5 ms·

It looks bleak. There are fewer and fewer options remaining. Carbon sequestration at the source of emissions could reduce some CO2 from big fossil fuel power st

by titzer 5y ago

It looks bleak. There are fewer and fewer options remaining. Carbon sequestration at the source of emissions could reduce some CO2 from big fossil fuel power stations, but won't fix vehicles. We need a miracle technology that can actually extract CO2 from the air. Planting 1 trillion trees might help, but we won't do it.

pier25 5y ago
Fusion could be the miracle we need to kickstart strong negative emissions.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  We've been trying to get design effective fusion reactors for what, like 50 years now? I wouldn't put much stock in that option.
  - elevaet 5y ago
    Just need another 20 years!
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Fusion research hasn’t ever been funded well enough to hit the various timelines. If people fund it, or if computing power gets cheap enough to solve the remaining research problems in-silico rather than with a demo reactor, we could plausibly get it in 5-10 years. But I agree with @gnfargbl, we should use the naturally occurring one that we orbit.
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      The issue is a lack of designs with promising commercial application. The world has dumped plenty of money into fusion design research since the 50s but only very recently created a design that could actually generate more power than it consumes containing the plasma field. The current most effective designs output 1.25w for every watt of input. And only at a very small scale. It's great that we can finally produce net energy from fusion. But let's not get ahead ourselves here. The issue is not funding, it's lack of brain power. Fusion is an insanely difficult nut to crack and trillions of dollars won't do crack it alone.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        This funding graph suggests lack of money is a key limit: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fu... I had similar discussions ten years ago with a Cambridge PhD in this field, who was of the opinion that the money spent on Iraq War would have been more than enough to resolve all known fusion reactor related questions (he explicitly did not say the result would be a working reactor).
        mywittyname 5y ago
        ITER is set to come online in the next couple of years with a price tag of around $50,000,000,000 !!!! And it will spend 20 or so years testing various fuels. China is building their own tokamak reactor to compete with ITER. I can't find cost figures, but presumably costs are roughly the same, considering the same size and is intended to "compliment" ITER. These are still merely "test" reactors. They are experiments that may provide some enough data in 10-20 years such that another, even larger and more expensive test reactor may be constructed. Assuming ITER runs until 2045 and a replacement is started on in 2040. With 10 years of construction time, and 20 more years of testing, that means the next generation is set to complete testing in 2070. And hopefully the results of that generation will give us an idea of how to build a commercially viable fusion reactor. All the funding in the world isn't going to change the fact that testing is a long-drawn out process, and that it must be performed in a somewhat linear fashion. The results of the previous experiments inform the next generation. And we are still a few generations away from commercial viability. I do want to point out that I'm a strong advocate for fusion research. I just don't see it as a viable solution to global warming, regardless of how much we fund it, because we don't even know what a commercially viable reactor even looks like yet, much less be able to scale the technology out to the point that it will put a dent in CO2 emissions.
        ben_w 5y ago
        $50bn looks (eyeballing it) like less than the area under the graph labelled “moderate”. You and I both agree fusion isn’t likely to be the solution to global warming, but I do think it could be if people wanted it to be. (I also think nobody with the money to spend really cares that much about fusion, and that PV is so absurdly cheap this is unlikely to change).
  - elihu 5y ago
    There's been a lot of interesting progress recently using high-temperature superconductors that weren't available when ITER was being designed. This should make fusion a lot more attainable and practically useful. That said, I don't think we should count on fusion to get us out of this when renewables are a good-enough solution that's available now and they're cheap. (If storage is an issue, perhaps that means we should be investing in long-distance transmission lines so we can, for instance, power North America at night using solar panels in the Sahara.)
- throwaway5752 5y ago
  Usable fusion doesn't exist today and the problem is immediate, it is that simple. We are at the point of solving it with what we have, not helplessly waiting for a deus ex machina.
- gnfargbl 5y ago
  We already have a huge gravitationally confined fusion reactor on tap. We need to get much better at using the energy it provides us, and quickly.
- adrianN 5y ago
  There is no reason to believe that fusion will be a particularly cheap source of power.
- tarsinge 5y ago
  Why wait for fusion when we could use fission, a decade old proven technology with risks dwarfed by the problem at stake?
  - Teknoman117 5y ago
    a decade? Try a half century. Everyone (especially the environmental activists) need to come to the realization that we've long passed the point where we have the luxury of being picky over what we replace our fossil fuel (carbon emitting) energy sources with. While everyone has been arguing about hydroelectric versus nuclear fission versus truly renewable sources versus "just wait for fusion", the energy consumption of humanity has been exponentially growing and satisfying that desire primarily with carbon emitting sources of power. All options need to be on the table. Mandate solar panels on roofs, mandate battery storage in homes, build utility scale PV and solar thermal plants where it makes sense, build wind farms where it makes sense, get over our fear of fission and build many small, yet passively safe nuclear fission plants and the necessary fuel recycling facilities to reduce the need for spent fuel storage. Tell anyone who thinks that renewable power sources look ugly to shove it. Rather than focusing our collective energies on developing more energy generation tech, pivot to figuring out how to sink carbon we've already emitted and use existing generation solutions until the problem is controlled. Then start looking at the future again and offline whatever is obsoleted.
melling 5y ago
We keep coming up with crazy ideas to address climate change instead of going after the big problems I wrote a blog about it a couple years ago. Basically, we needed to stop using coal years ago http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-climate-change/ http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-c... Google tried to make renewable land cheaper than coal in 2007 https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2014/11/30/why-google-stopped-trying-to-make-renewable-energy-cheaper-than-coal/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2014/11/30/why-... We could have bought ourselves another decade by dealing with coal sooner
- giantg2 5y ago
  Even if we eliminate coal, there's still too many people and too much consumption.
  - melling 5y ago
    The idea was to buy another decade or so to let technology advance, etc Coal is extremely bad for CO2 emissions, and we already have options
    - giantg2 5y ago
      I think it's a little late to be able to buy that kind of time. Maybe if that was implemented a decade ago. It seems many of the options are still small scale experiments or face energy storage issues... or have social issues like nuclear.
      - melling 5y ago
        Yes, a decade from now, we'll need an even bigger miracle.
ansible 5y ago
Yes, it is bleak. We'll be talking about nuking a volcano at some point, just to cut down the sunlight falling on the Earth.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  At this time, albedo modification is not politically correct, because it would still work whether human action is the main driver of global warming or not.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by titzer 5y ago

