Energy Matters

  ‘Twas the Week Before Christmas ‘Twas the week before Christmas and all through the land There was news about FUSION - exciting and grand A breakthrough of major proportions was here  No more need to warm up our atmosphere! When what to my wondering eyes did appear  But a miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer And a guy flinging fusion gifts throughout the sky! Oh, I get it, I said - I’m just very high. The news about nuclear fusion research achieving an exciting milestone was timed perfectly to end our year on a note of cheer. There’s nothing wrong with cheery news, as long as we understand it well enough to know how to react! We’ve understood hydrogen fusion to be the primary energy source of the sun and recognized its potential since 1920. It was successfully re-created in the lab in 1932. Fusion was proposed as a domestic energy source in 1941, and tested experimentally in 1952. As a bomb. That bomb was 450 times as strong as the fission bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Oops! Control

  Making Simple Complicated It’s really very simple, but some people sincerely don’t seem to get it. The problem the world has is this: We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So far that is not happening. Greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise. Annual g lobal energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose by 6% in 2021 to 36.3 billion metric tons , their highest ever level, as the world economy rebounded from the Covid-19 crisis and relied heavily on coal to power that growth (IEA analysis released March 8, 2022). In 2021 people in developed nations produced on average 8.2 metric tons of CO2 each, and in China, 8.4 metric tons; meanwhile, per capita emissions in the United States were 14.5 metric tons in 2021, an increase from 2020 pandemic levels.  So when the Chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives says “There’s actually a place for fossil fuels in reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” it makes us scratch our heads. Because adding is n