[GJM] Urgent Message from former astronaut Brian O'Leary, Ph.D.

Mon Nov 20 17:35:22 MST 2006

 Please distribute this far and wide.
 We must act now. 

marguerite hampton
Founder/Director Turtle Island Institute 

Call for a New Energy Revolution

Brian O’Leary, Ph.D., November 2006, 
www.brianoleary.com

Prepared for:
Scientific Discovery, World Innovation Foundation

“The resistance to a new idea increases as the square of its 
importance.”

                           -Bertrand Russell

The world is at an energy crossroads.  The alarming new information coming
out of the climate science community confirms the unprecedented danger faced
by all of humanity and nature by mankind’s routine burning of
hydrocarbons—oil, coal and natural gas.  The resulting emissions of carbon
dioxide and carcinogens into the Earth’s atmosphere spell almost certain
doom not only for the environment, but for human systems of government and
commerce as we know them.  Human survivability itself is in question,
especially against the backdrop of vast deforestation, marine habitat
destruction, accelerating species extinctions, and the threat from weapons
of mass destruction on Earth, and, perhaps soon, in space.

Nature is fighting back with heat waves, super storms, rising oceans,
desertification, species and disease vector migrations, and weakening of the
Gulf Stream, in response to warming caused by injection of record amounts of
carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Despite this, and in the face of dwindling supplies of hydrocarbons, humans
still consume as if there were no tomorrow.  Even modest international
agreements such as the Kyoto Protocols are ignored by the most polluting
nations, especially the United States government, which seems to be more
interested in going to war for oil than transforming its energy
infrastructure to cleaner sources.

This multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel juggernaut is the largest economic
engine ever made in human history.  We see record profits for the petroleum
industry while innovation is stifled and largely ignored by established
scientists, leadership and media.  Yet innovation in our energy systems may
be the single most important factor for our survival.

Significant solutions using conventional technology have proven to be
elusive, prompting some scientists and environmentalists such as James
Lovelock, Stewart Brand, John Holdren, Nathan Lewis, Richard Heinberg and
myself to conclude that even the traditional renewables such as solar, wind,
biofuels and hydrogen are not adequate to replace hydrocarbon combustion.
Solar, wind, waves, tides, ocean-thermal, geothermal, hydropower and
satellite solar power can suffer from intermittency, site unsuitability,
diffuseness, limited availability and materials- and land-intensity.
Biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel compete with agriculture for land and
still inject carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, albeit not as much as
hydrocarbon combustion.  Hydrogen is expensive to produce.  It most often
requires more energy to extract hydrogen than you get out of it, making this
fuel an energy carrier but not an energy source.  Typical methods of
production (reformation of methane and electrolysis of water) still consume
fossil fuels, emit carbon dioxide and can deplete atmospheric oxygen.

These fundamental physical limitations have led James Lovelock, Stewart
Brand and others to reluctantly conclude that we should construct
centralized nuclear power stations throughout the globe to produce
electricity through grids in an electric economy.  But because of limited
supplies of uranium, high costs, hazardous fuel cycles and nuclear
proliferation concerns, many of us in the scientific community (e.g., Union
of Concerned Scientists, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Federation of
Amercian Scientists) believe this is a very poor choice for our future.
First, the questionable safety of nuclear power plants, especially in the
age of terrorism, presents grave dangers to us all.  The Chernobyl accident
of twenty years ago should provide us ample warning.  Moreover, no safe
long-term method has yet been found for disposing of high-level, long-lived
radioactive waste—an inevitable byproduct of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Finally, the proliferation of the technology throughout the world, would
inevitably lead to acquisition of doomsday nuclear weapons by numerous
irresponsible parties.

The prospects for “hot” nuclear fusion are equally dim.  In spite of tens of
billions of dollars over decades being spent on trying to achieve energy
“breakeven” using gigantic Tokomak reactors, the results have thus far been
negative.  Moreover, nuclear fusion plants would constitute oversized,
vulnerable facilities necessitating the continued use of ugly, antiquated
centralized grid systems.

