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Author Topic:   Fusion Power on the way - at last ?
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 80 of 130 (741094)
11-09-2014 2:26 PM
Reply to: Message 79 by ringo
11-09-2014 2:19 PM


Re: All Good Things Suck ” At First
Don't play dumb. What fuels it? You can't get something from nothing. What's the input?
I ain't the Fusion Genie. If you want to know, look it up. I gave you the link.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 79 by ringo, posted 11-09-2014 2:19 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 81 by ringo, posted 11-09-2014 2:43 PM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 82 of 130 (741102)
11-09-2014 3:54 PM
Reply to: Message 81 by ringo
11-09-2014 2:43 PM


Re: All Good Things Suck ” At First
I asked you earlier in the thread if you could run your Toyota on fusion power. Your answer was the highly profound, "Yes."
I'm asking you to back up your claim. The onus is on you to tell us what that Toyota would run on or what my portable generator would run on. What is the input?
What you actually said was: "Do you see fusion as a sensible alternative to the fossil-fuel-burner in your Toyota?"
All forms of power are alternatives to fossil-fuels when it comes to transportation because generated electricity can simply be stored in a battery that fits in the vehicle.
Solar and wind have yet to demonstrate an ability to provide enough electrical power for non-transportation needs. It is very unlikely that they will ever generate electricity in such a way as to provide a cost-effective and comparable alternative to gasoline and diesel ICEs so long as oil remains in plentiful-enough supply. Our current fossil-fueled power plants cannot even provide electricity that's a cost-effective and comparable alternative to the ICE.
If we are to move away from oil-powered ICEs in transportation, then we need an electricity-generating method that can supply copious amounts of affordable electricity for charging batteries (or other technologies we might develop to replace batteries).
Fusion is the only power source that even promises this as a possibility. Whether those promises are empty or not, no other technology currently possesses even the theoretical capability of replacing fossil-fuels in ICEs.
Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 81 by ringo, posted 11-09-2014 2:43 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 83 by ringo, posted 11-10-2014 10:48 AM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 84 of 130 (741171)
11-10-2014 10:54 AM
Reply to: Message 83 by ringo
11-10-2014 10:48 AM


Re: All Good Things Suck ” At First
Read the Wikipedia article.
Like I said, it's not my job to answer all your questions about fusion (me not being a nuclear physicist and all).

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 83 by ringo, posted 11-10-2014 10:48 AM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 85 by ringo, posted 11-10-2014 11:05 AM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 86 of 130 (741196)
11-10-2014 12:03 PM
Reply to: Message 85 by ringo
11-10-2014 11:05 AM


Re: All Good Things Suck ” At First
Read the rules. Bare links are not a legitimate argument. They're only for backing up an argument that you actually make.
And I'm not making an argument.
You asked a bare question and I kindly provided a link to a resource that would answer it.
And now you are sobbing because I didn't bother to shit the answer out on a little golden plate for you.
Do your own damn research.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 85 by ringo, posted 11-10-2014 11:05 AM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 87 by ringo, posted 11-10-2014 12:08 PM Jon has not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 90 of 130 (741237)
11-10-2014 3:24 PM
Reply to: Message 89 by Percy
11-10-2014 1:44 PM


Re: All Good Things Suck ” At First
In my rudimentary understanding of fusion, it is the deuterium and tritium isotopes of hydrogen that is the fuel. The big problem isn't fuel, I wouldn't think, but ignition. Temperatures in the millions of degrees Kelvin would be required.
Another concern with vehicular fusion power: What happens in the event of an accident and containment integrity is lost for the millions of degrees fusion reaction?
Yes, those are potential fuel sources for fusion power. They are discussed in the Wiki article, where anyone on this forum can learn more about fusion than they can probably understand (except for a few of our members).
And you highlight some good reasons why putting fusion generators in cars is a stupid idea. There are plenty of other reasons too. Quite simply, though, it's likely to be uneconomical. The energy provided by a single generator would be far more than any car would need; taken against the cost of making the generators, putting them directly in cars doesn't make sense. They might be useful in trains, though, if they can truly be made as small as the OP's link suggests. Of course, if they replace fossil fuels, I don't know what the trains are going to be hauling past my house by the millions of gallons and thousands of tons a day, but I'm sure they'll think of something.
Anyway, an on-site energy storage system and an electrical motor are the only sensible alternative to ICEs powered by bio-fuels.
And fusion could provide the energy pretty easily if it could get going.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 89 by Percy, posted 11-10-2014 1:44 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 91 by Rahvin, posted 11-11-2014 5:32 PM Jon has seen this message but not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 94 of 130 (741473)
11-12-2014 3:16 PM
Reply to: Message 93 by Rahvin
11-12-2014 1:34 PM


