SAVE OUR BEAUTIFUL PLANET

Climate Change is the theme for this year's annual BLOG ACTION DAY.

"BLOG ACTION DAY is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance."


On the corkboard that covers the walls near my desk, I post photos of the ones I love. Even before the "Eagle has landed", when the first astronauts had circled the moon without landing, I pinned up their photo of earthrise over the edge of the moon. They were awed by it, and so was I. What a beautiful planet we live on, blue oceans and lands tinted blue with atmosphere, all swirled with white clouds and glittering snows!

It looks indestructible, but it is not. Global climate change is happening at an accelerating rate due to the rapid buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Glaciers and polar ice caps are melting. They have served through the ages as reflective surfaces that moderate the amount of sun rays striking the earth. And as they diminish they not only lead to climate change for us, they themselves become the victims of the increased heat. It is a positive feedback system.

I feel confident that many bloggers are posting remedies that can be applied on a personal basis. Here is a link to my friend Aurora's blog. She has a list of excellent suggestions.

What I would like to address concerns larger projects that must be addressed by governments or industries if we are to save our planet from its catastrophic increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. This is how Otto spent the last part of his life, seeking to convince those in power that the sun and the wind are the only solutions, that they were being used successfully in other countries, that the components were essentially "off the shelf". He had designed an even more efficient conventional steam power plant. I have shown a diagram of it previously on this blog.

Just this morning I saw a program on PBS that showed wind farms in Pennsylvania, and the acceptance of them as things of beauty by an initially hostile populace. They are tall, slender and quiet, a lacy decoration on a beautiful landscape.

There are many ways to store the energy of alternative systems when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine, especialy when wind and sun are integrated into utility systems.

Because it is BLOG ACTION DAY I will post once more the information about improved solar plants. Skip it if you have read it too many times already.

Otto proposed building solar-turbine power plants in such places as the Gran Desierto of northern Mexico, the Yuma desert of Arizona, the Sahara and Gobi deserts.

The power plants, of his improved design, would be the conventional steam turbines now used, with the schematic below showing a more economical design than any current solar plant. Low-cost parabolic trough concentrators would boil water. The wet steam would then be dried and superheated by the focused solar light of tracking heliostats.

This would significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels. It would be a first step toward slowing the accelerating pace of global warming before it reaches the point of no return.

This is an example of the single-axis parabolic collectors
that would be used for the pre-heat.
These are at Kramer Junction in the Mojave Desert.

Their are improved versions of the above type of pre-heat collector using Fresnell lens for even greater efficiency (i.e. lower cost).

This plant, CPS 10 in Spain is an example of the
tracking heliostats that would provide the super-heating
for the seccond stage.

And here is a part of our earth to be saved.