Global Warming

--or--

CO₂ is A-OK, Part III

They’re called "trees"

For those who were not aware, plants, trees, algae, and even euglena perform an endothermic, solar-powered, chemical reaction known as photosynthesis every day. The chemical equation for the overall process is:

6CO₂ + 12H₂O + light → C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ + 6H₂O

Obviously, there are several intermediate steps along the way, but the important part is the fact that it absorbs light energy and stores it in chemical form in glucose. So plants will actually cool down the area around them. And, in case you did not notice this either, they need carbon dioxide to perform this reaction. And here is why carbon dioxide is so important for keeping the earth cool: the more carbon dioxide there is in the air, the more photosynthesis the plants will perform.

What this means is that, across this wide world, much of the land mass (and even a lot of area in the water, thanks to algae), is dedicated to using carbon dioxide as fuel for a reaction that is cooling the air. By using the plant matter that was buried and turned into coal, oil, and natural gas as an energy source, we are spitting out heat, energy and carbon dioxide. And those same plants that will someday be coal, oil, and natural gas. Then plants use the carbon dioxide to get rid of the heat that was produced by the plants' distant, ancient ancestors that are being dug up to be set on fire. Thus, it is a complete circle: you heat up the world by burning things and, through that, you create the carbon dioxide that helps to cool it down.

So, from what I can tell, it seems that not only is carbon dioxide not causing global warming, it is one of the major agents in preventing it. But, of course, that would require scientists to accept the idea that nature has developed in such a way that it is self-sustaining and it can even take care of itself. But considering the modern scientific view that nature and life are incapable of developing in such a way as to sustain themselves, that idea is clearly wrong.

So how do we fix it?

So now that we've discovered the crazy idea that carbon dioxide may be a key component in keeping the earth's temperature about right, what do we do to fix it? I mean, we have that whopping 0.6C difference in temperature over the last century and now we need to make it better. Well, the obvious solution is, of course, marketing.

The Screw the Environment Theory

You like the name? Me too.

The theory I am espousing is not to actually say that the environment can screw off. No, on the contrary, I shall assume that the environment is something I shall, for the moment, worry about. However, I am not actually interested in doing anything expensive or time-consuming to save it because I'm cheap and lazy. And I'm not the only one. Thus, for the most part, people will simply say, "Screw the environment, I've got other things to worry about." Okay, they won't actually say that aloud, but they -- and by "they", I mean "we" -- aren't going to do much that isn't cheap/free and convenient. It's just a fact, deal with it.

There is no way I would drive a car full of aluminum cans and old newspapers around town to find some recycling center that is only going to give me 30 cents for an hour of my time. I know because I used to live in a city where that was what you needed to do to recycle... and nobody did, including me. But I'll make sure I use free curbside pickup of recyclables. And so will a lot of other people. And I know this because I live in a city with curbside recycling... and I make sure I separate that crap out every week. I'll even bag it like the good environmentalist I am.

So, we need to make it cheap and easy for people to turn around global warming or people won't do it. This is why "green building" and "green energy" is not all that popular -- it's prohibitively expensive and often difficult to deal with. Well, I've got a few ideas for that.

First off, you need to figure out what kinds of plants churn through the most heat per unit of surface area covered. More than likely this will be algae, so then we need to figure out the next best options that don't involve gobs of stagnant water.

What we do next is find business owners with very large buildings that have a great deal of exposed surface area. Industrial parks, factories, warehouses and the like. We'll need to start with large, flat-roofed structures -- since those are the easiest -- and we will improve as we go on. Eventually, one would hope that the initial outlays, investments and development would allow us to develop economically feasible solutions for smaller structures with slanting roofs -- such as houses -- that could pass on more savings to more people.

Now then, what we would offer these initial business owners is roof tiles with such things as, let's say, turf and potted trees and plants and whatnot (think Prescription Athletic Turf or FieldTurf tiles). We make them removable tiles so that, if the roof starts leaking, it still has easy access. We offer them an inexpensive way to irrigate the plants. We offer them plants that are almost entirely self-sufficient and don't require a gardener to work with them two or three times a week (Do you want to mow the roof? Didn't think so.) And, here's where we get them to buy: we tell them how many thousands of dollars they will save every year by turning their roofs into planter boxes.

Think about it: solar powered, low/no maintenance cooling units placed atop roofs that once got so hot that their tar surfaces would bubble in the summer sun. Rather than having rooftops that are solar ovens, they would have self-cooling rooftops. Throw in some large trees to shade the south sides of their buildings (or north for the Australians) and you've got yourself a self-sustaining cooling system that doesn't cost a darn dime outside of the occasional pruning. You might even be able to get some climbing ivies on the south side as well, giving them that many more free BTUs. Oh, and we need to give these places a payment plan rather high up-front costs because businesses are not going to spend tens of thousands now to save hundreds of thousands later. It's just a fact, deal with it.

For the global warming thing, what will that buy us? Not much. But it's something: trading large amounts of one building's A/C energy requirements for an environmental cooling unit the size of a factory. And if that's not exactly the sort of thing that we're looking for... well... clearly I have no idea what saving the environment actually means.

The following websites were used in the compilation of this article:
Engineeringtoolbox.com
Wikipedia.org
The Energy Information Administration

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