Population increase is one cause, but not the main one. The projections are shown in Fig. 2.5. In developed countries, the scenarios generally predict a slowing population growth peaking around 2040, followed by a slow decline to the end of the century. The underdeveloped countries in Africa and Latin America are responsible for the continuing increase to 2100. Experts believe that population will stop growing at 10 billion people, the most that the earth can support. After that, we will have to start colonizing the moon and Mars.

It is the productivity of man that drives the need for more and more energy, as shown in Fig. 2.6. One measure of this is the gross domestic product or GDP. This can be evaluated for a single, developed country; but to do this for the whole world requires dealing with different currencies and ways of accounting. For this reason, the GDP for the world is estimated differently by different sources; and the data for the past are not necessarily accurate. Nonetheless, projections for growth can be calculated using a consistent system. In Fig. 2.6, we have reduced the GDP data to US dollars of the year 2000. There we see that the GDP is expected to grow expo­nentially. This is in spite of the fact that the GDP per person in developed countries is expected to decline slightly. It is the industrialization of the rest of the world that drives energy demand.

To illustrate this, Fig. 2.7 shows energy demand in the high economic growth case of Fig. 2.4, broken down between OECD and non-OECD countries. The

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Fig. 2.6 Projections of gross domestic product increase. Units are in trillions of US dollars of year 2000. The triple bars show the predictions of three different scenarios from Scenarios of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Atmospheric Concentrations, US Climate Change Science Program, Synthesis and Assessment Product 2.1a, 2007. The 2007 point is from the CIA World Fact Book

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Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development consists of some 30 industrialized countries mostly those in Europe and North America, plus Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The non-OECD countries include Russia, China, India, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and South America. It is clear that most of the growth is in the non-OECD countries up to the year 2030, and the projections of

GDP in Fig. 2.6 show even greater dominance of the non-OECD countries in the second half of the twenty-first century.

Can we believe these predictions? We may not trust what unseen scientists do with their computers, but this is the best information we have if we are to plan for the future. Doubters and naysayers are usually single persons who act on their intu­itions without doing the homework. By contrast, the scenarios shown here are worked out by large groups of experts using massive amounts of data. The ground rules of a scenario are decided at the beginning, and widely differing approaches are taken to cover the spectrum of possible results. For instance, in predicting the path of underdeveloped countries, one scenario assumes that different localities modern­ize in isolation, following their own customs and ways of life, while another scenario assumes that communication is so good that all countries are connected by the internet and can share methods and economics with the rest of the world. The different regions have GDPs that increase at vastly different rates, but they tend to average out over the world. This leads to the scenario results of Fig. 2.6, which differ greatly by the year 2100 but nonetheless show a definite trend. In the energy projections of Fig. 2.4, these vastly different scenarios still agree within ±10% in the year 2030.

Al Gore’s book and video, An Inconvenient Truth, has raised the public consciousness about the dangers of global warming and climate change. This book is intended to convey the message that there is a solution. A solution not only to global warming caused by anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, but also to the depletion of fossil fuels and to the wars in the Middle East related to our depen­dence on their supply of oil.

The solution is the rapid development of hydrogen fusion energy. This energy source is inexhaustible (it is seawater); no greenhouse gases are emitted; and the dangers of nuclear power are avoided.

Most legislators and journalists have regarded fusion as a pipe dream with very little chance of success. They are misinformed, because times have changed. Achieving fusion energy is difficult, but the progress made in the past two decades has been remarkable. Mother Nature has actually been kind to us, giving us benefi­cial effects that were totally unexpected. The physics issues are now understood well enough that serious engineering can begin. An Apollo 11-type program can bring fusion online in time to stabilize climate change before it is too late.

Seven nations have joined together to form and share the cost of ITER, a large machine which is an important step in achieving fusion. These nations contain more than half the world’s population. A community of international workers, as well as schools for their children, has been set up at the ITER site in Cadarache, France. More on ITER will come later. There is a plan and a timetable to pursue the ulti­mate solution to civilization’s most pressing problems. There is no downside to fusion.

So much has been written about climate change and alternate energy sources that almost every magazine has an article on these topics. By repeating the data given by Al Gore, journalists have found an easy way to meet their deadlines. Readers are hard pressed to distinguish fact from conjecture and sensationalism. We therefore start with a summary of climate change and energy sources, trying to give a concise, impartial picture of the facts. Here, I am out of my depth; I am not an expert on these topics. I get my information from the same newspapers, maga­zines, and websites that you do. But I think it is important to put fusion in the proper context within the general scheme of the world’s future.

