Solar farm blocked:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/...ck-up-the-sun/

"another resident—a retired science teacher, no less—expressed concern that a proposed solar farm would block photosynthesis, and prevent nearby plants from growing"

Lol.

remember that one about solar panels draining the suns power?

Terran logic: That's alright, we'll just land at night.

"...lazy corkscrew Solward...

The ice melts, exposing centuries of carefully harvested antimatter.

And BANG, we're internal dev.

I ain't no idiot, cher.

Just do passive heat drains from the top layer of deserts, invert what Iceland's doing with geotherm. Sure you can store it within ambient water temperature in semi-vac. Or circulate it thru adobe housing thru the southwest. If you're at 5k' elev and there's a town down about 2k', passive gravitational resistance will add to the heat actually using the right medium...

O right, adobe again.

One resident was right that there's no evidence they're not causing cancer. The sun does cause skin cancer, so its only logical that harnessing larger quantities would cause more cancer.

As for the McDonalds at every corner of every small country town...

(: Mistake.

Well, if take out all of the photosynthesis, you will get a higher concentration of sun cancer.

Just about the only valid concern here is the look for the area. Everything else is ridiculous bs. I mean surely one may not like to step out and see a huge reflective blue, black or whatever area following the sun when they look out of their balcony or garden or anywhere elevated with a vista. But what if they placed trees in the perimeter of the project to cover its interior from nearby view creating a mini perimeter forest. Then only someone very elevated would be able to still see them. The rest would be seeing in a distance some trees and assuming the city is not elevated compared to the solar farm location no 1-2 floor building would be able to see anything for at least 5km.

The solution of course in the future is to do it in areas that are not particularly scenic or where industry or other commercial buildings exist and of course initiate it in the roof of all companies and all modern homes in an artistically smart design that is not ugly and part of the roof system geometry in some cute high tech looking style. I can even imagine it along highways. If you did one such long system in the dividing barrier for 1m-2m width times 50km in some suburbs to city highway route you would obtain 50000*1=223^2 m^2 the equivalent of a 223mx223m =12.5 acre square farm and all the cars would be seeing in the dividing lane would be a dark blue modern looking surface (power for 6000 homes). Similarly in the sides of the highway too if it made sense. If you did that in all significant highways you could use area that is now more or less wasted blocked by barriers as it is. You would not require more area, just what you already have there.

I can especially see it in farm land and near places they have livestock. Endless flat ugly areas used for crops where 5-10% of the area of each farm is solar farming now giving farmers a better usage of their land ($/acre per year) in terms of income than even the best crops yield.


Another futuristic approach when technology has become very cheap may be to have instead of flat solar panels, artificial trees that have leaves that easily rotate to follow the sun and which from a distance look indeed like trees.

Seriously though as it is if you forced or offered incentives to every company that has significant area of buildings, every warehouse, every supermarket, every school, every hospital, etc all buildings that are necessary to be there without having any artistic geometry to begin with anyway, to cover their roofs 90% you would get a ton of power created without altering the geometry of the city and in fact you would improve its look in many cases that the buildings are flat ugly boxes. How about in racing areas, stadiums (perimeter and some walls ) the roofs of all gas stations, basically anywhere that we need to have such places anyway not particularly sensitive about their geometry and where the flat shinning dark blue aspects of that geometry would fit just fine with the overall architecture. It might even improve the look of these buildings. There are a ton of high rise (say 2+ floors) buildings that are used as rentals with flat horizontal roofs also that have substantial roof area elevated from street view, impossible to see from around that could be used for that function.

See what i mean with these examples eg in walmarts etc





In the future i even envision systems that use solar power to capture CO2 from atmosphere and synthesize fuel from it. Eg imagine methanol or higher synthetic hydrocarbons used for gas today by using only the available CO2 in the atmosphere (about 10^15 kgr) (reactions are available) which of course doesnt remove the CO2 because you eventually burn that fuel but at least makes the fuel clean having no real additive role to use it in vehicles or other machines that by then are not yet electric for whatever reason. Also systems that capture water from the atmosphere (humidity) can be used to irrigate arid areas and enable agriculture there. Or many systems that are near very poor countries coastlines that use desalination to produce water to be used to enable agriculture in these arid areas (eg places like Aithiopia/Eritrea, Somalia etc maybe countries like Lybia, certainly many middle eastern countries etc).

