Let save our World

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A photovoltaic (PV) module that is composed of multiple PV cells. Two or more interconnected PV modules create an array.

A solar panel is a device that collects and converts solar energy into electricity or heat. Solar photovoltaic panels can be made so that the sun’s energy excites the atoms in a silicon layer between two protector panels. Electrons from these excited atoms form an electric current, which can be used by external devices. Solar panels were in use over one hundred years ago for water heating in homes. Solar panels can also be made with a specially shaped mirror that concentrates light onto a tube of oil. The oil then heats up, and travels through a vat of water, instantly boiling it. The steam created turns a turbine for power.[1]Contents [hide]
1 History
2 How Solar Panels Work
3 See also
4 References

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History

The history of solar panels dates back to 1839, when French physicist Antoine César Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect during an experiment involving an electrolytic cell that was made up of two metal electrodes placed in an electrolyte solution. Becquerel discovered that when his device was exposed to light the amount of electricity generated increased.[2]

Then in 1883, the first genuine solar cell was built by Charles Fritts. Fritts’ solar cell was formed by coating sheets of selenium with a thin layer of gold.[3]

Between 1883 and 1941 many scientists, inventors and companies experimented with solar energy. During these years Clarence Kemp, a Baltimore inventor patented the first commercial water heater powered from solar energy. In addition, Albert Einstein published his thesis on the photoelectric effect and a few years later received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research. William Bailey, an employee of the Carnegie Steel Company, invented the first solar collector with copper coils contained in an insulated box.[2]

In 1941, Russell Ohl, an American inventor who worked for Bell Laboratories, patented the first silicon solar cell. Ohl’s new invention led Bell Laboratories to produce the first crystalline silicon solar panel in 1954. This solar cell achieved a 4% return on energy conversion. In the years that followed, other scientists continued to improve on this original solar cell and began to produce solar cells with 6% efficiency.[4]

The first large scale use for solar electrical energy was space satellites. With government backing much of the research the US was able to produce a solar cell with twenty percent efficiency by 1980 and by early 2000 had produced solar cells with 24% efficiency. As of November 2007 two companies, Spectrolab and Emcore Photovoltaics dominate world solar cell production and have the ability to produce cells with 28% efficiency.[4]

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How Solar Panels Work

The basic element of solar panels is pure silicon. When stripped of impurities, silicon makes an ideal neutral platform for transmission of electrons. In silicon’s natural state, it carries four electrons, but has room for eight. Therefore silicon has room for four more electrons. If a silicon atom comes in contact with another silicon atom, each receives the other atom’s four electrons. Eight electrons satisfy the atoms’ needs, this creates a strong bond, but there is no positive or negative charge. This material is used on the plates of solar panels. Combining silicon with other elements that have a positive or negative charge can also create solar panels.[5]

For example, phosphorus has five electrons to offer to other atoms. If silicon and phosphorus are combined chemically, the results are a stable eight electrons with an additional free electron. The silicon does not need the free electron, but it can not leave because it is bonded to the other phosphorous atom. Therefore, this silicon and phosphorus plate is considered to be negatively charged.[5]

A positive charge must also be created in order for electricity to flow. Combining silicon with an element such as boron, which only has three electrons to offer, creates a positive charge. A silicon and boron plate still has one spot available for another electron. Therefore, the plate has a positive charge. The two plates are sandwiched together to make solar panels, with conductive wires running between them.[5]

Photons bombard the silicon/phosphorus atoms when the negative plates of solar cells are pointed at the sun. Eventually, the 9th electron is knocked off the outer ring. Since the positive silicon/boron plate draws it into the open spot on its own outer band, this electron doesn’t remain free for long. As the sun’s photons break off more electrons, electricity is then generated. When all of the conductive wires draw the free electrons away from the plates, there is enough electricity to power low amperage motors or other electronics, although the electricity generated by one solar cell is not very impressive by itself. When electrons are not used or lost to the air they are returned to the negative plate and the entire process begins again.

Three wind turbine blades have been successfully installed on the Bahrain World Trade Center, a twin skyscraper complex. This is the first time that a commercial development has integrated large-scale wind turbines within its design to harness the power of the wind. The three massive turbines, measuring 29 meters in diameter, are supported by bridges spanning between the complex’s two towers. Through its positioning and the unique aerodynamic design of the towers, the prevailing on-shore Gulf breeze is funneled into the path of the turbines, helping to create power generation efficiency.

