately, we need to access that excess of energy and use it to perform work of some sort.

That's what we're trying to do right now, with solar, wind etc... Then ultimately nearly all of the energy used will end up back as heat anyway.

Your motives are right but your science is misguided.

 

[Miranda]

That's what we're trying to do right now, with solar, wind etc... Then ultimately nearly all of the energy used will end up back as heat anyway.

Your motives are right but your science is misguided.

The excess energy will end up as heat. Exactly the point

 

[Screwdriver]

hey.

That was the whole point of this thread.

collecting energy…. Means a hotter earth

That is simply not true. Sunlight which falls on the earths surface carries with it a specific amount of energy, something like 500W per square metre. While there may be some highly localised effect of having a solar panel intercepting it before it hits the ground (like underneath the panel!) it will make no difference whatsoever to the net energy input.

You appear to suggest that "trapping it" somehow makes things "hotter" and that is just not true. Energy falling onto a solar panel is converted into electrical energy (not perfectly but with losses) and that energy may be stored (or "trapped" if you insist) but that makes absolutely no difference to the net energy input.

The other thing is, the Earth is ginormous! The total energy falling on Earth is circa 173,000 terawatts and the total combined solar array currently is circa 500 gigawatts.

Translating the tera and the giga into a million million and a thousand million respectively, the difference between how much is falling on the earth in total and how much is falling onto solar panels is a million times smaller.

Now I just nabbed those numbers off Wiki etc. so they could be way off and I am surprised there's only six orders of magnitude difference but if the wold is only "trapping" one millionth of the total amount of energy falling on the Earth, I'm not going to worry about it. It's not as if that is excess energy, whether it is trapped or stored or used to grow grass is is still merely part of the total energy input, no more no less.

 

[Miranda]

That is simply not true. Sunlight which falls on the earths surface carries with it a specific amount of energy, something like 500W per square metre. While there may be some highly localised effect of having a solar panel intercepting it before it hits the ground (like underneath the panel!) it will make no difference whatsoever to the net energy input.

You appear to suggest that "trapping it" somehow makes things "hotter" and that is just not true. Energy falling onto a solar panel is converted into electrical energy (not perfectly but with losses) and that energy may be stored (or "trapped" if you insist) but that makes absolutely no difference to the net energy input.

The other thing is, the Earth is ginormous! The total energy falling on Earth is circa 173,000 terawatts and the total combined solar array currently is circa 500 gigawatts.

Translating the tera and the giga into a million million and a thousand million respectively, the difference between how much is falling on the earth in total and how much is falling onto solar panels is a million times smaller.

Now I just nabbed those numbers off Wiki etc. so they could be way off and I am surprised there's only six orders of magnitude difference but if the wold is only "trapping" one millionth of the total amount of energy falling on the Earth, I'm not going to worry about it. It's not as if that is excess energy, whether it is trapped or stored or used to grow grass is is still merely part of the total energy input, no more no less.

There is no such thing as absolute science.

Yep everyone is going along the happy path to a future full of energy with no consequences. It just CANNOT happen. Sorry folks. We will melt. as people have said, it will end up as heat.

 

[hotponyshoes]

Even if we had solar panels that could capture 100% of the energy that fell on them and we could use 100% of that energy for whatever we wanted then I can't see that, once we have used that energy, how the planet is going to end up any hotter than the sun just hitting the ground/roof/wall that the solar panel is covering up?

If 1kw of solar energy hits 1sqm of ground and the planet only absorbs 10% then 90% must bounce back into space.

If we put out a 1sqm panel and capture 100% and store 100% then use 100% at some stage all of it is going to be released to drift back off into space again.

Long time since I did school but I was taught it was a buildup of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere that cause global warming. Just generating heat (if you could do it from a clean source) would not actually make the planet any hotter as the atmosphere is allowing the planet to retain just the right amount of heat.

 

[MattF]

There is no such thing as absolute science.

Yep everyone is going along the happy path to a future full of energy with no consequences. It just CANNOT happen. Sorry folks. We will melt. as people have said, it will end up as heat.

