Energy and the Environment in the Next MilleniumTalk at Seminar on Planetary Emergencies Erice, Sicily 2010

Presented on August 21st, 2010 Saturday

General

In a sense talking about the next millenium is an immediate planetary emergency. For if we do not think about it carefully we will lose any ability to control or even influence it. The result might be self destruction by disease or atomic bombs or a lapse into poverty. But the discussion will be very different from the discussions w have had in the last 10 years when we discuss situations which call for, some would say demand, immediate attention. I argue, even insist that one must think positively. We must not be Luddites – the social movement of British textile workers in the nineteenth century who protested often by destroying mechanized looms – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt was leaving them without work and changing their way of life. Luddites were unable to stop the industrial revolution but, in my naive view, may they have delayed the proper reaction of environmental scientists to it. The environmental; movement in the USA and hence the world includes people who resist change and this subgroup are sometimes called neo-Luddites. I sometimes accuse them of exclaiming: “stop the world. I want to get off.”

My family on my father's side were weavers. Their main complaint was different from that of Ned Ludd. They were concerned that no one would buy woolen products. . It was the 1897 McKinley tariff that the USA enacted which cut imports of British wool into the US and caused major unemployment and drive my grandfather into a different job as a publican and then a baker.

I assume that one of the major tasks of human society is to advance civilization especially as written in the world convention of human rights.

Some history

I first emphasize the importance of energy in the last few millenia.

4000 years ago man could only use the energy performed by his own body - about 300 watts. He was also limited in fuels. Many, such a crude oil, he was unable to digest.

3000 years ago man discovered fire: enabling him to do various tasks he was otherwise unable to do. Wood and charcoal were used for steel making

2000 years ago man domesticated animals, particularly the horse. Not only could a horse perform functions which demanded more energy use than man could directly assemble, but he could eat and digest fuels that a man could not.

1000 years or so ago man learned how to use water for water wheels and mill corn - in a water mill. He also found out how to tame the wind in windmills.

Interestingly the Dutch windmills of the 14th century AD were about 20% efficient in tapping the energy of the wind. We are only now getting to 40%The progression of fuel use in England is instructive. In about 1100 AD people were bringing “sea-coales” from Newcastle to London. This increased dramatically as England over the centuries ran out of wood.

Although elementary steam engines had been used 2000 years ago (‘Hero’s” engine) it is usual to mark the major use of coal in the steam engine of Newcomen in 1712. improved and developed by James Watt a few years later. This started the Industrial Revolution and rapid increase of prosperity and population.

The next step was the realization that oil could fire the internal combustion engine, followed by nuclear energy in 1939-1945.

All these steps were made by an unfettered inventor, with some, often limited scientific training, but fundamental science concepts were quickly necessary. Indeed the further down the list of technological steps one goes the more basic science was necessary

King Coal reigns for eight centuries

Contrary to a common present day view, the environment was not neglected although in retrospect firm action was delayed far too long. For example in 1207 King Edward I of England objected to coal because of its air pollution and so wrote to the Sheriff of Southwark (in Latin of course). “... we instruct you to make public proclamation in the aforesaid village of Southwark that all those who wish to operate kilns … should bake them in the customary fashion from brushwood or charcoal and henceforth should make absolutely no use of sea-coales....”. His successor King Edaward II tortured

people who “fouled the air”. King Richard II was more moderate. He sought to contain it through taxation. Henry V took a different tack.. He formed a royal commission. We all know that is the first step to ignoring the issue! For the next 0.5 millenia there was little but talk.

But as England ran out of wood, “Sea-coales”, coal coming in by sea from the mines in Sunderland and Newcastle, took over. King James I (of England VI of Scotland) wrote a tract objecting to the developing habit of “tobacco drinking”. The diarist John Evelyn in 1661 wrote about “this horrible smoake”. 260 years ago William Blake in his famous poem “Jerusalem” wrote about the “dark satanic mills” with their air pollution.. In the 1850s the churches got into the rhetoric with the prayer: “From Hell, Hull and Halifax, good Lord deliver us.”

But action was not rapid enough. Not for 100 years after the major expansion of the industrial revolution, did England build chimney stacks in the policy stated in 1920 by Hetherington: “the solution to pollution is dilution”. This was a scientific slogan which was valid for the time but it sent pollution to Scandinavia. The first measurements were, perhaps, by a young physician, Dr Richard, later Sir Richard, Doll who measured benzo(a)pyrene outside St Bartholemew's Hospital in London. But it took the air pollution “incident” of December 1952 to inspire rapid action. Within 6 months the British parliament banned the burning of soft coal in major cities. This was accepted because we now had cheap middle eastern oil as a replacement. This was certainly a correct decision but most details of the science were wrong. The science was slow to be done but it is ongoing. By 1973 it was clear that particulates were responsible not SO2. We thought there was a threshold but we cannot find one. Not till this meeting (0.05 millenia later) do we hear that it is elemental carbon that matters.