All this can be avoided of course if we obtain fusion soon even aneutronic fusion with eg Boron that wont require significant infrastructure. But i see no problem with introducing solar in all standard boring buildings we have already and our necessary infrastructure as part of their geometry going on in the future indefinitely. I mean ugly cities/flat buildings that exist anyway by necessity can simply become a bit better looking that way not worse and they represent a huge amount of area that is not exploited.

Speaking of solar trees earlier;



Trees like that in parking areas or airports lol? Tons of stupid endless open areas we currently have that their geometry would improve actually. The cars can benefit from the shade not having the sun fry them all day in those parking spots too.
Just remember actual photosynthesis (trees) is like 3% efficient and solar can be 25-30% even 50% in future generations eventually. So if its not ugly looking its 10 times better than having trees there in terms of energy capture and even eventually CO2 removal.

masque de Z,

Kim Stanley Robinson goes into reasonable detail about solettas in his RGB Mars trilogy.

Also, solar sails can be static and energy converted to laser beams. From Lunar {L2, L4, L5} there is an immense area of 360 degree space (shouldn't really close out natural light where populations are) in which to spread out micron-thick sails used as collectors. Could probably push gigamasses towards L3 then attitude redirect to drift towards these 3 points. Also decent spots for orbital habs then eventually O==O==O. Loopy trains from geosynch.

etc. But yeah, solar trees and beaches that double as solar collectors. It's just resource optimization recursiving endlessly.

+add2dict: recursiving.

Booking in a bit. It's a new ****ing era, baby.

But it's soaking up all the area's sun, so that should reduce cancer?!?

Those two idiots are still much less ******ed than what's on CNN right now.

Nah, it attracts extra sun and extracts all the good sunlight which leaves a greater concentration of bad sunlight.

I am not biting. The last time I turned on the TV on the night of a debate, I almost landed myself in the hospital.

Recursiving (v): See recursiving.

So it's like the solar equivalent of nonresident cobras? Oh crap, there's no proof they don't cause an increase in snakebites either.

Kristofero, certainly if we could initiate some AI assisted development of structures in orbit from eg moon that is easier to transport material or even captured asteroids, building mega-structures in orbit becomes possible in a geometrically expanding sense that is self sustainable. Also developing space elevators here on earth would enable many such applications that currently are very expensive to consider. I think depending on how fusion goes we may do such things within 100 years.

But i mean even with current technology we can in principle push solar to 50-75% of all our needs. There is no reason any future home build and any future factory or warehouse or any city action necessary infrastructure to not be able to produce energy for 10 more of them that dont have it yet.

Obviously studying the overall impact to the system from all possible angles is necessary as we do not want to solve one problem and create others in its place.


A problem a civilization that explodes in usage of solar energy ultimately has, even from its AI alone, is energy conversion of the solar radiation that would have been lost to space (albedo) into eventually thermal energy in our cities. So i mean what solar panels ultimately do is reduce the radiation reflected back to space. Some of it is now captured and not reflected out (dark surfaces). That eventually becomes electric and in the end thermal energy as we use it in applications. So it is released to the system to a big fraction (other stored forms of energy are created also ie in what we are developing etc) as heat instead of radiated back to space. Of course it will be emitted back to space as thermal microwave radiation eventually (instead of just reflected radiation) but maybe only after already rising the temperature of our cities and therefore releasing more heat to the environment that can also produce climate change (global temperature rise as the new equilibrium that our energy consumption forces).

So my question is even if we stopped CO2, CH4 emissions (fossil fuel burning, livestock etc) what happens if we 100x our energy consumption in the next 100 years? Does that still alter the environment/climate? This can also happen if we switched to fusion. Visualize it better by how much heat our computers alone generate. Super strong AI will release even more heat moreover the fact of course it will manage to be super efficient in how it uses energy.

This is why we certainly have a crystal clear incentive to expand to space anyway and not on earth as much to do the super high technology civilization that will require enormous power consumption for all mega engineering and all AI functions.


I want to see some work though on just what happens if we converted all fossil fuel burning to solar to the climate change problem if we tripled at the same time our energy usage say in the next 30 years. How does say using 3% of our surface area for solar to stop CO2 emissions, and even reverse it, affect the climate also?

Is CO2 our main problem or our rising energy usage presents a similar problem eventually if not just yet?