However, that is not what this book is about; it is about controlled fusion. The physics of fusion is highly technical, but the difficult problems and ingenious solutions can be explained so that everyone can appreciate what has been done. This is a difficult task, and I ask you to be patient. Although our explanations are longer and gentler than the succinct language of scientific journals, you cannot flip through the pages as with an ordinary book. This book is written for a variety of readers, from “green” enthusiasts with no science background to Scientific American magazine subscribers. There is a lot of information contained in many new concepts, but they can be understood by anyone with a college, or even high school, education. If you get stuck, do not give up. Your can skip ahead to more practical and less scientific material. The bottom line — what has yet to be done, how long it will take, and how much it will cost — may surprise you.

Los Angeles, CA, USA Francis F. Chen

We know that photosynthesis in trees uses sunlight to convert CO2 into oxygen. Could it also produce oil? It turns out that fast-growing algae, considered scum that chokes up ponds, can contain both biodiesel oil and carbohydrates that can be fermented into ethanol. Funded by venture capitalists, hundreds of startup compa­nies are scrambling to develop a process that can be commercialized to compete with fossil oil. The Center for Algae Biotechnology was founded in 2008 in San Diego, CA, and 200 companies have been set up in that area. In the Imperial Valley to the east, there are 400 acres (81 hectares) of algae farms.29 Algae, half of whose weight is in oil, are expected to produce 10,000 gallons of oil per acre per year, compared with 650 gallons from oil-palm trees.29 Growing algae needs carbon dioxide, which can be from the exhaust of coal-burning plants, and light, but not

necessarily sunlight. This is because most of the sunlight is of the wrong frequency (color). Algae can be grown in acres of tanks lined with plastic sheets and given the right amount of CO2 and water at the right temperature. Under the best condi­tions, algae of the right species can double their weight in 1 day.

Small-scale experiments at OriginOil, Inc.30 have shown an efficient way to grow algae, harvest it, and extract the oil. Efficient LED lamps of the right frequency are used instead of sunlight to grow the algae, and CO2 is fizzed in. After harvesting, the cell walls of the algae have to be broken up to release the oil. CO2 is first added to change the pH. Then pulsed microwaves are applied whose frequency, intensity, and pulse rate are feedback-controlled. The mix is then moved to a settling tank, where gravity causes the oil to rise to the top, the biomass to the bottom, and water in between. The biomass can be used for feedstock. The separation occurs in a single step with no further input of energy. Whether oil from algae will be worth it is not yet known, since the process is still in the research stage.

The earth’s average temperature has risen 0.74°C (1.3°F) in the last century, with most of this rise, 0.55°C (1.0°F), occurring after the 1970s. Since our local tem­perature varies by many tens of degrees between day and night and between sum­mer and winter, how can a one-degree change have the dire consequences attributed to it? The one-degree change is only an average over the whole globe and over a whole year. Any particular place can have swings of temperature much larger than this which are compensated by opposite swings at other places. As will be dis­cussed below, there is evidence that extreme weather events like droughts and floods are occurring more frequently, and these can cause disasters like wildfires, though the causal relation cannot be proven.

In some instances, the effect of even one degree is clear. Much of the perma­frost in Greenland is near the melting point. A one-degree warming can cause it to unfreeze, allowing plants to grow. These, in turn, absorb much more sunlight than ice does, triggering accelerated warming by positive feedback. The loss of ice and snow where the temperature is near 0°C has affected the lives of polar bears and their prey, the monk seals. The permafrost under the Arctic Ocean has trapped methane from decaying vegetation ages ago. Bubbles of this gas, with 26 times the warming potential of CO2, have recently been observed to come out in increasing amounts, though the connection with global warming has not yet been established. On land, the pernicious effects are more subtle but have already been observed. The tree line on mountains has moved upwards. Birds have found their usual food sources diminished during nesting season. Spring seems to arrive ear­lier. Annual migrations of birds and butterflies are sensitive to small changes in the timing and location of their food sources. Examples of quantitative data are given in Box 1.1.

