A Technology to Save the Planet

From our frieds at DailyKos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/1/173826/0547

The Solar Tower

We could solve our energy problems in 10 years

This space age looking thing is actually a power plant called a Solar Tower. The first commercial version is set to be completed by 2006 in Australia.

It works off a very old and simple concept: hot air rises. The hot air is generated by a greenhouse effect under the collection area around the base. As the air heats up underneath, it has nowhere to go but up the giant chimney where it turns giant fan blades connected to turbines. It's so simple it's silly.

The one being built in Australia will generate around 200MW (megawatts) of electricity -enough to power about 200,000 homes. It will cost about 500 million bucks. Standard coal powered plants that generate 200MW cost around 750 million and that doesn't include the cost of mining, processing, and transporting coal.

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is from the gas & oil/energy sector. Their entire goal since they came into office is to further enrich their already rich friends. Then they'd rather keep funding themselves by keeping their base stirred up about social issues.


Seriously, whether that is true or not, it's a leadership issue, pure and simple.

Huge for the power produced. About 2% efficiency. Compare with 15% for consumer photovoltaic cells or 30+% for mirrors-turbine solar thermal setup.
The only positive is the water heat storage that enables the plant to produce electricity overnight. But that is not nearly enough to offset the negatives.
Note that construction was supposed to have started in 2003 with completion this year. They haven't started the construction yet. Completion by 2006? Don't think so, even if they started today.

50,000 acres to replace 1 large nuke/fossile fuel plant.

They may have their place. But I don't think these are the universal cure to our problems.

they are, in fact, rich ecosystems. And the Oz plant is not even being built in real desert. The 20 square miles or so they bought for the purpose used to be a sheep farm.

Also note that 20 square miles of metal frame with glass panes can't be just left to its own devices. Even though the maintenance effort per unity area is very low the huge size means that it is certainly not negligable and will run up the operating costs of the plant.
Note that it covers an area of a medium sized city.

So, the size does matter.

So, you like nukes better?

Instead of relying on a huge solar array for heat/energy, use cooling water from nuclear reactors circulating through huge radiators at the base to heat and drive the convection up the turbine tower? Conventionl cooling methods would probably need to stay in place with a secondary loop to the turbine tower.

Any thoughts on feasibility of this?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x20290

It's actually way over-hyped and certainly ISN'T going to solve the world's energy demand.

...we have an energy problem.

without addressing the population problem. That is like wanting
to address overgrazing without reducing the number of cows. We
can reduce our numbers or it will be done for us. How "ethical" is
it to have billions of people starving and living in shit?

No one is more in favor of family planning and the elimination of poverty (now well understood to be the root cause of unrestricted population growth) than I am.

The route to the elimination of poverty will involve energy, for which, BTW, there are vast resources, at least in the case where general technical ignorance about energy can be arrested.

In countries like Finland, where there is wealth and energy, the population is falling or being maintained in an orderly (ethical) way, in a climate of peace and prosperity.

The opposite holds true in places like Somalia, which is ravaged by war, environmental collapse and extreme poverty, and where the population is nonetheless soaring.

Now, I suppose one solution would be to shoot as many people in Somalia until things calm down and until there is enough resources to provide whatever fraction of survivors we decide upon access to health care, education, etc. The other is to manage our remaining resources worldwide so that they are wisely used and equitably distributed, in such a way that all have equal access and to help our Somalian brothers and sisters to live in decently so they themselves can see what they must do.

I agree with the premise that the world is beyond its carrying capacity, but I believe that there are enough resources to reduce the population by attrition, by holding the world, if need be by regulation, to a family size of two or less. However this will NOT happen in impoverished areas. People in those areas do not think like middle class people in rich comfortable areas. They don't even have a clue about who we are or why they should have anything to do with our agenda.

The problem is not simple and is not addressed by a single pat focus on just one area of the crisis, in this case, population. I can repeat what I often repeat, that population control will come with the adoption of the liberal agenda. This includes ideas like raising the status of women, access to health care, reduction (paradoxically) of infant mortality, access to education, provision for universal good nutrition, etc, etc.

I am well aware of the various solutions to overpopulation,
among which the better are as you say, personal security and
literacy will do much of the job in time, and education more,
and there is little hope without those things.

My point is that to deal with energy without dealing with
overpopulation is futile, in fact the result is most likely
greater damage to the biosphere.

I don't think your idea of trying to manually cull the herd would
work, and I don't see why you think I am advocating a one-dimensional
approach, it's just the opposite, so based on your last paragraph
I'd say we agree in that regard.

And basically you're right that the long term solution to energy (and just about every other environmental/resource problem) should be population control.

I am not in favor of doing nothing about population. However I believe that we will never solve this problem other than through the mechanisms of war, disease and environmental collapse, unless we solve the closely related problems of poverty and ignorance.

Poverty and ignorance cannot, in turn, be addressed - at least through any mechanism of which I am aware - without the use of energy. Energy, though, is not as serious a problem as say, water and soil depletion, because several very low environmental impact - albeit mysteriously unpopular - alternatives exist, especially nuclear energy.

I do recognize that increasing the energy supply and reducing the environmental impact of its production via nuclear means is a temporary solution to the crisis at hand and it will not address the problems of habitat destruction, soil destruction, the toxic residue of our past practices etc, etc. In fact, it can be said that easy access to energy got us into this mess in the first place and so I think that cheap safe energy can be (and always will be) a double edged sword. However, although my country and my planet have been savaged, particularly in the last few years in this Reign of Error and mythology, I am still a liberal at heart, which means that I still optimistically believe that humanity can learn from its experience. If we DO learn from this experience, though much has been lost, there is still much that can yet be saved.

If we don't destroy ourselves in other ways first, some day we'll experience another disease pandemic that will sweep through our anti-biotic resistant populations.

Modern means of transportation will insure the widest possible spread of disease in the shortest amount of time, and our overburdened and eroding health care system will be unequal to the task of containment and treatment.

From an individual perspective the prospect is horrifying, but it may well be our species only salvation since we seem incapable of the developing an effective social/psycological mechanism for keeping our population in check.

A substantially reduced human population would relieve a major strain on the global ecosystem at a time when it already under tremendous pressure to adjust to climate change.

It's called birth control. Condoms are cheap, already available and can be distributed worldwide.

Any notions of "saving the planet" must go beyond creating the technologies which will simply allow humans to continue to breed exponentially. This species is no more deserving of this planet than the countless thousands we are driving to extinction by our selfish and parasitic ways.

They are useless unless people use them. People use condoms (and the many other forms of birth control) when they understand the necessity for doing so. They understand the necessity for doing so when they are educated and when they are not dependent of child labor and or surviving adult children to take care of them in their own age.

A pile of condoms reaching to the moon is thus just more rubber without breaking the cycle of poverty and ignorance.

Finally if we must compare species "rights," we should also compare species behavior. A colony of bacteria will not stop breeding to preserve the rights of other species. Many colonies of humans on the other hand have done so, though clearly there are many which have not. The population of many European countries, for instance, are expected to fall in the next century, even without war and pestilence.

I have no doubt that the human population will be reduced by tragedy rather than by ethical means if the status quo is allowed to persist. However I do not agree that reduction by tragedy is inevitable, nor need it be universal.

The belief that something can be done to face seemingly insurmountable problems is what liberalism is all about.

there would be no problem with the population/energy ratio if we would use energy efficiently.