This has been a hot summer so let's review my solution to global warming.
Remember that there is a simple solution to global warming. This doesn't mean that it will be easy, but it is fairly simple.
Global Warming is caused by carbon dioxide, CO2, in the air and the search is on for the development of a physical process to actively reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere but this is what all the plants on earth are already doing. What the world is basically doing now is taking the oil that formed from prehistoric plants and burning it in car engines, and other machines, to get the solar energy that was absorbed when these plants lived and releasing that energy to drive the car.
When those plants of long ago were growing, they pulled CO2 out of the air and used the energy of the sunlight to split the one carbon atom from the two oxygen atoms. The oxygen was released back into the atmosphere while the carbon atom went to build the plant's structure.
Unfortunately when the oil, the fossilized remains of these plants, is refined into gasoline and is burned in car engines, oxygen is taken out of the air and combined with carbon atoms from the gasoline to recreate the CO2 molecules that were broken up in the plants during prehistoric times.
Thus, by burning fossil fuels we are putting all that CO2 that has been underground and out of the atmosphere for so long, back into the atmosphere. The result is global warming because CO2 acts like a greenhouse in the earth's atmosphere.
Normally, the sun radiates energy to the earth, which absorbs it but re-radiates some of it back into space at a different wavelength. CO2 in the atmosphere does not affect the incoming radiation much but it blocks the radiation that is being re-radiated by the earth back into space. So, the earth gets warmer.
Since we have released much of the carbon that was being held underground for millions of years back into the atmosphere, why not simply reverse that process? Plants operate on a cycle in terms of carbon and carbon dioxide, CO2. As the plant grows, it pulls carbon out of the air to build it's structure, as described above.
When the plant dies and decays, oxygen in the air combines with the carbon in the plant to return CO2 to the atmosphere. Since atmospheric oxygen is ordinarily diatomic, consisting of two atoms together, we get the two atoms of oxygen combining with one of carbon.
Why don't we recreate the burial of billions of tons of carbon underground and out of the atmosphere? What if all the grass that was mowed every summer was used to make a large-scale product, such as asphalt, so that it could not decay and return it's carbon to the atmosphere? The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would decrease.
There is all kinds of regulations about recycling garbage, why not do the same with mown grass and other plant matter? All that we have to do is make something out of grass clippings so that they do not decay. We have done a pretty good job of finding all manner of uses for discarded automobile tires.
Even if this was done on all the lawns on federal or local government properties in the U.S., Canada and, Europe, it may virtually solve global warming by permanently removing carbon from the atmosphere. This is a simplistic solution but the way to solve this may well be low-tech and labor-intensive instead of high-tech.
Do you know what the ultimate in energy is? We often see it when there is a storm. It is lightning.
There is a tremendous amount of energy in a lightning bolt. Currents of air knocks some of the electrons out of atomic orbitals of atoms in the air. A lightning bolt is between the cloud and the ground, or between two clouds. It is a flow of negatively charged electrons to correct a charge imbalance.
Why can't we harness the power of lightning? I have been wondering about this since I was a child. If we can harness the lateral movement of the air, by windmills, then why can't we harness the vertical movement of the air, by lightning?
It is not difficult to get lightning to strike, a metal tower that gives it the route of least resistance to the ground is all that is needed. The saying that "lightning never strikes twice in the same place" has no truth to it whatsoever. Although lightning sometimes goes from the cloud to the ground, and sometimes vice versa.
To harness it's tremendous power we would need a heavy duty capacitor structure that would temporarily store the electrical energy. Then the current would pass through a chemical vat that would act as a chargeable battery. The electrical energy of the lightning bolt would then be stored as chemical energy, and released at will as useful power.
The capacitor and the battery would decrease the conductivity of the metal tower to the ground. It would be necessary for it to still be by far the path of least resistance for the lightning bolt to get to ground.
This structure would have to be wired in preparation for the lightning to be either from cloud to ground, or vice versa. A one way bolt of lightning is direct current. One way that it could be turned into alternating current is to have two batteries, one for each direction of the bolt, and alternate release of current between the two.
There is no reason for us not to be harnessing the tremendous power in lightning.
AI AND TRAFFIC LIGHTS
Everyday there is more in the news about how quickly AI is developing and all the amazing things that it can do, although it is worrying some people.
But here is what I think is the most important question about AI. When is all of this wonderful technology going to get applied to traffic lights? Ever since I first read about AI I have been waiting for it to be applied to traffic lights.
Traffic lights are wasteful beyond belief. How many times have you seen a dozen cars lined up at a red light but no cars on the green light side? Can you imagine all the time that is wasted at red lights that should be green? How much fuel does this waste and how much does the resulting exhaust contribute to global warming?
