[ExI] Efficiency of wind power.

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2011 12:06 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Efficiency of wind power.

 

Putting solar panels all over Arizona would not change the albedo of the earth very much, if it did you could compensate with lots of white paint... :-)

Are all of the black asphalt roofs changing the albedo substantially? If so then we already have a problem roughly equivqlent.

I like moonbeams...  The algae columns are ready for deployment today.

Kelly




We suffer from an illusion created by living where there are lots of people, where the natural environment has been changed considerably.  Everywhere we ever go is on a road, with roads everywhere.  Next time you fly, look out the window and estimate the total effect of humanity on albedo.  Or if you don’t want to spend the money on a plane ticket, go into GoogleEarth and look around.  Randomly choose a spot.  Do you see any roads or houses?  

Or do the following BOTEC: the typical house is about 2000 ft^2 and there are… say, ~100 million of them in the US, so just say about 2E11 ft^2 of roof area and a square meter is about ten square feet, so about 2e10 m^2 of roof area, and for estimation purposes the US is close enough to 5e6 by about 3e6 meters, so about 1.5e13 m^2, so all the roof area in the US combined is on the order of around 1 to 1.5 parts per 1000 in area, a tenth of a percent, without looking up anything.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if all the road surfaces combined have a similar magnitude or perhaps about a magnitude more road area than roof area, still all told perhaps a few tenths of a percent.

When you finish with that BOTEC, consider most of this globe is ocean.  Roads and roofs are not causing this old planet to warm.

spike

 

 

 

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