Leonardo da Vinci, 21st century environmentalist

[bruorton]

I'm not a huge fan of the Silver Bullet Theory of crisis solution -- for example, that a single technology will save us from global warming.  There are too many structural things that need to be changed for us to actually live within our means, habitat-wise; I also think that much of our structure itself needs to become decentralized, with everyone depending more on the food, energy, and community in the places they live.

That said, as far as large-scale power generation goes, concentrated solar power is the only thing I'd feel particularly inclined to support.  I only happen to mention this because over lunch today I read an article describing the history and theory of CSP which included the amusing revelation that "Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks contain many designs for solar concentrators, including some for industrial purposes, because he worried about the destruction of the earth's vast forests in humanity's search for fuel."  Gotta love that guy.  550 years old, and he still knows how to keep with the times.

That article, on the other hand, is a bit out of date.  It was a link in an article today about the challenges to actually building these plants, one of which appears to be either Sen. Dianne Feinstein, or conservationists' concerns about building power plants in the fragile desert ecosystem... depending on how you look at it.  Anyway, I really only bring this up to suggest (if reading about climate change issues appeals to you) to check out this blog in general.  Joe Romm is one of those people who likes silver bullets, and wants to find ways for us to keep living more or less the way we do now, but nonetheless knows what's going on in the world of climate science, politics, and economics.

He's also the one who came up with my favorite line so far on the whole thing (I'm paraphrasing): "We're all Bernie Madoffs...  we have constructed the grandest of Ponzi schemes, whereby current generations have figured out how to live off the wealth of future generations." 

Now that's what I call staying on the rhetorical cutting edge.

Comments

stayin' relevant

[emusnare.livejournal.com]

How cool is that?! I didn't realize that da Vinci had conceived of conentrated solar. There have been some other "low-tech" options gaining visibility recently: taking advantage of temperature and pressure differentials (wherever they might be found), or turbulent eddies in low-flow currents. Not sure if da Vinci imagined these. He had optics but not thermodynamics (I think), but still... he just might have...

Have you seen this article: http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21747/
(don't know how to hyperlink in a comment)?
It discusses some of the structural changes you're talking about (I think), as well as some of the challenges midwestern developers have faced in generating their "own" power.

Your concerns with wind... birds 'n bats? noise? MW/acre? altering weather patterns?

I've been thinking about local/central generation lately, too. I wonder what differences there are in energy investment between installing/maintaining generation at several communities versus central hubs. I know that generating efficiency tends to increase with the size of the plant, but transmission over large distances has to wash that away at some point, no?

[pwrdfblog.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the Silver Bullet. Not just for the reasons you listed but also because people seem to think that if they just buy that technology they can go about their lives with no other changes- that everything will be just fine!

This absolves them from the need to change their patterns of consumption and behaviour which helped to cause the problem in the first place...