By Daniel Rigney
In my search for signs of hope in the green war on global warming, I’ve come upon several reports of potential breakthroughs in renewable energy that seem to show promise of mitigating climate change significantly.
In this article I want to focus on four proposed solutions in particular. To their most enthusiastic proponents, these are silver bullets capable of stopping climate change in its tracks, or at least mortally wounding it.
I confess I remain skeptical of solutions that seem too good to be true. I suspect that there really is no silver bullet in this unfolding story, and that silver buckshot, or even silver beebees, will be needed to avert the worst ravages of our largely human-made climate crisis. But in the interest of open-mindedness, I want to bring these potential solutions to your attention in case one or more of them really does turn out to be a real planet-saver.
The four nominal silver bullets are (1) thorium; (2) lunar solar energy (3) regenerative agriculture; and (4) artificial trees. Yes, you read that right. Artificial trees.
Thorium
Thorium is a cleaner, safer, less weaponizable alternative to uranium as a source of nuclear energy. Even critics opposed to conventional nuclear power may be intrigued by thorium’s potential as a source of carbon-clean and plentiful (though not strictly renewable) energy. To hear the thorium story from its most optimistic advocates, take a look at this promotional video embedded in a blogpost by skypixie0 and viewable here. See also former NASA engineer Kirk Sorensen’s TED talk here. Bill Gates, among others, is interested in thorium’s potential as a fuel source of the future. It seems well worth learning more about.
Lunar Solar Energy
Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov proposed in 1941 that our species might one day create a space station to collect solar energy and beam it back to Earth in the form of microwaves. Today’s sciengineers are proposing something even more dramatic – turning the moon itself into a solar power station capable of streaming to Earth all the renewable solar power the world needs.
Silver bullet? The Japanese company Shimizu is betting on it. To learn more, look here, here, and here. One U.S.-based site announces that “Lunar Solar Power is not just a solution for our power needs as a country, it is the solution for the power needs of the world!” That’s good to hear, but Shimizu doesn’t plan to begin building its lunar facility until 2035. Until someone builds one, it’s just moonshine.
Regenerative Agriculture
This afternoon I heard a fascinating Pacifica radio interview with Kristin Ohlson, author of The Soils Will Save Us. Her book is subtitled “How Scientists, Farmers and Foodies Are Saving the Soil to Feed the Planet.” Ohlson argues that many centuries of poor farming and ranching practices have depleted the world’s soils of up to 80 percent of their carbon content. To recapture that carbon and re-sequester it in the ground, she urges organic methods ranging from composting and planting regenerative cover crops (“green manure”) to no-till planting, “holistic grazing,” and replacing industrial farming’s chemical fertilizers and pesticides with scientifically advanced organic methods that mimic the subtle intelligence of nature.
A respectful LA Times review questions whether the book’s sweeping solutions are really “our great green hope” as its book ad claims. Nonetheless, Ohlson’s book underscores the need to return lost carbon from the air back into the intricate system of microorganisms beneath our feet, upon which the future of many species (including ours) depends. We enrich our future prospects by enriching our soil – Enriching Earth by enriching earth, if you will.
Artificial Trees
We come at last to my favorite nominee in the silver bullet category: artificial trees. Not fake Christmas trees, but artificial carbon dioxide absorbers that pull excess CO2 out of the air and render it less harmful, or even positively useful in the making of certain products.
Like natural trees, artificial trees breathe in carbon dioxide and hold it. This Scientific American article explains that Columbia physicist Klaus Lackner is working on a “potentially world-saving technology: a plastic resin that can capture carbon dioxide directly from the air” and thus reduce atmospheric CO2 levels.
Other types of carbon-pulling machines are currently in the works at Harvard, Climeworks (a Swiss company), Georgia Tech, and USC. Lackner’s prototype and others will have to be refined and scaled up massively and affordably to make much difference in the world’s CO2 level (which at this moment stands at a historically high 402.11 ppm on the Keeling Curve). Nonetheless, it’s comforting to know that while we’re deforesting real trees as we pump gajillions of tons of new carbon into the sky every day, someone, somewhere, is working on carbon-absorbing alternatives to actual forests. It makes me breathe just a little easier.
Let’s hope one or more of these strategies in the war on warming is the magic bullet that kills the giant carbon monster. But I, for one, am putting more hope in our capacity to invent a diverse range of more limited solutions. Together these might one day add up to a sustainable solution to the problems created by our carbon economy and way of life.
Maybe sooner than we think, we’ll be adding much less CO2 to the atmosphere, and at the same time subtracting some of what’s already there, driving the Keeling curve back down into the sustainable zone. If we were smart enough to invent ourselves into this climate mess, maybe we can find equally clever ways to undo the damage our cleverness has already done.
I’ll remain on the lookout for more hopeful signs of renewable and sustainable environmental breakthroughs. Peering into our murky future for signs of life and light, I remain your faithful citizen-blogger,
-- originally posted in Danagram
This article is a sequel to a previous article entitled Breakthroughs in Renewable Energy. If you know of promising developments not noted in either of these posts, please pass them along to me at drigney3@gmail.com and I’ll try to recycle them. Thanks.
