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I'd actually say that delivering one large power station per week is a fairly unambitious goal, and that if the will were there, globally, dozens of plants coul

I'd actually say that delivering one large power station per week is a fairly unambitious goal, and that if the will were there, globally, dozens of plants could be onlined per day. That said, uranium is a finite resource, and even if we built all of these plants we'd be looking at peak uranium in the not too distant future. Therefore, either we go for thorium, which is looking increasingly promising, or as you say we consider geoengineering. Even if we stop burning fossil fuels, another problem remains, which is thermodynamics - the waste heat from our energy use has to go somewhere, and right now the only place it can go is into the earth, or into space - and we're not doing much of either, other than inadvertently. If we keep up current rates of energy growth, we'll cook ourselves before too long regardless of what source the power comes from.

ScottBurson 11y ago
Even if we stop burning fossil fuels, another problem remains, which is thermodynamics - the waste heat from our energy use has to go somewhere, and right now the only place it can go is into the earth, or into space - and we're not doing much of either, other than inadvertently. If we keep up current rates of energy growth, we'll cook ourselves before too long regardless of what source the power comes from. Not remotely true. The amount of solar energy that falls on the Earth and is not immediately reflected is 120PW (petaWatts), or 120,000TW. The total amount of energy being used by humans is about 15TW. So the heat we're generating changes the Earth's energy balance by a little more than .01%. (Numbers from Morton's book.) Essentially all of that 120PW is also being radiated away as infrared from the night side of the Earth.
fleitz 11y ago
Everything is a finite resource, the sun isn't going to last forever either.

ScottBurson 11y ago

Even if we stop burning fossil fuels, another problem remains, which is thermodynamics - the waste heat from our energy use has to go somewhere, and right now the only place it can go is into the earth, or into space - and we're not doing much of either, other than inadvertently. If we keep up current rates of energy growth, we'll cook ourselves before too long regardless of what source the power comes from. Not remotely true. The amount of solar energy that falls on the Earth and is not immediately reflected is 120PW (petaWatts), or 120,000TW. The total amount of energy being used by humans is about 15TW. So the heat we're generating changes the Earth's energy balance by a little more than .01%. (Numbers from Morton's book.) Essentially all of that 120PW is also being radiated away as infrared from the night side of the Earth.

fleitz 11y ago

Everything is a finite resource, the sun isn't going to last forever either.