Many people are concerned that the world is wasting limited energy resources and causing climate change due to Global Warming. Personally, I think that the tiny percentage of the worlds total production of Carbon Dioxide is not a factor in Global Warming. Many scientists agree with me. Many do not. The fact is that there is no internationally/nationally agreed upon concensus regarding the cause of Global Warming.
Although it is unclear if human caused Carbon Dioxide production has any affect on Global temperatures we can all agree that it would be a good thing if humans could reduce their production of Carbon Dioxide. This would be great if it cost nothing to reduce production of Carbon Dioxide.
The world does not have any shortage of energy. In fact, the world has enough oil, coal, natural gas, uranium, etc to meet global energy needs for thousands of years into the future. There is not even a shortage of oil in the world. There is only a shortage of oil that can be produced for $10-$25 per barrel. In fact, if world oil prices stay in the $50 range for long it will result in massive overproduction of oil as new resources are brought on line and alternative technologies such as Coal Liquifaction (chemical conversion of Coal into Oil) is implemented.
The world has enough carbon based fuels to supply 100 percent of the worlds energy needs for thousands of years. The problem is, do we want to continue to use fossil fuel as our primary energy source.
The problem with continuing to use carbon fuels is that they create carbon dioxide and we all agree it would be a good thing if we didn't produce so much CO2. Fortunately, there is a solution, Fusion Power.
All legitimate scientist are in agreement. Commercially viable Fusion Powered Electrical Generation is feasible and can be done on a massive scale. Fusion powered electrical generation will eventually be low cost and non polluting. There is no question that it is the ultimate answer to the worlds energy problems. Eventually, fusion powered electricity will provide a limitless, pollution free, very inexpensive source of energy for the world's use. Once fusion created low cost electricity is available it will displace more expensive electricity produced from coal, oil, etc and all of the worlds coal and oil powered power plants will be torn down.
The problem with Fusion Power is that current Fusion reactors require about as much energy to create energy as the reactor produces. Commercially viable Fusion power generation requires that the reactor produce much more energy than it consumes. Most scientists believe that commercially viable fusion power generation technology is 20 to 30 years into the future. However, this timeline is primarily a function of the R&D funds alloted by governments to fusion power development.
Instead of throwing precious tax dollars into pipedreams such as solar and wind powered electrical generators that can never hope to produce more than a few percent of the worlds electricity needs and will always be much more expensive than alternatives such as coal, oil, nuclear, and fusion, we need to vastly increase R&D into fusion electrical generation and move the timeline for the startup of commercial fusion power generation closer to the future.
If the world can have commercially viable fusion electrical generation in 15 to 20 years it makes no sence whatever to spend any more money pursuing extremely high cost solar and wind power that will take at least as long to put in place and will never be capable of producing enough electricity to put the coal and oil powered electrical plants out of business.
The US needs to take the lead in development of Fusion power and begin a "Manhattan Project" for implementation of this technology. Once fusion power is available it will eliminate most uses of alternative carbon based fuels (oil, gas, alcohol, etc) and this will dramatically reduce air pollution.
Wind and Solar power can never be more than a tiny, extremely expensive, supplement to the electrical generation needs of the world. If we put our R&D money into wind and solar we are guaranteing that coal and oil will be our primary fuels for decades into the futue. Fusion power holds out the promise that it will be so low cost and capable of producing such massive amounts of electricity that it will force almost all other forms of electrical generation out of business.
Once we stop using carbon fuels to produce cheap electricity it will no longer be economical to use oil or coal for home heating. Everybody will switch to electricity for cheap home and office heating. This will leave transportation as the only significant user of carbon fuels. If transportation were the only significant user of carbon fuels (oil, gas, etc) then it would not be necessary to conserve oil, it would not be necessary to create very expensive high efficiency cars, etc. We would not need to worry about global warming since we would have eliminated the vast majority of carbon dioxide production attributal to humans.