Re: All Good Things Suck ” At First
Hydrogen is not a power source - it has to be generated by cracking water...with extremely large amounts of heat, or with electricity. So we need the high-capacity power plants either way (nuclear to generate the extreme heat for that method, or just any significant power output for the electrolysis method).
I wonder what the difference is between the amount of energy used to create hydrogen both vs. the amount of energy the hydrogen provides and vs. the energy the electricity would provide were it put directly into a car.
Personally, I want nothing to do with hydrogen. I have no interest in driving around in a Hindenburg; and if it comes to that, I'll walk a lot more often.
The infrastructure exception are the rapid-"charging" stations that Tesla is constructing, but these aren;t strictly speaking necessary. You can charge an EV at home from a power socket. The Tesla option of on-site battery replacement in moments for a reasonable fee is necessary only to extend the already-reasonable range of EVs, since "normal" charging would take a few hours and travelers want to be on their way.
If we get fusion, and if it lives up to its promises, I would imagine a rapid development in quick-charge technologies, and probably even development of technologies for storing energy without a traditional battery.
The energy capture increases of the Industrial Revolution completely changed the world. I would imagine the energy capture increases of successful fusion technology to be equally (if not more) revolutionary.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 93 by Rahvin, posted 11-12-2014 1:34 PM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 95 by Rahvin, posted 11-12-2014 4:37 PM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 97 of 130 (741583)
11-13-2014 11:25 AM
Reply to: Message 95 by Rahvin
11-12-2014 4:37 PM


Re: All Good Things Suck ” At First
Nuclear power could, today, provide much of the benefit we would receive from fusion. It remains by far the cleanest and safest source of power per unit generated. It's been around for a long time. Yet it didn't drive the sort of innovation and economic improvement that you predict (the same sorts of predictions that were made about nuclear power).
Fission has a stigma, and I think people have good reason to be concerned about the disposal of the wastes.
The time it takes for the waste to become non-problematic means we are essentially setting ourselves up for future disasters.
The half-life of fusion waste, and the fact that there is much less of it, means it can effectively be managed within a couple generations, which is, in my opinion, a more reasonable time period for company, political, etc. organizations.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 95 by Rahvin, posted 11-12-2014 4:37 PM Rahvin has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 98 by Tempe 12ft Chicken, posted 11-13-2014 1:56 PM Jon has not replied
 Message 107 by Modulous, posted 11-13-2014 7:02 PM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 106 of 130 (741680)
11-13-2014 6:00 PM
Reply to: Message 102 by Rahvin
11-13-2014 3:24 PM


Re: All Good Things Suck ” At First
But Jon wasn't claiming we'd see Mr Fusion from Back to the Future. He was saying we could use fusion power stations to produce hydrogen as a fuel source for hydrogen-combustion or fuel-cell vehicles. That's a perfectly realistic position, I just don;t think it's likely because EVs are already here.
To clarify, I actually was talking about using fusion to generate electricity to run electric motors in cars.
Ringo brought up the hydrogen go-between.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by Rahvin, posted 11-13-2014 3:24 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 108 of 130 (741691)
11-13-2014 8:41 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by Modulous
11-13-2014 7:02 PM