But are mankind’s activities the cause of these changes? Figure 1.11 showed the temperature rise over both land and ocean. The change in air temperature over land is shown more clearly in Fig. 1.16. We see that there was a warming trend from 1890 to 1940, a change of about 0.5°C which was probably due to natural causes. This was followed by a period of global cooling. Wildlife has in the past adapted to

such changes. It is natural for some species to become extinct occasionally, just as the dinosaurs became extinct. What is new is that the current temperature rise is noticeably faster and can be related to the emission of GHGs. It is not so much the one-degree (°F) change of the past but the six-degree (°F) change predicted for the next century (Fig. 1.12) that is worrisome. Natural evolution is being driven at an increasing rate by mankind with unknown consequences unless CO2 emissions can be controlled.

Not all energy is the same. Electricity is the form of energy that governs the way we live in modern society; we depend on it in ways that we do not always appre­ciate. Much of the energy needed by underdeveloped countries will be for building an electricity infrastructure. The next four graphs will show where electricity comes from and where it goes. The readily available data here are for the USA.

Figure 2.8a shows that total energy use in the USA is shared almost equally by the transportation, industrial, residential, and commercial sectors, but they use

different sources. Transportation energy comes almost entirely from petroleum (loosely called “oil” here). Industry burns most oil and natural gas (“gas”). In the commercial and residential sectors, electricity and gas are equally important, but electricity is fast overtaking gas, as seen in Fig. 2.8b for the commercial sector. In this sector, lighting and air conditioning in buildings use large amounts of electricity, much of which can be saved by strict conservation practices. In the residential sector, 31% of the electricity is used for space heating, cooling, and ventilation; and 35% for kitchen appliances and hot water. Lighting, electronics, laundry, and other uses take up less than 10% each.2 Each household in the USA uses 1.2 kW of electricity steadily when averaged over day and night, winter and summer. There being 2.6 persons in each household on average, each person is responsible for about 470 W of electricity consumption.2 The peak load is, of course, many times that; and power plants have to be built for peak demand.

To make things worse, making electricity is very inefficient. The losses are shown in Fig. 2.9a, and the sources of energy for electricity are shown in Fig. 2.9b. Two-thirds (69%) of the fossil energy used for electricity is lost in production! The main loss is in converting heat into electricity. The raw material, such as coal, has to be prepared to be burned. It then burned to produce steam, and the steam is used to drive a turbine (an electric motor in reverse) to generate electricity. Each of these steps takes energy. The main loss comes from an old thermodynamics principle called Carnot’s theorem, which states that the best that any engine can do in con­verting heat to mechanical energy is to suffer a fractional loss equal to the initial temperature divided by the final temperature. For instance, if the steam is heated to 500°C (932°F) and cooled to 100°C (212°F) to drive the turbine, the absolute tem­peratures are about 770 and 370 K, with a ratio of about 0.48 or 48%. This is the part that is lost, leaving 0.52 for the part that can be used. So even if all is ideal, the efficiency cannot be more than 52%. Modern heat engines can exceed this figure,

a b Electricity by source

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but then the turbine is not perfectly efficient either. This conversion loss is shown in Fig. 2.9a. To this we have to add the losses in transmission and distribution, including the heating of the high-voltage cables and the transformers to step the voltage down to wall-plug values. These losses are given by the last column in Fig. 2.9a. What is left for use is the middle column there.

Our thirst for electricity comes at great cost. We are using precious fossil fuels very inefficiently. Systems that produce electricity directly without going through a heat cycle make much more sense. These are hydroelectricity, wind, and photo­voltaic solar cells. Solar, unfortunately, has its own physical limits on efficiency, as will be seen later in this chapter. We see in Fig. 2.9b that by far the largest fraction of electricity comes from coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels! And we have not yet counted the fossil energy expended in mining, transporting, and refining coal. It is encouraging that the slice labeled “other,” which includes wind and solar, appears larger than the splinter seen in our other pie charts. This is because they can produce electricity directly, without going through a heat cycle.

Several hundred million years ago, light from the sun produced trees on the earth, and these were eventually converted into fossil fuels in the earth’s crust. This leg­acy of easy energy allowed mankind to develop the advanced civilization that we enjoy today. But it is fast running out. The sun is the ultimate source of 90% of the energy we use, but it is mostly in fossil form. The everyday influx of solar power is too dilute to supply all energy that we use. We depend on the fossil fuels stored away from forests grown by the sun eons ago. Controlled nuclear fusion, or “fusion” for short, is about making an artificial sun on earth. It is not easy; but we hope to show that it is not only possible, but necessary (Fig. 1).