Bottom line, the US and the World are focusing efforts on the wrong technologies. Forget about wind, solar, etc. Focus on creating cheap Fusion power and create economics that will make all other forms of electricity generation(oil, coal, natural gas) more expensive. Once it is cheaper to produce non polluting electricity the world (not just the US and Europe but all of the 3rd world as well) will immediately switch to fusion and abandon carbon fuels.
There is an easy answer to Global Warming and Air Pollution that does not require the industrialized world to go bankrupt while the 3rd world replaces all of the the industrialized nations pollution reductions with 3rd world pollution. Fusion is the answer and we need to focus massive national resources on developing it.
Comments (20)
Rocketman.....nice try, but it assumes there is some global warming going on. The Earth has been COOLING for 11 years. Why do you think they switched names from Global Warming to "Climate Change"...a better name because the climate is always changing. Can't lose with that scare tactic. If it wasn't for the hot air coming out of Al Gore's mouth, we'd probably be heading into an Ice Age.
Merlin,
I'm trying to be generous and not contentious. I'll never convince hard core Climate Changers that CO2 isn't a cause of Global Warming. However, we can all agree that it would be nice if we could reduce CO2 if there were no price to pay for the reduction. Hence, cheap fusion power that replaces photovoltaic, wind, coal, oil, gas electrical generation while reducing CO2 production at zero economic cost is clearly the way to go.
Rocketman, You're right. I'm all for fusion, regardless if glbal warming exists or not...
It would be great if we had it. I suspect that those in both the Cap n Trade crowd and the Big Energy (cost) groups would be opposed to it because it furthers neither of their deeply held agendas. I should have read your post more carefully....sorry...
~ Merl
Global warming is a fact. Global cooling is a fact. Weather cycles are a fact. Don't be so arrogant as to believe that man is making any ability to make a major alteration in the Earth's weather patterns. Have you ever heard of the sun, ocean currents, volcanos, etc? Fools have made upwards of $100 million for the idiot Gore in this scam. That is why they spew propaganda to gullible fools to try and support their cause - money and power.
Fusion research is at a stage where it is so primitive that even with substantial resources allocated, it could not be expected to succeed inside of a multiple-decade timeframe. As such, it does not address the energy concerns you posited, which are short term.
Fusion is very hard and has radiations problems at least as severe as those associated with fission. Fission is a far better option, and more easily rolled out.
Fission power is more plentiful in the long term, and is available in the short term. In the very long term, only solar power is viable.
Voting down.
To Soda:
Please check your facts. There is little doubt within the scientific community that Fusion will eventually be capable of providing cheap and limitless electricity. Moreover, you are incorrect that radiation problems with Fusion are at least as severe as with Fission. There are no long term radioactive material storage problems associated with Fusion power nor is diversion of plutonium or weapons grade uranium to military purposes an issue.
The biggest problem with Fusion power is funding. Even at current levels it is likely that commercial fusion power will become available within 30 years. With a large infusion of money this start date could be moved up by a decade or more.
It will take the US many years to make a significant dent in energy production using photovoltaic, wind, geothermal, etc sources. In fact, it is unlikely that these sources will even be able to supply the increased electricity demand that will occur during the period it takes to build the facilities and the electricity produced will be VERY expensive relative to other energy alternatives.
You are smoking something if you think that the world will ever convert 100 percent to solar power. Long before this could be done Fusion will come on line and will replace all other forms of electricity generation worldwide.
Even if Obama succeeds in bankrupting the nation with unwise energy alternatives such as Cap and Trade, Solar, etc it will take decades for these alternatives to make any dent in the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere. In fact, there will never be a reduction in CO2 production if Fusion is not developed since India, China, Brazil, and the rest of the third world will continue to industrialize and will spew out ever more CO2 as there economies develop.
When the car was invented it quickly replaced the horse because it was cheaper to keep a car than a horse. When the airplane became available it quickly replaced the train as it was faster and cheaper for most travel. Likewise, once cheap fusion electricity is avaiable it will quickly replace coal, oil, natural gas, wind, solar, etc power It will be so much cheaper than alternative sources that nobody will want to continue to use the former energy sources.