Re: All Good Things Suck ” At First
People are worried about the 'worst case scenario' while ignoring the radioactive contamination they are getting and too often neglecting those pesky non-radioactive things like the 3,000,000 tonnes of carbon emissions as well as the arsenic, lead and other fun heavy metals.
They've been getting that for over 200 years.
Known risks are always favored over unknown ones.
And we simply do not know what problems generating all our power from fission will create.
Granted it'll still not be something people should be handling in any sense for another thousand years or so, but I'm guessing if we're still around and technically advancing we'd have found a use for the stuff by that point.
Yes, guessing. That's all it is. We have no idea what our societies are going to look like in the next few thousand years, and it is immoral to burden them with the handling of our nuclear waste, or worse: when the natural changes in political, company, or societal organization leave behind management of the waste and it exacts its revenge on humanity.
We have pretty good evidence that a variety of societal models can function with the wastes of fossil fuels. And the long-term danger they pose is minor compared to the danger posed by a failure to manage nuclear waste.
Bad things will probably happen with nuclear fission, but they'll likely be relatively localised. Terrible things will happen if we keep using fossil fuels.
But the terrible things of fossil fuels are spread over the planet. Nuclear disasters take lives immediately and their effects are very apparent. Fossil fuel use may reduce life expectancy by a few years.
Apparently people are happier with the latter guaranteed than the former as a risk.
That's how people roll, ya know?
Like climate change?
Climate change is a real problem. But it seems to be a more manageable problem than the unknown problem posed by trying to store nuclear wastes for thousands of years under unknown political or social conditions.
I mean, we haven't even tapped into all the productive area of this planet. Remember our Ebola thread? The estimate was that farming an area of the Congo roughly the size of your little island could feed all the people now eating tainted and unsustainable foods.
Anyway... there are millions of people just like me who want nothing to do with fission. So long as we live in democratic societies, nuclear fission is not the future. And solar and wind power are relatively a joke. We'll burn through our fossil fuels until there aren't any left. Or...
... we'll develop fusion.
Oh... and people think fossil fuel energy is pretty cool. It is very much a 'cultural' thing.
Until we figure out the engineering and the science though, we'll have to opt for other solutions.
And none of those solutions seem likely to replace fossil fuels before we burn through the whole damn works.
Perhaps it's ironic, but I think the saddest thing of all this is not that we will be forced to switch from fossil fuels (which have plenty of drawbacks) after running out of them, but that we will completely lose a part of history. It seems like it'd be cooler to teach 10th graders about the Industrial Revolution by showing them coal-fueled steam engines than simply telling them about this thing called 'coal' that no longer exists and never will again exist for the rest of their lives.
And that's all the more reason I would like to see workable replacements for fossil fuels than the namby-pamby, not-a-chance-in-hell, hippy shit people have been putting forward in this thread.
I'm hoping for a real alternative; so far only fusion takes that cake.
But let's fund the boffins, maybe someone'll find something that is the key to making the whole thing work and I'm hopeful we'll all be better off because of it. How cool would it be to be powered by 1/64,000th of the sea (or whatever it is)!
Googled 'boffins'. Word now stored in mental dictionary.
I agree that we are likely to figure it out eventually. What's more, whatever we figure out will probably be able to fix most of the problems we have so far created.
The question then, though, is whether people in 2500, who have made that world work, will really think it is a good thing to return the planet to the state it was in in 1750.
Probably not.
Absent of making the whole damn place uninhabitable, the beat will probably just go on.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by Modulous, posted 11-13-2014 7:02 PM Modulous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 109 by Modulous, posted 11-13-2014 10:41 PM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 110 of 130 (741704)
11-14-2014 12:19 AM
Reply to: Message 109 by Modulous
11-13-2014 10:41 PM


Re: All the best!
What makes you think managing the climate for thousands of years is more manageable than managing inanimate buried objects for the same period?
Who says we have to manage the climate? We're still alive and are likely to keep kicking. Climate change makes life tough, not impossible.
If we manage to burn all the coal that's thought to be left, we'll probably all be much too dead to worry about teaching children about why we're dead. Running out isn't the problem we once thought it was going to be.
How so? I haven't seen any models for global warming that predict complete extinction of humanity.
I don't think it's quite safe to trust that discovering the secrets of harnessing the power of fusion will solve the problem of rising temperatures causing natural carbon stores to release more carbon and any potential sustained feedback that may result.
Carbon can be removed from the atmosphere. And it might become cheaper to use alternate building material, thus allowing us to plant more trees, etc.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 109 by Modulous, posted 11-13-2014 10:41 PM Modulous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 114 by Modulous, posted 11-14-2014 4:37 PM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 115 of 130 (741838)
11-14-2014 10:31 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by Modulous
11-14-2014 4:37 PM


Re: All the best!
Hello? Oh hi! Yeah, he's here. OK, sure I will. Jon, it's for you, it's Venus.
Venus's atmosphere is almost 100% carbon dioxide. We aren't even close to that. And CO2 levels were far higher during previous eras with life still possible.
I don't think our current output of CO2 is going to make our lives rosy, but it also seems unlikely that it's going to extinguish us.
We might be able to survive in Antartica or Siberia or something.
Isn't that it? Climate change doesn't screw the whole planet - just certain parts of it, particularly the parts that we currently find very attractive for putting down roots.
Maybe. But then maybe we still need space in say, the Congo, to build farms. So we cut down an area of forest the size of Britain.
Fine by me. People are more important than trees.
Getting say, 300 billion tonnes of carbon out of an atmosphere, and keeping it out of the atmosphere, and doing it before too many negative effects manifest, is very difficult.
Unless we discover a super energy source that lets us do virtually anything we want at little to no cost. Then the currently uneconomical methods of CO2 removal become practical options.
In line with my statement of people living in 2500 that I made earlier, if we develop any technologies to get rid of current CO2, will likely need to address the question of what level of CO2 we do want. The earth's CO2 concentration has changed naturally during human history, and there is likely a preferable level that we would be wise to artificially maintain, even if it means some other things go extinct.
And then we'll have to store it, potentially for millions of years protecting against disaster or malevolence releasing it all into the atmosphere again!
Or shoot it into space (the Sun? a planet we want to live on?) on rockets powered by our almost free and unlimited energy source.
Again; this is why I think only successful fusion is going to solve any of the current problems. It doesn't look like we'll be largely switching anytime soon to solar or wind or fission. Perhaps fusion won't live up to its hype even if we can get it going.
But in that case, we're all left with massive global warming from total depletion of fossil fuels. And no after solution.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by Modulous, posted 11-14-2014 4:37 PM Modulous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by Modulous, posted 11-15-2014 7:56 AM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 117 of 130 (741868)
11-15-2014 9:13 AM
Reply to: Message 116 by Modulous
11-15-2014 7:56 AM


Re: All the best!
If we change the climate faster than the many moving parts of our food supply chain can adapt to, that's going to be a serious problem.
Our food doesn't really come through a 'chain', unless you are talking about a production/processing chain.
The PETM resulted in a 30% extinction rate and the carbon output was less than it is today.
Where did you get this information from?
And 'not rosy' is an interesting euphemism for 'millions dead'.
Who's dead?
In that scenario, billions would be dead, and a few thousands or millions surviving in small pockets is an outside possibility I mentioned.
Why are all these people dying?
Well you were the one that mentioned planting more trees. I was just pointing out that we'll still be cutting them down even if we aren't building stuff out of them.
Of course. But those are ones we already should be cutting down. My point was that we could cut down fewer trees overall if we weren't needing them for building material (if using other materials became cheaper).
I'd kind of like to have a contingency plan just in case we don't, you know?
We already do. It involves switching to solar, wind, fission, etc. and dealing with their consequences instead.
Hence why some people are arguing we should be trying to increase solar, wind and fission power production. Even if it doesn't 'solve' our problems, it can buy us the time we need to create a rainbow machine that powers the world.
I agree. But increasing use of these energy-generating methods shouldn't involve a reduction in our standard of living (which, despite Global Warming, continues to grow).
Naturally, if we don't have contingency and mitigation plans. I'm just suggesting we should have such plans.
Those plans won't prevent the level of global warming caused by total depletion of fossil fuels.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by Modulous, posted 11-15-2014 7:56 AM Modulous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 118 by Modulous, posted 11-15-2014 1:01 PM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 120 of 130 (742205)
11-18-2014 1:46 AM
Reply to: Message 118 by Modulous
11-15-2014 1:01 PM


Re: All the best!
The PETM resulted in a 30% extinction rate and the carbon output was less than it is today.
Where did you get this information from?
Weather underground
Nature Geoscience wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica and so on.
It's not hyper obscure information beyond the realms of most search engines.
From your first cite I found:
quote:
"PETM: Global Warming, Naturally" from Weather Underground:
Ecosystems adapted remarkably well to the PETM warming, likely because it was gradual enough for life to adjust to the new environment. The only species extinction that scientists have found were some foraminifera that lived on the sea floor.
From Wikipedia:
quote:
Wikipedia on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum:
The increase in mammalian abundance is intriguing. There is no evidence of any increased extinction rate among the terrestrial biota. Increased CO2 levels may have promoted dwarfing - which may have encouraged speciation. Many major mammalian orders - including the Artiodactyla, horses, and primates - appeared and spread around the globe 13,000 to 22,000 years after the initiation of the PETM.
So where's this 30% mass extinction?
Hyperthermia, starvation, drowning, diseases like Ebola and malaria, there's lots of ways to die in a world with global temperatures are moving towards being 15-30 degrees K higher than they are today.
I understand why people die.
What I don't understand is where you get estimates such as "billions would be dead, and a few thousands or millions surviving". The planet now supports more people than ever before and that that number is only increasing. As a percentage, the Black Death ousted more Europeans than even the highest estimates of climate-change-related deaths in modern times.
But increasing use of these energy-generating methods shouldn't involve a reduction in our standard of living
Huh?
Energy capture is directly related to standard of living. The competing technologies are less reliable than fossil fuels. For example, there is no existing storage infrastructure that would allow us to provide all our power from wind or solar, and there isn't even a feasible way to construct such infrastructure.
Obviously. So we should put them in place before we deplete the fossil fuels. That's what I'm suggesting. Burning all the fossil fuels at the current rate would be insane and I'm betting - pretty hard to do.
But it seems like we aren't going to put them in place before we deplete the fossil fuels. If we switched as much of our energy production to renewable as possible, we'd still be burning fossil fuels because in many cases right now they are the only option. We'd burn through them much more slowly, but we'd still be burning through them, and we'd certainly never meet the U.N.'s recommendation of being carbon free in 85 years. Unless...
We accept major decreases in our standard of living (think unstable power supply, no steel, no cement, no plastic, etc.), or...
We develop fusion.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 118 by Modulous, posted 11-15-2014 1:01 PM Modulous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 123 by Modulous, posted 11-18-2014 3:06 PM Jon has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 121 of 130 (742231)
11-18-2014 10:35 AM
Reply to: Message 119 by RAZD
11-17-2014 4:29 PM


