| Prescription for the Planet: The Painless Remedy for Our Energy & Environmental Crises | 
 enlarge | Author: Tom Blees
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
Category: Book
Buy New: $25.00
New (3) from $25.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 62993
Media: Paperback
Pages: 422
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 1419655825
Dewey Decimal Number: 531
EAN: 9781419655821
ASIN: 1419655825
Publication Date: September 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An end to greenhouse gas emissions, a global framework to control nuclear proliferation, a preemptive remedy to looming water wars, and unlimited energy worldwide are just a few of the concrete solutions offered up in Tom Blees's brilliant and timely Prescription for the Planet. Everyone is worried about global warming, energy wars, resource depletion, and air pollution. But nobody has yet come up with a real plan to resolve these problems that can actually work-until now. Prescription for the Planet proposes a workable blueprint to virtually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century and solve a host of other seemingly intractable global problems. Solving our planet's most pressing dilemmas requires more than simply setting goals. We need a roadmap to reach them. Technologies that work fine on a small scale cannot necessarily be ramped up to global size. Worldwide environmental and social problems require a bold vision for the future that includes feasible planet-wide solutions with all the details. Prescription for the Planet explains how a trio of little-known yet profoundly revolutionary technologies, coupled with their judicious use in an atmosphere of global cooperation, can be the springboard that carries humanity to an era beyond scarcity. And with competition for previously scarce resources no longer an issue, the main incentives for warfare will be eliminated. Explaining not only the means to solve our most pressing problems but how those solutions can painlessly lead to improving the standard of living of everyone on the planet, Blees's lucid and provocatively written Prescription for the Planet has arrived not a moment too soon. There is something here for everyone, be they a policymaker, environmental activist, or any concerned citizen hoping for a better future.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
A Real Solution December 23, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Blees' voice as an author makes Prescription for the Planet an incredibly enjoyable and easy read. I am particularly impressed by how comprehensively Blees discusses his energy solutions. He addresses the scientific, political, and economic aspects of his ideas, which provides great strength for his proposals. Blees does a thorough job of analyzing the common alternative fuels that are used today and discusses why these methods of energy production do not solve our energy problems. Furthermore, he acts as his biggest critic every step of the way and then proves why those criticisms are unfounded. Some of Blees' ideas involve complex nuclear physics, but he writes in such a way as to provide a basic level of understanding for the average person while still engaging those readers already versed in these higher level ideas.
One of the most striking takeaways from this book is that while the solutions Blees proposes sound too good to be true they are all possible right now. All these ideas can be enacted within the next 40 years based on currently available technology. Anyone concerned about global warming and energy production should read this book. I find myself telling everyone I know about Prescription for the Planet.
Rx: nuclear power + boron fuel + plasma waste gasification December 7, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a book about three world-wide problems and three technologies to solve them. It's a book about technologies written by an Alaskan fisherman for understanding by the general public.
Nuclear power can solve global warming primarily by eliminating CO2 emissions from coal power plants, and secondarily by enabling new vehicle fuels. Nuclear power reactors in the US have not changed design in decades, and the public's perception seems to be acceptance of the mysterious domed plants, but with concern for the spent nuclear fuel waste.
There are newer, better nuclear technologies than these solid fueled, water-cooled reactors, which are generally unknown to the public. Tom Blees describes one: The Integral Fast Reactor consumes spent fuel reactor waste, generates power from the 95% of potential energy left in the waste, and does not involve any transport of weapons-proliferation-sensitive plutonium outside the plant. The IFR project, developed and tested for a decade at Argonne National Laboratories, was two years from fruition when it was killed in 1984 by President Bill Clinton, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, and Senator John Kerry.
The IFR would have solved the coal-burning energy crisis, consumed existing nuclear power plant waste, and not isolated inventories of plutonium (as does the French power program.) I nearly cried when I first heard of the death of the IFR, and Blees tells the story well. Since Blees wrote this book he has learned about the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, which has these same advantages at lower cost.
