Environment
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Background: Increased global average temperatures may lead to increased sea levels. This could be a problem for coastal regions, but perhaps we can all do our part to mitigate sea level rise by storing the water elsewhere. The Issue: We have the following numbers (Fig 1): If we want to be prepared for the 0.5-meter…
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Background: It’s difficult to appreciate the amount of energy that is consumed by a citizen of a modern industrial economy. If we only consider household electricity, a “reasonable” amount of consumption (ignoring air conditioning or heating) can be more than 5 kilowatt-hours (~200 watts of average usage over a 24-hour period). A non-bicycling-enthusiast adult can…
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Background: In temperate latitudes, people frequently heat their homes in winter and cool their homes in summer. The Issue: The main source of heat is the Sun. So in the hot summer, a homeowner would want their roof & sun-facing walls to be reflective. But in the winter, they’d want the opposite—the roof should ideally…
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The Issue: Climbing the world’s tallest mountain peaks can be hazardous for several reasons: a person could be blown off the mountain by gale-force winds, get frozen, or die due to insufficient oxygen in the low-atmospheric-pressure “death zone”—and this is before even considering the danger from disease, avalanches, other humans, and high-altitude cryptids such as…
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Background: Animals have varying caloric requirements: usually, larger/warmer ones need to eat more. The Issue: When a small animal eats a small portion of food, it’s hard to intuitively understand how much food that is at a human scale. For example, if a sparrow eats a single sesame seed, is that equivalent to a human…
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Background: Recently, there has been discussion around the futuristic concept of “vertical farming”: growing crops in skyscraper-style greenhouses in city centers. The issue: Although there are many conceptual advantages to such a farm, there is at least one major difficulty: light. Obviously, only the topmost layer of a vertical farm would be practical to light…
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The issues: Let us consider two economic / environmental problems that should, in an ideal world, be addressed somehow: Sea level rise (see Figure 1) Overfishing Obviously no one has any plans to actually address these; the “tragedy of the commons” will sort them out naturally. But what if we did want to make a difference,…
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