Let us take a look at how fossil fuels fit into the scheme of human history. Figure 2 shows a timeline from the beginning of recorded history to several thou­sand years in the future, showing several significant events along the way. The large, narrow peak in the center, known as Hubbert’s Peak, represents the rate of mining and use of fossil fuels. It begins with industrialization in the 1800s and will end less than 100 years from now with the depletion of readily accessible deposits. This will happen within the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. We are extremely lucky to be here during this very brief slice of time in the history of mankind. If our civilization is to continue as far into the future as it has existed in the past, it is clear that fossil fuels will have to be replaced by other energy sources. Energy conservation and known renewable energy sources will not be enough to sustain our civilization.

In considering either climate change or energy sources, it is important to separate three very different time scales that are involved. The first time scale is a short one, a few months to a few years, the time it takes to implement immediate but temporary solutions. For climate change that might be making an agreement like the Kyoto Protocol or issuing carbon credits which can be traded on the market. For oil or gas shortage, that might be limiting the speed limit to 55 miles per hour, offering tax credits for renewable energy installations, or starting a war in the Middle East. The second time scale is longer, 10-50 years, the time it takes to develop new sources of energy which will not burn fossil fuels and generate CO2. The third time scale is far into the future, 100-5,000 years, perhaps the life of human civilization on this planet as we know it today. The band-aid solutions of the near term are mostly political. The problems of the far future cannot be solved now, since we do not know what they will be. However, the problems of the second (intermediate) period are upon us now, and there is barely time for effective action. Global warming and sea level rise will accelerate in the next ten years. Fuel prices will rise as fossil fuels become scarce and hard to burn cleanly. It is time to complement the efforts spent on temporary solutions with a serious program to solve the bigger problem.

Fusion power is a solution which will take time and money to bring to reality, but no more so than putting a man on the moon. We live in a glorious age when we can afford to send satellites to explore the solar system and to build huge particle accelerators to probe the structure of matter on the smallest scales. But we are not taking care of our future. The outlook is not quite that bad, however. As will be described in future chapters, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER, is being supported by seven nations representing more than half the world’s population. Costing some $21 billion and located in France, it will test sustainability of a fusion reaction — a continuous “burn.” It is to be completed in 2019 and operated for ten years or more. Another large machine will be needed simultaneously to solve engineering problems not included in the ITER project. After that, the first power-producing fusion reactor, DEMO, is planned, but not before the year 2050. The path is clear, but the rate of progress is limited by finan­cial resources. In the USA, fusion has been ignored by both the public and Congress, mainly because of the lack of information about this highly technical subject. People just do not understand what fusion is and how important it is. Books have been written light-heartedly dismissing fusion as pure fantasy.[1] The fact is that progress on fusion reactors has been steady and spectacular. The 50-year time scale presently planned for the development of fusion power can be shortened by a con­certed international effort at a level justified by the magnitude of the problem. It is time to stop spinning our wheels with temporary solutions.

The following chapters will tell the fascinating story of how the tricky problems of creating a miniature sun on the earth are being solved, as well as give a realistic account of what is left to be done and the likelihood of success. Controlled fusion energy is not a pipedream. It can replace fossil fuels and curb global warming. The world will benefit from a concerted effort to bring fusion reactors into the power grid sooner rather than later.

