Where will we get enough sustainable energy, and what sources should be prioritized to help focus and co-ordinate research in the next decade?

Carbon has been our primary energy source so far, and is not sustainable. There are many alternatives, but research is fragmented, and each source appears to try and compete and downplay the other, rather than augment one another. This is probably due to limited funding, and an absence of priorities.

How to generate energy from the temperature gap of sea bottom and sea surface?

The whole edifice of moden civilization is based on energy for which there is no substitute. Energy demand increasing not only because of population growth but also the need to attain higher standard of living. All existing energy sources are not sufficient in future. Even nuclear energy has its own limitations and expensive. In this situation is there any way to produce energy from sea bottom? Temperature difference or gap between sea surface and sea bottom can be harnessed to creat a unlimited supply of energy. As 71% area of earth covered with sea and ocean and only 21% of land. Then a very large amount of energy may be produced from sea bottom in future.

How can we make use of global warming to generate energy in the future?

As reported some where by the year 2030 if carbon dioxide reaches twice is pre-industrial level, global temperature would be 1.5 degree to 5 degrees C higher than that of today. This means more solar heat available on the earth. Is it possible to use this potential radiated heat from CO2,O3,CH4 and CFC,s etc.and increased solar heat to generate solar power stations all over the world in the next couple of decades?

How can we rapidly develop carbon negative energy systems and deploy them globally?

Sub-questions: What options for carbon negativity are there? What are the thermodynamic limitations on the various carbon negative alternatives? How can we break the linkage of large grants going to unproductive and ineffective entities? How can small farmers become the engine for carbon negativity that Sir James Lovelock suggests they must? Are there alternatives to the current IPO model for this kind of development cycle? What are the real time constraints for effective activity in the carbon negative arena? How can we explain these constraints to the general public?

Sir James Lovelock has identified the apparent only real carbon negative energy opportunity – processing organic residues into stable biochar and using that char as a soil enhancement near where the residues occur globally and enabling small farmers to profit from this activity. He has not connected this to distributed energy generation and there are many factors that would benefit from both rapid documentation and codification for global use. The recent changes in Arctic thermal profiles raise serious questions about how long we really have to react. There is no question that lowering the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere can only be accomplished with either massive reduction of emissions for an extended period so that normal carbon negative processes can catch up with the past emissions or we will have to find ways of accelerating the removal of CO2 with thermodynamically beneficial systems. What alternatives do we really have?

At the same time we need to also put in place a series of practices that will be stable over the long haul – ie: they must become sustainable. It appears that Sir James has hit on a realistic possibility to do many of these things at once, and he has seen that the normal corporate practice of enriching a few by doing things that we all should be doing for ourselves is no longer a tenable solution. How do we get to real sustainable practices in time to do things right?

How does nature do it: how does she transform the disordered form of matter by recycling back to an ordered form without violating the second law of thermodynamics? And how does Nature prevent disorder to accumulate on earth when she processes matter and energy from available form to unavailable form? How to develop planetary technology analogous with these natural processes?

The planet earth is materially a huge system processing matter (mainly by recycling) and energy (mainly by dissipating exergy flux from the sun or from the stores in the ground, and active information. Doing it Nature necessarily produces entropy which contrary to the human system is, however not accumulated on earth but discarded to the space by a proper natural process.

First the material entropy (related to matter transformed into an unavailable state) is processed back to an available state by recycling etc. This work is done by microbes, etc with use of solar energy or energy available in the material under processing. But when the disordered form of matter is transformed to an ordered form again – entropy is decreased! But according to the second law it is possible only, if somewhere entropy at the same token increases even more. In fact the decrease of material disorder is compensated by increase of the exergy dissipation (energy entropy) when the work of recycling is done. And in the next stage the exergy dissipation related entropy is bound to warm up a little water vapour and CO2 gases and lift them to stratosphere and then the low quality energy (energy entropy) is “released” to the space.

This kind of planetary technology is totally missing from the human system and we are accumulating disorder in increasing amount on the earth.

What is the exergy balance and its break down into components of the planet earth and how is it fluctuating over time (seasonal and long term)? Has it been changed by human impact?

Exergy is the general thermodynamical quantitative concept of the resources available for any activity and changes in nature or by human origin. It measures useful energy, structured matter, and active information. Exergy is dissipated when used (the amount of exergy is conserved but its quality is lowered when dissipated) and that quality change is related to entropy production. Exergy balance could give us the most complete picture of the planet earth situation from a resource point of view.