Common Thought

A very common thought inside my head is a benign hydro electric power generation system. I think wind is a waste of time, they spin for a very long time just to offset the carbon dioxide gas produced to make them before they are beneficial. This is how my benign hydro electric power system would work. 

Along the river banks there would be drains that flow into aqueducts that are below ground. The aqueduct would zigzag down the valley, following the path of the river but it would be below the ground. At certain points the subterranean aqueducts would flow through underground water wheels and cause them to spin, this would generate electricity. Then the water would flow out of the aqueduct through a drain back into the river downstream. 

There would also be butterfly valves in the ducts to stop the flow of water if power wasn't needed. The mouth of the drain would be close to the water line so it would take some of the water from the river but not too much because that would cause trouble for the fish. This system would also not cause villages to be flooded, it would do the opposite, it would help stop flooding because a lot of the water would be inside the aqueduct so it would lower the level of the river a bit and it would not get in the way of fish migrations like a dam would. 

Environment perspective

There are four Alan's so far New Alan, 90's Alan, Millennium Alan and Servant Alan.I am presently Servant Alan because I realized my reason to live in this world is to be a Servant, to assist the world in different ways. From spring 2019 till now I am Servant Alan. A man that has no desire for prestige but only asked what can I do for my family and the world? Or what can I learn today? Servant Alan listens more than he speaks. 

 Millenium Alan thought that Global warming is not a big Hazard because it has taken a century for the atmosphere to increase by 1°C. He believed that fossil fuels would run out or become too expensive before climate change became a big Hazard. 

Servant Alan is different, he asked what does that mean. Chain reactions can happen, frozen methane at the bottom of the ocean could evaporate and bubble to the surface, ice floating in the sea could melt and reflect less heat back into space causing a chain reaction. I now realize that a Global Famine is definitely going to happen and would likely wipe out at least one third of all people on Earth. The ocean water will become acidic and bitter. We have all seen what a 1°C increase in heat can do, we watched record temperatures, wildernesses burning up and draught. We saw lots of super hurricanes like 'Catrina'. Much of our Earth was either flooded or dry. Perhaps by 2050 it will be 2°c.

Now I ask what can I do? I don't know. 

Plastic Recycling thought

I think that plastic doesn't recycle very well, the quality of the plastic would probably deteriorate very quickly and some of the plastic wouldn't recycle at all. 

I thought that it would be a good idea if they placed the plastic into an aquaduct filled with grinding wheels. The plastic would be ground up into small grains then an ai controlled device would seperate the plastic grains into different types. The aqua duct would be isolated from all other water sources. The water is just used to move the plastic to the different grinding wheels 

Then the grains that are harder to recycle would be mixed with tar to make asphalt that uses plastic powder instead of sand. Some of the powder plastic would be turned into Nurdles to make more plastic, others would be used as aggregate for concrete, so you would also have concrete blocks that use plastic instead of Sand. 

The Plastic composite Asphalt would still contain plastic particles but the surface of the road would receive UV radiation from the sun and that would help to break down the long molecular chains of the plastic molecules. Plus the asphalt would also be recycled into more Asphalt when it is worn out. I think the UV rays would only penetrate a few millimetres into the Asphalt so it would take a long time to make any progress with breaking down the plastic. 

I'm not saying this would work, I'm just saying it is good if we all think about things like this. Someone out there will find a way to help the world. 

What February 2020 means to me

It is March now, in February the Corona virus called Covid 19 spread around the world and has infected thousands of people. 

Some people think that the virus came from a Lab and was deliberately released into the community. I would say Swine flu came from pigs, Bird flu came from birds and Corona viruses came from making everything under the sun's Corona that walks too slow into a stir fry meal, bats, rats, snakes, everything. Animals get their own viruses and humans get them from the food chain. Humans are not controlled by reason they have big brains but they don't use them the right way. 

All influenza and Ebola viruses came from eating animals. Even aids came from a hunter that cut his hand while he prepared an infected kill, no lab was involved although I wouldn't be surprised is experimentation came into it. 

If an alien is reading this and thinks I am exaggerating about human ignorance, I would say that humans spill lead and plastic into the oceans, the fish eat the pollution then the humans eat the fish.  Then the humans say who's bad? Who's bad?  You are. And they go to war and drop explosives and die. They are both bad (at thinking). 