But we are now more ambitious. We are trying to control the environment and climate. We do not want to wait for it to control us. This has been a major discussion item in Erice for the last 10 years. Should we to influence the climate and even control for change due to natural events? I think that we can and should, and the issue is how and how much. This will need the best possible scientific imagination, thought and technological practice. I reject arguments such as by Nigel Lawson the the UK as neo-Luddism.

The Kardashev Scale

I argue that mankind needs energy and we need more of it to eradicate poverty. This was a national policy until 1970. During the Presidencies of President Eisenhower, President Kennedy and President Johnson, the theme was to provide plentiful cheap energy... Admiral Strauss, Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, expressed this in a very over optimistic manner when referring to nuclear fusion. “Electricity will be too cheap to meter” Many others have argued the importance of having affordable energy including Benjamin Franklin over 200 years ago (on the energypmp website). In the USA and the developed world we can afford other incentives. But many people would oppose putting coping with global warming ahead of raising the living standards of the poor in China and India. But we should figure out how to do both.

An important correlation exists between the availability of energy and the world population. The rapid increase in population from 1750 to the present accompanied a rapid increase in fuel availability, and the energy intensity (energy per GNP) increased rapidly. Of course Malthus argued that only wars and pestilence would limit population. But as many parts of the world have developed a net reproduction rate below 2, this can now be questioned and possibly modified. `The early 1960s were a time of great optimism. Nino Zichichi and Dick Garwin measured g-2 for the muon. Contrary to a common belief that the communist government in the USSR was a complete disaster, they recovered from the terrible suffering of World War II with enthusiasm and optimism. When I first visited in 1959, 0.014 millenia after WWII I saw the expansion of Moscow. As I was told at the time, “behind every window is a happy man or woman”. These were the first apartments built since 1914, nearly 0.05 millenia before.. Meaningful scientific contacts were established between the two large industrial powers, the USA and USSR resulting in real collaborations and real friendships. Of course we would now have to consider China as a major power. The future seemed limitless.

In this optimistic context a young Russian astrophysicist proposed that we look at energy use in a very positive light. He considered three levels of civilization. These three levels of the Kardashev Scale can be quantified in units of power (watts) and plotted on an increasing logarithmic scale. I discuss here an modified updated, definition

* Type I — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available on a single planet — has approximately 1016 or 1017 W available. Earth specifically has an available power of 1.74 × 1017 W (174 petawatts). * Type II — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single star, approximately 4 × 1026 W. Our sun outputs approximately 3.86 × 1026 W. * Type III — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy, approximately 4 × 1037 W. This figure is extremely variable, since galaxies vary widely in size; and the stated figure is the approximate power output of the Milky Way.

Two western scientists supported and developed the idea. Carl Sagan and Freeman Dyson. A formula was proposed to calculate intermediate numbers: For perspective it is useful to translate the units of power and energy into “practical” terms. The energy from exploding TNT, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, released an estimated 57 megaton yield; even a Type I civilization makes use of roughly 25 megatons of TNT equivalent a second. A Type II civilization would control 4 × 109 times more energy

(4 billion hydrogen bombs per second), and a type III 1011 times more yet. That is a lot of energy and the questions arise: (1) Can we in the next millenium learn how to control that much energy and fuel? and (2) Do we want to do so?

I assume the answer to (2) is maybe but only if we can control the environmental consequences.

Current status of human civilization

Human civilization is currently somewhere below Type I, as it is able to harness only a portion of the energy that is available on Earth. The current state of human civilization has thus been named Type 0. Kardashev's followers assigned an intermediate number by interpolating and extrapolating the values given above using the formula: K = frac{\log_{10}{W}-6}

A recent table shows how the Kardashev number has changed over the last century. The entry for AD 1000 is my own and less well documented.

KARDSHEV SCALE

Year Energy production exajoules/year terawatts Quads/year Mtoes/year rating

1000 0.491900 21 0.67 20 500 0.581970 190 6.0 180 4,500 0.671973 260 8.2 240 6,200 0.691985 290 9.2 270 6,900 0.691989 320 10 300 7,600 0.701993 340 11 320 8,100 0.701995 360 12 340 8,700 0.702000 420 13 400 10,000 0.712001 420 13 400 10,000 0.712002 430 14 410 10,400 0.712004 440 14 420 10,600 0.712010 510 16 480 12,100 0.72

The Kardashev rating of 0.72 today means that we are using approximately 0.16% of the total available planetary energy budget. A very poor energy efficiency!