Re: reality of fusion vs solar, wind and other renewable sources
It seems to me that you are the one claiming "massive energy requirements" without any definition of what those requirements are.
What is there to define? The Industrial Revolution was possible specifically because people had an ability to exploit large amounts of energy ” exponentially larger than people had ever captured before.
No on needs me to point out that our societies use even more energy than during the IR and substantially more than at times before the IR. Nor does anyone need me to point out that developed nations capture astronomically more energy than undeveloped nations.
The feasibility of a world run on solar/wind rests on being able to demonstrate that either (1) these alternatives can generate the same amount of energy as current methods, or (2) the amount of energy that they can generate is enough to power modern, developed societies (i.e., that current standards of living can be maintained on substantially less power).
If we look at household needs, the typical house has lights, tv, computer, stove, dishwasher, refrigerator, AC and heat requirements. All of these systems can be powered by local 24vdc systems, and we know this because we can design mobile homes and yachts with such systems.
Mobile homes and yachts have the ability to move to where the power is to maximize solar/wind capture.
My 60+-unit apartment building is much less portable. (I think; I've never tried moving it...)
The only question then becomes how you generate the 24vdc power. Obviously batteries can be -- and have been -- used to power these, normally charged by a generator.
How to generate power is the point of this thread. And those batteries don't get power from the power fairies; so where does it come from?
Thus all you need to do is take the generator output and convert that to solar panel and wind turbine output. This has been done. Google off-grid housing.
Curiously I have a friend who lives on a sailboat and is totally self-sufficient via wind and solar generation.
You are still stuck with showing individual instances of the success of solar/wind without any attempt to prove their scalability.
Do you have any interest in showing how solar/wind generation can be used to power modern, developed societies or are you only interested in showing how great solar/wind power can be for hippy communes, nomads, and bums in sailboats?
Pharmaceutical companies aren't very good either; but I think we can all agree that the science of developing and using drugs is a pretty good thing.
Where they are bad is for the same reasons -- they hold people hostage for services considered necessary for minimal quality of life.
Sure. And just like the solution to that problem is not to have everyone create their own medications, the solution to electricity monopolies is not necessarily to have everyone produce their own electricity.
When you consider the total cost of fossil fuels, not just the corporation costs, but the externalized costs to the environment and cleanup of waste and spills, including global warming, their cost is significantly higher.
That's possible. But that's just a discussion of costs.
Now how about a discussion of results?
I notice you've been completely silent on that matter. In fact, you have intentionally avoided addressing the issue of solar/wind reliability and total output. I asked you specifically in one question about the energy needs of the people meeting 150% of those needs with solar power and you sidestepped.
I'm all for a world where we can produce our power with non-polluting inputs, but so far you haven't shown that such a world is even somewhat possible.
It's all anecdotes and flower power. Hardly convincing stuff, really.
You can choose to live in their shadow and breath their exhaust, or you can choose to go your own way.
Grid power is here to stay.
Find a way to make your solar/wind generation proposals work with the grid system or stop wasting my time.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 119 by RAZD, posted 11-17-2014 4:29 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 122 by ringo, posted 11-18-2014 11:36 AM Jon has not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 124 of 130 (742365)
11-19-2014 10:56 AM
Reply to: Message 123 by Modulous
11-18-2014 3:06 PM


