Buckminster Fuller, the genius architect behind geodesic domes, declared “The earth is like a spaceship that didn’t come with an operating manual.”
Our blue planet orbits a small star, a continuous five billion year old thermonuclear explosion steadily converting 332,000 earth’s worth of hydrogen into helium. We live in a 14-mile slice of atmosphere and anchor our buildings into continent sized rocks floating on molten magma. On average, our entire civilization consumes about 16,000,000,000,000 watts of energy – enough to run ten billion 100W light bulbs continuously. Solar energy produces about 8,000,000,000 watts. In comparison, our planet continuously absorbs 120,000,000,000,000,000 watts from the sun. So why are we only using 0.000007% of the available solar energy?
90% of our 16 terawatts comes from fossil fuels, 65 to 650 million year old liquefied dinosaurs deep within the bowels of the Earth. Burning high-octane brontosaurs releases about 21.3 trillion kg of Carbon Dioxide, 18 million kg of Sulfur Dioxide, 12 million kg of Thorium and 5 million kg of Uranium per year. Carbon Dioxide heats up the atmosphere, Sulfur Dioxide makes acid rain, Thorium is radioactive and Uranium is used in nuclear weapons. When we have so much solar energy, why are we filling our 14-mile slice of atmosphere up with this stuff?
Obviously, somebody couldn’t find the manual.
Shrink is trying to change that. We’ve brought onboard Dr. Roland Winston, the leading expert on non-imaging optics and a solar guru, to help write a new one. We are developing products, like our Luminescent Solar Concentrator OptiSol™, to help make renewable energy adaptable and affordable. I’d recommend checking out our technology review on OptiSol™.
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