Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health. David Suzuki
Too often, governments are quick to use excessive force and even pervert the course of justice to keep oil and gas flowing, forests logged, wild rivers dammed and minerals extracted. As the Global Witness study reveals, citizens are often killed, too – especially if they’re poor and indigenous. David Suzuki
In the US where fracking is well established there’s growing alarm amid stories of gas-contaminated drinking water. Tonight: The Truth About Fracking, ITV 2019
Can you go green and still save money? The potential pitfalls. Government green schemes under fire. And building the houses of the future … Does it make financial sense for households to go green? And is the government doing enough to help us get there? Tonight: Energy Bills: Can Green Be Cheaper? ITV 2023
Burning carbon-based substances like oil, gas, and especially coal, produces billions of tons of extra carbon dioxide each year. Methane gas from cows and pigs and other animals on our large farms ends up in the atmosphere as well, trapping more of the sun’s energy as heat. Bill Nye
What people need to hear loud and clear is that we’re running out of energy in America. George W Bush
The American people need to know this situation and be told as well that there are no easy or quick solutions to today’s energy problems. The President has to begin educating the public about this reality and start building a broad base of popular support for the hard policy choices ahead. Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For the 21st Century, report of task force sponsor James A Baker
And what is a man without energy? Nothing – nothing at all. Mark Twain
Energy and persistence conquer all things. Benjamin Franklin, quotation often given as ‘alter all things’
Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. William Blake
The difference between one man and another is not mere ability ... it is energy. Thomas Arnold
These notions of potential and kinetic energy depend on a notion of length scale. For example, one can speak of macroscopic potential and kinetic energy, which do not include thermal potential and kinetic energy. Also what is called chemical potential energy is a macroscopic notion, and closer examination shows that it is really the sum of the potential and kinetic energy on the atomic and subatomic scale. Similar remarks apply to nuclear ‘potential’ energy and most other forms of energy. This dependence on length scale is non-problematic if the various length scales are decoupled, as is often the case ... but confusion can arise when different length scales are coupled, for instance when friction converts macroscopic work into microscopic thermal energy. Richard Feynman
There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing all natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law – it is exact so far as we know. The law is called the conservation of energy. It states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same. Richard Feynman
It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. Richard Feynman
The real key word that triggers my rage is the word energy. When people start talking about positive or negative types, for instance, negative energy – what are you talking about? What do you mean? Let’s think about it, what does energy mean? Well, we know what it means, you know, energy from petrol when it’s burned and moves a car and makes it move, it’s like this. ‘This room has positive energy.’ Now, where the fuck is it going, then? It’s not moving. It’s covering up such woolly thinking, such pathetic nonsense. Stephen Fry
No-one knew what energy really is. Some people thought of it as a fluid that flows from one place to another. But what was becoming increasingly clear is it could be transferred. The steam engine, like the kettle, could be explained scientifically. Michael Mosley, The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion, BBC 2010
Energy: it led to the formulation of a new law of physics, one that is absolutely fundamental. It is called the first law of thermodynamics ... A mathematical description of energy known as Conservation of Energy. It states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So you can never get more out than is contained in the fuel you put in. ibid.
An ancient human ambition: the search for limitless power. We are the most power-hungry generation that has ever lived. Energy is the heart-beat of our civilisation. ibid.
Energy is the ability to do something – to do work. So if you have energy you can do stuff. Jim Al-Khalili
Our modern world has a lust for energy. We are consuming more and more of it each year ... As a physicist I know there’s an alternative: Fusion. An almost limitless supply of clean energy. Almost no pollution. Too good to be true? Well I believe it’s not that far off. Jim Al-Khalili, interview Brave New World With Stephen Hawking
This is the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, home to what I think is one of the most important scientific endeavours in the world. They have a rather nifty piece of equipment at their disposal: the world’s largest laser. ibid.
We are living on borrowed time. We are consuming more energy: our supplies are running out. Our whole way of life is under threat. Well nuclear fusion could change all that. ibid.
Radium: it was a sensational discovery for one primary reason: Though radium looks like an unremarkable grey metal it contradicted all the then known laws of physics. Because radium pumps out invisible yet powerful rays of energy which could fog sealed photographic paper and burn human flesh. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Atom: The Key to the Cosmos, BBC 2008
Radium appeared to contain within it an inexhaustible store of energy. Curie worked out that a gram of radium – a piece much smaller than a penny – contains more energy than a hundred tons of coal. ibid.
When radium was first discovered they found all sorts of weird and wonderful commercial uses for it; here is the radium bath products, there’s the radium Eau de Cologne, atomic perfume and radium face cream. ibid.
How did humans acquire the power to transform the planet like this? Looking at the Earth at night reveals to us just how successful we’ve been in harnessing and manipulating energy, and how important it is to our existence. Energy is vital to us all. We use it to build the structures that surround and protect us. Order and Disorder With Jim Al-Khalili I: Energy, BBC 2012
Energy is essential to life itself. ibid.
What exactly is energy? And what makes it so useful to us? ibid.
Scientists would come up with a strange set of laws that would link together everything from engines to humans to stars. ibid.
Almost no-one had understood the fundamental nature of the steam engine; very few were aware of the cosmic principle that underpinned it. ibid.
Left alone, energy always seems to go from being concentrated to being dispersed. ibid.
The second law of thermo-dynamics and it turned out to be stranger and more beautiful, more universal ... All things that gave off heat were in some way connected together. All things that gave off heat were part of an irreversible process that was happening everywhere. A process of spreading out and dispersing, a process of increasing entropy. It seemed that somehow the universe shared the same fate as a cup of tea. ibid.
Entropy – why was it always increasing? ibid.
Entropy was in fact a measure of the disorder of things. ibid.
The universe itself must one day die. ibid.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. ibid.
We are surrounded by order. Over the last 300 years we’ve developed amazing new ways to harness energy. Order and Disorder With Jim Al-Khalili II: The Story of Information
Another type of invisible order ... Something we call Information. ibid.
By combining different sounding pictures, the ancient Mesopotamians could express any idea imaginable. ibid.
A new information carrying medium – electricity. ibid.
Just like Jacquard’s punch cards, the genius of Morse and Vail’s code lay in its simplicity. ibid.
The telegraph system would spread around the entire globe. ibid.
The [Maxwell’s] demon seemed to suggest that you could put things back together without using any energy at all – just by using information you could create order. ibid.
Alan Turing was the first person to conceive of the modern computer. ibid.
The power of information was revealing itself. ibid.
A Mathematical Theory of Communication: Claude Shannon. ibid.
Information is actually an inseparable part of the physical world. ibid.
Information can never be divorced from the physical world. ibid.