The volcano Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland that has been grounding air travel and impacting the economy in much of Europe also is not good news for the solar and wind energy industry, but gives a strong vote for developing other free energy technologies.
 Eyjafjallajokull volcano image posted on YouTube March 24, 2010. The little dot near the bottom of the center of the photo is a snowmobile. |
The volcano Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland that has been grounding air travel and impacting the economy in much of Europe also is not good news for the solar and wind energy industry -- at least in the short term, and possibly even in the long term -- but gives a strong vote for developing other free energy technologies.
Effect on Mainstream Renewables
Obviously, any extent that the sun’s rays are impeded effects the ability of solar panel arrays to collect the sun’s energy. Otherwise mostly sunny areas are now not mostly sunny. The dropping ash also increases the maintenance required to keep the panels clean.
The impact on the wind sector is not as obvious and not as serious, but could potentially physically impair the turbines for similar reasons that are keeping the air travel grounded. While the turbines are designed to keep dust and other airborne particulates out, for the most part, increasing the amount of particulates in the air certainly puts an extra load on that engineering.
Geothermal energy production, which is a major source of renewable power in Iceland (for obvious reasons), will likely remain unchanged. Nevertheless, in an extreme case, the earthquakes could potentially disrupt the flow; and a releasing of geological pressure in one area could possibly alter it in another, resulting in a variation in an otherwise stable power source. It will be interesting to see just how “stable” the existing geothermal resources being put to use in varying vicinity to Eyjafjallajokull remain during this period of eruption.
Conventional Power Okay
In direct vicinity of the volcano, the power providers have been able to keep the power on (ref, even though in some areas it is so dark even during the day that you can’t even see your hand in front of you. (Ref.) I'm not so sure they would be able to keep this up if the volcano persisted for a long time.
Could be a Long-Term Problem
While most news stories are looking at this as a short-term problem, Mitch Batros of EarthChangesMedia.com gave the following memo to his readers:
The damage caused by Iceland volcano "Eyjafjallajokull," could be far more damaging than is being reported. It has happened before, and it could happen again. The last large eruption was in 1695 with consequences lasting seven years and brought Scotland to its knees.
Not only does such an event change the world's climate for 3 or 4 years, it could cause a financial collapse of the European Union. If they go down --- everybody goes down.
If this or another volcano were to pose this kind of blockage of the sun, it would certainly make it harder for the global warming crowd to find sympathy. You can think of it as a form of natural geoengineering that would drop the temperature of the planet..
Gratefully there are other reasons on promote clean energy technologies, especially the more exotic kind.
Alternatives Appeal
A non-solar, non-wind renewable energy solution would enable us to circumvent such a dreary prediction or eventuality by making us less vulnerable to such acts of nature that could strike in a number of places around the world. This is yet another reason for people to be taking the technologies we try to showcase in our news more seriously and provide more support for finding and developing the best free energy technologies such as cold fusion, magnet motors, zero point energy devices, overunity electromagnetic systems, etc.
The emergence of an alternative, distributed energy solution would be all the more welcome if Eyjafjallajokull or another volcano were to cause a prolonged darkening of the earth, creating a change in the climate. Distributed energy is a good idea in just about any scenario you might imagine.
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Links
- Iceland Volcano Won't Cool the Planet - The emissions from Eyjafjallajökull did not go into the Stratosphere like like the one at Mount Pinatube in 1991, actually did cool the planet by injecting sulfates into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, where they circulated for over a year, shading the earth. (MIT Technology Review; Apr. 16, 2010)
See also
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Comments
Volcanic ash fouls jet engine turbines when engine heat melts the silica, and the resulting glass sticks to engine parts. Wind turbines have no such problem. Ash sufficiently dense and persistent to present a long-term problem to solar presents a much bigger problem to life itself.
Magnet motors are a pipe dream of those who either don't understand science or those intent on fleecing such people. OU has the same problem, as does ZPE harvesting. Cold fusion is at best incredibly unlikely. So called revolutionary energy technologies don't fail because of conspiracies by the energy companies. They fail because they require nature to be something it isn't.
We would all like: safer, cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable energy. Real improvements have always come from real science. They always will.
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