I think we are slowly moving in the right direction. But it’s too slow and Ed need to focus on speed plus quality.
One point you made made be a little off but we can probably fix it…, solar panels shade the areas under them, so the likelihood that we can continue to use the underlying land to grow crops (especially ones like grain that love sun) is not likely. I HAVE seen some interesting photos of solar panels being used to shade bike trails. I think that’s exciting because we have so much blacktop on highways, parking lots etc that would benefit from shade that the basic idea of putting panels over blacktop is exciting.
Also, I’m looking forward to seeing wave energy converters to be perfected and used in the oceans to generate electricity. John Rohrer of York Maine and his partner have won fifth prize internationally for their WEC design, which is now being built on the West Coast in prototype. Look him up on line. John has invented many devices and received patent approval on quite a few. He turned to wave energy converters with the goal of creating a device that would contribute to our conversion from fossil fuels to environmentally safer sources. Check him out.
I couldn’t agree more about parking lots, particularly as they could be directly hooked to EV chargers. Not sure about your neck of the woods, but grass grows just fine under Maine solar panels, as they generally have to be put up in spaced rows to avoid shading in the low winter sun. There are numerous areas where sheep have been grazed under solar arrays, and the University of Maine has ongoing experiments with raising blueberries under panels.
John Rohrer (https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/rti-wave-power) has been working with U of Maine on wave energy for several years, and there are lots of others working on ocean wave and tidal power. These technologies have a lot of potential and may be very important in the next stages of carbon reduction. But so far there isn’t a design in mass production that can be economically deployed in the the short time we have left to affect the course of dangerous warming. As Bill McKibben says, in this case “Winning slowly is the same as losing”
Hard-alee! The sailing will be turbulent, but we gotta change course or die! Great post, Doug. Check out Elizabeth Kolbert's excellent piece, Annals of a Warming Planet: A VAST EXPERIMENT in the November 28 New Yorker. Right up your alley.
I think we are slowly moving in the right direction. But it’s too slow and Ed need to focus on speed plus quality.
One point you made made be a little off but we can probably fix it…, solar panels shade the areas under them, so the likelihood that we can continue to use the underlying land to grow crops (especially ones like grain that love sun) is not likely. I HAVE seen some interesting photos of solar panels being used to shade bike trails. I think that’s exciting because we have so much blacktop on highways, parking lots etc that would benefit from shade that the basic idea of putting panels over blacktop is exciting.
Also, I’m looking forward to seeing wave energy converters to be perfected and used in the oceans to generate electricity. John Rohrer of York Maine and his partner have won fifth prize internationally for their WEC design, which is now being built on the West Coast in prototype. Look him up on line. John has invented many devices and received patent approval on quite a few. He turned to wave energy converters with the goal of creating a device that would contribute to our conversion from fossil fuels to environmentally safer sources. Check him out.
Thanks for all your research and articles, Doug!
Janet Spaulding
I couldn’t agree more about parking lots, particularly as they could be directly hooked to EV chargers. Not sure about your neck of the woods, but grass grows just fine under Maine solar panels, as they generally have to be put up in spaced rows to avoid shading in the low winter sun. There are numerous areas where sheep have been grazed under solar arrays, and the University of Maine has ongoing experiments with raising blueberries under panels.
John Rohrer (https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/rti-wave-power) has been working with U of Maine on wave energy for several years, and there are lots of others working on ocean wave and tidal power. These technologies have a lot of potential and may be very important in the next stages of carbon reduction. But so far there isn’t a design in mass production that can be economically deployed in the the short time we have left to affect the course of dangerous warming. As Bill McKibben says, in this case “Winning slowly is the same as losing”
Thanks, Janet, for reading and commenting!
Hard-alee! The sailing will be turbulent, but we gotta change course or die! Great post, Doug. Check out Elizabeth Kolbert's excellent piece, Annals of a Warming Planet: A VAST EXPERIMENT in the November 28 New Yorker. Right up your alley.
Excellent (no surprise). I more or less quote George Layoff again: "The liberal fallacy is that the truth will save us."