It is a very wet and windy February. It rained incessantly through the month and preceding winter, we had 3 storms. The whole winter was damp and political. I keep my chin up for spring. 

Paddle it

Many countries are trying to build solar panels, others are trying to build wind farms. There is a cheap way to use both I think.

Water wheels! The sun makes water evaporate, then the wind pushes the clouds accross the Earth's surface, this is wind and sun together.

I think that the sides of rivers could have cylenders that are disguised as logs lining the river banks. There could be holes in the log imitations that allows water to flow into paddles that push a Dynamo around and around. They would be cheaper than solar panels and discreet.

Additionally aquaducts could be hidden on the side of river banks under bridges that channel away water when the water level is too high and use the excess water to generate even more power.

I wish that you could see what I was thinking. You see, there would be millions of these things, the casing is made of stone but looks like timber so people think that logs vertically lining the river bank. These stone logs are hollow and there are many small holes on one side that allows water to flow though and push the paddles that are connected to a Dynamo.

If I was rich, I could build these things and try to convince governments around the world to install them.

Dreams...

Being an ordinary man is being imprisoned by mediocrity.

October Frost

Yesterday on the 28th of October the frosty air finally reached the ground early in the morning in my part of the world. The frost adhered to wooden panels, cars, blades of grass and roof tops. My car had plenty of frost all over it.

The industrial revolution started 200 years ago in the 1820s. After 200 years of fossil fuels being burnt frivolously I can say that the Earth is warming up but the fossil fuels are running out quicker than the Earth can destabilize.

I imagined that perhaps we are supposed to be in an ice age now or a greenhouse apocalypse but they cancelled each other out. A bit like sodium and chlorine, the two elements are very toxic but when they are combined they form salt. Or Oxygen and Hydrogen, very flammable but when combined forms water.

Imagination is free and doesn't need to be right, it just has to exist freely because that is what makes us human.

Fridge and fro

Earlier this morning the temperature dropped to 4°c. The early morning frost is nearly here, it is not quite reaching the ground yet. If I was to guess, I would think the frosty air drops down to about 200 metres above ground and cools down the air below it to the temperature of a fridge. I will see if we get frost before daylight saving in 3 weeks time. Seeing frost in the morning before the clocks go backwards 1 hour is my comfort that the Earth can recover from climate change after the oil runs out. Its quite obvious that the world we live in now is warmer wetter and windier than it was when I was born over 35 years ago; more and more energy is staying in the atmosphere for longer.

If I see frost in the morning before October the 27th then I will think to myself that permanent land ice won't melt and flood our big cities. I will think that the Earth won't have a chain reaction and turn into Venus, a spherical oven like planet  that can't support life. I will give myself a silly man's comfort.

What is special about October the 27th. It is the day when the day time and night time are the same length on the island of Britain.

Now I ask one thing. I ask the people of Earth to invent the low cost high capacity power cell. A small box that can store large amounts of electrical power but cost less than lithium batteries. The person that does that will change the world more that any living person alive today. They will make the electric car affordable to ordinary people like me and allow power stations to be turned into batteries that store excess power during the day and release it at night. It will become cheaper to heat your house with electricity than with fire within five years if we have such a breakthrough.

People... Invent the low cost high capacity battery. As fast as you can.

Greta Thunberg

The Swedish teenaged activist Greta Thunberg is very angry with the world leaders for choosing profit and growth over the environment. Her face looks like she wants kill someone. I think she needs to drink some English tea and look at the other side of things, the Swedish tea isn't as good as the English one.

In my view, carbon dioxide and methane are gasses that are good at trapping heat and heating up the Earth and there is a big hazard of causing a global disaster, but I think that they will run out. There is a limited amount of natural gas and crude oil on Earth. When the oil runs out then the problem is fixed. Am I the only person that thinks this way? I see the prices rising all the time and there is an economic pressure for people like me to get more efficient vehicles or electric ones. Very soon all cars will be powered by electricity. Hopefully I will be able to afford one in the near future.

Man and Nature

One thing I noticed throughout my existence is that nature gives mankind free gifts and mankind doesn't take them gracefully. He just takes the ones he can exploit quickly for money.

I can imagine a conversation mankind would have with nature if they are just two people in a room.

