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Earth Operators Manual

Decent Essays

EARTH: THE OPERATORS MANUAL
The climate is changing, the earth is warming and the reason this is so is analyzed by Richard Alley in his study of the relationship between climate change and energy. The questions he answers in his documentary was how much energy we consume as humans, what amount of this energy do we derive from fossil fuels, what countries are putting in place to conserve some of the energy and some other new practices we can adopt to save our planet. Fossil fuel as the number one producer of energy in todays world; 80% of the energy we use today is derived from plants which died over hundreds of thousand years ago. Even with this 80%, some people are still left without power and they use other sources to get light to see …show more content…

With todays advancement in science and technology, the excess of the suns energy can even be stored for those days of no sunlight and dense clouds which don’t mostly happen in this desert part.
Dams are also an alternative to minimize energy loss; although some countries don’t use that because of flooding landscapes, disrupting the eco system and displacing people but in a country like Brazil, dams give 80% of the people electricity. Hydropower can contribute to 12% of human energy use.
Plants such as sugarcane can also absorb a lot of sunlight. Sugarcane can be used as biofuel because ethanol can be produced but the usage of this biofuel in countries like Brazil does not affect the price of Agriculture. The United States also produces ethanol from corn but ethanol from sugarcane is more effective for replacing fossil fuel than what is produced by corn. In some plantations, farmers use the dry waste from sugarcane to power and fuel their machines and electronics on the farm and the rest of the waste to fertilize the other crops on the farm which save them money from buying fossil fuel.
Geothermal energy derived from hot springs and hot rocks is also another means of replacing fossil fuels. Although not much of the energy is obtained, mining for such energy causes little to no harm to the environment. New Zealand uses this type of energy to supply a part of their population with electricity.
Wind energy mostly seen in Texas is also another

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