Once operational, the wind turbines will deliver approximately 11-15% of the energy needs of the building, or 1100 to 1300 megawatt-hours per year — enough to provide light in 300 homes for over a year.

Just last month we witnessed a gigantic skyscraper / solar tower hybrid that generates a whopping 390-kilowatts of energy, but even that looks like child’s play compared to the 40-story solar power plant that resides in Spain. The expansive system consists of a towering concrete building, a field of 600 (and growing) sun-tracking mirrors that are each 120-square meters in size, and a receiver that converts concentrated solar energy from the heliostats into steam that eventually drives the turbines. Currently, only one field of mirrors is up and running, but even that produces enough power to energize 6,000 homes, and the creators are hoping to see the entire population of Seville (600,000 folks) taken care of solely from sunlight. So if you’re eager to see what’s likely the greenest solar power plant currently operating, be sure to slip on some shades, tag the read link, and peep the video.

Country like India and other big fast rowing countries desparetely need more and more power and drain its hard earned money for the power generation instead of food, shelter, communication etc. People now must think the alternate way for their need of power so that at least they can create their power by alternate sources like wind, solar etc.

As food prices soars to new heights, researchers at Texas A&M makes a potentially revolutionary discovery. They discover a plant gene for saline tolerance in Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis is the trusty old model organism for plant scientists, and this discovery will help us produce new plants using molecular plant breeding methods (PMB’s), if the environmentalists will let us.

 

Although some of our current ailments are based on ill conceived ethanol mandates, subsidies that skew the food markets, and increased consumption in India and China, a recent op ed in the Telegraph joins a more and more unified Brittish demand for adopting PMB’s.The op ed also points the finger in the direction of OPEC, and the hypocrisy of leaders like Hugo Chavez. Chavez is supposedly a champion of the poor, but the high oil prices caused by the cartel’s price fixing are part of the problem with the rise in the cost of food.

 

Parts of the Arab world are harvesting the riches from the price fixing, it is important to remember that not all countries in the Arab world have oil. The region is balancing on a precarious edge between civil unrest and political chaos by choosing either of the options available to alleviate the situation.

 

Zimbabwe is again looking at starvation, not only due to the food prices, but also due to new bouts of drought.Last time they faced this situation, about 6 years ago, the government in Zimbabwe refused to accept aid shipments of maize because the grains came from PMB’s. This is the same corn that Americans eat every day. Luckily the starving population would not stand for this decision, spurred on by jet-setting environmental activists from Europe and USA. They raided the food containers, so the grain eventually got the people it was intended for, but what will the misguided leaders in Zimbabwe do this time around?

 

On the good news side, Ethopia opened up its first commodity exchange last week, which will lower the transaction cost for several major commodities in the country. Hopefully that will help Ethiopian farmers and consumers with lower cost for important foodstuffs.

by Lene Johansen

Tropical public health specialist Paul R. Epstein joins the World Health Organization in warning that global warming is likely to adversely impact human health. Global warming is likely to change the distribution of tropical diseases and cause starvation and heat-related illnesses and deaths.

global warming the gradual increase of the temperature of the earth’s lower atmosphere as a result of the increase in greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution .

The temperature of the atmosphere near the earth’s surface is warmed through a natural process called the greenhouse effect. Visible, shortwave light comes from the sun to the earth, passing unimpeded through a blanket of thermal, or greenhouse, gases composed largely of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Infrared radiation reflects off the planet’s surface toward space but does not easily pass through the thermal blanket. Some of it is trapped and reflected downward, keeping the planet at an average temperature suitable to life, about 60°F (16°C).

Growth in industry, agriculture, and transportation since the Industrial Revolution has produced additional quantities of the natural greenhouse gases plus chlorofluorocarbons and other gases, augmenting the thermal blanket. It is generally accepted that this increase in the quantity of greenhouse gases is trapping more heat and increasing global temperatures, making a process that has been beneficial to life potentially disruptive and harmful. During the 20th cent., the atmospheric temperature rose 1.1°F (0.6°C), and sea level rose several inches. Some projected, longer-term results of global warming include melting of polar ice, with a resulting rise in sea level and coastal flooding; disruption of drinking water supplies dependent on snow melts; profound changes in agriculture due to climate change; extinction of species as ecological niches disappear; more frequent tropical storms; and an increased incidence of tropical diseases.

