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Pamphlet for a New Energy Policy


 

"All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
"

                                                                    Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)


1) The necessity of a new energy policy

The modern energy question is a profound one. The survival of mankind is at stake. As we clearly see at the beginning of the 21th century, we cannot continue using fossil fuels. We must transition to sustainable energy sources, partly because 1) the energy resources of oil, gas and other fossil fuels are depleting, but also 2) because the use of non-sustainable energy sources, leading to excessive CO2 emissions, poses an imminent threat for the biological balance and the habitability of this planet.  Additionally, we face geopolitical governance and related military power conflicts in connection with the pursuit of a mew world order in response to the numerous crises of climate change .

With the second factor of the environment, indicating the limits of what Mother Earth can bear from us humans, we seem to be approaching a tipping point. The climate warming around mid-2007 is a well-established fact, but even in the 50 years prior to that, the intensity of sunlight, for example, measured by the so-called pan-evaporation, a sort of meteorological evaporation index, decreased by about 15%, presumably due to soot particles and other chemical compounds in the higher atmospheric layers around the Earth. Causes and consequences are under discussion. An increase in atmospheric particles results in a 'dimming' effect, but due to recent climate measures, this dimming is decreasing, and pan-evaporation is increasing again (see, for example, Wikipedia on global dimming and pan-evaporatie). The CO2 level on Earth shows natural fluctuations; historical data obtained from tree rings and ice cores are subject to multiple interpretations. Feedback mechanisms between the atmosphere, ice masses, oceans, and the biosphere, which can cause rapid escalations or mitigate climate effects, also make a precise assessment of the influence of CO2 levels uncertain. Climate effects are difficult to predict due to tipping points that can lead to unexpected developments, such as a faster rising sea level or, conversely, a not yet alarming but certainly slightly decreasing oxygen content in the atmosphere due to more combustion, fewer forests, and reduced ocean vitality due to CO2-induced acidification. Conversely again, extreme weather, such as sudden cooling, can be temporarily caused by events like volcanic eruptions. Climate effects in terms of drought and precipitation vary regionally, so a changing climate balance does not immediately provide clarity about its causes and consequences, about the seriousness of the situation, or whether it is an acceptable natural variation temporarily responding to the influence of human culture, which is also subject to (self)limitation. There is much confusion, even in science. There is also a psychological effect of no longer being aware of the problem due to habituation and rationalization, much like a frog not jumping out of a pot of gradually boiling water. Nevertheless, scientific progress in the development of climate models, improved risk assessments, and enhancements in technological and ecopolitical adaptation strategies provide us with greater resilience and a better understanding of the climate problem. Despite uncertainties about the causes and consequences of CO2 levels, climate change, and geopolitical issues, as well as uncertainties about what we could do about them so far, an overwhelming majority of experts agree that human activities significantly contribute to higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and thus, also to associated climate change. Heat in the atmosphere is trapped, indeed, like in a greenhouse. Hence, a proactive approach, a strategy preventing worse outcomes, is necessary to counter and reverse climate changes. Limits have been set on our growth and consumptive desires; we need to plant more trees to absorb CO2 and develop more sustainable energy sources to prevent global warming.