Gas hydrates are solids like ordinary ice, but they exist only under high pressure, typically below hundreds of meters of ocean. They contain methane bubbles trapped by H2O molecules and will burn if ignited in air. The methane is believed to have been created by bacterial action ages ago. Gas hydrates are found on continental shelves and under the tundra in the Arctic. Figure 2.21 shows why. The dotted vertical line shows the freezing point of water; it is around 0°C and does not change much with pressure. Water is liquid on the right of the line and is ice on the left side. Gas hydrates, however, can exist only at great depths, where the pressure is high; and the depth is greater if the temperature is higher. The possible temperature-depth combi­nations for gas hydrates are shown by the yellow part of the diagram. In the ocean at temperatures above freezing, gas hydrates lie below 500 m of seawater. In the Arctic, they are closer to the surface because the temperature is lower.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) has led the exploration of gas hydrates under coastal waters such as the Carolina Trough, in the North Slope of Alaska, in the Gulf of Mexico, and even in the Bay of Bengal in India and the Andaman Sea of Thailand. Drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico were carried out in 2005 and 2009 to obtain cores of the layers where hydrates are found. Detailed data have been obtained not only on the concentration of gas hydrates but also on the nature and stability of the sand layers through which the drill goes. It has been estimated that the amount of fossil energy in these hydrates can exceed the energy in all other fossil fuels on earth, but this is highly speculative. One estimate is between 100,000 and 300 trillion cubic feet of gas in hydrates, which translates to the same number of Quads, since 1 trillion cu. feet contains approximately 1 Quad of energy. This compares to the world’s proven conventional gas reserves of 6,385 Quads given in Fig. 2.12. The highest estimate is 47,000 times this number and should be taken with a grain of salt. More accurate information became available more recently.31

We are clearly still in the exploration state on this resource. There is no proposed method to mine gas hydrates safely and distribute the methane. The problem is that methane is a greenhouse gas ten times as powerful as CO2, and it is released as soon as the hydrates are relieved from the pressure they are under. Leakage of a small fraction of this gas into the atmosphere would be catastrophic. Methane can also be released from sand layers that the drills have to go through. Although methane is a clean-burning gas and emits less CO2 than other fuels, it is still a fossil fuel, so CO2 is emitted when it is burned. Even if it’s true that the gas reserves in hydrates are huge, it is dangerous to exploit this source when completely carbon-free energy sources can be developed. These are the subject of the next chapter.

To conclude this chapter philosophically, we refer back to Fig. 2.2 in the Prologue. There we saw that the use of fossil fuel occupies only a thin slice of human history. For millions of years, solar energy was stored in trees which decayed and were stored deep underground as carbon compounds. This fortuitous treasure was discovered by man and is being recklessly consumed to advance our civilization without regard for the future. Mother Nature’s endowment, however, was not meant to be wasted. The endowment was sufficient for humans to develop enough intelli­gence to find an unlimited resource: fusion energy. First, she showed us the enormous power available by leading us to develop the hydrogen bomb. She is now gently leading us to the next step. In Chap. 7, we will see evidence of her helping hand.

There have been totally unexpected bonuses in our attempts to control the reaction. It is a way to continue the benefits of the one-shot legacy of fossil fuels without destroy­ing all the species of birds, fish, and animals that she has created.

When we talk about rainfall, global averages are of no use; rain and snow occur locally. This can be seen in Fig. 1.17, which shows how precipitation varies from region to region. What global warming does is to increase the occurrence of extremes: severe floods or severe droughts. It is hard to see the long-term trend because of large periodic weather events such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the less well-known North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which is a modulation of the westerly winds into Europe. Nonetheless, the IPCC 2007 report states that the wet-dry differences (the color depth in Fig. 1.17) have been increas­ing from 1900 to 2002.9

Box 1.1 Effect of Temperature Rise on Birds and Flowers

The Audubon bird count has been going on for 109 years, and there are 35 million bird records in the database. A 2008 study by California Audubon [12] analyzed the shifts in ranges of 312 species in the last 40 years as the January temperatures rose by 2.5°C (4.5°F). For most species, the shift is northward toward cooler climates and can be over 400 miles. A few examples are shown in Fig. 1.18.

The range over which birds can find sufficient food and nesting sites can be shortened by their geographic displacement (Fig. 1.19). This can be computed using scenarios which assume different rates of anthropogenic carbon emissions and different degrees of mitigation. Consequently, for some birds such as the California gnatcatcher, the predictions can vary widely from model to model.

The migration of birds is also affected by higher temperatures as their nesting period and food sources occur earlier in the spring. Jenni and Kery [13] have studied the time of migration through Western Europe of 65 species in a 43-year period. Long-distance migrants migrate sooner, but short-distance migrants and multiple-brood birds may delay or not change their migration times.

Flowers also have been blooming earlier as temperatures rise. Using Henry David Thoreau’s notes on flowering dates in the 1850s and comparing with his own measurements in Massachusetts, Primack [14]10 has been able to show that the mean flowering date for 43 species has moved up seven days, while the May temperatures increased by 2.9°F (1.6°C) between 1855 and 2006. Some plants were found to bloom 20-30 days earlier.