In particular, India, China, Brazil, etc will want to use Fusion because it will be cheap. The industrialized world will not have to worry about that the 3rd world will pump out many times more CO2 than the industrialized world can conserve.
The solution to the worlds energy and pollution problems is to vastly increase fusion research funding and move the availability of commercial electricity production forward by 10 or 15 years as I suggested. This will result in fusion power replacing CO2 producing electrical generators much quicker (because it will be more economical) than if we try to do it (completely ineffectively) by regulation, law, international agreements that the 3rd world will violate, etc.
I do agree with your comment that Fission power is available now. France generates 70% of it's electricity via Fission. If the US would do the same we would not have an energy problem and CO2 emissions would be reduced much more than will ever be possible from using wind or solar power. Safety and pollution issues associated with Fission are vastly overblown. We should begin building dozens of new fission power plants immediately and use them as a stop gap until Fusion power becomes available.
To Soda:
Soda, please check out this website for information on how funding problems are delaying fusion R&D.
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090527/full/459488a.html
Perhaps I we are discussing differing time scales; there is a finite amount of fissionables, and a finite amount of fusionables on the surface of this planet. Using these requires extracting them from natural resources, and as energy production climbs those extraction processes will have to become larger and larger.
How many years of fission power are easily available at current rates? How many years of fusion power are available assuming standard growth curves in power consumption? Both will be gone all too quickly, or the required consumption rates will simply be deemed too environmentally damaging to be usable.
Solar power is the only other usable energy option that has a longer time period. We certainly can't do it with ground based solar, but space based solar is entirely different.
Regarding radioactivity of fusion versus fission, fusion is only slightly (around an order of magnitude) better in terms of byproducts, when both are used in a best-practices environment.
Breeder reactor fission produces neutrons, a huge amount of low level waste due to those neutrons, and a small amount of very high level waste which decays rather quickly; fusion produces a similar quantity of neutrons, a huge amount of low level waste due to those neutrons, and no meaningful amount of high level waste. The storage of the high level waste from a fission reactor is trivial relative to all the other low level material which must be handled, at least in the current regulatory regime.
Again, I agree with you that fusion is better in this regard; but I do not regard it so much better that should be chased this vigorously.
Given its only moderate advantages and my belief that it will become feasible around the same time as orbital solar, I cannot justify more than the research-level spending already taking place.
Rocketman.....well said !!
I don't see this as fusion vs fission. You've helped me realize it's fusion AND fission, at least temporarily. Why do you think the lefties are pushing these wind and solar "alternatives" when they could never work on a scale that would make them true "alternatives?" Do you think it'a about the money, the control of the populace, or both?
Glenn Beck: GORE will make billions off Cap n Trade
GLENN: Steve Milloy is with us now. Steve Milloy is the guy who wrote Green Hell, and he says that Al Gore has lied to the House energy subcommittee. The reason why we bring this up is there is the global warming bill that is happening in Washington and I mean, you just know all of this stuff is going to happen anyway, you just know it's going to go through. We haven't had a real debate on anything in this country and he says that he's been lying in the House energy subcommittee. Steve, welcome to the program. What was he lying?
MILLOY: Hey, Glenn. What he's lying about is financial interest in cap and trade. You know, when he testified in the Senate in January, no one asked him about his financial interest in cap and trade. When he testified in the House in April, Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee and Steve Scalise from Louisiana tried to ask him, but he deflected both questions to Marsha Blackburn. He denied that he had a financial interest in cap and trade and that if he ever did make any money, he was going to give it away. To Steve Scalise, he pretended like he had never heard of Goldman Sachs even though he has business dealings with Goldman Sachs. And just yesterday we've learned that Al Gore's firm has invested $6 million in a software company that's going to make cap and trade software, software to help companies keep track of their greenhouse gas emissions, and the CEO of this company says if cap and trade goes through, this software is going to go from a $2 1/2 billion market to a $25 million market. So Al Gore is investing millions to make billions at our expense.
