Our Climate and the Energy Problem

This essential provides an overview of the changes in our climate, their causes and their consequences. Today, humanity's energy needs are largely met in ways that are harmful to the climate. The alternative to this, solar energy, would satisfy our needs thousands of times over. But this option is far too little used for mainly economic reasons. This essential then discusses the energy converters that can be used to make solar energy available. Some other modern energy sources, such as nuclear power, are either inadequate, still utopian, or otherwise environmentally harmful. An outlook shows that our energy problem could easily be solved with economic reason by global use of solar energy. The climate could thus still be stabilized in time.

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c.. Klaus Stierstadt is professor emeritus of physics at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and author of several physics textbooks. He was a member of the board of the German Physical Society as well as vice president of the University of Munich and is honorary senator of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. His fields of work are radioactivity of the atmosphere, magnetism, phase transitions, neutron scattering and magnetohydrodynamics.