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Re: Arthur C. Clarke on Cold Fusion



In his 6/27/98 Phys-L posting =93Arthur C. Clarke on Cold Fusion,=94 Will=
iam
Beaty directs attention to
Sir Arthur Clarke=92s =93Science=94 essay =93Presidents, Experts, and Ast=
eroids=94
at=20
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5369/1532>.
Clarke writes:

=93Even more controversial than the threat of asteroid impacts is what I
would call perhaps one of the greatest scandals in the history of
science, the cold fusion caper..... Now I have little doubt that
anomalous energy is being produced by several devices, some of which are
on the market with a money back guarantee, while others are covered by
patents. The literature on the subject is now enormous, and my
confidence that "new energy" is real slowly climbed to the 90th
percentile and has now reached the 99% level. A Fellow of the Royal
Society, also originally a skeptic, writes: "There is now strong
evidence for nuclear reactions in condensed matter at low temperature."
......My guess is that large-scale industrial application will begin
around the turn of the century--at which point one can imagine the end
of the fossil-fuel-nuclear age, MAKING CONCERNS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING
IRRELEVANT, AS OIL-AND-COAL-BURNING SYSTEMS ARE PHASED OUT.... Finally,
another of my dubious predictions: Pons and Fleischmann will be the only
scientists ever to win both the Nobel and the Ig Noble Prizes.=94 (Our
CAPS.)

The lead quote in Clarke=92s essay is =93For every expert, there is an eq=
ual
and opposite expert.=94 (Attributed by Clarke to =93Late 20-th Century
folklore=94.)

One counter expert for Clarke=92s view that cold fusion would make global
warming irrelevant is A.A. Bartlett, =93Fusion and the Future,=94 Physics
and Society 18 (3) 1989, who writes:

=93Physicist A said...(with regard to cold fusion)... =91If fusion become=
s
self-sustaining, we=92ve got an energy source that is almost unlimited.=20
It would be incredibly beneficial to mankind if it is true.=92 Physicist
B...(R.R. Hake)... said =91If the Pons-Fleishmann breakthrough is for rea=
l
then it will be one of the greatest disasters ever to befall mankind....

If an enormous source of low-cost energy is discovered, it is easy to
predict what the immediate consequence would be. Our political and
economic leaders would collectively breathe a great sigh of relief and
would then discard all notions of energy limits. They would rejoice
over the advent of a period of uninhibited growth in the global rates of
energy consumption.

In order to estimate the consequences of likely rates of growth of
global energy consumption, we must remember that essentially all of the
energy released by human activity winds up ultimately as heat in the
environment. First we need some data. The solar power incident on the
Earth can be calculated by multiplying the solar constant [1.35 x 10exp3
W/m(squared)] by the projected area of the Earth PiR(squared). this
gives 1.7 x 10exp17 watts, of which 34% is reflected back into space
(1), leaving 1.1 x 10exp17 watts of solar power entering the Earth=92s
atmosphere. Romer (1) shows that the rate of energy use by humans is 8 x
10exp12 watts. A simple quotient shows that human activities put into
the Earth=92s atmosphere abut 10exp-4 of the power the sun puts into the
Earth=92s atmosphere. The simple arithmetic of growth show that one woul=
d
gain a factor of 10exp4 in 14 doubling times. At a growth rate of 3%
per year, the doubling time is 23 years and 14 doubling times would take
only about 300 years (2). The arithmetic would suggest that at this
modest growth rate, in 300 years human activities would put about as
much thermal power into the Earth=92s atmosphere as the sun puts in! The
absurdity of this situation is obvious. Independent of the =91greenhouse
effect,=92 global warming from this direct heating would likely render th=
e
Earth uninhabitable long before the passage of 14 doubling times.

One must now ask, if we had unlimited energy resources are there any
indications that humans could act in unison to limit the energy
consumption growth rate in order to protect the planet? The signals are
mixed......

I believe I agree with Professor B in thinking that if an abundant
source of low-cost energy is found it may be the worst thing that has
ever happened to the human race.

Whether or not the present efforts in =91cold fusion=92 are successful, w=
e
should alert our students to these simple calculations so that they can
play a role in the preservation of our global environment.=94

REFERENCES

1. R.H. Romer, =93Energy, Facts and Figures,=94 Spring Street Press,
Amherst, Mass. 1984, pp. 29.

2. A.A. Bartlett, Am. J. Phys. 46, 876, 1978.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<hake@ix.netcom.com>
<http://carini.physics.indiana.edu/SDI/>