Monday, January 18, 2010

Challenges and Opportunities - Green Touch

Challenges and Opportunities - Green Touch
Few questions on Global Warming and carbon emissions.
I am still in the early stages of understanding how the global warming as a phenomenon works. The universe is constant energy system. I really want to understand or rather convince myself that we are indeed working towards a real cause or are we heading in the wrong direction!
So energy release within the earth should ideally find a sink because energy can neither be created nor destroyed and it can only be transferred. The only know source of energy to me from external to earth is the sun. So in effect the extra source of energy keeps flowing to earth. And in effect the earth should also emit some radiations towards the universe. So the sun as such is pumping energy to earth. Earth ends up using this energy and emit a part of it.
So the question is - is earth emitting lesser energy than it is actually using up and it is thanks to the carbon in the atmosphere ?
So are we saying that if we are using a solar powered heater we are somehow making sure that this energy is utilized on the earth - in other words adding to the total energy of earth ? So in effect what we are doing is just reducing the power consumption required to heat water which is leading to a reduction in the electric energy in turn reduction in coal or some other plant which generates power and hence reduced carbon ??? but then we are trapping the sun's energy on earth.

What i seem to infer
we are having carbon in the atmosphere.
we have earth emitting energy.
we have sun's input energy
carbon prevents earth from emitting more energy.
as a result the earth's surface temperature rises due to trapped energy.
hmm so we need to better this flow of energy.
does this mean tomorrow if we head towards global cooling we may need to emit more carbon into atmosphere to retain earth's temperature ?
so are we saying that if we use up the temperature available on the earth and put it to good use we can reduce the global warming to a great extent ? So if we use the energy on the earth's surface or rather temperature on earth's surface rather than switching to solar energy which ends up contributing to earth's total energy we are in a way reducing the temperature on earth.

Ofcourse the other way is to reduce carbon ..plant more trees...reduce the co2 footprint!!!


I remember saying lets switch of all lights and reduced the energy on earth ?
So does this mean if we reduce our ill temper we are indirectly reducing the temperature on earth. So if we stop exercising/gyming/running we contribute to reduction of earth's temperature ?
So in effect what we see is that most of the work life style is changing. So this means that we are doing less and less of work by the day. So our physical energies and physical activities are reducing. On a lighter note humans are serving as energy banks by consuming more energy rich stuff and doing less work. So humans are, in a way, reducing their temperature contributions by a huge factor.
At the same time we have machines doing our work. And these machines seem to use up energy on one hand releasing heat on the other. So is it that Green touch aims to reduce this temperature footprint from the various mobiles/Network elements etc etc devices ? Also the indirect chain for energy generation requires co2 at some point in the cycle ?

Well a whole new perspective on how we can one day do nothing and still do something to global warming :-)


Now some suggestion:
We all know that some colours are drainers of energy - black gets heated quickly
We all know that some materials like cotton - which keep you cool even in summer
we all know nylon can retain heat -- sports applications
and a whole lot of materials

So if all the cars switch to white - how much temperature on the earth's surface is reduced or increased.
If all the building are painted white/people wear white/ - what is the impact on the energy flow. Sorry executives ! you may need to say bye to your black coats ;-)

So to me this is a simple solution to reduced the overall energy absorption at the earth's surface !

more on it ...when i find time!!! until then THINK!







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