Box 1.1 (continued)

The underlying physics involves the fact that warmer air holds more moisture: 7% more for every degree Celsius rise in temperature. In places where it rains, the larger moisture content in the atmosphere makes it rain harder. At the same time, evaporation is a cooling process, so the transfer of surface moisture into the air tends to cool the surface. Where it does not rain, this cooling effect does not occur, and the land gets hotter and drier. This raises the possibility of heat waves and forest fires, the latter injecting more CO2 into the air. This is conjectural, but there is an immediate impact of global warming on drought which comes from timing. Earlier summers mean that the snowpack on mountains melts sooner, releasing water before it is needed and causing reservoirs to overflow. The loss of water means drought in the summer.

Here is the bottom line: how much fossil fuel the world has left, and how long it will last. The data are for 2007, and the heat equivalents have been reduced to Quads.3 First, let us look at coal, the largest resource, shown in Fig. 2.10. The regions are as follows: Asia Pacific includes China, India, Japan, Korea, Australia, and other nations on the Pacific Rim. Europe and Eurasia include West and East Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Greece, and Turkey. North America is the USA, Canada, and Mexico. South and Central America is self-explanatory, and so is Middle East. Proven reserves are known deposits that can be mined using existing techniques.

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We see that coal deposits are concentrated in the first three regions and are practi­cally nonexistent in the Middle East.

Petroleum, of course, is a different story. Figure 2.11 shows what we already know: most of the world’s oil is in the Middle East. In addition to normal oil, there are reportedly large amounts of oil trapped in oil sands and shale oil in Canada. However, this oil is extremely hard to extract, and known methods are energy inten­sive. This oil is not included here because it would take a new technology to get a large net energy gain.

Natural gas reserves are shown in Fig. 2.12. The Middle East leads here also, but note the difference in scales. The amount of energy in gas is small compared with coal and oil.

The dominance of coal is more clearly seen when we put these reserves on the same scale, as done in Fig. 2.13. For oil, we see from the red columns that we will still be dependent on the Middle East for our main transportation fuel.

Now we come to the crux of the problem: how long will fossil fuels last? This is estimated by the R/P ratio, the ratio of Reserves to Production. Hubbert’s Peak, mentioned in the Prologue, has been estimated numerous times, but more exact infor­mation is now available in the R/P ratio, shown in Fig. 2.14. If we take the fossil energy available in known deposits in each region and divide by the annual produc­tion of energy in that region, we can get the number of years the supply will last if there is no trade. Clearly, some regions will be more self-supporting energywise than others. In the real world, we import and export fuels; and the number of years the world’s fossil reserves will last is shown at the right of the figure. Oil will be depleted in 42 years, natural gas in 60 years, and coal in 133 years. Note that the consumption rate has been assumed to be steady at the 2007 level! With the predicted increase in consumption shown in Fig. 2.4, these reserves will be gone in a much shorter time.

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Fig. 2.13 Summary of the world’s proven fossil reserves (Data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008.)

Let us examine the case of oil, which is critical for gasoline and all our travels. In the Prologue, we mentioned Hubbert’s peak, a prediction by M. King Hubbert in 1956 about the eventual decline of production as we run out of fossil fuels. The shape of the peak is usually shown as a smooth, symmetric curve like that in Fig. 2.15. The dots there are yearly data on oil production in the USA since 1900, expressed in Quads per year of equivalent thermal energy. We see that indeed the data lie on a Hubbert-type curve, and the peak was reached in 1973, the year of the oil crisis.

Fig. 2.14 Reserves-to-Production ratio for different regions and for the world (Data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008.)

US oil production has been declining since then, but clearly this is not true for the whole world. Figure 2.2 showed that use of all fossil fuels, including oil, is still increasing. What the USA lacks, it is importing from the Middle East. We are not changing our habits in airplane and car travel, or in the transport of food and merchandise in trucks. This means that the consumption curve will not be sym­metric. It will keep going up and then crash rapidly when oil becomes more and more difficult to find.