It is clear that many factors must be considered if we want to transition to a different way of generating energy while preserving the natural and cultural order on our planet. It can be overwhelming to realize the complexity of the climate problem and the energy issue. There are effects such as desertification, the global food problem, water management, the dying off of marine and terrestrial life, the melting of polar ice caps, and the permafrost in Siberia, releasing vast amounts of methane gas that further contribute to the greenhouse effect.
  Every aspect of the crisis facing our world has its own implications for the environment and culture and requires its own measures. A so-called emission-neutral, sustainable policy might theoretically create a political balance between warming due to the greenhouse effect and cooling as a result of climate measures taken. However, simply pausing and relying solely on pollution prevention and the use of biofuels and other non-emission-free, less sustainable techniques could lead to far-reaching negative consequences. The problem of clean energy technology is not solved with compensation measures alone.
  A further decline in the overall habitability of the planet and in energy and food policies, as well as further disruption of the natural balance of the associated climate and human, animal, and plant well-being, will inevitably lead to significant cultural and political problems when pursuing policies based on political feasibility but acting fundamentally from ecological ignorance. We cannot be content with this. With a one-sided, purely economically understood policy of 'cleaning the atmosphere' and 'creating a new balance', the planet's temperature could rise by several degrees in just a few decades,  melt the pole caps and cause catastrophic consequences for all low-lying coastal areas worldwide.
  We must not delude ourselves into thinking that we can solve this with solar panels and wind turbines. Climate science warns against such policy simplifications. A broad-spectrum approach is needed, including scientifically. We need a constant energy source with a much higher energy density than solar photons and an unstable atmosphere. Thus, in the search for alternative energy sources, there has been a renewed interest in nuclear energy. Nuclear power plants, based on atom splitting, have optimal energy density with their nuclear fuel; however, they are not inherently clean energy sources due to the atomic fissile materials they require. Uranium and similar radioactive metals not only pose an environmental problem with the radioactive waste they leave behind but also, as widely known, come with great danger. If something goes wrong, we face nearly irreparable environmental damage. The disasters in Chernobyl, Ukraine, and Fukushima, Japan, serve as examples of this.


   So also could next to that, in the search for alternative energy resources, a renewed interest for nuclear energy be observed, which essentially constitutes no sustainable source of energy because of the fossil nuclear materials that are needed. And there is also a serious objection, as is generally known, against the nuclear waste and the danger of this method. An alternative technology for nuclear energy production would be the technology of
nuclear fusion. As yet is the most favorable technique for controlling the immense heat needed for the nuclear fusion the floating and spinning of the fusion plasma in a strong magnetic field in a so-called tokamak. This technology though delivers no degree of overunity in 2007: one never achieves more energy out of the process than one has put in. The entire project of nuclear fusion without a fusion-efficient form of fuel just might turn out to be a terribly expensive illusion. Helium-3, a helium atom missing a neutron, would be a candidate to have a more efficient output with less input of energy in the fusion process. The element itself is radioactive neutral so that less problematic radiation is released with the nuclear fusion. It offers a cleaner fusion process, be it that one also with the He-3 cannot reach an entirely radiation-free production of energy. The element which on itself is stable in a crystalline form and with its special properties extensively is researched by the physicist E.R. Dobbs, is rare on earth but abundantly available on the moon as a form of precipitated solar wind. Even though He-3 can be artificially created from Tritium-decay and also is known as a byproduct of nuclear weapons, must it, to supply the entire world efficiently with energy, be mined on the moon. An enthused adherent of the method may, via a handy website selling options on lunar territory, in advance reserve a place there. One supposedly could find there enough energy in the form of Helium-3 for the entire earth for many centuries. But such a policy of winning energy will with the moon bases and space-shuttles required, be such an economically, culturally and scientifically extensive operation that, not even considering that the supply of He-3 at the moon is also finite - it is a very luxurious type of fossil fuel thus -, also this option must be discarded as being too uncertain in an economic sense, too dangerous in a geopolitical sense and as technologically too laborious. Nuclear fusion in other ways, like the so-called aneutronic fusion process which is not in need of any He-3, has itself as yet not unequivocally proven as being efficient, or even as a feasible practice. Nuclear fusion seems to be a beautiful scientific challenge, but whether it is ever going to be a realistic alternative source of energy free from ecological, political and economic objections, is thus most uncertain, despite of the enormous scientific efforts and financial expenses in the previous decennia.

