Prosperity and Economic Growth without Regrets E-Book

Jean Pütz

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 102

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Jean Pütz has a special concern with this book. He wants to make a significant contribution to saving the climate without jeopardizing the industry and thus the prosperity of the population. To this end, he relies on concepts outside the mainstream. The science journalist speaks plainly - as his audience of millions is used to from his television programs and social media. He doesn't care about "political correctness". He classifies many measures propagated by politicians as populist and strictly rejects them because they do not lead to the desired goal. But he does not stop at criticism. Page by page, he outlines concrete ways to get out of the energy mess and back on track. He has the whole world in mind and provides global answers to the climate and energy issues of our time because only a global approach can lead to the goal. He pulls a regenerative energy source "like a rabbit out of a hat" that can find worldwide acceptance and replace coal, oil and natural gas. His credo is: It's about defossilization, less about decarbonization. As a co-author, he has enlisted the well-known economic journalist Andreas Dripke - a successful symbiosis following the motto "1+1 is more than 2."

Leseprobe

Content

Personal prologue by Jean Pütz

Preliminary remark by Andreas Dripke

Hydrogen as a savior?

Hydrogen is the most common substance in the universe

Energy exchange between water and oxygen

The mistakes of politics on hydrogen

A Eureka moment in politics

Green methanol for the world

Ammonia is not a good alternative

Methanol as a regenerative world energy source

Advantages of green methanol

Hydrogen as a prerequisite for green methanol

New type of solar cell in the pipeline

Profitability of photovoltaics yesterday and today

Energy from the desert

Green methanol from sunny countries

The conclusion favors green methanol

Can green energy from the desert save the climate?

The deserts are predestined

A clever invention gets water out of the air

Green methanol as a peacemaker

Wars and terrorism in the struggle for deposits

Russia and China in Africa

Saving energy: the need of the hour?

Images of Science

Convenient scapegoat: the traffic sector

An electric car for everyone?

Elon Musk has seduced the world into e-mobility

Battery-powered e-cars are expensive

Devastating social and ecological balance

Over one billion vehicles in use on the planet

E-Fuels also indispensable for climate change

This is how the principle of the hyperhybrid e-car works

Not to be confused with parallel plug-in hybrid

The German automotive industry is on the brink

Generation anti-car

Demands on politics

Much approval for “climate rescue without compromise”

Prosperity and education against overpopulation

More books from Diplomatic Council Publishing

About the Diplomatic Council

Focus on economic and scientific diplomacy

Highest status at the United Nations

Keywords

References

Personal prologue by Jean Pütz

The great misconception that both politics and many climate activists fall victim to, and on which, above all else, the Paris Agreement is based, is that they want to reduce the emission of CO2 everywhere by all means, no matter the cost. This misconception is fatal, because it actually refers only to CO2, which is produced from fossil fuels. At the time of the Paris Climate Agreement, it was inconceivable that the entire world could transition to renewable energies.

But this book explains how it is possible to ensure the entire energy supply of our globe with regenerative energies. Then, it is no longer a question of avoiding every single CO2 molecule. On the contrary, modern technology is capable of even simultaneously recovering CO2 from the atmosphere with the production of regenerative energy. The ideology of decarbonization is transformed into the imperative of defossilization.

The Paris Agreement caused a furor at the time, partly because it formulated binding limits for every country in the world. This was necessary in view of the fact that things would have continued as they had in the past: that is, "come hell or high water" to get every last ton of fossil fuels out of the ground and pollute the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Hardly anyone had ever thought that it would be possible to use the sun as the energy source for our planet one day. These possibilities seemed unlikely.

At that time, I have thought whether this was not too pessimistic. This prompted me to develop a concept almost ten years ago on how it would be possible to rely on an energy source that doesn’t require big investments in infrastructure, but can be obtained in immense abundance regeneratively.

In the foreground of this optimism was the fact that photovoltaics could in the meantime be applied technically on a large scale, and also the generation of electric current with wind energy was technically mature. Everyone was betting on hydrogen, but it was clear to me right from the beginning that this "scratchy" gas, although indispensable, could only be distributed and used worldwide at a cost that was not affordable. Hydrogen is very difficult to store, just like electricity.

Up to now, fossil energy, if not in the form of compact hard coal or lignite, has been obtained mainly from crude oil and natural gas. All the prerequisites for this were in place in terms of infrastructure. I thought that if we had an equally convenient, but much more environmentally friendly energy source available, obtained from solar energy using regenerative methods, fighting climate change would also be possible for those countries that could not afford the whole thing for cost reasons.

In the course of this book, you will find out that my favorite is the chemically largely hazard-free methyl alcohol, abbreviated methanol. Basically, this is the ideal storage for the hydrogen gas, and it can replace all the fossil fuels that have been in use up to now.

I didn't leave it at wishful thinking, but pulled out all the stops to pursue this possibility through personal research beyond the chosen path, the so-called mainstream. There was still the problem that methanol, when burned or otherwise applied, produces CO2 in the exhaust gas. It may be that this is why the world's research community has abandoned this option due to the imperative of decarbonization.

Conversely, to produce methanol from hydrogen, you need exactly this CO2. Initially, I believed that this CO2 could be obtained by recycling, by filtering it out of the exhaust gases. The technology for this is also available. In India and America, CO2-neutral, coal-fired power plants have even been built.

