The Concern
The World's Energy Supply has
Problems of Quanity, Quality
and Sustainability.
President Obama's Science Advisor, John Holdren, has stated it well: “Without energy there is no economy. Without climate there is no environment. Without economy and environment there’s no material well-being, there’s no civil society, there’s no personal or national or international security. And the problem is that the way we’ve been getting the energy our economies need is wrecking the climate that our environment needs. That is the essence of the problem.”
Most, including DOE Secretary, Dr. Chu, are looking for a
form of laser fusion, magnetic confinement fusion, bio fuel, wind, or solar energy to be our
salvation. Well, none of these are big enough nor doable in time to stave off
the crisis of the energy needed in the world in the next ten years.
The limited supply and worldwide environmental effects of
carbon-based fuels demand that a different source of energy be identified and
tapped. This analysis applies to
synthetic bio fuels as well as fossil fuels. The obvious candidates to supplant carbon-based fuels are
solar conversion, wind generation, hydraulic generation, geothermal extraction,
fission, and fusion. When scaled
to the size necessary to satisfy the energy demands of the world, all except
fusion have severe unmitigated environmental impacts, induce geopolitical
instability, or exhibit very limited availability, reliability, and
sustainability.
Most technologies suffer from more than one of these drawbacks.