Energy and Climate
Our economies run on energy. We advanced from human to animal power and then learning to use fire was a huge advance. We learned to cook which allowed us to get more calories and support a bigger brain. We learned to use wind and hydro power and made another huge advance with burning coal and the steam engine. Now coal is being replaced by oil and methane which are easier to handle and less polluting. We are just starting to use nuclear fuels; fission fuels now and ultimately fusion fuels.
ENERGY USE PER CAPITA
Each transition described above produced increased energy use per capital. Indeed, civilization advances with increasing energy use per capita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%27s_law
The transitions allowed us all to get richer, better fed and more educated. Our health dramatically improved. Lifetimes have increased from maybe 30 years to 70 or 80 or even longer. Our population has increased immensely. It will peak near 10 billion and now we are aging rapidly so our population will gradually decline. Our wealth has increased dramatically.
Energy use per capita is related to the energy density of the fuel: the more energy dense the fuel, the greater the energy use per capita. At each stage in the historical process, we used increasingly more energy dense fuels and obtained greater energy per capita.
CLIMATE CHANGE
But now our huge population is having huge effects on the global ecology. We are using immense amounts of energy, primarily by burning coal, oil and methane. Burning these fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which causes a greenhouse warming of the atmosphere.
We have understood the physics of global warming for 100 years and in spite of lots of conferences and talk, we are not reducing the danger. We are now over 420 ppm carbon dioxide. Increasing temperatures making some regions uninhabitable, such as India and Pakistan. Melting glaciers and sea-level rise and flooding of costal cities. Worse, we are reaching “tipping points” where positive feedback loops become important. Albedo in an ice-free Arctic Ocean and melting permafrost releases warming methane.
https://www.lenntech.com/greenhouse-effect/global-warming-history.htm
WHAT TO DO?
Our objectives should be to maximize our human welfare while minimizing our environmental and ecological impacts. Since the environmental impacts of an energy source are roughly proportional to the amount of land and materials used, we should use the most energy dense fuels.
Fossil fuels cause other problems as well, such as declining availability, air pollution, regional differences in availability and resource wars.
In spite of numerous conferences and agreements, climate change is getting worse with no signs of slowing.
Fossil fuels are much more energy dense than biomass and exponentially more energy dense than wind and solar power but they are causing problems. Renewables may seem like a good solution but they are not. As we add wind and solar power to the grid, the grid becomes more unstable and harder to manage. System costs of storage and backup become dominant so that even if the electricity were free, the cost to the consumer would be high.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/09/bidens-climate-fix-is-fantastically-expensive-and-perfectly-useless/
The solution is to electrify everything and power it all with zero-carbon, extremely energy dense nuclear fuels. Fission at present and ultimately fusion fuels. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2022/05/27/rolls-royces-smr-needs-10000-times-less-land-than-wind-energy-proves-iron-law-of-power-density/
In addition to reducing burning of fossil fuels, are many ways to reduce carbon emissions.
Deforestation
Desertification
Air pollution
Carbon farming
Will these help us reach net-zero emissions by 2050?