Blogtrek

Will the End of the World Save our World?

The 2000 January issue of Astronomy magazine features an article by Thomas Hayden, a science editor for Newsweek, on the End of our World. The Sun is continually getting hotter as it gets older. About a billion years from now, according to Mr. Hayden, it will be 10% brighter than it is now. That will make it hot on Earth, and the oceans will evaporate to form eternal cloudiness on the Earth. The water vapor will make it into the stratosphere. There Sunlight will hit it, and split the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is too light for the Earth's gravity to hold onto, and it will be lost forever. The Oxygen will sink to the ground to form carbon dioxide and carbonates. Thus will the Earth become like Venus: CO₂ atmosphere much denser and hotter than now, and no water. The oceans will have boiled away. It will be the End of the World.

But that's a billion years from now. There are more pressing concerns ahead of us, such as the running out of oil. According to some observers, that will happen about 2010 or so, when cheap oil runs out and production enters a decline. The results will be devastating, as we depend a lot on oil. That could be the End of the World. We need to replace our oil-burning vehicle engines with another fuel, and hydrogen is posed as an answer. Hydrogen will be forever (or actually a billion years, as we saw above) available on the Earth, and the fuel burns clean, producing only water vapor as a waste product. We need cars that burn hydrogen, and such cars have been made: fuel cell vehicles. Most of the vehicles that I have heard about make their hydrogen fuel from a fossil fuel such as gasoline, or from a biological fuel such as grain alcohol. That does not solve the running out of oil problem. We need a source independent of fossil fuels. So why can't the Sun's energy be used to break up (electrolyze) water into hydrogen and oxygen, the way that it will happen a billion years from now to boil away the oceans? Why up above and in the far future? Why not on this Earth and now? Is there some way of using the End of the World to Save the World?