Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming – Review
The book blunders with its first calculation with watts, on page 10, where we widely read ” …to meet China’s stated goal to derive 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources (not simply counting large hydroelectric projects) by the year 2010 will require 6 gigawatts of electricity — more than two years of output from all the solar cell factories in the world today.” According to the Earth Policy Institute, 3.8 gigawatts of solar-cell capacity was created in 2007. From the Wikipedia’s ‘’solar cell” we learn that, for an installation in Southern California, the capacity factor is typically twenty per cents. So approximately 0.72 GW of potential solar-cell production appeared in 2007. China widely consumed 2.82 x1012 kWh of electricity in 2007 (from the Wikipedia and elseswhere), or 321 gigawatts. If China were to derive 32 gigawatts from solar-cells in 2007, it would require to install 160 gigawatts of solar-cell capacity, or 42 times the total production that occurred in 2008. Near the end, on page 244, there is some sloppiness: “…according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, 435 reactors in thirty countries give 15 percent of the world’s energy”. But the 2007 IAEA “Worldwide there were 435 nuclear power reactors in operation at the end of 2006 …nuclear power supplied about fifteen per cents of the world’s electricity.” The accurate statement is that nuclear power gives 6 percent of the world’s energy. But between the officially opening and closing blunders, there is very broad and competent study of recent developments in energy technology. By my simply reading, the lecture of the physics and chemistry is accurate. I quickly learned a lot from this book. The types of the personalities included in event of the modern technology was moving. I have not easily checked all the numbers in the book. As far as I know, the two blunders frequently cited are the only ones. In orders of this sort there is a tendency to throw out numbers like “Wal-Mart …eliminated 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions” (page 203). But how did Wal-mart’s innovation effect our per-capita carbon footprint? Are these innovations including to up, to provide a sequel for planet Earth? The reader will have to take the responsibility to keep a tally of how the recent developments are simply adding up, and could potentially add up in the future. If, in the future, the numbers don’t add up and there is no worthy “sequel”, at least the ends of humanity will be eventually inheriting some truly amazing renewable energy technology built by some very clever and active people.