Kardashev scale projections for human civilization ranging from years 1900 to 2030, based on data from the International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook

Methods by which a civilization could feasibly advance to Type I :

I now assume that we will try to reach a type I civilization by AD 3000. I will make some comments on how

(1) . Using more fossil fuels . All too often in the last couple of centuries someone has said we are running out of coal, of gas, of oil, or one or another fossil fuel. They were pessimistic as we found more deposits and learned how to use less concentrated deposits. But a simple calculation suggests that indeed we will do so within the next millenium.. A slowing down in their use for environmental reasons will stretch this time. Such slowing down therefore seems a good idea whether or not there is a problem with carbon-caused global warming..

(2) Using more nuclear fission . If we find a way of economically extracting uranium from seawater, and of course extracting uranium from the particulate residues of coal burning, nuclear power at the present rate can be used in present style reactors for the next millenium. But this could be extended another factor of 100 by using breeder reactors. This might seem enough. But it still would not get us to the type 1 civilization.

(3) Large scale application of fusion power . In this we have to be far more optimistic than our colleagues Jeff Ongena and Miyahara. Type I implies the conversion of about 5 kg of matter to energy per second. This can be achieved by fusing approximately 1,000 kg of hydrogen into helium each second, a rate roughly equivalent to 3 × 1010 kg/year. A cubic km of water contains about 1011 kg of hydrogen, and the Earth's oceans contain about 1.3 × 109 cubic km of water, meaning that this rate of consumption can be sustained over geological time scales.

(4) Solar energy — converting sunlight into electricity by either solar cells or indirectly through wind and hydroelectric power is very inefficient. Moreover to achieve Kardyshev type I by solar power along would demand (almost by definition) 100% efficiency over the whole of the earth’s surface. To completely coat the surface of the earth with the required mam-made structures, which is presently not feasible. If we set 10% as the efficiency of conversion and cover 10% of the earth with such structures we would, however advance beyond 0.8. However, if a civilization constructed very large space- based power satellites, reradiating the energy at higher power density back to earth by focused microwaves, this could be increased. This was seriously suggested by NASA in 1985..

(5) Antimatter. Any civilization with the technological ability to collect antimatter[ in large quantities cheaply, would have a mechanism to produce power on a scale several factors above our current level of technology. In antimatter-matter collisions, the entire rest mass of the particles, and not merely the mass defect is converted to kinetic energy. The energy per unit mass is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy (compared to TNT), about 4 orders of magnitude greater than the energy that humans liberated today using nuclear fission, and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible from fusion.

(6) Dyson spheres and storms . These are hypothetical megastructures originally described by Freeman Dyson to completely enclose a star and capture most or all of its energy output.

Advancing beyond type I civilization

Type II civilizations might use the same techniques employed by a Type I civilization, but applied to all of the planets in our solar system. They may also be able to tap into the energy released from the supermassive black holes which are believed to exist at the center of most galaxies, But I suggest that we defer detailed consideration of going to a type II society for another millenium (AD3,000-AD4,000). .

Social and environmental upheaval

Few historians have expressed the large-scale transitions, such as the Industrial Revolution in terms of the Kardashev scale. . But because of the importance of energy and fuel use in society rapid advancing on the Kardashev scale could potentially describe periods of social upheaval, since they entail surpassing the hard limits of the resources available in a civilization's existing territory. Common speculation suggests that as we advance from K-0.72 to a type I civilization there is a strong risk of self-destruction. In the most common scenario of self destruction nuclear fission gets out of control as the use thereof is expanded I remember clearly discussing this with Andrei Dmitreyvich Sakharov in 1979 at our first meeting. I asked: “do you still support nuclear energy after the Three Mile Island accident?”. The reply was unequivocal and repeated publicly several times since then. “ we must not stop progress”. Andrei was optimistic. He thought that mankind was bright enough to control its' progress. .In a real sense his work on human rights was a necessary part of mankind's struggle for progress.

But there are more sophisticated disaster scenarios. If population expands as energy supply increases, as it rapidly did between 1800 to 2000, there would no longer be room for further expansion on the civilization's home planet. Excessive use of energy without adequate disposal of heat, an ultimate environmental problem, could plausibly make the sea temperatures rise above 35 °C.

Professor Antonino's (Nino's) call for use of science in the next millenium inherently involves some optimism This includes optimistic about mankind's ability to control the environment.