GLENN: Okay, now wait a minute. He says that every dollar that he's made and every dollar that he's going to make on any of these investments is going to go right back to
MILLOY: Yes.
GLENN: advertising and, you know, having little children plant trees, et cetera, et cetera.
MILLOY: Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know why anyone would believe that. I don't know that it's true. If that's true, Al Gore should open his books. I mean, I know that he's invested personally $35 million in a variety of climate related investments and I don't think that was true at all. The problem was Marsha Blackburn didn't know enough to follow up with Al Gore, which is commonly the case in congress.
GLENN: What is the problem? Let me play devil's advocate. What is the problem with somebody? For instance, you know, I talk about our financial situation. We're going to be hit with an out of control dollar soon, and I talk about different things and say, you know, I'm personally, if that would happen, I'm personally invested in gold. So I would make money. What's the difference between just living, walking the walk and being somebody who is nefarious?
MILLOY: Well, you know, if you want to admit what you're disclose what your interests are, that's fine. Al Gore is lobbying for legislation that is going to radically change the way we live, make Americans poor, make him richer and he's not disclosing it. As a matter of fact, if you ask him a question, he just lies about it.
GLENN: What evidence do you have that he lies about it?
MILLOY: Well, he has made all this money that has been invested in various climate I mean, there's no secret here. It's just that when you put him on the spot in public, he just can't come to admit what's true. I mean, you know, there's public records on this. This has been in Bloomberg. Bloomberg has dug up SEC records where Al Gore has taken $35 million of his own money, money that he has made over the last few years from, you know, Inconvenient Truth and his lectures. You know, he gets paid $175,000 per talk. He has also, you know, on the Google board and Apple board has all this money invested in all these climate related projects and, you know, we're to believe that, you know, all this money is then going to go back into lobbying for something that could happen this year. It's just not plausible.
GLENN: What is the you've looked at the climate bill obviously.
MILLOY: Yes.
GLENN: First of all, what are some of the worst things in it? Is there anything good in it? And what are the odds that it's just going to pass?
MILLOY: Well, I mean, you know, the worst case scenario is that electric utilities are forced to buy these, you know, buy billions of dollars of credits from congress basically from the government, and these cost because they are so immense, they are just going to be passed onto consumers and our electric bills are going to go up from 50% to 100% or more depending on where you live and what fuel is used to produce your electricity. What are the odds in it passing? I'd say the odds are, you know, not unreasonable. I think they are at least 50/50. You've got corporate America in there pushing for this. We talked about this before, General Electric, all the other U.S. climate action partnership companies, Dow, Alcoa, Goldman Sachs.
GLENN: You know what? Steve, do me a favor.
MILLOY: Yeah.
GLENN: Explain why these companies I mean, I know why General Electric would.
MILLOY: Right.
GLENN: General Electric is going to make just a ton of money because they make this, you know, they make the green, the windmills and the turbines and everything else. But tell me why other companies want it.
MILLOY: Well, Goldman Sachs, for example, owns the exchanges where carbon credits would be traded, okay? So they stand to be the broker for all these trades and, you know, make a piece, make some money off every transaction. You go to companies like Dow, Alcoa and DuPont, they want congress to basically give them money for reducing their CO2 emissions over the last 20 years as they move their operations offshore. So, you know, General Electric makes windmills. You know, you've got the solar and wind industry, and they have obvious interests. And then now you also have other energy companies in there. Everyone's trying to cut the best deal they can with Waxman. Waxman's giving them free credits, which is essentially giving free money away. So, you know, there's just a whole host of interests in here. The electric utilities are trying to figure out how they can assure their profits and meet congressional demands to become more efficient and sell less electricity, which means consumers will be paying more for electricity. I mean, you know, it is like a highway bill and a farm bill all rolled into one, multiplied by 10, and consumers and taxpayers are going to be stuck paying the bill.
