Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: New magnetic fusion technology could be ready in 5 years [View all]johnd83
(593 posts)and been on the receiving end of many peer reviews for papers I have published. The peer review process is far from perfect. I have seen plenty of articles slip through that are completely wrong. A "book" is not peer reviewed.
Anyway, I have skimmed the book book. The numbers are... optimistic. He claims we need 200 m^2 of solar farm per person. That means 63,000 km^2 in solar farms for the US assuming 315 mil. people. That is the equivalent of covering EVERY SQUARE MILLIMETER of the state of West Virginia. Sure it would be spread out, but that is a A LOT of area. It would also cost at least a trillion dollars. "Defense" is also laughably low. In the US a significant portion of our energy use is for defense. In fact on page 109 he goes through all the problems. This is just after 10 minutes of skimming, I am sure if I really spent the time I could find many more issues.
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/sewtha.pdf
Edit: just as an example I once reviewed a paper (Chinese team) that kept computing magnetic force the same way as you would compute electrostatic force, ie so horrendously wrong it was scary. I am fairly sure they managed to publish that paper in a "peer reviewed" journal. Some things like climate change are settled, but clean energy is not.