Stopping and Reversing Climate ChangePart II

This article discusses quantitatively how to stop and reverse climate change. To stop climate change, we must transition from burning fossil fuels to using clean energy resources that do not involve the emission of CO2. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of renewable energy sources, such as wind, water, and solar, relative to nuclear fission and the continued burning of fossil fuels, coupled to CO2 capture and sequestration of the flue gas. A plot of the energy per unit mass, ε, against the energy per unit volume, e, shows many orders of magnitude difference between changes in the mechanical state of ordinary matter versus chemical reactions versus nuclear transformations. These differences raise an apparent paradox concerning how the price of electricity can be roughly competitive for the commercial technologies based on the very different fuel types. Explicit and implicit subsidies for politically favored fuels give a partial explanation, but the turbines that turn flowing fluids into flowing electricity account for most of the result.