When full life-cycle environmental costs are considered, none of the above
technologies appear to meet the criteria of sustainability--absent a
breakthrough.  By choosing any or some of them, we could only hope for
incremental changes in our energy supply in the face of accelerating global
demand.  More importantly, these alternatives do not address the urgent time
factor requirements for clean energy needed to mitigate global warming.

On the other hand, many new energy technologies have already been proven in
hundreds of demonstrations in laboratories scattered throughout the world.
Any one or some of these approaches, if properly developed, could end our
dangerous dependence on hydrocarbons and uranium.  Clearly the traditional
technologies keep us mired in the nineteenth and  twentieth centuries rather
than launching us forward into the twenty-first century.  Nevertheless, this
conventional thinking continues to dominate the news these days. Despite the
great need, suppression of new energy has been historically documented in
great detail by those who have taken the time to investigate.  Inventors
have suffered funding cuts, threats, sabotage and even assassination ever
since the time of Nicola Tesla more than one century ago.

We define “new energy” to generally mean innovative technologies with the
potential of providing a quantum leap in our ability to tap cheap, clean,
safe and decentralized energy for producing fuels and electricity.  These
may or may not be recognized by mainstream science.  The technologies
include:

ADVANCED HYDROGEN TECHNOLOGIES (1) catalytic water molecule manipulation and
dissociation through cheap electrolysis, and (2) manipulation of hydrogen
plasmas with catalysts to induce fractional quantum electronic states that
yield large energy outputs;

COLD FUSION or non-radioactive low-temperature nuclear reactions by
electrochemical means, induced in water and  heavy water solutions catalyzed
by (1) palladium cathodes, (2) sonocavitation and (3) other processes that
can produce large amounts of thermal, radiation-free nuclear energy;

VACUUM ENERGY or zero-point energy, tapping the enormous quantum potential
of every point in space-time, through the use of (1) super-motors with
super-magnets (cf., the experiments of Michael Faraday in the 1830s), (2)
solid state devices, (3) Tesla coils, and (4) charge clusters; and

THERMAL ENERGY from the environment.

Any one of the above approaches to new energy promises a quantum leap, i.e.,
orders of magnitude increase, in our ability to tap and have abundant clean,
cheap, decentralized energy for all of humanity. In addition, there are many
important transitional technologies which can mitigate emissions in the very
near future, as follows:

RECYLING AND SEQUESTRATION OF CO2 AND OTHER POLLUTANTS AT THE SOURCE through
innovative chemistry; and

REMEDIATION OF RADIOACTIVE NUCLEAR WASTE with innovative technologies, based
on the principles of low temperature non-radioactive nuclear transmutations.

All of the above concepts have already been demonstrated in laboratories
throughout the world (I have seen many such demonstrations) and have been
published in the peer-reviewed literature.  But implementing them has proven
difficult because there is no significant support.  This lack of support for
outside-the-box thinking is familiar to those who know the history of
innovation. That is to say, there is generally a bias against the
credibility of a new technology until it is accepted by the mainstream
culture.  The most strident objectors are often scientists themselves
because some of their treasured “laws” appear to be broken by breakthrough
experiments that often lead to profound technological change.  And, as
Russell stated in the quote at the beginning of this essay, the bigger the
change the bigger still is the resistance, by a large margin.  In spite of
these severe limitations, I propose here that the transformation of our
energy culture to one based on new energy is necessary for our survival, and
that we should embark on a research and development program as soon as
possible.

History is replete with examples of disbelief of new technologies when they
first emerge.  One example is aviation during its early days. The reporter
who covered the Wright brothers’ maiden flight in 1903 was fired from his
position because his editor denied that heavier-than-air flight was possible
  In 1905, Scientific American wrote an editorial saying that aviation was a
“fraud” because it wasn’t reported, even though, by that time, thousands of
eyewitnesses had seen the Wrights fly.  It took a few years longer to
establish the credibility of aviation, thanks to a public demonstration for
U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt.  Before then, we had been embroiled in a
vicious cycle of media and scientific blackouts of reality.

