The Science of Sustainable Energy

It has long been recognized that science is the pursuit of knowledge, knowledge is power, and power is political. However, the fantasy of science being apolitical is a hallmark legacy of the enlightenment era, an era that romanticized pursuit of knowledge, disconnected from the baggage of power, politics, and dogmatic assertions. Yet, while the age of information has exponentially increased our access to knowledge, we can see, as clearly as ever, that scientific knowledge is neither apolitical nor dogma-free, and it certainly is not disconnected from power. It is hard to imagine another era when the separation between science and politics has been this blurred as it is today. At the same time, it is true that no other topic than climate change has been so politically charged, with one side dominating the scientific narration and branding anyone opposing the mainstream as a “climate change denier,” and the other standing in staunch defiance that climate change exists. In an age of political and scientific turmoil, how can we navigate out way to coming towards a more objective understanding of the scientific issues surrounding the climate change debate?

This book presents the current debate of climate change as scientifically futile, on both sides of the scientific, and often, political, spectrum. The climate change debate has become like obesity, cancer, diabetes or opioid addiction, which is to say that the debate should not be if these maladies exist, but rather, what causes them. Instead of looking for the cause and making adjustments to remove those causes from our lifestyle, a combination of the capitalist drive towards mass production and a lack of identifying the roots of the problems, new solutions, or substitutes, have been proposed as "quick fixes" to the problems. This book identifies the root causes of climate change and shows that climate change is real and it is also preventable, but that it can be reversed only if we stop introducing pollutants in the ensuing greenhouse gases. The book brings back common sense and grounds scientists to the fundamentals of heat and mass transfer, while at the same time disconnecting politicking and hysteria from true scientific analysis of the phenomenon of global climate.

M. R. Islam, Ph.D. is the President of Emertec Research and Development Ltd. and an adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University, where he was Canada's first Killam Chair in petroleum engineering from 2000 to 2005. Prior to this, Professor Islam was the first NRCan (Natural Resources Canada) professor of engineering at the University of Regina, where he was the program leader of petroleum engineering. He was instrumental in establishing the Petroleum Technology Research Center (PTRC) and the Greenhouse Gas Technology Center (GTC) in Regina. In the 30+ years of his professional career, Professor Islam has held faculty positions with seven different universities and supervised over 150 research students and post-doctoral fellows. He is also the author of dozens of books and hundreds of scholarly papers, in a variety of fields and areas.

M.M. Khan, Ph.D., P.Eng. is a pioneer of zero-waste engineering. He received his PhD from University of Alberta, M.Sc. from Dalhousie University, and B.Sc. from BUET (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology), in chemical engineering. In his 20 years of professional career, he taught in BUET and held several research positions with government and industry funded projects such as the Atlantic Innovation Fund (AIF), NSERC, Canadian Centre for Clean Carbon and Mineral Processing Technologies (CMPT), BP Americas, and Schlumberger on the topics of sustainable development, greenhouse gas mitigation, carbon dioxide capture and sequestration, and coal gasification. He has co-authored dozens of research publications and five books on the topics of energy and the environment. He has lectured around the world in conferences and technical meetings. He is a professional engineer, registered with the Association of Professional Engineers and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGA).