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Acknowledgements<br> Prologue<br> <br> PART I: QUESTIONS<br> Introduction<br> Ancient Days and Modern Times<br> Ice Ages -<br> Past and Future<br> Global Warming versus Returning Glaciers<br> Earth's Fossil Fuel Supply<br> Nuclear Power<br> <br> PART II: ANSWERS<br> Introduction<br> Solar Energy<br> Wind, Waves, and Tides<br> Going with the Flow: Water, Dams, and Hydropower<br> Geothermal Energy: Energy from the Earth Itself<br> Efficiency, Conservation, and Hybrid Cars<br> Energy Storage: Macro to Micro<br> Green Fuel: Biodiesel, Alcohol, and Biomass<br> <br> PART III: DREAMS<br> Introduction<br> Breeding Nuclear Fuel<br> Nuclear Fusion: Engine of the Sun<br> Power from the Ocean: Thermal and Salinity Gradients<br> Fuel Cells: Hydrogen, Alcohol, and Coal<br> Magnetohydrodynamics and Power Plants<br> Thermionics and the Single Fuel Home<br> Artificial Photosynthesis and Water Splitting<br> Planetary Engineering and Terraforming<br> Space Solar Power: Energy and the Final Frontier<br> <br> PART IV: NIGHTMARES<br> Introduction<br> Alternative Futures<br> ORBITuary? Disasters That Could Occur

"Most readers would probably agree that if only politicians could be made to read this book they then would be convinced that much of the current taxation and subsidy policy should be consigned to the dustbin and replaced by at least one of the other carbon-free technologies so elegantly described here ." (Chromatographia, July 2010)<br /> <br /> <p>"[An] original approach ... .Recommended to graduate students and to science educators at all levels, who have the pressing responsibility to increase awareness of energy and climate problems in younger generations." (<i>Angewandte Chemie International Edition</i>, 2009)</p>

Franklin Hadley Cocks is Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the Pratt School of Engineering of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, USA. Professor Cocks has taught courses on energy and the environment for decades and has published over 150 technical papers and more than 20 US patents. He earned all his degrees from MIT and was a Fulbright Fellow at Imperial College, London, and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard. At Tyco Laboratories he developed the silicon ribbon crystal growth method now used to produce silicon solar cells on an industrial scale. His foamed-metal payload was flown on the Columbia shuttle in 1991. He was a consultant to Los Alamos National Laboratory for many years and more recently for the Department of Energy.

This scientifically sound yet easily readable book provides the science and background necessary to understand today's energy and climate problems, and offers possible answers using both current and future technology. The history of energy and climate issues as well as individual energy technologies provides insight as to what has happened to earth's climate in the past, what may happen in the future, and what can be done about it. Questions, answers, dreams, and nightmares are all considered in separate sections. <p>The photograph below shows the author paying homage at the gravesite of Louis Agassiz, the discoverer of ice ages (see chapter 2).</p>

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