Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up (cont.)
The following items are the continuation of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, June 21, 2007:
23. We all use solar energy
by Greg Rummo, New Jersey Sunday Herald, June 3, 2007 (PDF)
. . . Life on this planet as we know it would be impossible without our sun. Earth would be a frozen wasteland with a temperature only slightly above absolute zero. Its oceans and atmosphere would be solid. One day, the sun’s finite reserves of hydrogen will be used up and it will wink out — cosmically speaking. None of us will be around to witness the event. We are and always have been dependent on solar energy. But not just the energy that streams into our atmosphere and falls on our continents and oceans in real time.
This process has been going on for a few years. And over these millennia, the sun’s energy has been captured, utilized for some very complex biochemistry and the end products stored for a rainy day in the earth’s future.
Put in very simple terms: when a photon of sunlight falls on a molecule of chlorophyll in the cell wall of a green plant, biochemistry happens. The earth’s forests, prairies and algae-dotted oceans act like huge sponges soaking up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Inside the plant’s cell walls, the sun’s energy is harnessed to disassemble atmospheric carbon dioxide and combine it with water to produce sugar and molecular oxygen which plants release back into the atmosphere for you and me to breathe.
When you look at a forest, you are really seeing hundreds of years of solar energy, stored in wooden structures. You can cut down a tree and burn it or send it to a mill and cut it up into lumber for the housing industry. A tree is in reality, a sink of solar radiation that can be used either for the production of heat and light by burning (a process chemists call oxidation) or as a building material to insulate man from the elements—to keep him warm in other words.
But the story even gets better if we extrapolate further back in time.
Earth scientists tell us that long ago, the climate on our planet was mostly tropical. This rain forest-like climate covering our planet was very conducive to the growth of green plants. ExtremeScience.com explains that during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods a “profusion of plant and animal life left behind generous organic materials from their decay…(which) built up over millions of years undisturbed. They were eventually covered by younger, overlying sediment and compressed, giving us fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum and natural gas.”
The reality is this: All of us are using solar energy, not just the techno-geeks with the flat panels on the roofs of their homes. Every time you flip a switch in your home or depress the accelerator in your car, you are using solar energy. Just because you weren’t there to witness the biochemistry and the geology behind its creation doesn’t negate the fact.
Continue reading "Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up (cont.)"
23. We all use solar energy
by Greg Rummo, New Jersey Sunday Herald, June 3, 2007 (PDF)
. . . Life on this planet as we know it would be impossible without our sun. Earth would be a frozen wasteland with a temperature only slightly above absolute zero. Its oceans and atmosphere would be solid. One day, the sun’s finite reserves of hydrogen will be used up and it will wink out — cosmically speaking. None of us will be around to witness the event. We are and always have been dependent on solar energy. But not just the energy that streams into our atmosphere and falls on our continents and oceans in real time.
This process has been going on for a few years. And over these millennia, the sun’s energy has been captured, utilized for some very complex biochemistry and the end products stored for a rainy day in the earth’s future.
Put in very simple terms: when a photon of sunlight falls on a molecule of chlorophyll in the cell wall of a green plant, biochemistry happens. The earth’s forests, prairies and algae-dotted oceans act like huge sponges soaking up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Inside the plant’s cell walls, the sun’s energy is harnessed to disassemble atmospheric carbon dioxide and combine it with water to produce sugar and molecular oxygen which plants release back into the atmosphere for you and me to breathe.
When you look at a forest, you are really seeing hundreds of years of solar energy, stored in wooden structures. You can cut down a tree and burn it or send it to a mill and cut it up into lumber for the housing industry. A tree is in reality, a sink of solar radiation that can be used either for the production of heat and light by burning (a process chemists call oxidation) or as a building material to insulate man from the elements—to keep him warm in other words.
But the story even gets better if we extrapolate further back in time.
Earth scientists tell us that long ago, the climate on our planet was mostly tropical. This rain forest-like climate covering our planet was very conducive to the growth of green plants. ExtremeScience.com explains that during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods a “profusion of plant and animal life left behind generous organic materials from their decay…(which) built up over millions of years undisturbed. They were eventually covered by younger, overlying sediment and compressed, giving us fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum and natural gas.”
The reality is this: All of us are using solar energy, not just the techno-geeks with the flat panels on the roofs of their homes. Every time you flip a switch in your home or depress the accelerator in your car, you are using solar energy. Just because you weren’t there to witness the biochemistry and the geology behind its creation doesn’t negate the fact.
Continue reading "Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up (cont.)"
Sat, 11/22/2008 11:34
Wow. I had no idea Catholics were adamant about "the common good." I did know that “altruism” was coined by Comte as [...]