More in line with a mechanically easily manageable and economically efficient approach in this field is the so-called 'cold fusion', also known as low energy nuclear reaction (LENR),  first developed in 1989  by the chemists B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann from the University of Utah in de U.S.A. They demonstrated how, with just two electrodes (an anode of platinum, and a cathode of palladium) in heavy water (deuterium oxide) with low current can, additional heat of heat excess can be generated, only explainable by a nuclear process. Although the process, which produces no harmful radiation, was not immediately well understood or controlled, the fact that this effect could be generated for one up to two days and leven longer using only a small container of (heavy) water, contradicted existing scientific models. Cold fusion was therefore initially met with skepticism.
   However, in 1990, Michael McKubre, the director of the Energy Research Center of Stanford Research International, along with the researchers Richard A. Oriani of the University of Minnesota, Robert A. Huggins of Stanford University and Y. Arata of the University of Osaka in Japan,
joined in supporing their findings. In 50% of the investigations they found the mentioned results of additional heat and other related phenomena. In 1993 a group of U.S. Navy researchers of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in California, led by the chemist Melvin Miles, conducted an investigation into the bubbles developing in the device. that were appearing in the device. They concluded from mass spectrometric measurements that Helium-4 was present.  Despite the fact that the quantities found did not match existing theories, they provided evidence that a form of room-temperature atomic fusion had indeed occurred, explaining the heat production.
   In fusion, two heavy 2H or deuterium atoms merge into Helium-4 with the release of energy. In hot fusion, millions of degrees Celsius are required, using additional, hard-to-obtain tritium, another isotope of hydrogen. But how can such a process occur at room temperature? Even though this is clearly a case of protoscience, a science still in its infancy, it is often labeled as pseudoscience, or a form of self-deception or delusion based on flawed methods, with the standard mutual skepticism regarding each other's research designs. However, it wasn't the methods that were flawed, given all the sincere scientific efforts; it was the prevailing paradigm that was flawed.
   
To understand why cold fusion is often wrongly labeled as pseudoscience, or why such an important research phenomenon is misclassified, we need psychology, philosophy, and other scientific disciplines. With the mysterious research results, one ends up outside the boundaries of the prevailing classical model of physics. Scientists are not quick to abandon the familiar territory of natural science with paradoxical results pointing to unknown processes. Such a convention-bound group of scientists cannot easily master all the additional sciences that play a role in such a significant shift in scientific thinking."
    Despite of the great number of published investigations that found an anomalous heat production, concluded the
United States Department of Energy that in 1989 formed a research panel to investigate the case, that no sufficient proof had been delivered for the reality of this cold fusion process and that for that reason no research funds needed to be provided for further development. Also a second panel in 2004 arrived at a likewise conclusion, be it that the argument against had been watered down. The report of 2004 in fact constituted a turning point because from its conclusions the more reputed scientists and more important commercial magazines (Time, Scientific American) now dared to pay some more attention to the subject. But nevertheless one also in 2007 in the U.S.A. was investing many billions of research grants for new energy technologies rather in the far more doubtful hot fusion process, which thus never delivered more energy - and thus certainly also not more money - than was put in. In the U.S.A. cold fusion remained a taboo, while one in Asia e.g. is more inclined to reward patents in this field. Also with science in formal politics a narrow-minded village mentality can be prominent that, based on ulterior motives and with surpassing reason, rejects everything which the establishment of the confided ego of exercising authority, the usual teachings and the associated wages earned that way, would endanger.
   For if there would be a formal recognition, the world would be turned upside down, because we in that case would have a revolution: all societal and economic relations would change and also would all textbooks have to be rewritten and the educational system be reformed. And who would stand and sign for that? Progress ultimately is an egoless process in which each and everyone plays his part. Now at the beginning of the 21st century there are with that process already commercial signs observable, for also money runs where it cannot go:
Energy Technologies in Israel, D2Fusion in California, JET Thermal Products in Massachuchets, Mitsubishi motors and The Mastrrr Company in Texas are the corporations that 2007 are engaged in harnessing the process of cold fusion for the sake of different purposes like the purification of water, mechanical propulsion, and the supply of energy. What thereto for the acceptance of the greater public still is needed is the entire account of the paradigm associated with the cultural change involved. In this pamphlet  the complete of the paradigmatic question with everything belonging thereto will be discussed at length. In this study, based on the latest experimental and theoretical findings in this field of free energy as also on the rest of the testimonies of witnesses associated with the question of energy, will be attempted to contribute to the further development of this new paradigm for the 21st century, now emerging in postmodern times. We are on the way of a renewed scientific thought model, with which we may speak of a new World Order. It then is about, so it now appears, an order which is not just based on the, with of without military means, preaching of 'democracy' with blotting out state borders in a mondial clime in which a form of free enterprise is allowed to rule that isn't directly of service to the social and biological climate of the planet either. The cards are shuffled differently thus. A better ecological policy is necessary, we after all have to survive ourselves too with each his individual freedom of defending his material interests.
    It is all about a broader and more responsible concept of world order, a concept which also reaches beyond the three pillars of internet communication, hydrogen storage and the two-way distribution of energy which, as being the essence of a third industrial revolution, lately 2007 was suggested by the american economist
Jeremy Rifkin. His still most expensive solution of 850 billion for an intelligent energy network to feed back self produced energy into the grid is a new energy policy all right but is still based on the old paradigm of science. In the new model emerging now under the influence of cold fusion, and the other free energy technologies we will discus later,  everybody at every moment of the day draws as much 'new energy' as he needs with the new technology, and that can privately be done as good as by means of a central power plant, we after all are talking aboutfrom a truly free energy market. Storage is  this new perspective not needed anymore, and that is an extra advantage for everyone on the planet. What Rifkin is defending so nicely up to date is seen in this light again already outdated. The progress at this front is very fast. The hydrogen obsession of storing energy is not applicable any longer with the direct, according the need won energy of e.g. cars that run on cold fusion generators (see also: Basics; peswiki-article, Cold fusion 18 years and heating up; Eugene Mallove; News; ISCMNS (society); Naudin project; FAQ; Conferenties).

