Intelligent Use Of Free Energy

Green Earth - For Us All


There are various proposals to replace fossil fuels by bio-fuels and first and foremost they all address a short-term issue, that is, cutting out the dependence of other nations on oil rich ones - but this is very short sighted, since they will create far more problems if they do work, and if not they are merely distracting attention from the real issue and taking efforts away and besides, even ridiculing a very real grave danger we all might be in.
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The really bad ones out of the whole range of proposals begin with one that showed someone inventing a wood burning car. It is difficult to believe it was real, but it was on news channels, respectable ones, and they showed good cars and compared their running and announced it was satisfactory.

The various dangers are obvious, but the greatest one is if people did take this seriously and started chopping woods and cutting down forests even more than they are doing now for reasons even worse than today, we shall lose all forest cover in no time - trees live long but they do take time to grow and using them for running cars is the greatest folly ever to cross any mind.
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As it is there is too much cutting down of trees and use of wood going on for purposes that really don't need it, and should be substituted by other, better means. the two biggest examples are furniture everywhere and building of homes in U.S. - the former has many alternatives that would do better,

An idea for the former, there are many options, including using bricks to have permanent structures - how much do you really move your heavy furniture anyway, and what for, except for cleaning? so it would be good if you did not have to either clean under (there won't be anything under) or move it. And if it broke it is earth to earth, sweep it away and have another put in place.

For another idea, use the growing problem of plastic garbage by turning it into a solution here, by doing some rather intelligent recycling of plastics that are thrown away; that is, compactifying it for the mass of the furniture and giving a veneer of metal - or even better, of glazed earthenware, to construct the final usable and good looking furniture.

Just imagine what scope exists for craft and creation of beauty with glazed earthen furniture, even if it is only a veneer covering the compacted plastic.
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And the latter, building of houses with wood, is a romantic vestigial habit from the times people arrived fresh from Europe and needed shelter and chopped down a tree from the then plentiful forests and made a log cabin asap; a habit that could have been changed long ago to more appropriate use and industry of bricks - but now it is high time the switch is made.

This is the time when we need all the forest cover we can have and not cut any more trees. For any reason.

Bricks after all come from earth and it is not so much of a damage to earth to take some mud from the surroundings, bake bricks and construct a house. Unlike wood that needs cutting down of trees that take decades to grow and are not so much in abundant supply

And as for what carbon that would generate - using solar power should be entirely possible for the brick industry, for the whole process. So the whole process should be from free material and free energy, as good sounding as it can get and quite practical too.
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If the proposals to use either bio fuels or wood do work it is going to be disastrous, either with people getting distracted enough not to pay attention to the real need of the hour or even worse by actually doing this stupid thing and making it worse.

Trees absorb carbon and we really need them for that on a large scale, much more than they exist. And also to stop disasters like the tsunami and so on, which was far less devastating in places where there were trees all the way to the sea shore to and beyond waterline.

Trees hold the earth too and we do need them to avoid land slides, and the mountains that are now bare of them for either road and house building or for need of people to burn wood for winter or for sheer greed of lumber industry - whatever the reason the cover is thin and landslides are costing lives, and going to cost more.
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As for burning bio fuels, people are more likely to think in terms of corn oil than the really useful fuel, dung - the latter is used even now in rural parts of much of the world, certainly Asia, and is very practical especially for the poor - they usually need to keep some animals, and a cow and an ox do wonders for the economy of the family in this and in every other way too, by providing everything from milk (much needed nutrition) to transportation (ox are intelligent and far more docile used with a cart that is useful as transport for trade and for every other need of the family; but the free fuel is the ultimate usefulness of the animals.

Of course - it can be made better and only recently someone designed a far better stove for it to convert the usual carbon monoxide emissions into carbon dioxide so it will benefit rather than be bad for environment in general - as long as there are trees.

But the fashionable people that talk of bio fuels are not thinking of or experimenting with such fuels, only with corn or vegetable oil; and while it is better to have farms and greenery rather than oil drills, the amount of land needed to use for farming for fuels for the ever growing need of people is no joke. In all likelihood it will amount to chopping down forests and taking away land and forest from the helpless poor - whether within a nation or more likely some nations taking away from the poorer ones, and Africa will starve more, as will people of south America.

Most likely both the disasters will come together - losing forests and poor losing precious farming land and crops. No, it is unthinkable. If there are any bio fuels to be used it ought to be on the lines of use of cow-dung by rural poor in India - and other animals in other lands; horses will do too.

At the very least that will amount to saving the animals.
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The real danger in all this is that people will forget about the urgent need to do a lot more to reduce carbon, and the real answers are not about what other fuels to source from earth literally unless it is heat of the earth at night from infrared radiation - it is in solar and wind energy to be harnessed for every purpose.

Cars do get hot, as everyone knows, since they are driven outdoors and are made of material that heats - so what is stopping people from using solar panels covering the car to give energy to the engine and cooling the car too at the same time?

This is even apart from the fact that solar panels and wind turbines on top of buildings can help every building to become self sufficient in terms of energy, and with some intelligent architecture one can do away with air conditioning as well, so the need of energy reduces to where solar and wind energy will suffice.
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The real need is to get down to the real questions and stop fooling around with dangerous stuff and make it possible for all of us to survive, and use what is there in plenty already - sun and wind and, heat of earth even at night.
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