In my search for signs of hope in the green war on global warming, I’ve come upon several reports of potential breakthroughs in renewable energy that seem to show promise of mitigating climate change significantly.
In this article I want to focus on four proposed solutions in particular. To their most enthusiastic proponents, these are silver bullets capable of stopping climate change in its tracks, or at least mortally wounding it.
I confess I remain skeptical of solutions that seem too good to be true. I suspect that there really is no silver bullet in this unfolding story, and that silver buckshot, or even silver beebees, will be needed to avert the worst ravages of our largely human-made climate crisis. But in the interest of open-mindedness, I want to bring these potential solutions to your attention in case one or more of them really does turn out to be a real planet-saver.
The four nominal silver bullets are (1) thorium; (2) lunar solar energy (3) regenerative agriculture; and (4) artificial trees. Yes, you read that right. Artificial trees.
Thorium
Thorium is a cleaner, safer, less weaponizable alternative to uranium as a source of nuclear energy. Even critics opposed to conventional nuclear power may be intrigued by thorium’s potential as a source of carbon-clean and plentiful (though not strictly renewable) energy. To hear the thorium story from its most optimistic advocates, take a look at this promotional video embedded in a blogpost by skypixie0 and viewable here. See also former NASA engineer Kirk Sorensen’s TED talk here. Bill Gates, among others, is interested in thorium’s potential as a fuel source of the future. It seems well worth learning more about.
Lunar Solar Energy
Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov proposed in 1941 that our species might one day create a space station to collect solar energy and beam it back to Earth in the form of microwaves. Today’s sciengineers are proposing something even more dramatic – turning the moon itself into a solar power station capable of streaming to Earth all the renewable solar power the world needs.
Silver bullet? The Japanese company Shimizu is betting on it. To learn more, look here, here, and here. One U.S.-based site announces that “Lunar Solar Power is not just a solution for our power needs as a country, it is the solution for the power needs of the world!” That’s good to hear, but Shimizu doesn’t plan to begin building its lunar facility until 2035. Until someone builds one, it’s just moonshine.
Regenerative Agriculture
This afternoon I heard a fascinating Pacifica radio interview with Kristin Ohlson, author of The Soils Will Save Us. Her book is subtitled “How Scientists, Farmers and Foodies Are Saving the Soil to Feed the Planet.” Ohlson argues that many centuries of poor farming and ranching practices have depleted the world’s soils of up to 80 percent of their carbon content. To recapture that carbon and re-sequester it in the ground, she urges organic methods ranging from composting and planting regenerative cover crops (“green manure”) to no-till planting, “holistic grazing,” and replacing industrial farming’s chemical fertilizers and pesticides with scientifically advanced organic methods that mimic the subtle intelligence of nature.
A respectful LA Times review questions whether the book’s sweeping solutions are really “our great green hope” as its book ad claims. Nonetheless, Ohlson’s book underscores the need to return lost carbon from the air back into the intricate system of microorganisms beneath our feet, upon which the future of many species (including ours) depends. We enrich our future prospects by enriching our soil – Enriching Earth by enriching earth, if you will.
Artificial Trees
We come at last to my favorite nominee in the silver bullet category: artificial trees. Not fake Christmas trees, but artificial carbon dioxide absorbers that pull excess CO2 out of the air and render it less harmful, or even positively useful in the making of certain products.
Like natural trees, artificial trees breathe in carbon dioxide and hold it. This Scientific American article explains that Columbia physicist Klaus Lackner is working on a “potentially world-saving technology: a plastic resin that can capture carbon dioxide directly from the air” and thus reduce atmospheric CO2 levels.
Other types of carbon-pulling machines are currently in the works at Harvard, Climeworks (a Swiss company), Georgia Tech, and USC. Lackner’s prototype and others will have to be refined and scaled up massively and affordably to make much difference in the world’s CO2 level (which at this moment stands at a historically high 402.11 ppm on the Keeling Curve). Nonetheless, it’s comforting to know that while we’re deforesting real trees as we pump gajillions of tons of new carbon into the sky every day, someone, somewhere, is working on carbon-absorbing alternatives to actual forests. It makes me breathe just a little easier.
Let’s hope one or more of these strategies in the war on warming is the magic bullet that kills the giant carbon monster. But I, for one, am putting more hope in our capacity to invent a diverse range of more limited solutions. Together these might one day add up to a sustainable solution to the problems created by our carbon economy and way of life.
Maybe sooner than we think, we’ll be adding much less CO2 to the atmosphere, and at the same time subtracting some of what’s already there, driving the Keeling curve back down into the sustainable zone. If we were smart enough to invent ourselves into this climate mess, maybe we can find equally clever ways to undo the damage our cleverness has already done.
I’ll remain on the lookout for more hopeful signs of renewable and sustainable environmental breakthroughs. Peering into our murky future for signs of life and light, I remain your faithful citizen-blogger,
-- originally posted in Danagram
This article is a sequel to a previous article entitled Breakthroughs in Renewable Energy. If you know of promising developments not noted in either of these posts, please pass them along to me at drigney3@gmail.com and I’ll try to recycle them. Thanks.
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