How Will We Power the Future?
Everyone knows our civilization is doomed and our kids will be digging through the rubble, for cans of dogfood. Apparently Nobel Laureate Robert B. Laughlin missed the memo. He wrote the book Powering the Future: How We Will Eventually Solve the Energy Crisis and Fuel the Civilization of Tomorrow.
Later in this program, we'll talk with Dr. Rose Cory, lead author of a newly published paper. She found another surprise agent whipping up the production of greenhouse gases in the far North. It's yet another positivie feedback loop in the rapidly changing Arctic. About 24% of exposed land in the Northern Hemisphere is frozen under the surface. That empire of permafrost is disappearing quickly. Scientists estimate ten to twenty percent will melt in this century alone. The latest research says just 1.5 degrees Centigrade over pre-industrial levels will tip the permafrost into a vast melting process, unleashing more carbon dioxide than we have in the atmosphere now.