At a basic level of thinking currently we receive from the sun near 5*10^24 J per year (33% is reflected out right away, the other in captured and released as thermal radiation eventually to reach equilibrium) and our current consumption is 10^21 J per year or just 1/5000 that amount.

So we only need to sacrifice at say 25% efficiency about 0.1-0.2% of our planet's area for solar energy capture. That is only 0.5% of the land area say. Not a huge impact in terms of albedo (33% say over all the planet). This is definitely not a lot yet. It will remain still a worse problem what CO2 and CH4 do to the atmosphere in trapping heat and raising the equilibrium temperature and therefore making weather more volatile than what the thermal capture does from solar technology but certainly we cant imagine going to 50x what we already consume in this planet without essentially creating similarly problematic climate change due to our energy usage alone then.

It is a comfort though to see at least initially we have room for a 10x and this can buy significant time plus efficiency will improve also. If prices come down significantly even stupid capitalist model may get lucky and avoid the collapse. But scientific society would be much better at solving these problems fast as top priority that also supports the economy and produces jobs constantly bypassing idiot politicians, stupid public voting and money interests manipulating everything and even digging their own grave too lol.

And regress? Holy ****, no. Instead of that, hand out graph paper (or a tablet app with graphing SW) and teach Hohhmans instead of dry calculus.

Why do you reckon $/barrel's spiraling? Some got futures. (:

We need our Hamlets and van Goghs yo.

Don't mind if I do, Elon. I'm more her speed. Cool store up Yorkdale.

To match CO2 change from pre-industrial to today, global (non-solar) energy consumption would have to go up by around a factor of 500-1000.

Yeah it felt that we have a lot of room to see 50-100 as ok room for growth assuming all else providing this was clean but i still need to see how the CO2 and CH4 affect the temperature to be more confident in what i was saying. I mean if today we can be ok by using 0.25% of the area of the planet (with all current 25% efficiency etc) going to 10-20x that is a rather big deal in term of albedo change and the extra energy released in heat now. The sun is giving us 5000 more than we consume so going up 1000 is like 1/5th that and i doubt that this isnt much worse than CO2 right now. Right? I would imagine even 5-10% of that is a big issue.

But that still leaves big room for growth at least a factor or 100 seems manageable. Plus improvement in efficiency will prolong that assuming we didnt screw up the environment in other ways. I was basically making the point this is an inevitable long term problem too for a planet in terms of its technology unless it finds a way to cool itself lol.

It may also be a way to detect extraterrestrial intelligence ie look for the thermal output of distant solar systems. Can you imagine what the emission in infrared for our system will be in 300 years if we have space colonies all over the place?

Expand on solar trees/sails. You don't need full Dysons, and sure other civs will be capable of the same thing... Provided they give a **** about extant civs.

Most don't from my perspective. But it's fun to set traps.

It's easy for a Kd2 to make itself look like a scattering of Kd1's and less across a kilolight so...

(Including body heat, we have a few gigayears of infrared. And some civs diverge and focus inwards and model exterior developments to astonishing accuracy and... leave well enough alone, because once they pinpoint a possible civ, they find that within this civ placement, there are heaps of divergences to explore... So forth.)

Bootstrap w/e. I cover. So does the stable post-solar that was once and still Iove.

Ivanpah-solar-plant-bird-deaths

Plant falls short of energy production:

http://www.reviewjournal.com/busines...as-falls-short

Burns natural gas:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/p...as-energy.html

The tortoise doesn't beat the hare:

http://www.hcn.org/wotr/the-tortoise...-mojave-desert



People need to stop whining and realize that Coal is the answer. Nuclear is not bad either. Energy from the silly sun, variable wind, the lackluster tides and waves produced by the ocean, geothermal, are all just pipe dreams. And will all be blocked by the earth savers union.

I've thrown boatfuls of Greenpeacers into slaver ships just to prove a point.

What do you get when you burn coal? Indeed.

Lungs adapt. Terrans learn to become truly native Lunarians. Areans. Titanics is a bit arrogant, so let's go with titani.

I had a cat named Coal coming into school-age. I wonder what happened to her. Probably nothing; felines understand quantum quasi-pixelation rather well. They are older. Sleep mostly. They wait on the silly apes, who then adore and wait on them.

So be it.

But is looks really cool.

