free write BA9

Solar energy hitting the earth exceeds humanities needs by a factor of 20,000 times. This figure is important to understand when considering renewable energy source development. Our noble pursuits of renewable energy through wind, geothermal, and tidal energy include a fatal flaw. That flaw, still unrecognized, is the assumption that humans can draw endless energy from our environment without consequences. Imagine how 20 million wind turbines could affect global wind currents. Or how robbing the earth’s mantel of geothermal energy might affect plate tectonics. Or how tidal energy turbines might disrupt oceanic currents. We will not find the key to meeting humanities energy needs on earth because our planet is a closed cyclical system and any energy farming will affect many other systems. In the end, only solar power can provide humanity with sustainable energy for as much as 7.8 billion years.

Since the dawn of life plants inhabiting the earth utilized the suns free energy taking full advantage of this resource. We should learn from plants because they are the only continuously thriving species of life on earth. In other words, one-must assume plants have figured out what works because they have never faced extinction. The only reason our planet is inhabitable is because of that giant glowing sphere in the sky.            

I wonder, why would anyone pursue renewable energy through wind, water or geothermal sources? The reason I ask this is the law of diminishing returns. Simply put, when you draw power solitary source, energy is lost. If this energy is drawn from a solitary source, eventually, its energy will diminish much like a battery. Why deplete the Earths stored energy? 

            Lets take wind powered renewable energy for instance. Sure, wind creates power if you utilize a turbine windmill. But did any one consider the impact of 20 million wind turbines, and their effects on our atmosphere? Imagine slowing down storms, or stacking storms upon storms in one particular region. Wind turbines are basically giant wind blocks harnessing momentum from air molecules. We should consider wind turbines the same as sand paper along the earth’s surface: gently slowing our atmospheric rotations causing flooding in specific regions.

            Water on the other hand is quite promising as a renewable energy source. The reason for this, water contains two oxygen molecules and one hydrogen molecule. When one divides these molecules naturally through enzymes or algae and then recombines them energy’s released. Before I go into this, presently humans utilize water’s natural pull towards gravity. Dams provide a wonderful source of electric power because it utilizes waters relationship with gravity. The only major problem humans face is that dams must situate near specific water sources and consequently rob geographically lower cities of available water. In addition, some energy entrepreneurs poeticize tidal forces can provide an energy source in the future. One major problem with this concept is that removing energy from our oceans will magnify the slow down of oceanic currents caused by arctic and Antarctic melting.  The only major benefit water technology could produce is enzyme and algae separation of water molecules. As proven in 1993 by a biological engineer in Canada, algae can naturally separate oxygen and hydrogen molecules in the right conditions. This technology could be utilized in the form of enzyme research. Each of these technologies could easily yield a major breakthrough in energy technologies equivalent to the solar industry.

            Geothermal technology faces the same dilemmas as wind technologies. Every physicist and geologist knows that depleting the earth’s mantel of too much heat would spell disaster. For this reason geothermal is limited in its possibilities. We can only claim what comes to the surface. But we must also treed carefully with those prospects because the heat expelled from the mantel warms our environment and plays a critical role in our survival. Again the energy withdrawn from this source must remain limited.