Nature: "Hi Mankind".
Mankind: "Hi Nature".
Nature: "I would like you to have cold air"
Mankind: "What would I do with cold air?"
Nature: "you can pump it into your freezer to lower the running cost every winter".
Mankind: "If I did that, How would I exploit my own kind's needs for energy fully?
Nature: "You can still exploit them because they will save money and spend it on other things"
Mankind: "no"
Nature: "Ok, what about sunlight? it is full of energy"
Mankind: "This black sticky fluid is full of energy and I can control the supplies of it to maximize my profit"
Nature: "But the energy in the black sticky fluid came from sunlight anyway, why don't you go directly to the source?"
Mankind: "No, shut up bitch".
Nature:"what about wave energy, you can control the supply of that, You could have a monopoly of the coastal free energy"
Mankind: "I give you free plastic to play with in the coast"
Nature: "It is my fault, I allowed you live and I reduced you numbers in the past so your brothers and sisters had to get jiggy to restore your population, now you are stupid inbred fools".
Mankind: "why did you shake my city apart?"
Nature: " I told you not to build there because there is a fault line, you don't listen"
Nature: "You never listen and you destroy yourselves".

Electric bike

I was looking at electric bikes and thought they are doing it wrong. The battery is a large stack of lithium batteries that slide into a cartridge at the back of the bike. The electric motor is over powered. Everything they do makes the price of the bike unnecessary.

I was looking on the Amazon website at cylinder batteries such as AAA AA C and D types. You won't believe this but many rechargable c bateries produce 5,000 milliamps. That is 5 amps, about 60 watts of power each. They are only 1 and a half volts but that is ok because when you put batteries together end to end the voltage is doubled up. What I am saying is that with just 8 c batteries you can have 12 volts or 40 amps although would wouldn't get more current if they are connected end to end. You would need to connect them in parallel to increase the amps.  To me 5 amps is an enormous amount of power. And the c batteries would fit inside the bike frame. The tubing of a typical bike frame is just over 30 millimeters. C batteries are less than 30 millimeters (3 cm) so If I made electric bikes, the tubing of the bike frame would have a plastic cylendrical holder and connectors to hold an array of 8 batteries. The 8 batteries would be cheap because they are not specifically made for bikes and are standard batteries. Plus if there is no time to charge the batteries, then they could be removed and swapped for freshly charged ones.

If I built an electric bike, it would have a tiny and weak electric motor but the motor would have a gear system that converts speed into force so if the motor is spinning at 1000 rpm then I would attach gears that have a final turn ratio that is one tenth so it gets more power and slower speeds that are ok for bikes. It doesn't take much power to push a pedal bike and I can certainly see where the power can come from.

Poop Road

I remember being told when I was a child to be careful what you wish for. This is so true because I was lost in thought today and if someone wished to know what I was thinking about, I would say I was thinking of ways sewage could be turned into a road.

The reason I was thinking this was because Sewage costs nothing so if you could make a civil infrastructure product out of it, you would save the tax payer a lot of money.

This is what I came up with. The sewage would be burnt and the ashes from the sewage would be combined with waste plastics that have been ground up into a fine powder. When  Feces are burnt then they are no longer Feces but ashes. The microbes that made it stink are destroyed and the compounds that the microbes we're feeding on would be consumed by the fire. Sewage is more than Feces, it is urine, cleaning chemicals, toilet paper and countless other things so when the water content of the sewage is removed and the stuff is burnt to ashes you would find that every grain of ash has different properties. Some of them would be hard glass like grains. Others would be very brittle and some would be heat resistant. When combined to the finely ground waste plastic powder and heated, you would have a composite material that takes advantage of the properties of many different grains. The plastic is sticky when heated and binds things together and it is flexible, it can move and flex slightly without breaking. The ashes would be heat resistant and would not go more brittle when it is exposed to ultra violet Ray's and some of the grains would be as strong as stone.

Like all deep thoughts in this world there is more to this, you see the sewage is almost entirely made up of water. To burn the sewage the water must be removed, to do this I thought that the sewage could be pumped into a large air-tight tank. The air in the tank is pumped out, this would lower the boiling point of the water. The water would boil away and the pump would continue to pump out the water vapour until there is a dry mass of stuff to release into the furnace. The heat form burning the sewage would power the grinding machines that turn waste plastic into fine powder.

Could we build roads out of two products that have no cost? Sewage and Waste Plastic. Who knows?