Now I have the benefit of a great invention that helps to extract this necessary CO2 from the atmospheric air at relatively low cost. Why this is also economical nowadays, is described in this book.

I would also like to write this in the guest book of the committed climate activists: You protest, only make demands on the state, but do not think about how this could be realized. The state is supposed to fix everything.

Before you make impossible demands that are illusory for technical and scientific reasons, I recommend that you consider the side effects and risks of radical decarbonization. This is not only about economic prosperity, but also about the future of our democratic constitution.

I also initiated this book because I fear that the climate crisis is putting a great strain on our democracy. If we lose our prosperity, it will not simply be that we will be worse off, but there will be considerable political upheaval in our country, which will result in violence. The signs of this are already emerging today: The tendencies toward far-right ideology cannot be denied.

To clarify: I am not criticizing the state in general, which I accept without reservation. Rather, it is a matter of combating the populism that is rampant among all parties with demonstrable arguments. In a world shaped by technology and science, this has a lot to do with knowledge of scientific principles. It is not acceptable that the laws of nature are undermined by political laws and that possible solutions come to nothing due to ignorance and political correctness.

In a career spanning almost sixty years, I have made use of the knowledge I acquired as a truthful science journalist, TV editor, author, and presenter. As a young man, I also completed an apprenticeship as a mechatronics technician and skilled worker in a dirty ironworks, at that time without any environmental protection. After that, I studied engineering, graduating as a graduate engineer in electrical engineering, "narrow-minded physicist" (senior lecturer in physics and mathematics).

This wide range enables me to recognize interrelationships, and this at a time when specialism is being pushed to extremes even in science, so that in many cases the view of the whole has been lost.

In particular with regards to the climate crisis, the democratically-oriented voter has little control over politics today because the swarm intelligence of the population is very low when it comes to natural science. Many aesthetes are even proud of not having to deal with the alleged minor subjects of natural sciences and technology.

For many, technology is not even part of the culture, although it ultimately provides for our prosperity. The swarm intelligence is not enough to control "those up there". So it is not a surprise that ordinary citizens believe everything the protagonists of alleged progress say, for example that a car, that does not need an exhaust pipe, is the pinnacle of technology. Out of ignorance, no one asks about side effects and risks.

This applies analogously to the use of energy in general. For example, some green environmentalists would have us believe that the enormously CO2-intensive area of heating could be served with renewable electricity.

In “Eureka fashion”, it was noted that one kilowatt of electricity could produce three kilowatts of heat. Thus, the use of heat pumps was propagated as a "bliss-inducing" solution for households.

That was enough for most to believe that we could usher in climate change by going all electric. To get you, dear reader, thinking right from the start, here's an example:

In the morning, you use an electric kettle to bring a liter of tea or coffee water to boiling point. With this electrical energy, you could transport the cabin of a counterbalanced elevator carrying five people with light luggage (approx. 400 kilograms) up 100 meters in a high-rise building, i.e., more than 30 stories. Such is the cost of heat, which is always neglected. Five minutes with the window open on a freezing day, and the heat generated from cooking quickly dissipates.

"It seems as if politicians believe that half-knowledge is sufficient to develop a concept for entire economies, ostensibly serving the purpose of climate rescue I suggest we call this "Eureka politics", i.e. "hurray, I've got it!"

"Eureka!" exclaimed the Greek philosopher Archimedes when he discovered a principle of buoyancy while bathing. He is said to have been so excited by his discovery that he jumped naked out of the bathtub and ran through the streets while shouting "Eureka!" ("I have found it!").

The exclamation "Eureka" has become a popular expression for a sudden realization or discovery.

But this is not enough, as will become clear in many places in the course of this book. Unfortunately, this "Eureka" realization has also limited thinking – as has the maneuvering on the CO2 front.

The book focuses on the solution to the climate and energy crisis – but not in the populist way in which it has been thought up to now. Instead, it presents an amazingly simple solution that combines forces and will therefore lead to success. Especially because we are thinking globally. Our plan to save the climate therefore encompasses all countries of this world.

Please consider this book from these aspects. Hopefully it will also provide an impetus for our policies.

Although I have personally emailed hundreds of politicians in positions of responsibility, none of them have yet addressed these ideas. What's more, I have already published these ideas in detail several times in the social media, for example on Facebook with well over 100,000 followers. The reach partly corresponds to the high ratings of my earlier TV shows.

As far as I met a politician directly, he usually said he had no idea about it, but in his party there were experts who knew about it. But that was the end of it, nobody has answered so far - except many scientists, most of whom agreed with me.

In contrast to large parts of politics, this book is not based on wishful thinking, but on natural science and technical facts. Everything has been researched and is practically possible.

Fortunately, word of the climate problem has spread among the population. That's why, for populist reasons, the parties believe they must include climate protection in their programs "come hell or high water," which is not a bad thing. But if the wrong measures are taken, even the greatest activism will be of no use. Instead, they should try to find a solution that doesn't ruin our economies.

This brings us closer to the reason why we, Andreas Dripke and I, have written this book: to lead politics away from the wrong path of ideologically-driven wishful thinking and onto the path of laws of science and nature.