No-one can guess what the outcome would be, exactly. Every action has a consequence, & time alone will tell.

 

[Miranda]

No-one can guess what the outcome would be, exactly. Every action has a consequence, & time alone will tell.

Yep. I agree.

just glad in sooooo. many ways I’m not 20, I foresee all this blowing to a head in a very short space of time

 

[Munkul]

Only it won't. Because the earth is actually bigger than you give it credit for, and the energy from the sun is so incredibly massive, that it literally drives the world. Wind, warmth, rain, everything.
Humans have had a bad impact on the world but its still relatively small in energy terms compared to what the sun does every day.
I don't disagree that we need to change what we do energy wise, but this scaremongering is just plain overblown and annoying.

So again... Please stand down off your soap box and get a more balanced view!

 

[Miranda]

it’s fine to disagree. It’s not fine to ask others not to speak.

 

[mtt.tr]

But it's a fair criticism to say come back when you've looked at the evidence and leave the untested opinions elsewhere


Alternatively run a study?

 

[Screwdriver]

There is no such thing as absolute science.

Yep everyone is going along the happy path to a future full of energy with no consequences. It just CANNOT happen. Sorry folks. We will melt. as people have said, it will end up as heat.

Err right so what you are suggesting is that your opinion that "trapping" the suns energy causing extra warming is more valid than science?

I am beginning to think science is not your strong point.

Only it won't. Because the earth is actually bigger than you give it credit for, and the energy from the sun is so incredibly massive, that it literally drives the world. Wind, warmth, rain, everything.
Humans have had a bad impact on the world but its still relatively small in energy terms compared to what the sun does every day.
I don't disagree that we need to change what we do energy wise, but this scaremongering is just plain overblown and annoying.

So again... Please stand down off your soap box and get a more balanced view!

Oh. Right so again some hand waving general waffle which still manages to be hopelessly incorrect.

Please explain how "humans have had a bad impact on the world in energy terms". Are you suggesting humans have been creating energy here?

What is this "scaremongering"? If we are talking about Greta Thunberg then yes, I agree. Political tosh from an ill educated child. That's not "science". But she's an obvious extreme. The scientific community just get on with measuring things, working out what's going on and letting the world know what they find.

Then it gets into the hands of the media and politicians generally and they bend /manipulate the science until it is barely recognisable from the source. But that is still not to suggest there is no problem. There is a huge problem: global warming. It is happening and it is "a bad thing". We should stop dumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere for a start. The thing is 1. We won't (China is ramping up its coal fired power stations) and 2. If the worlds total anthropomorphic CO2 output fell to zero tomorrow (impossible) there is no guarantee things will start to get better.

We might already be over the tipping point as the excess energy in the atmosphere drives extreme weather events. That could just keep getting worse and worse for the lifetime of anyone reading this even if we stop now. We should certainly be doing something to slow down this destruction but there is an entire industry trying to cash in on the problem and obfuscating the actual cause; excessive energy consumption, rampant consumerism, deforestation, plastic pollution etc.

 

[Parm]

There is no such thing as absolute science.

Yep everyone is going along the happy path to a future full of energy with no consequences. It just CANNOT happen. Sorry folks. We will melt. as people have said, it will end up as heat.

Better get a crack on with your harvesting, windows, door n tractor rebuild

you ain’t got much time. According to you

 

[Miranda]

Better get a crack on with your harvesting, windows, door n tractor rebuild

you ain’t got much time. According to you

Yeah probably best get a shift on.

I’m no tree hugger. Just a realist.

 

[MattF]

 

[Screwdriver]

Ignorance is bliss.

 

[Barking Mat]

skip to 40 sec
solar water bottle lights

hey.

That was the whole point of this thread.

I think @Miranda just fancied an debate.

Honestly, if you will bring up issues like this on a forum...

Just the same as @fizzy .

I do understand an open discussion on interesting topics, but taking a cross section of views, it's generally going to get turgid and disagreeable.

But makes interesting reading, till it gets locked.

Drive on...