Originally published in Green Home MegaStore in 2009

Hi there!

As usual, I was reading our RSS feeds (you should too, there’s some interesting stuff there) and this time I ran across an article that discussed the potential of having energy beamed to the Earth’s surface from high Earth orbits.

If you’ve been reading Practical Greenology and/or GHMS for a while, you will probably not be surprised at my reaction. I’m simply amazed! And that’s not because I never thought about it before. Let’s assume that the technical and financial hurdles are overcome, and we have a network of satellites beaming solar energy collected in space to us poor, energy-hungry beings here on the surface of Earth.

Do the logic: The Earth consumes – one way or another – the amount of energy that arrives on the Earth’s surface and radiates a sufficient amount back off the planet to keep us essentially balanced – albeit there are anomalies due to major volcanic eruptions, meteor strikes, plus mankind’s atmospheric and oceanic pollution, etc. In any case, the amount of energy out-of-balance is not a significantly high amount. That’s the base case. For an energy-oriented engineer, that’s a balanced system, Energy In – Energy Out = No Change

Project – case one: We sit here and consume an additional 0,5% (a crass assumption, but we have to receive a large amount of energy to be able to pay for the space systems) compared to the solar energy normally landing on the planet. I don’t claim to have the foggiest idea of what the amount of heating rate that would amount to, but I am reasonably certain that it is considerably more than what is being caused by our pollutionary activities. I can imagine that in less than 100 years, the Earth would be totally unlivable for any creature species living here today! Talk about global warming! The engineer’s equation: Energy In – Energy Out = Change in Status Quo (we put in more energy – ultimately heat – than we remove, and start to cook)

Project – case two: We sit here and watch on TV as one of the radiation-gathering satellites goes haywire from a meteroid hit and the energy stream focus moves away from the receiving station and starts wandering around the countryside – destroying everything it comes near in a science fiction-type nightmare. Hmmm… there’s not really an engineer’s equation for this, but maybe FUBAR is an adequate description: Fouled Up Beyond All Recovery (that’s not the Army version :-) ).

Project – case three: More or less the same as case two, except that the deviation of the energy stream is caused by an attack from a political splinter group, either on the ground station (more likely) or on the satellite itself. Same results as case two, except that they may be able to choose their political or politico-economic target – Manhattan, Washington D.C., Paris, Damascus, Mexico City, Tokyo, Seoul, you name it! FUBAR 2!

To be honest, I don’t like any of these scenarios. Do you?

Space Energy System Misused

Thanks for looking in,

Jimmy Craig
for
Sue & Craig Websites

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Power From Space?

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Please note: If you click on an ad behind one of the above Google links, Sue & Craig Websites should receive a small commission, whether you buy something or not. This is called pay-per-click (“PPC”) advertising.

Nanotechnology: Today Is The Future

Hello again!

I found this video on a health and diet website, of all places, and it is totally fascinating, at least for this engineer! Sorry to say this, but some of the concepts that are coming out of this nanotechnology research make our green efforts look a little puny! On the other hand, they are still research for the future, and what we’re doing is having impact today.

Anyway, see what you think? I’d like to see your comments, also.

Ciao for now and as always, thanks for looking in!

Jimmy Craig
for
Sue & Craig Websites

Nanotechnology: Today Is The Future

Hi there!

I just ran across something that surprised me and pleased me at the same tîme. It’s a search engine that plants trees in return for using the search engine! And it’s not “just any old” search engine, it’s the Yahoo! search engine powering Ecocho’s engine. It’s also not that new (just new to me) – they’ve been doing this for four years.

How does it work? Well, it’s really simple – go to http://www.ecocho.co.uk/ecocho-tools.php (or test it out at the top of the sidebar here on our site first) and make it your search engine! It gives the same results as Yahoo! search, it’s as fast as Yahoo! search, and for every thousand searches, they will grow – notice the difference, not plant, but grow – two trees. This takes place in an Australian provincial government tree farm, and two healthy trees should be responsible for removing one metric ton (that’s about 1.1 US short tons) of CO2 from the atmosphere every year.

Here’s a quote from our common web hosting company:

Ecocho is a Yahoo-powered search engine that is working to help fight climate change. For every 1,000 searches made, the company plants two trees. To date, the company has planted more than 7,500 trees and helped neutralize nearly 4,000,000 kilos of CO2.

Think about the equation: you put in searches, just as you do it now, you get back results, just as you do now + two trees will be grown per 1000 searches! It’s difficult to do any better than that! Talk about practical greenology – this is it!

Here are the main links again – you can read more about the entire program there (their operation is also carbon neutral – big surprise? no, not really and they even have a low energy “black” online version that takes less energy to display on your computer )

and select your preferences – country version, and white or black versions.

We’ll be using it, hope you join us and help us grow trees!

Please note: Ecocho is NOT a non-profit organisation, but we (Sue & Craig Websites) feel that their effort is worthy of response, and we receive only “warm fuzzy feelings” if you click on any of their links here.

Jimmy Craig
for
Sue & Craig Websites

A Green Search Engine