A few months ago, I received a call from the producer of a BBC television
special on energy solutions to environmental problems.  He wanted to
interview me on new energy.  Days later the interview was mysteriously
cancelled when he admitted that their “new energy” segment would be confined
to Tokomak nuclear “hot” fusion technologies rather than any of the concepts
I had explored.  To this day, the mainstream Western media has blacked out
mention of true new energy.

Unfortunately, in these times, the leading innovative nation, the United
States, is living in fear since this century opened, with the inauguration
of George Bush as its unelected president and its violent overreaction to
the attacks of September 11, 2001.  The nation appears to be too distracted
by wars, repression, and the dominance by large corporations who don’t
embrace technological change outside of their own interests. The public
awareness of the gravity of the global environmental crisis and the
innovative spirit of America have gone underground, awaiting the opportunity
to be sanctioned by the larger culture.

There is much discussion now about how the warnings we hear from leading
atmospheric scientists continue to be ignored and scoffed at by those in
power.  In a refreshing counterpoint to politics-as-usual, former U.S. vice
president Al Gore recently said that our children “deserve better than the
spectacle of censorship of the best scientific evidence about the truth of
our situation and harassment of honest scientists who are trying to warn us
about the looming catastrophe.”  Yet there exists a second group of
scientists involved in new energy research that has been suppressed even
more.  These truly unsung heroes of innovation will eventually take their
place in our quest for solutions.

New energy would shift the paradigm overnight. We will need public policies
in place to:

Do the necessary R&D Apollo-style in secured laboratories, gathering teams
of the best and brightest scientists and engineers in the field. But first
we should support a wide variety of inventors and technologies throughout
the world.  Surprisingly, this seed effort would only be on the order of $1
billion per year for the first few years, equivalent to a few days to weeks
of fighting in Iraq or profits for ExxonMobil.  Funds could come from public
and/or private sources (at the moment, the new energy researchers receive no
public support and only scattered private support).  The seed money can come
in the form of small business grants and loans to the 100-200 most promising
researchers until they can attract capital or open source their technologies
  As the technologies mature, we can expect the actual amount of investment
and return to end up being significantly greater, depending on a number of
factors other than the true R&D costs.

      1. The goal is to produce prototypes for the marketplace as soon as
possible.  Whatever
          management model emerges, we  must leave no stone unturned in this
quest because
          of the urgency of the global crisis.  Fortunately, the range of
technologies is already
          broad and far-reaching.  The research effort should be
international in scope and be
          immune to the political vicissitudes and corruptions of leadership
and corporate
          dominance in the United States and elsewhere.  Therefore, the
research may need to
          be done discreetly at first under responsible and publicly
accountable auspices.

      2. Provide public forums to debate and discuss how to implement the
most viable new
          energy options to reverse climate change and pollution; and
provide education
          and demonstrations for the world community.  We need to plan
conversion scenarios
          that can help industries and governments make the necessary
transition to a new
          energy economy, free of corruption and monopoly.   We need to
assess the full life-
          cycle environmental impact of each alternative and its safety.  We
don’t want to repeat
          the mistakes of touting the benefits of nuclear energy without
properly assessing its
          dangers and hidden costs.

While being politically incorrect at the moment, the consideration of new
energy needs to be at the forefront of future energy policy discussions. It
is too late to deny this, and we certainly don’t want the control of these
technologies to fall into the wrong hands by default.  In former U.S.
president Dwight Eisenhower’s words, “Only an alert and knowledgeable
citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security
and liberty may prosper together.” New energy needs to be controlled by the
citizens of the world and so, in my opinion, a strong grassroots movement
will become vitally important.