GLENN: Last night I had an interview with a guy on TV and we were talking about how he contends that the media, they love Barack Obama, but at the same time they are afraid of Barack Obama. They don't want to stop taking his press conferences even though it's costing millions of dollars, they don't want to stop taking them because they don't want to piss him off. They don't want to you know what I mean?
MILLOY: Well, absolutely. This is the old story. This is one of the reasons it's hard to get a fair shake on a story from mainstream media because if they start reporting the truth about what's going on, their access is going to be cut off. And this is true not only in Washington D.C., press coverage President Obama but also in the financial press that covers big business. You know, you can't ask a CEO a tough question because you'll never talk to him again. You see this on, you know, CNBC's a great example of this, you know. NBC's personal PR arm. They never ask Jeff Immelt or really any CEO a tough question because they will never get him back on.
GLENN: So what are the odds that it's not just media that is doing that but it's also several businesses that are I mean, you can't tell me, you can't tell me that the Hummer thing was just because it was a losing I mean, it was snatched up by the Chinese, you know, right away.
MILLOY: Yeah.
GLENN: You know that part of the deal was, you get rid of the icon of gas guzzling vehicles.
MILLOY: Yeah.
GLENN: Hummer. What are the odds that a lot of these companies are making bad decisions because they are also afraid, they are also wanting to play ball?
MILLOY: Well, yeah. And Glenn, I think you've highlighted this, you've been a leader in highlighting this. There is this new corpocracy going on there. It's sort of a new fascism where big business is lining up with government. Big business helps government. Government helps big business, and the rest of us are getting the short end of the stick.
GLENN: We're getting the scraps off the table. I saw a story today on the front page of the Drudge Report. By the way, we're talking to Steve Milloy. He is the author of Green Hell. Steve, I saw a link on the front page of the Drudge Report this morning and now the article has been pulled and so you can't find it anywhere.
MILLOY: Yeah.
GLENN: The headline was, when do we begin to jail or execute global deniers. And it was a quote. Do you have any idea what that story was about?
MILLOY: Well, yeah. I mean, the whole you know, the left has really got up in arms against global warming skeptics, you know, people like myself that criticize the science behind global warming and raise questions about, you know, the effectiveness and the purpose of global warming legislation. And they have resorted to all sorts of, you know, nasty slurs, innuenda. Greens have called for climate skeptics to be put on trail. You've got people like James Hansen, the NASA scientist who says that coal company and oil company executives should be accused of crimes against humanity. I mean, they've really gone off the deep end. You know, you can't have debate with these people. They liken us to Holocaust deniers. You know, you spend half your time worried about your safety rather than focusing on the issues.
GLENN: It's truly amazing. Steve, I mean, you know, people say that it's crazy that you would say what you just said a few minutes ago, that we're marching towards some sort of a fascist kind of state. I've been warning, even under George W. Bush, fascism is on the rise, it's corporatism, it is I mean, that is the fundamental building block of fascism. And if you play this out and you think I mean, let's just play this out with General Motors. General Motors gets $50 billion or $100 billion. We make this huge investment. It doesn't turn around, we have to make another $50 billion. Well, then what happens? Instead of losing it, they are going to have to start putting other restrictions on other cars coming from outside the United States, you know? I mean, it just spirals.
MILLOY: Right. They are going to have to lean on Ford Motor. You know, I mean, it's going to be pressure on Ford to conform to whatever GM's doing. You know, if they can't get you, if they can't get a business directly, you know, there's a million other ways they could do it. They could do it through the EPA, they can do it through the justice department antitrust, they can do it through the Federal Trade Commission. You know, this is really bad when we have, you know, the people with the power, the federal government, hook up with the people with the money, big business. I mean, the rest of us are really in trouble and unless people, you know, start agitating and, you know, get interested, get worried, get active about this stuff, we're going to be in for a world of trouble.
