Renewable Energy: Do or Die?

Global warming has become a hot topic. Is mankind responsible or not? In some ways that question doesn't matter.


Mankind's history on planet earth is very short in geological terms. The earth is considered to be about 4 billion years old. That is including all the way from a hot boiling cauldron of lava to the present day.


In all that time there have been plenty of instances when life on earth was very close to being totally wiped out. Some of them involved green house gases being in high volume and heating the whole place up, leading to circumstances that made it real tough on life.

Ice cores from the arctic, before man was even around show times when carbon dioxide, one of the main green house gases, was much higher than it is today. It is theorized this was due to volcanic activity etc.

I believe the question about whether or not mankind is responsible for today's high rates of green house gases pales in comparison to asking if there is anything we can do about it, to make the planet a more stable place to live in and leave to our children and grandchildren. This question seems to ring with a resounding Yes!

The earth has many different natural cycles that help keep the whole thing habitable. There is an oceanic conveyor belt that moves warm water from the tropics towards the poles that is involved in heating and cooling. Not only can the green house gases getting out of whack turn us really hot, it can also be involved in turning us real cool, as shown in the movie, "The Day after Tomorrow."

What can we do to cut down and back on the green house gases? My big answer to that is renewable energy, of which there are many types. Photovoltaic cells, wind, hydro: in the form of dams, wave action, tidal turbines and others, geothermal and other mediums too.

Energy generation can be very location specific. If you don't live near the ocean than tidal turbines are out. If it isn't sunny where you are then solar is out, and if there is now wind than wind turbines won't work.

But, if you do implement one of these types in an area that is conducive to it then you can generate very large amounts of energy that compete economically with the conventional methods of burning fossil fuels.

All these areas of energy generation need more research and development and perhaps most importantly they need to be geared up so the costs will come down naturally.

Even though most of us can't put a power plant in the back yard or on the roof we can purchase credits for energy made in a green fashion to use to pay our power bills.

We can also push at every opportunity for governmental agencies to move faster and farther on R and D and implementation.

There are a couple of examples that come to mind of countries that undertook the challenge and are exemplary as far as what can be done. There is a country in South America that now uses hardly any fossil fuels because they have pursued making ethanol from sugar cane to use in their vehicles. They also use the left over vegetation from that to burn cleaner for power generation plants.

The country of Iceland gets over half of all their power needs from geothermal. Since it is a volcanic area they drill down a few thousand feet, stick a pipe in the ground, pump water into it and use the steam to run generators to produce electricity. They have gotten so good at it that they even pump hot water into the towns for people to hook up to, saving consuming fossil fuels for that.

They have started a greater push to use solar generated electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, a very simple process you may have performed in a high school chemistry class. They use the hydrogen to propel their vehicles with fuel cells, whose exhaust pipes pour out water you could drink right from the pipe!

This paper can in no way be a complete discussion of the topic of renewable energy sources and why we should use them. Just watching the nightly news will convince you that the climate is not what it used to be. Every day there are new ways people are coming up with for us to be more friendly to the planet. It is the only one we have to live on so I think it behooves us to all be open to thinking about ways we can help the planet help us.

Thank you,

Dave Briggs