Traffic lights are an example of what I refer to as being "technologically forward but system-backward". We develop a new technology and implement a basic system to manage it. We make progress in the technology but it is limited by the fact that we are still using the same primitive system as at the beginning. There is so much discussion nowadays about "smart" technology but traffic lights are about as dumb as it can get.
What if the traffic light could see or sense the cars, including the indicators as to which way the car was turning, and then make the logical decision as to which way should be red and which way green? There would be no more unnecessary waiting at red lights.
The fuel saved would not only be due to the elimination of idling but also the car's momentum is lost when braking for a red light and must be regained, at the expense of fuel, when the light turns green. The reduction in stops that must be made would also save drivers money because brakes would have to be replaced less frequently.
Technology is wonderful, until we get dependent on it and it doesn't work. But if this AI system ever breaks down, it would be relatively simple to implement a mechanism that would shift it back to the automated system that we have now. The AI system could be programmed to automatically turn to a green light for emergency vehicles.
This should have been done already. There are AI-powered cameras and sensors watching everything that we do. When is this going to be applied to traffic lights to eliminate unnecessary stopping and waiting?
GLOBAL OXYGEN DEPLETION
This is something that you probably have not thought about. Most fuels that we burn today, including gasoline, are hydrocarbons. That is, their chemical structure is made mostly of carbon and hydrogen atoms. All the attention today seems to be focused on the carbon. This carbon in fuels combines with oxygen during combustion to form carbon dioxide, which is responsible for global warming.
I would like to get you thinking about the hydrogen side of hydrocarbon fuels as well. When hydrogen burns, whether it is pure hydrogen or whether is is part of a larger molecule, two of the released hydrogen atoms combine with one oxygen atom in the air to form a molecule of water, which exits into the atmosphere. The long-term peril that I realized and that no one seems to be paying attention to is that by burning hydrogen or hydrocarbons, we are permanently creating more water at the expense of oxygen. This leaves us with more water and less oxygen in the global environment.It is more irreversible than the creation of carbon dioxide in the same engine since that will eventually be broken down by plants and the oxygen released back into the atmosphere while the carbon atom goes into building the structure of the plant. But water lasts essentially forever. During the era of automobiles and aircraft, we have been steadily increasing the amount of water in the world at the expense of oxygen.
We do not notice this in our daily lives but if you want to see an example just look up at the contrail (vapor trail) of a plane high in the sky. This contrail appears behind the plane when it is high enough in the sky, meaning the air outside is cold enough, for the water vapor in the engines' exhaust to condense immediately.
This water vapor comes from the hydrogen in the burned fuel combining with oxygen in the air just as the CO2 comes from carbon in the fuel combining with oxygen in the air. The same thing happens at ground level but is not visible to us. This comes at a time when countries across the world are trying to cope with rising sea levels.
There is another peril to oxygen. This one concerns the ever-increasing use of iron to manufacture steel.
As you may know, Iron is mined as ore and then combined with carbon to form steel. The presence of carbon atoms breaks the regular structure of the atoms in iron, thus giving it more strength. Various steels are made by giving the iron a certain concentration of carbon, but the carbon is never more than a few percent of the finished steel. There has only been large-scale steel production for about 150 years, but the modern world would be unimaginable without it.
The iron in steel will react with oxygen in the air to form rust. Regardless of the protection used; paint, galvanizing or, other rustproofing methods, none will last forever. All iron that is taken out of the earth by human beings will eventually turn to rust. Iron pipes were used by the Romans, as were lead pipes, but all that remains of the iron pipes today are rust-colored streaks in the soil. Lead, which is softer but heavier than iron, came into use for pipes because it does not rust.
The iron in the ground does not rust because it exists as ores, and not as pure iron. It originated in iron asteroids which struck the earth. But when we make cars, structures, ships, appliances and, utensils of steel, we are exposing the chemically active iron to oxygen so that it will eventually rust.
When iron does rust, it combines with large quantities of oxygen. Life is actually dependent on this affinity between iron and oxygen because it is why the hemoglobin in blood carries oxygen in the body. If all of the cars in the world suddenly turned to rust, it would take up a significant amount of the oxygen in the atmosphere. So much of what we do in terms of transportation and manufacturing involves the use of oxygen. The air is about 21% oxygen and we act as if there is an unlimited supply.
The modern world is reducing the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere in three major ways. Even a slight decrease in concentration would have widespread ramifications for life on earth. We are permanently removing oxygen with the Hydrogen Peril and this Iron Peril. We are temporarily removing oxygen by creating carbon dioxide. Although this oxygen will eventually be liberated by plants, the increase in carbon dioxide decreases the oxygen available at any given time.
Iron is abundant on earth, indeed it is the most common element on earth by mass and one of the most abundant elements in the Solar System. With an exploding global population, there is ever-increasing demand for steel and only a low percentage of steel is recycled. Eventually, all of it will turn to rust and a vast amount of oxygen will go with it.
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