When will this come? Figure 2.4 showed predictions of the world’s fossil fuel consumption up to 2030. We can get specific predictions for oil for that period from the Energy Information Administration’s Reference Case.1 Using the average rate of increase of 1.2% per year, we can predict the annual consumption beyond 2030. Then, knowing the total amount of oil reserves in conventional deposits in 2007 (7,180 Quads) from footnote 3, we can calculate how those reserves decrease year by year. This is shown in Fig. 2.16. The oil reserves in the world will be depleted by 2040. Though this seems to agree with Fig. 2.15, it is different. First, this is for the whole world, including the Middle East, not just the USA. Second, the drop will be much sharper, as shown by the dotted line, since the consumption rate keeps going up until the price of oil becomes prohibitive. It will become imperative to use alternative fuels, so complete depletion of reserves can be avoided. Oil consumption (the same as production when the whole world is involved) will decrease much faster than it rose, giving an asymmetric Hubbert curve. There are unconventional sources which can be tapped at great cost, but this would extend the curve only slightly. The point here is that the world’s oil will soon be depleted. The world cannot import oil from elsewhere the way the USA can.

The need for petroleum can be mitigated several ways. Cars can be made much more efficient if they are, for instance, made of carbon fiber instead of heavy steel. Current gasoline engines are terribly inefficient. Only 1% of the energy is used to move the driver, and only 10% to move the car; the other 90% is lost in heat.4 Gas-electric hybrids are already marketed and can double gas mileage. Electric plug-in vehicles use no gas, shifting the burden to the more abundant fuel, coal, which

can be burned more efficiently at high temperature at central power plants. Alternate fuels such as hydrogen and ethanol have their own problems, which will be discussed in Chap. 3. The buying public’s preference for horsepower and speed has to change to one for fuel efficiency. It will take many decades to change the manufacturing infrastructure from one making steel parts and gas engines to another making carbon parts and efficient new types of engines. Changing the infrastructure of fuel distribution (gas stations and pipelines) will also require decades. Thus, the oil problem is already upon us.

We have stressed oil as the most imminent problem, but all fossil fuels will soon have to be replaced. It has been said that there is no shortage of coal, which may be true for North America and Europe, but not for the entire world. China is building a new coal plant every week, thus depleting its reserves rapidly. In Fig. 2.14, the Asia Pacific region already has the lowest amount of reserves compared with its consumption rate. Eliminating greenhouse gases from all coal plants will be very costly, if at all possible. As for oil, it does not make sense to burn up this precious resource when it should be saved for special applications, such as making plastics. By the time, oil and gas run out by mid-century, their entire energy slices in Fig. 2.2 will have to be filled by nuclear, fusion, and renewable energy. Renewables like wind, solar, and biofuels would have to expand a 100-fold to make up the differ­ence. Nuclear energy can do it by expanding 17 times, but it has environmental problems. These sources are discussed in the next chapter. They would be needed, together with continued use of coal, to fill the energy gap in the first half of this century. If fusion can be online by mid-century, it will help. It will definitely be needed for the second half of the century. By 2100, with even coal and uranium running out, fusion should become the main source of backbone power. How fusion works and its difficult development will concern us in Part II.

Is Global Warming Real?

The following two graphs have served as icons to raise public consciousness of climate change caused by man’s activities. The first (Fig. 1.1) shows the meticulous measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, taken on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, by Charles D. Keeling over 47 years from 1958 to his death in 2005. A continuous increase can be seen from 315 ppm (parts per million) to 380 ppm. The data are precise enough to show the very regular seasonal variations occurring every year.

The second graph (Fig. 1.2) is the “hockey stick” curve, popularized by Michael Mann in 1998, showing the surface temperature in the northern hemisphere over the past 1,000 years. The curve was relatively flat, on average, for the first 900 years. Then, around 1900, it took a sharp turn upwards and has continued to rise at a steep rate. The shape of the curve reflects the bend in a hockey stick. Though the historic data had to be gathered from tree rings and ice cores, the current rise is measured with thermometers and is much more accurate.

Are these graphs related? Is the increase in CO2 levels causing the rise in tempera­ture? Is man responsible for the rise in CO2 levels? The answer is now quite certain, though there have been and still are many skeptics. It is YES to all three questions. We will first discuss the doubts; then we will show why most scientists think that global warming is real and, furthermore, is anthropogenic; that is, caused by man.

