5/2022

 Current Technology to Fight Climate Change

In last month’s column I promised to delve deeper into the technology that addresses climate change which in addition to war, plagues and world hunger is one of the major problems we  (the human race) must face, or not only will we go down a very ugly path in the near future, we will take a lot of other life forms (like puppies) along with us.  Please don’t tell me that, in your humble opinion, Climate Change is not really real but it’s a hoax perpetrated by the Liberal Left Government. I view myself as a Centrist and believe anyone can believe in anything they choose but the test of the belief should not be “majority rules” --- that’s one of the reasons we invented Science. As the saying goes, “The only way to refute science is with more science”.  

A well-known cause of climate change is the use of non-renewable sources like coal, oil and gas to heat and cool our homes and power our vehicles. A solution is to find renewable sources of energy that will not cause chemicals to be released into the atmosphere. 

The idea of “renewable energy” is based on the capture and storage of energy that is usually wasted in a process. A simple example is your backyard compost heap (which during the  decomposition process produces  a large amount of heat into the air and is essentially wasted). What if there were a way to capture and possibly store the heat energy released which could be reused to heat a home or turn a turbine to convert the heat to electric energy?   Well, Good News folks...scientists and engineers are investigating that problem and are finding  many possible solutions, none of which are mutually exclusive choices. In other words a solution may consist of one or more approaches. (This is similar to the gun control issue where politicians are proposing returning to the 1994 ban on automatic weapons and the other side claims, “It's not a Gun issue, it’s a mental health issue”.  Well, guess what?  These are not mutually exclusive choices --- a reasonable solution is to do both and let the congress thrash out the costs, which they are elected to do.

 “There is a renewable-energy technology used for heating and cooling that doesn’t always get the appreciation it deserves: ground-source heat pumps. These systems, which draw heat out of the ground to heat buildings in winter