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I& #39;ve seen a lot of chatter about collectively using box fans to - for example - clear smoke from the #wildfires... heck I& #39;ve even had that thought! So last night I did some fast math:
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I live in Seattle suburbs, so we& #39;re just going to focus on WA (sorry OR & CA, you& #39;re on your own). WA has an area of 71,362 sq miles. Smoke can rise HIGH, but 2km of air should be plenty to breathe, e.g. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144658/how-the-smoke-rises
So">https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/14... we need to move... ~1.3e16 cubic feet of air(!)
So">https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/14... we need to move... ~1.3e16 cubic feet of air(!)
A typical box fan is rated for 2500 cfm (cubic ft per min), & draws ~100W of power. Under ideal scenarios, that will move an impressive 3.6 Million cubic feet per day! I want this smoke gone, so 1 day is good. That& #39;s a gentle to moderate breeze across WA https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lasko-20-in-3-Speed-Box-Fan-3733/100405665">https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lasko-2...
So in our simple model, comparing the volume of air over WA to the capacity of 1 fan, we need 3.6 BILLION box fans to clear WA in 1 day. They would draw 5.2e14 W, or (...some very fuzzy math...) about half the power output of the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated.
Huh, that seems fairly untenable. WA generates quite a bit of power, 116 TWh of electricity each year. We& #39;d need like... 70days worth of ALL the power in WA to drive those fans for 1 day.
ok ok, box fans are clearly too small. Seattle *is* "Jet City" afterall...What if we use JET ENGINES?! I was very impressed: the engines in a 777 move a whopping 2 MILLION CUBIC FEET of air PER MINUTE (at takeoff). WOW
https://www.businessinsider.com/some-unbelievable-statistics-about-the-ge-engine-on-the-boeing-777-2011-12">https://www.businessinsider.com/some-unbe...
https://www.businessinsider.com/some-unbelievable-statistics-about-the-ge-engine-on-the-boeing-777-2011-12">https://www.businessinsider.com/some-unbe...
So, those are some serious air movers! Swap those big & #39;ol boys for the 20" box fans, and we& #39;d need... like 4 million jet engines to clear WA in 1 day. Huh.
Jets burn like... 1500 gal of fuel per hour (at cruise), so running those engines for 1 day would burn ~1.6e11 gallons of fuel. That& #39;s about 10 years worth of the US annual jet fuel consumption.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/197690/us-airline-fuel-consumption-since-2004/">https://www.statista.com/statistic...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/197690/us-airline-fuel-consumption-since-2004/">https://www.statista.com/statistic...
And super bad news here. If you burned that amount of jet fuel, you& #39;d produce something like 3.2 trillion lbs of CO2, which is equiv. to 12 days of worldwide CO2 production.
The air would probably *not* be great then...
The air would probably *not* be great then...
Well, maybe WA is just too big, & rich Seattle should look out for itself. Let& #39;s just clear the Seattle metropolitan area, a meager 5872 sq mi (about 12x smaller than WA). We& #39;d need 298 million fans, or 372 thousand jets.
OK, we get it. The numbers are absurdly large. What is the point? 2 things:
1) to emphasize the scale of energy at play. You can& #39;t reroute a hurricane, or move a city& #39;s worth of smoke. As w/ climate change, the problem is HUGE, actions by individual ppl aren& #39;t the solution
1) to emphasize the scale of energy at play. You can& #39;t reroute a hurricane, or move a city& #39;s worth of smoke. As w/ climate change, the problem is HUGE, actions by individual ppl aren& #39;t the solution
But relatedly, despite the laughable volumes, etc, consider how reasonable these energy scales actually are! 10yrs of jet fuel use, 12 days of CO2 production. 3 months of power for WA, 1/2 the Tsar Bomba...
We DO change the climate w/ the cumulative impact of our lives
We DO change the climate w/ the cumulative impact of our lives
2) Our intuition doesn& #39;t prepare us for the real scale of the physical world, so people are easily tricked or duped. Your brain can& #39;t fathom a trillion of anything (gal of fuel or $ spent), & this is one way fake news & misinformation spreads.
and collective action *IS* needed to solve these big problems (climate, fascism, healthcare...), but it requires governments & laws & systemic changes. Some Facebook group is prob not a super robust source of information on the scale of problems we& #39;re facing.
Don& #39;t get mad at your neighbors for not pointing their boxfans north tonight, be mad that the alarm was rung decades ago & we& #39;ve done little to nothing to address it. Get FURIOUS that our "leaders" deny the problems even exist.
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