GLENN: And we're looking, we're looking at a situation that to me, when you look at Barack Obama and this congress, it is never about the thing they say it is. It's always, you know, watch the other hand. What else is going on here behind the scenes? For instance, the EPA. There's other things they are doing that are just going to usher crippling prices on gas or coal or anything else. It's not what everybody is watching.
MILLOY: No, that's right. Global warming regulation is not about the environment. There's nothing you know, its purpose, because global warming results in government control of our energy, really results in government control of our economy and what the greens and what the left and what President Obama really want to have is control. They are not going to stop using coal, they are not going to stop using gasoline. What they want is control and, you know, if they have the arbitrary power to exercise their anyone I don't know over anybody, they can get whoever they want to do what they want. So, you know, they will get business, they will force business to support them. I mean, we're going to have like, you know, a permanent government. It's going to be like, you know, the situation in totalitarian countries where you have elections where 90% of the people or 99% of the people vote for the party in power because everybody is scared to do anything else.
GLENN: All right, Steve Milloy, the name it book is Green Hell. We'll talk again. Appreciate it. Bye bye.
Um Glenn Beck is a little crazy and, um, he works for Fox News. I'm not saying what theyre saying has no validity, but I'd look elsewhere than the media conglomerates for actual objectivity.
Oh, also, Merlin, all the planets in the solar system have been heating up since the seventies. The "Cooling" youre talking about is nonexistent... the debate is weather the warming is from humans or the sun. I'm pretty sure its from the Sun, and she's one big ball of fire, so we best prepare for some climate change whether we like it or not!
Glenn makes more sense than most politicos....and where else can you turn for real news....the Mainstream (aka "Obama") media? I used to do an experiment...at 6PM, remote in hand, I would successively switch from NBC, to CBS, to ABC.....they all covered the same stories, IN THE SAME ORDER, and with the SAME spin. That's when I realized how coordinated and controlled the "media" is....eventually reaching the conclusion that (for me) the media DOESN'T matter....it's just an outrageous and dangerous arm of the PTB. Since then, it has grown worse, much worse, IMO...I give Fox credit for raising serious questions that no one else is.
Oh, also, Merlin, all the planets in the solar system have been heating up since the seventies. The "Cooling" youre talking about is nonexistent... the debate is weather the warming is from humans or the sun. I'm pretty sure its from the Sun, and she's one big ball of fire, so we best prepare for some climate change whether we like it or not!
>>>> I'm hoping for global warming; think of all the plus's, but alas, the earth has been cooling since 1998. That's why they've dropped "global warming" as the hoax du jour. The climate changeologists are desperate to find a way into your wallet.....it's all about the money, Money. Besides, most thinking Americans realize that, which is why
the public is right to be skeptical. According to a Pew poll released in the days following Barack Obama's inauguration, Americans rank "dealing with global warming" dead last among 20 policy priorities for this administration--just 30 percent believe it should be a top priority, 8 percentage points less than two years ago, and well behind such concerns as strengthening the military (44 percent), defending the United States against terrorism (76 percent), and strengthening the economy (85 percent). The harder he pushes this baloney, the faster his politcal fall will be....perhaps even faster than the global average temperature. If he tries to stick cap n trade onto us he will find himself retired early at the ballot box.
Merlin:
1) Global warming is unambiguous and the science behind the warming trend is pretty much beyond reproach at this time. That global warming is happening is a certainty; the real question is whether or not it's important. I maintain that it's not.
2) Why do lefties push wind and solar as alternatives? There are many reasons. Both are truly renewable so long as the sun shines, whereas coal, oil, fission, and fusion have limited lifetimes and will only last as long as the natural resources do. Wind and solar will be functioning right up until the sun dies, barring other major changes to the solar system.
That said, lefties are simply mistaken about how easy it is to use those energy sources. Both are very low energy density, both are inconsistent and highly variable. Most lefties just don't realize how much energy is required, and the reliability that must go along with it.
In the short term, we should go with fission. In the medium term, we should go with space based solar as soon as it becomes feasible. In the long term, only space based solar will remain viable.