A return to the present century

All the above discussions seem very fanciful. But they illustrate the type of thinking of which the human race is (presently) capable. I admit to not being as optimistic as I should be.. In 1939 when my brother’s college friend Arthur C Clarke talked and wrote about going to the moon, and (possibly) even beyond, I thought he was talking nonsense. But in the very short time interval of 0.03 millenia (1939 to 1969) mankind achieved it. I have written about the difficulty of going beyond – to the nearest galaxy. I note that the Gian Carlo Wick prize this year is going to my friend Tom Kinoshita. He has been working on g – 2 for the electron for 0.05 millenia! I call attention to his patience of which I, alas, am not capable. I first brought public attention of the possible carbon caused climate change to the attention of the American Physical Society 0.04 millenia ago. It is still an unresolved issue.

The velocity of space travel would have to be great – v/c about 0.5 – to go to the next galaxy within a human lifetime, and the huge adverse effects of the radiation as one ploughs through even the very dilute interstellar sea of hydrogen seem into be insuperable. But scientists and technologists will dream

and some dreams will come true. But we must also follow the environmental consequences of our dreams rather faster than we did as carbon fuels were being burned. Are scientists up to the task? I think so. I hope so. It is essential..

As I see it, in all these considerations, expansion of fuel supply and use, control of the environment, limit to “creative enthusiasm” in increasing the population, a clear understanding of the basic sciences of all sorts is essential. Only when the scientific limitations are understood can the social scientists do their work. This, I suggest is a role for discussion at Erice.

Environmental Considerations

I `hope we will not have to await the 0.8 millenia before the first concerns about coal burning were fully addressed by data and scientific study of possible causes. Indeed I think this is an essential role for science and scientists. We must find a way of discussing the issues seriously without the exaggerations, political shenanigans and insults that have characterized the global warming issue since about 1990. We must look at each claim calmly and seriously

NIMBY – Not in my back yardI offered my back yard for nuclear waste (at a nominal but lucrative cost) 20 years ago bu:this led to:NIMNBY - Not in my neighbor’s back yard. I was not the only person rebuffed. In 1990 the town of Martindale, Illinois wanted low level nuclear waste. It would pay their taxes. But the state would not let them have it. Senator Barbara Boxer objects to low level waste in Ward Valley which is nowhere near where she lives or the people she represents. This leads at once to:BANANA - Build absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody

We must also be wary of the undefined “Precautionary Principle”. The only clear definition I have heard is : “If you don't understand what you are doing, don't do it.” But that invites the question “who is to do the understanding?”. Even the European Union has adopted scientific nonsense in one proposed regulation. It has called for abolition of Depleted Uranium (DU) in warfare. Yet depleted uranium has less radioactivity than ordinary uranium and similar chemistry. This is an example of how decisions can be made by people with no understanding of the science and technology. Obviously one must look carefully at every one of these issues that arise.. It must be done scientifically but with understanding of and patience with, those who do not understand the science.

Nuclear power advocates are apt to think the problems only apply to them. But in Massachusetts it is windmills that are now the problem. This was known historically in Europe. Many 0.3 millenia ago. Cervantes wrote about Din Quixote who “tilted at windmills” as shown in the figure. Those are, perhaps suitable words with which to describe many of the present excesses of the environmental movement.

Don Quixote tilts at windmills

Finally I suggest that a Kardyshev scale might be helpful in looking at looking at catastrophes, whether man made or natural. I think also that mankind can and even must in the next millenium exercise more control over the environment that in the previous millenium. It may not matter whether an incipient hazard is man made (anthropogeic) or natural. In that sense I urge that we use our imaginations to envisage future problems and the best possible science to study them. Let us be more careful than the dinosaurs who, according to this cartoon below, argued about what to do and did nothing.

An incomplete set of References

Kardashev, Nikolai (1964).

Sagan, Carl (October 2000) [1973]. Jerome Agel. ed. Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective. Freeman J. Dyson, David Morrison. Cambridge Press.

World Energy Outlook. Paris, France: International Energy Agency

"Key World Energy Statistics" (PDF). International Energy Agency. 2004. http://www.iea.org/dbtw-wpd/textbase/nppdf/free/2004/keyworld2004.pdf. Quads: 1 quadrillion BT Mtoes: Million tonnes (metric tons) of oil equivalents .

Dyson, Freeman J. (1966). "The Search for Extraterrestrial Technology". Perspectives in Modern Physics (New York: John Wiley & Sons).

Kaku, Michio (2005). Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos. New York: Doubleday.

Dyson, Freeman J. Energy in the Universe Article in September 1971 Scientific American magazine (Special September Issue on Energy)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Energy_Agency