Among factors that may be contributing to global warming are the burning of coal and petroleum products (sources of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone); deforestation, which increases the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; methane gas released in animal waste; and increased cattle production, which contributes to deforestation, methane production, and use of fossil fuels.

Much of the debate surrounding global warming has centered on the accuracy of scientific predictions concerning future warming. To predict global climatic trends, climatologists accumulate large historical databases and use them to create computerized models that simulate the earth’s climate . The validity of these models has been a subject of controversy. Skeptics say that the climate is too complicated to be accurately modeled, and that there are too many unknowns. Some also question whether the observed climate changes might simply represent normal fluctuations in global temperature. Nonetheless, for some time there has been general agreement that at least part of the observed warming is the result of human activity, and that the problem needs to be addressed. In 1992, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development , over 150 nations signed a binding declaration on the need to reduce global warming.

In 1994, however, a UN scientific advisory panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, concluded that reductions beyond those envisioned by the treaty would be needed to avoid global warming. The following year, the advisory panel forecast a rise in global temperature of from 1.44 to 6.3°F (0.8-3.5°C) by 2100 if no action is taken to cut down on the production of greenhouse gases, and a rise of from 1 to 3.6°F (0.5-2°C) even if action is taken (because of already released gases that will persist in the atmosphere). A 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, based on a three-year study, termed global warming “unequivocal” and said that most of the change was most likely due to human activities.

A UN Conference on Climate Change, held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 resulted in an international agreement to fight global warming, which called for reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialized nations. Not all industrial countries, however, immediately signed or ratified the accord. In 2001 the G. W. Bush administration announced it would abandon the Kyoto Protocol; because the United States produces about one quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases, this was regarded as a severe blow to the effort to slow global warming. Despite the American move, most other nations agreed later in the year (in Bonn, Germany, and in Marrakech, Morocco) on the details necessary to convert the agreement into a binding international treaty, which came into force in 2005 after ratification by more than 125 nations.

Improved automobile mileage, reforestation projects, energy efficiency in construction, and national support for mass transit are among relatively simpler adjustments that could significantly lower U.S. production of greenhouse gases. More aggressive adjustments include a gradual worldwide shift away from the use of fossil fuels, the elimination of chlorofluorocarbons, and the slowing of deforestation by restructuring the economies of developing nations. In 2002 the Bush administration proposed several voluntary measures for slowing the increase in, instead of reducing, emissions of greenhouses gases. The United States, Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea established (2005) an agreement outside the Kyoto Protocal that proposed to reduce emissions through the development and implementation of new technologies. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, as it is called, involves no commitments on the part of its members.

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn’t exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.

 

What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don’t pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. “It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species,” wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970′s global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990′s temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I’ll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn’t occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, “State of Fear” he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen’s. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology – especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

I think it may be because most people don’t understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: “the consensus was reached before the research had even begun.” Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky’s book “Yes, but is it true?” The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky’s findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky’s students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.

by Timothy Ball

The Greenland coastal temperatures have followed the early 20th century global warming trend. Since 1940, however, the Greenland coastal stations data have undergone predominantly a cooling trend. At the summit of the Greenland ice sheet the summer average temperature has decreased at the rate of 2.2 °C per decade since the beginning of the measurements in 1987. This suggests that the Greenland ice sheet and coastal regions are not following the current global warming trend. A considerable and rapid warming over all of coastal Greenland occurred in the 1920s when the average annual surface air temperature rose between 2 and 4 °C in less than ten years (at some stations the increase in winter temperature was as high as 6 °C). This rapid warming, at a time when the change in anthropogenic production of greenhouse gases was well below the current level, suggests a high natural variability in the regional climate. High anticorrelations (r = -0.84 to -0.93) between the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) index and Greenland temperature time series suggest a physical connection between these processes. Therefore, the future changes in the NAO and Northern Annular Mode may be of critical consequence to the future temperature forcing of the Greenland ice sheet melt rates.