Thoughts Concerning Climate Change

Background

For several years, I’ve read news articles and watched videos by credible people that seem to know quite a lot about the topic of climate change. As I listened to the rhetoric, it seems we have the technology to solve our energy problems without causing self-induced pain and suffering. Note that I am not a scholar in any of these disciplines, I’m merely restating what I’ve read and researched on the internet, but if those sources are actually credible, the solutions are there. 

Based on the available evidence, it doesn’t look like we will be getting back the way we came. If, as many would assert, the weather is getting worse because the global temperature is increasing because the CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. And if, humans are adding more CO2 than the earth can absorb because we have been using energy sources that is releasing CO2 that has been held captive for long periods of time, then, the simple solution would seem to be not to use those energy sources that release CO2. But it doesn’t take too much investigation to see that reversing that process is much more difficult than it would seem and that the time it would take to see a difference would be too long to tolerate the weather anomalies that the increased temperature has produced. 

If we take a step back from the problem, it would seem that the weather anomalies are the issue here. Having more CO2 in the atmosphere is not problematic except that it holds a little more heat than less CO2 would. What I would propose is addressing both the weather anomalies and the energy source issues and allowing the CO2 and warming issues to self-correct. 

Desired Results 

If the desired result of mitigating climate change is for the weather to be more normal, we first have to understand what normal means. Hurricanes are normal. We have had hurricanes as long as we can remember. Perhaps a more desirable result is fewer adverse weather events. That would be a result that is actually better than normal. How could we do that? 

When considering the scope of the energy requirements of the world today, it occurs to me that producing that much energy with solar panels will cover huge amounts of land. I did a quick check on the internet and the estimates were that it would take 181,000 sq mile of solar panels to meet the world’s power requirements. The solar shading of 181,000 sq miles of land wouldn’t cool the earth that much, but if large patches of the ocean were not exposed to sunlight, the temperature of those patches would be slightly cooler. 

Consider a solar array 10 miles by 10 miles. That would be 100 sq miles of ocean that was cooled. This is still a small area in terms of global surface area, but certain areas of the earth tend to make a huge difference in global weather. Consider areas in the Caribbean that spawn hurricanes or ENSO that makes the El Nino effect. If these areas could be cooled slightly, it would make a difference in the weather. Cooling 100 sq miles of ocean would cool spots that are making storms worse. Of course, only 20% of that energy is turned into electricity. The rest produces heat in the panel. If the panels were cooled, they become more efficient and would result in a good amount of collected heat. Having control of that heat offers a number of options. The heat could be radiated back into space using radiative cooling technology would dispose of the heat very inexpensively. However, it might be better during some weather conditions to create clouds that would cool thousands of square miles and cause rain to fall. 

This kind of geoengineering would be safer than some but would still be devastating if done improperly. Clouds are interesting in that they can cool the earth, but they can also hold heat in. The elevation and type of clouds produced would require a complete understanding of the effect of clouds. If the wrong type of clouds were produced at the wrong time, it could be devastating but nowhere near as devastating as some other geoengineering solutions that have been proposed. The resulting weather conditions would last hours or days instead of years. It would of course take a couple thousand of these solar islands to produce enough power to meet the world’s demands so the cumulative effect would be substantial. While we’re solving the world’s problems we may as well make these islands float on buoys made of recycled plastic. It seems there is already a lot floating in the ocean. 

While a couple of thousand of these solar islands would produce enough power for the world, the question of how to get that power to land needs to be addressed. One way would be to use what could be referred to as a shipload of batteries. Loading up container ships with batteries actually solves two problems. The power is stored for use when it is needed and is portable so it can be used where it is needed. The ship would be docked and connected to the power grid, probably using the power to supplement the land-based renewable energy during high demand periods. 

 Another way the energy could be transported would be to produce hydrogen on the solar island. This green hydrogen would be compressed and again be brought to land via container ships. However, the best solution might be to also have “carbon capture” plants on the solar island. With hydrogen and carbon, it would be possible to produce synthetic fuel on the solar island and ship it to shore via large tanker ships, just like they do now. Synthetic fuel would power cars and power plants through the same infrastructure that we use now except that the fuel would be made of recycled carbon. No additional fossil fuel would need to be extracted from the earth. The process would pull excess carbon from the air and hydrogen from the sea to make fuel that would then be burned and returned to the air and sea. 

As stated earlier, all of these processes and products exist at this time. Most of these are small scale and would need to be scaled up and improved to get the required efficiencies and volume but it would not require a massive rework of infrastructure. It would not require that everyone change to electric cars or to get rid of their cooking stoves or convert to heat pumps that require yet-to-be-developed gases and technology. All that is required is to build a whole lot of solar panels that probably need to be built anyway.

Solar Island