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Submitted by: jaybo77 Date Added: 07 / 12 / 2010 Category: World History Words | Pages:848 | 4 Green Technologies Carlos Smith J.R. INF103: Computer Literacy Instructor: Carolyn Hughes June 28, 2010 I believe that with our rapid growing society and technologies we should start becoming more and more involved with making our planet and our lifes cleaner before it is too late to do anything about it. It is our responsibilities to make sure that we do whatever it takes to reduce the pollution because it not only affects us our animals as well. Most people will ask what green technology is. Well green technology is technologies that benefit or help the environment and possibly the human condition. Green Technology can help the environment and also help our wallets by saving us on energy cost. The most effective way most people know to save money is to by products or appliances that are made to save energy. I also believe that if we all would drive hybrid cars it would help enormously with our pollution in the air and on our lands and water systems. If every one would drive hybrids and electric cars we would not have problems like the one we are having now in the Gulf of Mexico. Another significant way to save money is solar energy, and wind energy. Solar energy is solar panels converting our sun rays into electricity by photovoltaic cells. The solar panels are intended to reduce both air pollution and CO2 emissions. Many people have found this new energy saver very useful so many of them have put them to work in their houses and their businesses. I think that this is a very good technology to have around the house because with our economy on the hinge. Greenhouses like these in the Westland municipality of the Netherlands grow vegetables, fruits and flowers. Many people will ask well what happens when the sun goes down and we can not turn the suns rays into electricity, well they have found ways to store the energy into heat for times when there is no sun or not enough to produce electricity. Many people even use this technique with solar lights to light their drive way instead of the old way which includes a drop-cord and outside lamps, the same storage technique is used in this solar lamps, they store heat then release the heat into electricity to produce light at night.

This is a graph showing a seasonal variation of the output of the solar panels at AT&T Park in San Francisco. Wind is a form of solar energy. Winds are caused by the uneven heating of the atmosphere by the sun, the irregularities of the earth's surface, and rotation of the earth. Wind flow patterns are modified by the earth's terrain, bodies of water, and vegetative cover. This wind flow, or motion energy, when "harvested" by modern wind turbines, can be used to generate electricity. Wind energy is nothing new, we been using this technique since the mid-1970s, but it has come a long way with durability, less costly, and more efficient turbines. There are many turbines in the United States they are known as Wind Farms. These Wind Farms produce electricity and stored into a utility grid and distributed to costumers just like the electric companies.

Geothermal power is using our natural source of heat energy which most people only know it as hot springs. I think that this is not a reliable source of energy because there are only a handful of hot springs in the United States and in 2007 less than 1% of the worlds electricity supply was produce from this type of source. Global capacity of geothermal electric power plants. Upper line is nameplate capacity, lower line is realized production.

Nuclear Energy has proven to be the most effective energy source out of all the other it also decreases the United States dependency on foreign countries imported oil. This also saves our country around 12 billion dollars and provide our citizens with jobs which helps everybody. Total world nuclear power capacity, in GW, and generation, in TWh for the years 1980 to 2007. Capacity increased by 12.3% per year from 1981 to 1987, and by 1.3% per year from 1987 to 2007 I also know of the danger it holds in the process; like waste it produces, the safety of the employees due to toxic releases, and the atomic weapons that nuclear energy promotes. The Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986 was the worst accident known by nuclear power plant. There was a rapid burst of output energy and when they tried to do an emergency shutdown there was another rapid energy burst and caused a vessel rapture

and it led to some explosions then exposed the graphite moderator components to the reactor with air which cause a disaster like no other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/solar_energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/solar_power http://windeis.anl.gov/guide/basic/index.cfm http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/nuclear.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power