I cannot stress too strongly that an aggressive program to develop new
energy is what humanity requires to survive this perilous situation. It may
be painful for us to address these issues and may seem a bit far-fetched at
first, but I can assure the interested reader that these technologies are
very real and can be developed as public policy. To that end, some of us are
working now with the progressive elements of the U.S. Congress to draft
legislation for providing public support for new energy R&D.

We shouldn’t rely exclusively on those mainstream scientists, journalists
and pundits who deny the reality of new energy.  Some of these sceptics do
not seem to understand that we are in the research phase of an R&D cycle,
and we cannot expect yet to have the kind of commercial prototype
demonstration they desire in order to be convinced.  They are just as
ignorant as those scientists who denied the practicality of aviation even
after the Wright brothers were flying.  But to expect the Wrights to
immediately deliver a 737 would have been unrealistic—or insane.

But, for the sake of argument, let us grant for a moment the remote
possibility that the sceptics are right and that no new energy source were
to prove to be practical for one reason or another.  Would doing the
research have proven to be a waste of time and money?  Of course not.  The
path of discovery always comes up with unexpected surprises, and I would opt
for such a modest effort, compared to the costs of war and polluting energy,
when our survival is at stake. It is time to put altruism and creativity
ahead of near-term profit.

Meanwhile, because of the urgency of the problem, I would encourage
innovators throughout the world to move ahead to organize themselves to team
up, obtain the necessary resources and perform research and development of
new energy—in spite of cultural pressures to act otherwise.  All of us
should become educated about the possibilities and collectively support
these pioneers of innovation, because we need all the help we can get to
convert civilization from a catastrophic energy age to a new energy age.

                                                         “Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

                         -Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Notes:

For the interested reader, there are many books, articles and websites that
describe new energy systems.  Some of them are listed on HYPERLINK "
http://www.newenergymovement.org" www.newenergymovement.org , HYPERLINK "
http://www.newenergycongress.org" www.newenergycongress.org and  HYPERLINK
http://www.brianoleary.com " www.brianoleary.com . I summarize the larger
context of new energy in my books Miracle in the Void and Re-Inheriting the
Earth , and in a review paper co-authored with Stephen Kaplan published in
the Review of the Scientific and Medical Network, U.K., no. 70, December
1999 issue.

I thank Joel Garbon and Jon Cypher for insightful editing.

About the Author:

Dr. Brian O’Leary received his Ph.D. in astronomy in 1967 at the University
of California at Berkeley, with a specialty in atmospheric physics and
energy science.  He served as a NASA scientist-astronaut, assistant
professor at Cornell, with visiting appointments in planetary science at
Caltech and technology assessment at the U.C. Berkeley law school.  In 1975,
he advised the U.S. Congress Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment and
wrote position papers and speeches for presidential candidate Morris Udall
on nuclear energy challenges and alternative energy sources.  He has also
served on the physics faculties of Princeton University and Hampshire
College.  Dr. O’Leary is author of 100 peer-reviewed papers in the
scientific literature, as many popular articles, and ten books on space,
technology and energy policy.  He has spoken at over 1000 venues worldwide.
He is a AAAS Fellow, WIF Fellow, co-founder of the International Association
of New Science and founder of the New Energy Movement.  He is cofounding the
New Energy Truth Movement, providing credibility, education, and activism of
new energy issues to the general public, including topical articles,
presentations and forums on the internet and in public.

With forty years of post-Ph.D. experience in many different positions in
research, teaching at leading universities, in government and independently,
Dr. O’Leary has acquired a reputation as a leading analyst of research and
development choices, which he expresses as the “thin edge of a wedge” of
technological and social change.  He feels that if new energy research
continues to be unsupported, the other choices such as weapons and polluting
energy will continue to dominate.  Most recently he is founding with his
wife Meredith a learning and research retreat, Montesueños, in the Andes of
Ecuador, a center for peace, sustainability, new science and the arts.
Further information, writings and CV can be found on  HYPERLINK "http://www
brianoleary.com " www.brianoleary.com . He can be reached at  HYPERLINK "
mailto:oleary1998 at yahoo.com" 
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