Thinking About Sensible Approaches To Creating Clean Energy
Saturday 23 April 2011
The need to develop and efficiently use new and reliable sources of power has become one of the most important considerations facing the first world. The slow and gradual improvement of our power generation approaches has been steady over centuries of development. The ultimate goal to this pursuit of clean energy is a power source which does not produce harmful waste.
The most ecologically sound way to come up with a power supply is also one of the oldest and most traditional. In many parts of the world, people still rely on the brute muscle of their livestock to do the heavier work. Oxen are teamed together to plow fields, donkeys turn grinding wheels, and in a pinch the most readily available source of work is still the human being who wants the work done.
While these methods might be conscientious and planet friendly, they cannot come close to supplying sufficient power to large populations. It would be unreasonable to even expect to generate enough electricity for the residents of a small apartment building in this way.
Even today in the United States, the reliance on coal burning electricity generation is high. One of the big problems with coal as a generating fuel is that the smoke produced is highly polluting. Some reports estimate that the number of Americans who die each year from mercury and other toxins thus produced is in the thousands.
While the generation of power by means of hydroelectric projects is substantially more environmentally sound than coal fired plants are, the paradigm is not without its own problems. Building dams and redistributing water flow can have serious consequences for the local water tables and other water courses. The inherent danger of destroying the habitat of indigenous water animals is also quite high.
A third, more modern option involves the use of nuclear generating stations. Unfortunately, many people oppose nuclear power on paranoid and uneducated grounds. They think that the plant will blow up and ruin everything. They only know the name Chernobyl and not the name Darlington. Nuclear stations hardly ever fail. The actual problem with this sort of generation is that we don't know what to do with all the highly dangerous radioactive waste.
Wind turbines and photovoltaic fields are absolutely the two front runners as far as new ways to generate power without harming the environment goes. Tidal power is also something that many people are starting to investigate, but this cannot be done if the country is land locked.
Even these two methods are not without their detractors. If you build a wind farm, someone will object on behalf of some migratory bird or other. If you build a field of solar panels, someone will find a tortoise that has been affected by the development. Any human development will run into complaints and arguments. But the encouraging thing is that we have apparently become intelligent enough to understand that our actions, even something so very healthy for the global environment like the quest for clean energy, have consequences not only for us but also for the weakest animals on Earth.
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The most ecologically sound way to come up with a power supply is also one of the oldest and most traditional. In many parts of the world, people still rely on the brute muscle of their livestock to do the heavier work. Oxen are teamed together to plow fields, donkeys turn grinding wheels, and in a pinch the most readily available source of work is still the human being who wants the work done.
While these methods might be conscientious and planet friendly, they cannot come close to supplying sufficient power to large populations. It would be unreasonable to even expect to generate enough electricity for the residents of a small apartment building in this way.
Even today in the United States, the reliance on coal burning electricity generation is high. One of the big problems with coal as a generating fuel is that the smoke produced is highly polluting. Some reports estimate that the number of Americans who die each year from mercury and other toxins thus produced is in the thousands.
While the generation of power by means of hydroelectric projects is substantially more environmentally sound than coal fired plants are, the paradigm is not without its own problems. Building dams and redistributing water flow can have serious consequences for the local water tables and other water courses. The inherent danger of destroying the habitat of indigenous water animals is also quite high.
A third, more modern option involves the use of nuclear generating stations. Unfortunately, many people oppose nuclear power on paranoid and uneducated grounds. They think that the plant will blow up and ruin everything. They only know the name Chernobyl and not the name Darlington. Nuclear stations hardly ever fail. The actual problem with this sort of generation is that we don't know what to do with all the highly dangerous radioactive waste.
Wind turbines and photovoltaic fields are absolutely the two front runners as far as new ways to generate power without harming the environment goes. Tidal power is also something that many people are starting to investigate, but this cannot be done if the country is land locked.
Even these two methods are not without their detractors. If you build a wind farm, someone will object on behalf of some migratory bird or other. If you build a field of solar panels, someone will find a tortoise that has been affected by the development. Any human development will run into complaints and arguments. But the encouraging thing is that we have apparently become intelligent enough to understand that our actions, even something so very healthy for the global environment like the quest for clean energy, have consequences not only for us but also for the weakest animals on Earth.
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While powering a laptop using a home solar power is incredibly easy to do you can also power your entire home using a solar source of energy. All you need to know is how to approach the task of making your own green energy source.
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