Nukes vs. Wood Fires

Back in my hippie days, I enjoyed the music and the message of a song called "Power," written and performed by John Hall, former lead singer of the group Orleans.

Just give me the warm power of the sun
Give me the steady flow of a waterfall
Give me the spirit of living things as they return to clay
Just give me the restless power of the wind
Give me the comforting glow of a wood fire
But won't you take all your atomic poison power away

That was an anti-nuke anthem and a lovely tune. Looking back, though, this song reveals some of the naivete of the time. Sure, it feels good to be against 'atomic poison power', but take a look at the alternatives...

• Warm power of the sun -- solar energy -- OK, that's good.
• Steady flow of a waterfall -- hydroelectric -- Um, maybe not so good, when you think about the ecological damage of something like the Three Gorges Dam.
• Spirit of living things as they return to clay -- Hm, I think that refers to fossil fuels, like coal and oil, probably the primary cause of global warming.
• Restless power of the wind -- windmills -- OK, I guess, if you don't mind how they look.
• Comforting glow of a wood fire -- Well, yeah, I agree that I love a wood fire as much as anyone, but it's far from an environmentally friendly solution.

A recent news story says "Wood stoves are big culprits in climate change":

Cooking stoves fuelled by wood or crop residue are contributing to climate change significantly more than expected, say researchers.

Scientists have found that smoke produced by these stoves, which are traditionally used for cooking and heating in developing countries, contains twice as many soot particles as laboratory experiments had previously indicated.

When released into the atmosphere, the black, noxious particles — which are darker than those produced by grassland or forest fires — absorb light and increase atmospheric temperatures. . .

[B]urning firewood produces 800,000 metric tons of soot worldwide a year.

By comparison, diesel vehicles generate about 890,000 metric tons of soot a year. Both sources together contribute 10 per cent of the soot emitted annually into the atmosphere.

It's ironic, isn't it, that easy answers like 'no nukes' and 'comforting wood fires' don't always make sense in the real world. In fact, building more modern nuclear power plants might be a sensible replacement for fossil fuels.

Of course, the most robust solutions for global energy production and for climate change remediation are likely to come from molecular manufacturing.

And for those of us who really enjoy the ambiance of a wood-burning fireplace, maybe we can have our cake and eat it too. Imagine a completely clean in-home system that could burn wood and then scrub the smoke and soot in a nano-built chimney...

One of the first products of molecular manufacturing will be efficient molecular sorting systems. It will be possible to remove the harmless and useful gases from the combustion products--perhaps using them to build the next products--and send the rest back to be re-burned.

Ahh...

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[Phillip Huggan]

The reduced asthma rates and reduced lung cancer rates switching from hydrocarbon fuel sources to wind power dwarves any rural wind turbine aestetic "landscape degradation".

An interesting paper I just read (okay skimmed, it's pretty technical) suggests wind would still alter climate but on a much smaller scale than does CO2 emissions. http://www.ucalgary.ca/%7Ekeith/papers/66.Keith.2004.WindAndClimate.e.pdf

Figures plugged into his simulations assume Terawatts to tens of TeraWatts of global wind turbine capacity (a good order of magnitude beyond anything wind will contribute to global power generation). An interesting conclusion almost lost near the end of the paper is that 100 meter diameter turbines may be useful for geoengineering. That is, strategically installed wind capacity can actually lower the surface temperatue of polar altitudes, initiating precisely the *opposite* temperature change that big-industry is catalyzing. Me thinks big-oil and big-power could produce the solution to their own problem if the right tax-incentives were legislated...