David, I work in Saudi Arabia. One looks around and sees nothing but emptiness for miles. Much of it bakes in the summer and can't support agriculture as most of us know it. But, here they grow lots of vegetables in reverse green houses. These are translucent plastic structures kind of like a quonset hut. They have large fans at one end sucking air out of the hut, and at the other end they have evaporative water panels with air entering the hut through them. The hut is cooled by the evaporation and roughly 50% of the light goes through the translucent hut structure to provide enough light for the vegetables to grow.
Now, what would happen if you built PV panels, or some other solar collector, say twenty feet off the ground, that would collect fifty percent of the incident sunlight for electricity, or whatever, maybe even hydrogen. And, underneath, one could grow crops. One could have huge expanses of solar energy collection, and equally huge expanses of productive crop land. The Sahara, the Gobi, the Empty Quarter, etc. What about water needs? With that amount of electricity, evaporative production from the sea should be feasible. And, why stop there? Every couple of hundred feet, stick a wind generator up into the air. There is plenty of wind in Saudi. Now one has wind energy, solar energy, and more solar energy in the form of crops for biofuel, all from the same surface area of land that currently isn't being used for anything other than the occasional grazing camel. Do I expect this any time soon? Of course not. But, it is an example of how we could make use of a lot of land that currently isn't used at all. What about roof top gardens? And, if I recall correctly, someone said once on this list that we could meet 10% of our transportation liquid fuel needs with biofuels obtained from currently WASTED vegetable oil, currently dumped in landfills. That would remove a big chunk of the need to produce biofuels from virgin oils. There is research on producing oil from algae. Imagine huge floating areas of seaweed 'crops' in the ocean for oil. You see, we don't even need to consider available land mass. All of this is possible. All of this is feasible with currently available technology. Ready for use as Hakan would say. Mostly it is a matter of political will to get on with it. Derek > This shows only too well how our addiction to mineral based fuels is > leading us to environmental disaster and possibly war. Here in the UK > we are beginning to see some biodiesel appearing on the garage > forecourts, though the industry is small here compared to France or > Germany. UK is a small country but even here we have 1.5 million > acres of set aside land.....and if we reduced EU farming subsidies to > let the real price shine through we would have even more land which > could in theory be used for biofuel production...But realistically, > how much land would be required to replace mineral fuel consumption > with biofuels. The Economist reckons it would take about a quarter of > the Earth's primary production to produce enough biofuel...but has > anyone seen any detailed studies on that? Have they taken into > account some of the vast, uncultivated lands in Russia for example? > > David > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