Culturally and psychically we have to fear for conflicts if we do not have a clear notion of the inevitable question of another policy of winning energy. Winning energy we are dealing with nature, nature that gave us our form, nature that educated us, that conditioned our genes, that conditioned all of our behavior, and our culture somehow will have to reflect that properly. Pragmatically thinking in favor of a quick result and economic success this is easily forgotten. Nature operates upon our genes and we switch with those genes responding to her with adapting ourselves to her dynamics. Our genes constitute the material with which we people, also in our cultural activities, find ourselves in an evolution which cannot be stopped at will or be obstructed. There is a cultural as also a natural authority ruling our lives. Ultimately it is about the question, as we very well know politically, who the boss would be, who is leading us, what in our decision making would come first. It must be clear in our minds eye whether, and to what degree, we are formed by pragmatical and economical dictates, which are also known as an endless struggle for power over whatever political grip or whatever advantage would have the - temporary - right of way. Or differently we admit, like it was proclaimed with the French Revolution in the beginning, that we have our footing in nature and therein find our primary order and harmony [see especially the works of the philosopher J.J. Rousseau, (1712-1778)]. When we psychically want to get rid of the cultural uncertainty and personal misery which is the consequence of a conflict between the material interests of our culture and those of nature, deeds must be done, deeds that have consequences for the policies of winning energy and caring for the environment. Caught between the two fires of the material, idle, short-sighted profit-mind and the mind in favor of the spirit of the preservation of nature which demands more conscience and effort, we may speak of a conflict situation in which we psychically are burdened with a tormenting uncertainty about the following question: wherein exactly can we find our true certainty and direction, our control and our confidence? In that area of tension we keep on searching for harmony and balance without, in our from attachments born indecision, us ever finding a collective solution or enduring form of world peace and collective righteousness of living.

A definitive choice has to be made, the indecision has to be given up before we are forced to decisions by the occurrence of cultural or natural disasters. With putting an end to this nature-culture conflict, the way it for instance lately is happening with the more environmental friendly and sustainable Cradle to Craddle philosophy of William McDonough and Michael Braungart in the field of corporate interests,  the democracy then may be more a reflection of the order we find in nature in stead of being a reflection of an everlasting, power-uncertain, political struggle which is in fact a destructive neurosis of culture. The struggle based on the inability to act directly from nature and to agree about it amongst ourselves, must end. That era we have to close. Also in the sense of our scientific thinking. The question first of all is thus: in what ways can we relate to nature when it is about sustainable energy policies? Next the question rises what the scientific consequences would be and how we exactly as normal people in our educational systems, and in what we personally teach our children, have to consider with the methods and technologies found. How would such a world order look like which is based upon the natural order of the wheelwork of nature, upon the wheelwork of the clock formed by the sun, the moon and the stars and not so much any longer is based on a division in territories and other concepts of false oneness, from the interest of which we have to fight each other's ego's? Is such a thing possible? (see also the article Sun, Moon and the new World Order)

 

   




 




 

 
 

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