Indeed it does. One should be built in Paris, France just to upgrade the look of that medieval city. They could center it on the Eiffel Tower.

The oh so annoying French have a much better nuclear generating program than 'Murica (or anyone else for that matter). The following link has a great deal of information and Masque should critique it so he can comment on it.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Co...es-A-F/France/


Merry Christmas.

Solution to the Greek starling problem?

The solution to the stupid bird problem i think is to initiate a program that hatches birds of these species in captivity ( i mean boosting the natural rate with some assistance) (assuming its not impossible for some species) and releases them to the area at the rate they die or more. Same for turtles or whatever. Come on now. You can also have some other subtle smell /frequency or other ideas that discourage wild life from visiting the risky specific path. Its not as if the birds cant fly even a few dozen meters away from the tower, its probably when they get into the path of the focused beam or maybe nearby that they die. Even 20-30 birds a year is small number that can be recovered i would think with much less cost and effort than declaring it a problem to shut down such projects.

Coal kills animals at greater rates it would seem.

I suppose if one does it properly with enough care to avoid errors and constantly monitor what can go wrong and how to react to it as if the life of the country depended on it, then it will be possible to be 100% nuclear and not worry about the products because they can be reprocessed eventually as we obtain better technology and fusion ultimately and AI can help clean and store these products responsibly and avoid nightmares like Chernobyl and Fukushima. I need to study the French program and how they do things to have a better opinion though in terms of what risk may be there that is bypassed by lack of proper care over the decades as new things were learned. You would have thought that the Japanese would have been very responsible about it as well and then look what happens when multiple things go wrong.

It is a given that activist people are insane about how unreasonable they prove to understand the true risk at all levels (they even worry about space missions). Maybe in the end losing a few thousand people to an accident every 100 years and some area of 5000km^2 is better than the loss of climate and the death of millions and so much wild life that is our CO2 legacy. But of course i think if it all proceeds very responsibly as if you anticipate all the failures then we can avoid such accidents and storage issues completely and i take that from the work of activists, the seriousness with which planning and execution must proceed to avoid disasters. Technology eventually will be developed that can clean everything generated now.

Read more here to obtain a much better picture about where this can be going and how we must proceed to be aware but not scared beyond reason;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

See also this alternative;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle


But of course lets hope we are close to aneutronic fusion with Boron at least, let alone other forms of fusion that will make this discussion obsolete and result in reactors that are clean and the size of trucks.
eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri_Alpha_Energy

My own proposal would be severe research on all kinds of fusion like our lives depended on it that mirrors our defense expenses every year (even if only 10% of them it would be spectacular and we would get there fast. Surely gl this happening but it is the answer if we knew what was best for us and turning fusion into an arms race equivalent may be the solution actually if the idiots cannot cooperate directly). Basically treat fusion like a Manhattan project or a moon landing project.

In the meantime go ahead with development of very safe nuclear fission reactors (with maddening paranoia security studies and real reactor security protocol functions in place to anticipate everything possible). At the same time of course expansion and refinement in efficiency and low cost of solar in every new home/building built and all major city roofs and industrial and other commercial/corporate infrastructure we use currently that dont have aesthetic/architectural value or where such deployment doesnt result in scenic disturbance in areas of interest. Then also go ahead and develop it in 1-2% of endless flat type farmland areas (treat solar as as if its crops , each major and small farmer has 2% solar in their land area from which they derive 5x more than the best crop choice known to man). That way we can be ok even without fusion or fission or buy time to do these things better. Having a world where each home is energy self reliant in a clean manner is a good world to have anyway. Develop also solar technology that turns CO2 from atmosphere (10^15 kgr) to fuel and put out of business fossil fuels turning it all to a cycle instead. Imagine your own home giving you your electricity and fuel. Of course transitioning to electric cars will reduce the need for fuel but its good to have a backup hybrid technology in place too.

We need a world that each home can in principle survive alone for a while (meet its own needs) if something happened. We need intelligent homes that operate efficiently and recover their own impact to the environment. If every new structure built was like that by law we would solve the problem simply by building as usual not even requiring a breakthrough elsewhere.

Think about collecting waste heat (you mentioned acreage) from otherwise useless radioactive material. Sure there are things that need both to be irradiated and warmed.

Like some kinds of well-aged meat? Maybe edible chemo?