Boron fuels were completely new to me. Cars, trucks, and airplanes require portable energy supplies, such as gasoline, diesel oil, or natural gas (the Pickens Plan). Electric batteries can provide this stored energy for cars. Liquid or compressed hydrogen is another (impractical) energy carrier. Blees points out that boron metal can be a portable fuel. Boron metal is combined with oxygen in a special engine to generate power. The resulting boron-oxide is later brought to a refueling station to be exchanged for a new supply of boron metal fuel. The refueling station uses electricity to convert the boron oxide back to boron metal fuel.
Boron fuel eliminates carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, and it eliminates dependence on foreign oil. (I think there is much more boron fuel R&D work to be done.)
Plasma arc gasification of waste is another technology new to me. Four states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Plasma is so hot (4,000 - 17,000 C) that electrons are torn free, molecular bonds are broken, and elemental nucleii are freed. Toxic chemicals are destroyed. The cooled plasma becomes a glass-like slag. It takes a lot of electric power to operate a plasma arc torch, but in the case of municipal solid waste, the process can generate 28x more natural gas energy than electric energy consumed.
There are solutions for our environmental and energy problems! Blees' Prescription for the Planet is nuclear power + boron fuel + plasma waste gasification.
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Energy Manager Review November 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Tom Blees's book was a surprising read for me. I am an Energy Management professional and have been in the business before "Green was Cool". As such, I did not expect to read anything that would change my overall views of how to deal with the Energy Crisis. I was wrong.
Prescription for the Planet identifies numerous issues in the energy world and makes very good recommendations on how to fix them. The big question is going to be, "Will our elected officials have the fortitude to pursue this excellent road map, or not?"
Thanks for reading.
[...]
tom speaks for logic November 4, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book of Tom Blees is bound to anger people on both sides of the fence. The radical greens will be angry at his support for nuclear power, and the radical libertarians will be angry at his support for public management of electric power production.
What Tom speaks for is people in the middle, like you and me - people who are deeply worried about the environmental and energy crises that we find ourselves in. In the course of his book, Tom manages to convince us that the solution is near at hand. What we need is coordinated political will.
None of the technologies that Tom describes are rocket science.. they are the logical conclusion of several decades of research efforts. We have no excuse to look at them with awe and disbelief.
1) Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) has been the largest research project undertaking by the US government. It has been a spectacular success. It is only logical that we should consider its merits in resolving our energy crisis. When we pay attention, we will realize that we have a means of electricity production that is cheaper than coal, that does not produce any waste, and that never runs out of fuel. In fact, newclear power (as coined by Tom) wins the race as the source of electricity with the least environmental impact, not just in dollar costs.
2) Boron fuel cells are an excellent choice for running the transport sector. For one thing, Boron makes an ideal energy carrier because its energy density per volume and the energy density per weight is amongst the highest in the chemicals that we know. Purely for this reason, it has been used in rocket ignition since the Korean wars. Serendipitously, Boron is also very inert and extremely easy to handle, unlike Hydrogen.
3) Plasma converters have been steadily making progress for several years. They have already reached the break-even point when it is actually profitable to build them. When we have them up and running, we have the best method for recycling our garbage (no more landfills) and the best method to produce biofuels (syngas) which will replace all our petrol needs for plastics, fertilizers and so on.
In a world spread rife with misinformation and madness, Tom speaks for logic. Buy the book and read it, so that you can later tell your grandchildren that you have been at the forefront of the revolution.
Gold in the dross. October 24, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
BOOK REVIEW;
PRESCRIPTION FOR THE PLANET.
By Tom Blees.
This book is a strange and unusual mixture
of 50% that is valuable and important marred by
50% of what can only be described as largely
irrelevant dross. The dross comprises the
introduction of a "boron"' economy as a principal
element - a whole chapter - when it has not even
reached the earliest stage of demonstration; one-sided
scaremongering about climate change when
reasoned debate is still the main need; and,
often, a climate and language hard to distinguish
from Marxist fellow-traveling. In complete
contrast, making the case that the nuclear fast
breeder offers the world virtually unlimited
CO2-free energy for centuries and discussing
the mainly political impediments is very well
done. Buy the book and read it. The author
deserves it.
Ernest Siddall [D.Eng., FCAE, P.Eng.]
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