Re: All the best!
quote:
The PETM is accompanied by a mass extinction of 35-50% of benthic foraminifera (especially in deeper waters) over the course of ~1,000 years
Saw that. But 30% of a single type of organism that lives mostly in a single place on the planet is hardly a mass extinction. If you read the whole portion there (between your quote and mine) you'll see that many species diversified, there was little effect on land animals, and mammals did very well.
This was hardly the mass extinction you portrayed it to be; and its effect on the food supply of mammals like us (which is the context in which you made the original statement) seemed negligible if present at all.
Because we're talking 1,000ppm-1,600 ppm carbon in the atmosphere. Just living in that atmosphere would make us dizzy, sleepy and have permanent headaches, blurry vision etc it would probably be enough to kill us all even not accounting for the 15K rise in temperatures globally.
I was talking about climate change in general I guess (as in where we are at now and likely to be in the next half century or so).
If you're talking about burning through all the fossil fuels in the next hundred years, then I suppose the side effects of that might be pretty severe.
I fail to see what now has to do with a hypothetical future in which we burn all the fossil fuels off.
My point was that even with conditions worsening, population is still increasing. I wasn't so much talking about burning through all the fossil fuels but just about releasing the amounts of greenhouse gasses currently estimated if we decide to take certain measures before global warming completely fucks us (and not much sooner).
For several reasons (which we can certainly discuss) I honestly don't see us getting to a world in which all the fossil fuels have been burned. Do you?
I understand, but you said 'should', which confused me. I mean obviously things have to change. Our current way of living that strives for eternal economic growth is simply not sustainable, so there's going to be a change in living standards one way or another. You also didn't discuss fission.
Sure. I've discussed this very concept in several threads, notably the one on Replacing Consumerism and Economic failure because of productivity increases / excessive productive capacity.
You'll see I am all in favor of getting away from economies based on endless consumption and production.
Economic growth is probably good. Our current way of defining economic growth, though, is outdated.
Whether this change involves a change in living standards is another story. As you will see from reading those threads, people don't necessarily today consider their living standards any greater than people several decades ago considered theirs. There is likely a point at which increased consumption no longer increases living standards (unless there is a scientific discovery that involves the invention of new technology). We may be far past that point already; perhaps all that is required for a good standard of living is comfortable living arrangements (house, furniture, etc.), access to modern healthcare, heat in winter, food security, protection from foreign/domestic violence, etc.
These things, though, are also want suck up most of our energy.
We might be able to figure out how much we can cut of non-essentials, but then that will just be our opinion. Perhaps others find disposable butter packets from McDonald's highly essential to their standard of living; so it's a tricky road to navigate, and kind of involves the sort of totalitarianism (telling us what is essential and not) most of us in the first world find highly opposable.
Technically it's carbon emissions free. It may end up amounting to the same thing, but surprises happen.
Well, yes, I was talking about emissions. Even if we cut back entirely on our use of fossil fuels for energy, other essential industries still release huge amounts of carbon (and even use fossil fuels). Steel and cement come to mind, as well as the great environmental bane plastic (which does has valid uses).
A theoretical idea, with many many hurdles that we've only gotten slightly closer to in the last 50 years of trying.
Not entirely theoretical, but I think you know that. Our only problem with fusion now is getting the reaction to sustain itself without putting in more energy than it produces.
Another alternative is to increase our use of fission, a technology that is empirically functional and many of the engineering challenges involved are already well known, many man hours of design into reactors has been completed and trained construction workers for the contracts are ready to go.
If we get 40% of power from fission and 40% of power renewables then only 20% needs be coal and gas.
The problem is still disposal and management. I'm not talking from my ass here, of course. For example, whether we can rely on the existence of future institutions with the capability or interest in safely managing and monitoring the wast is an issue that even people involved in nuclear power agree is a serious matter warranting discussion.
Imagine the global catastrophe of people a thousand years from now unwittingly blasting or drilling into these disposals.
The potential for disaster in a world based entirely on nuclear fission just seems far greater than the potential for disaster in a world where improvements in renewable energy generation allow us to slowly move away from fossil fuels as we look for the next development to break through the current ceiling (likely to be fusion, but who knows?).

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by Modulous, posted 11-18-2014 3:06 PM Modulous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 125 by Modulous, posted 11-19-2014 3:32 PM Jon has replied

  
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