Whether you believe climate change is real or not, producing enough energy to power our daily lives can become a 21st Century challenge globally. I came across two postings recently about how other countries (I am an American) are trying very innovative ways to use solar panels to harness the sun's energy. I saw these images and thought, “Why not adopt this worldwide”.
There are thousands of miles of bike paths in the United States. Could not a few miles of those paths be covered with solar panels to provide lighting during the evening hours?
If you drive through parts of California, you will see miles and miles of irrigation ditches to water farm fields. Given the sunny days there (and the added benefit of slowing down evaporation), I hope someone there takes notice of what is going on in India above.
France is taking action: The French Senate has approved a bill that will require parking lots with a minimum of 80 spaces to be covered with a canopy of solar panels, to provide both cheap renewable power generation and shade from the Mediterranean sun. Again, the U.S. is covered from coast to coast with parking lots. Could not states like Arizona and Texas add this requirement to any new construction?
What does this have to do with quality? ESG - the first letter stands for Environment. It is one of the components of the 2023-24 ASQ Strategic Plan. Probably more importantly, pollution, greenhouse emissions, and resource depletion negatively impact our quality of life. Two hundred years ago it was whale oil in lanterns until harvesting whales brought them close to extinction. Oil and gas exploration is costly but also not every country has it as a natural resource, thus putting their livelihood at risk if there is a disruption. Unless you live at one of the poles during dark winter, the sun does shine pretty much every other day.
The ISS uses large solar arrays to collect energy from the Sun and convert it into usable electricity for everything from life support and temperature controls to communications with Earth and propulsion systems to allow the station to dodge debris. The technology is constantly improving to where you do not have to be a rocket scientist to capture this renewable source of energy.
What I hope is that if you come across other images showing innovative uses of solar panels, you will share them on this post so others can see those examples.
@Steven Schuelka. I believe climate change is real, but think some people are looking at the symptoms as the root cause rather than digging down into the actual historical data.
According to NASA and NewsWise, climate scientists have known that Earth’s climate has changed dramatically over its 4.5 billion-year history, from ice ages to warming periods with warming period occurring every 100,000 years – which we are currently on that 100,000 year cycle. Several natural environmental factors have caused these drastic changes in climate, including variations in the Sun’s intensity, variations in the orbit of Earth, and volcanic eruptions. Scientists have used ice core samples from Antarctica to reconstruct climatic records over hundreds of thousands of years. Based on Antarctic ice core data, changes in CO2 follow changes in temperatures by about 100 - 800 years – that is the temperature begins to rise 800 years before any increase in CO2 occurs. The rise in temperature before a rise in CO2 leads many climate scientists to conclude that CO2 simply cannot be responsible for current global warming, and that some other natural phenomena is the root cause. Currently, climate scientists have no explanation why the climate changes to high temperatures and extreme weather roughly every 100,000 years – especially if mankind is not at fault for all the previous temperature rises.
Lets' look at another phenomena that has occurred over the past 150 years. If we only look at the past 150 years, radio waves (telephone, electrical auras, cell phones, wireless internet, etc. have greatly increased as the same rate as the temperature has risen - what if it's not CO2, but are the billions of wireless transmissions causing climate change? ha-ha-ha!
@James Dent
Let me add other images I came across showing that innovation is happening in the area of energy harnessing. Can you image in many places that use terracotta roof tiles, collecting solar energy to cool a house?
@Steven Schuelka
Of course, I'm aware of these items and other efforts to be more green. However, I also believe there should be more active research on the natural global warming cycle that occurs roughly every 100,000 years - which we are at that 100,000-year cycle. And more research on whether the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere precedes temperature increases, or lags behind temperature increases. Most of the climate change information presented to the public is just about the past 150-200 years, but very little on the 100,000 trends of historical global warming.