There's no need to posit a conspiracy of money grubbing companies to explain the push for wind and solar. Ordinary ignorance is more than sufficient.
In the short term, we should go with fission. In the medium term, we should go with space based solar as soon as it becomes feasible. In the long term, only space based solar will remain viable.
>>>> Thanks for the ongoing education I'm receiving. I have not understood why we haven't looked to fission when it's been so successful here and around the world (Exception: Chernobyl). In the last campaign, I recall McCain pushing the idea of creating
75 new nuclear plants to tide us over until we have more renewable resources. O'Blather, and his Democratic minions never mention it... any ideas about why that would be?
To Merlin and Soda,
I stated previously in my post that fission is the way to go for the short term and fusion is the way to go for the less than right away short term. There is no need to agonize over energy. Technology will supply us with limitless cheap energy within a few decades. Wasting resources trying to develop wind, solar, etc is just throwing money down the tubes. Neither of these sources have a ghosts chance of supplying a meaningful percentage of the nations consumption needs.
Global warming, to the extent it even exists, is almost solely attributable to natural causes. Man's contribution is miniscule. Even if man's contribution were significant the industrialized world can't change anything since the 3rd world will soon be contributing more CO2 than the industrialized world can possibly economize.
There is no oil shortage so don't waste time building tiny deathtrap obamamobiles. There is no shortage of oil. There is only a shortage of oil that can be produced for $25 or $30 per barrel. Once the price rises slightly and stays there the worlds reserves will increase manyfold as oil deposits that are currently not economically developable (for example the Bakken in Wyoming/N.Dakota/Canada) are brought into production.
Even if we were to run out of oil the US has an essentially infinite (say a couple of thousand year supply) of coal that can easily be chemically converted into Oil by a process called Liquifaction. The US can easily be self sufficient in energy if it just builds liquifaction plants and manufactures most of our oil from coal (as do the South Africans).
Remember, we only need to get through the next 20 or 30 years until economical commercial Fusion power becomes available. Once Fusion is on line the worlds production of CO2 will drop dramatically and nobody will care about CO2 anymore. So, spending trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 that won't change global warming anyway is simply a waste.
By far the best way to go is to vastly increase Fusion R&D and cut 10-15 years out of the timeline to commercially field the technology. If we just spent a few percent of the money we want to waste on ineffective pipedreams on Fusion R&D this problem will be solved.
Merlin: fission, and nuclear power in general, is a rabid-dog topic when it comes to the general public - anyone who touches it gets bitten and infected.
The general public is still deathly afraid of nuclear radiation. It doesn't have to make sense; that's just the way it is. This fear in the general public is easily whipped up into legal and other witch hunts, and these witch hunts have kept new nuclear power plants off the books for decades. Fear of ending their career prevents politicians from carrying the flag against popular opinion.
Things have only recently become sufficiently dire that more rational discourse can occur.
The general public is still deathly afraid of nuclear radiation. It doesn't have to make sense; that's just the way it is. This fear in the general public is easily whipped up into legal and other witch hunts
>>>> Who conducts these witch hunts?
>>>> Who instilled this irrational fear in the public?
I don't agree with "that's just the way it is"
because I think such attitudes were promoted
by someone whose agenda is behind the demonization of nuclear power. I think you meant it in the sense of ...it's a foregone
conclusion....so, I'm not picking on you; I just don't think we came to it based on the facts.
"All legitimate scientist are in agreement. Commercially viable Fusion Powered Electrical Generation is feasible and can be done on a massive scale." This is totally false.
Have you heard banks making loans to build them? They were willing to bet $42 Trillion on a massive amount of Real Estate but think this is too risky? Maybe, you should tell them. It would put people to work in some institutions.
South Dakota, Kansas and Texas, this three states together have enough wind power to supply ALL the electricity needed in the 48 States, according to an EPA study made in 1991 -and ignored by press and the oil companies, can you guess why?
My suggestion: Read more.