Two doctors at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine have published papers [1] giving data from various sources showing that warming and cooling have occurred in the past due to natural causes such as solar variability, and that shorten­ing of glaciers started well before the industrial age. They enlisted the support of Frederick Seitz, formerly a well-known physicist, who later in life engaged in activities like consulting for the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The most out­spoken critic of the global warming hypothesis has been Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. His “Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism” was delivered to ‘Numbers in superscripts indicate Notes and square brackets [] indicate References at the end of this chapter.

F. F. Chen, An Indispensable Truth: How Fusion Power Can Save the Planet,

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-7820-2_1, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

the US Senate in 2006, and his 233-page December 2008 updated report [2] claimed that 650 scientists supported his position.

These critics relied on a graph of historical temperatures showing a Medieval Warm Period in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, followed by a Little Ice Age in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This graph showed that temperature fluctuations of the magnitude that we have now have occurred naturally in the past. However, it turns out that these data were taken locally in the Sargasso Sea and do not represent global averages. The 2001 IPCC report [3] specifically refutes the significance of those data and instead presents the more accurate data of Fig. 1.2, in which these periods are not noticeable. Inhofe correctly cautions, however, that one cannot trust what one reads in the press. He cites articles in the media in the 1920s and 1960s warning about global warming, intertwined with articles in the 1950s and 1970s warning against a coming ice age. These critics of anthropogenic climate change are not scientists, and they clearly have their own agenda. Nonetheless, there are physicists who have studied past variations in solar radiation and believe that these could have caused global warming [4].1 Regardless of the past, however, the best estimates by climate experts, as we shall see below, show that greenhouse gases (GHGs) generated by man will definitely raise the earth’s temperature.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), formed in 1988, issues a detailed report every six years or so. The Third Assessment Report (AR3), issued in 2001, already gave ample evidence of man-made influence on the earth’s cli­mate. The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of 2007 incorporated tremendous advances in climate science in the intervening years. Many more ice cores, satellite observations, ocean and ice measurements, for instance, had been made to expand the database. In six years, the speed of computer chips has increased dramatically, as we all know. More importantly, the programs used for computer modeling of climate change have become much more trustworthy. The result is that we can predict with more accuracy what our future holds.

The IPCC-AR4 is divided into a Synthesis Report of about 100 pages, followed by the reports of three Working Groups (WGs). Each of these is just short of 1,000 pages and five pounds in weight. The data shown here come mostly from the WG1 report, The Physical Science Basis, the work of 152 authors summarizing the work of 650 scientific experts. There were disagreements, of course, and these have been resolved in over 30,000 arguments; this is a true consensus. In a way, science at the forefront is self-monitoring. If there are several researchers working on the same problem, you can be sure that each will examine the methods and results of the others with great care. The IPCC report is impressively careful about statistical errors. Each fact or prediction has a probability of being correct, and this certainty level is stated in words backed up by numbers. The WG2 report deals with the impacts of climate change, and the WG3 report with the methods of mitigation. For popular consump­tion, each WG report and the synthesis starts with a summary for policymakers. The entire report can be downloaded free of charge from the IPCC website.2

The massive compilation of data by the IPCC would not have made an impact on the media and the public if not for the efforts of former Vice-President Al Gore. By reducing the problem to its basics in his video and book An Inconvenient Truth, Mr. Gore has made us all aware, logically and emotionally, of the CO2 problem. His antics may have been over-dramatized, and his predictions of disasters may be unproven, but he has done the hard part that scientists cannot do: get the public interested. What he started was a media frenzy, with an article on global warming appearing in almost every issue of every magazine, most of them simply repeating the material that he had already given.

Many books have been written and new journals started since warming became a household word. After the first wave, articles began appearing on the economics or politics of climate change, rather than the science. But the world runs on money, and platitudes will not lead to action. Al Gore’s efforts have galvanized the public on all levels to take action on the climate problem. The USA did not sign the Kyoto Protocol primarily because it would have cost too much to enforce. Being a country with considerable fossil reserves, the USA was not desperate to find alternate energy sources. Fortunately, green energy is now becoming profitable, partly due to government subsidies, and companies in solar and wind power are growing fast. Large companies have installed alternate energy sources in their own buildings. It has become not only fashionable, but also profitable to go green. This is a healthy development, but these energy sources cannot serve mankind in the long run. We aim to show that fusion power is the ultimate solution both to global warming and to fossil depletion, and we should not wait to develop it.