There is a Ticking-time-bomb in the far North of Gaia. Sounds a lot like Sci-Fi, but nooo. It is real. Does anyone care enough to take notice ? http://www.sqwalk.com/blog/000235.html
Methane is more than 20 times stronger as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide...so... no problemo, let's just "burn it" say the petro-pundits. But it is ironic that CO2 is now poised to abruptly release far more methane than we could ever use or burn, and instead... it will burn us, not the other way around. The problem is not a slow rise in CO2 but a "runaway" greenhouse effect at some point, and the statisticians know that point. These are the same guys that accurately predicted the Hubbert peak, but we are not listening. Tragedy could be as little as twenty years away - tragedy which has happened before in earth's history. In fact, methane could kill us all within the next twenty year more effectively than all the nukes ever assembled. Methane already triggered the greatest mass extinction we know of in the fossil record 250 million years ago: http://tinyurl.com/5rkvz Unless new ZPE or LENR or Carbon-neutral technology comes along first, we are going to be in deep you-know-what... And without a crystal ball that can tell us when the new promised technology will arrive and be mass produced, we should be prepared to err on the side of caution, and there is an obvious place to start. For one thing, try to re-educate our government from the grass-roots upward that this is serious. They do not listen to any scientist (who is not on the Halliburton payroll) so it has to come from lots of voters. Even the Christian right-wing can get in on this one, as they have more kids than most of us and want to see their grandkids survive. To put in terms that even shrubbery can understand, we are now facing the equivalent of one billion WTC crashes happening all at once. The E.T.A. for the" tundra express" is about 2026. There are some kludges that could help to get us by, or "stay our execution" for a few more decades if need be... should the new technology fail us, or if it should take longer to arrive in mass production than expected. Time to start speculating... here is a trial balloon based on the strategy of looking for synergy in what we have now. Can three wrongs (disappointments) ever combine to make a right (successful hybrid solar energy concept which is Carbon-neutral)? Probably not this one, to be suggested, as it is very green... but someone out there probably can do better, and we need plans of action. Now. Disappointment #1) A large percentage of electricity world-wide is generated from turbines burring natural gas and releasing CO2. As a intermediate measure there are advantages to looking for a carbon neutral enhancement to gas turbines, since we cannot replace them all at once. Turbines are high efficiency and can even go higher if the exhaust can be recycled, or if the methane they burn can be reformed first and the carbon "sequestered" on the spot. This is costly but doable. It makes more sense to let nature convert the carbon into H2 near the plant. We can either reform the methane first or even last. Lean Premixed Combustion for Ultra-Low Emission Gas Turbine Combustors is possible by substituting about 20% of the methane with H2. The CO2 can then be theoretically converted in situ by hydrogen producing biomass (algae) to make the H2 in a very large expanse of adjoining greenhouses. Of course turbines will burn straight H2 also from reformed methane. Sites for algae farms like this are ideally desert areas or floating on oceans but most power plants now have a lot of adjoining "extra" space. The carbon in the biomass cells themselves is not burnt (otherwise it wouldn't be carbon neutral) but converted into plastics, fertilizers, animal feed, etc. It is possible to get pretty near to Carbon-neutral this way if you only operate the turbines during day-time... but at what cost for all that greenhouse acreage or equivalent overhead? Hydrogen-enriched hydrocarbon fuels modify both the chemical and physical processes that occur in flames for higher efficiency. Some reforming could happen now in every plant in the USA for about half of the annual cost of the Iraq war. These fuels have been shown to significantly improve flame stability characteristics during lean combustion and to allow combustion at the low temperatures while maintaining high Carnot efficiency and near zero nitrogen oxides. Disappointment #2) Solar in general, has not seen the cost reductions continually promised. But we spend precious little on solar research. The "solar chimney" mentioned in this article below has apparently not held up to close scrutiny either. It would have featured a large greenhouse covering many acres simply to heat air. As the hot air rises, it would escape up a tower in the center of the structure. Wind turbo-generators mounted in the chimney would convert this 30 mph rush of hot air into electricity. It works to a lesser degree on cloudily days. This idea was reported back in 2001, and they were hoping then to break ground a year ago on a project in Oz but cost estimates quadrupled. http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2004/08/solar-chimney.html However there are ways one could boost the output of such a device significantly. The most attractive way involves using the H2/gas turbine and greenhouse for "double duty" and to boost that 30 mph airflow to about 90 mph(triple) by mixing in the hot exhaust from the H2-fired turbine. Perhaps this could even be combined with wind turbines in proper sites. Disappointment #3) Professor Melis of Cal. has been working on modification of photosynthesis in green algae which will permit the generation of hydrogen gas as an economically viable alternative, but his progress has not lived up to initial expectations. http://pmb.berkeley.edu/profiles/newProfiles/melis.html It does work in theory and we all know that many algae will remove CO2 while producing H2 as a byproduct... so perhaps with advancing biotech, this kind of thing can be genetically engineered to do exactly what we need, and could even possibly be engineer to feed off of cooled gas turbine exhaust. Wonder if you could combine the three different ideas, using the greenhouse to both heat some air and grow the algae, which would remove CO2 and produce H2 for the gas turbine, which would also use reformed methane and send the CO2 to the greenhouse. The (now steam) exhaust from the H2 turbine is mixed with the rest of the hot air and channeled into the chimney where more energy is removed. Many tradeoffs are involved, and building acres and acres of greenhouse ponds is not cheap. But for about the $80 billion, the Admin is asking now for the War in Iraq, to go with the quarter trillion already spent, we could have already converted every plant in the USA to go carbon neutral (about 300 plants at a billion per). No, it is not cheap, but neither is war for oil. And neither is loosing everything in Western Civilization to a runaway greenhouse event ... Please read this information about the *ticking time bomb* that few are even aware of. The artic tundra is melting NOW. It is loaded with methane. What are we going to do? "Tent" the whole artic and Siberia? The Arabs would love that. They could sell us tents to go with their oil and imaginary WMD. This is fact, not Sierra Club BS! http://www.sqwalk.com/blog/000235.html Jones