pier25 5y ago

Fusion could be the miracle we need to kickstart strong negative emissions.

mywittyname 5y ago
We've been trying to get design effective fusion reactors for what, like 50 years now? I wouldn't put much stock in that option.
- elevaet 5y ago
  Just need another 20 years!
- ben_w 5y ago
  Fusion research hasn’t ever been funded well enough to hit the various timelines. If people fund it, or if computing power gets cheap enough to solve the remaining research problems in-silico rather than with a demo reactor, we could plausibly get it in 5-10 years. But I agree with @gnfargbl, we should use the naturally occurring one that we orbit.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    The issue is a lack of designs with promising commercial application. The world has dumped plenty of money into fusion design research since the 50s but only very recently created a design that could actually generate more power than it consumes containing the plasma field. The current most effective designs output 1.25w for every watt of input. And only at a very small scale. It's great that we can finally produce net energy from fusion. But let's not get ahead ourselves here. The issue is not funding, it's lack of brain power. Fusion is an insanely difficult nut to crack and trillions of dollars won't do crack it alone.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      This funding graph suggests lack of money is a key limit: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fu... I had similar discussions ten years ago with a Cambridge PhD in this field, who was of the opinion that the money spent on Iraq War would have been more than enough to resolve all known fusion reactor related questions (he explicitly did not say the result would be a working reactor).
      - mywittyname 5y ago
        ITER is set to come online in the next couple of years with a price tag of around $50,000,000,000 !!!! And it will spend 20 or so years testing various fuels. China is building their own tokamak reactor to compete with ITER. I can't find cost figures, but presumably costs are roughly the same, considering the same size and is intended to "compliment" ITER. These are still merely "test" reactors. They are experiments that may provide some enough data in 10-20 years such that another, even larger and more expensive test reactor may be constructed. Assuming ITER runs until 2045 and a replacement is started on in 2040. With 10 years of construction time, and 20 more years of testing, that means the next generation is set to complete testing in 2070. And hopefully the results of that generation will give us an idea of how to build a commercially viable fusion reactor. All the funding in the world isn't going to change the fact that testing is a long-drawn out process, and that it must be performed in a somewhat linear fashion. The results of the previous experiments inform the next generation. And we are still a few generations away from commercial viability. I do want to point out that I'm a strong advocate for fusion research. I just don't see it as a viable solution to global warming, regardless of how much we fund it, because we don't even know what a commercially viable reactor even looks like yet, much less be able to scale the technology out to the point that it will put a dent in CO2 emissions.
        ben_w 5y ago
        $50bn looks (eyeballing it) like less than the area under the graph labelled “moderate”. You and I both agree fusion isn’t likely to be the solution to global warming, but I do think it could be if people wanted it to be. (I also think nobody with the money to spend really cares that much about fusion, and that PV is so absurdly cheap this is unlikely to change).
- elihu 5y ago
  There's been a lot of interesting progress recently using high-temperature superconductors that weren't available when ITER was being designed. This should make fusion a lot more attainable and practically useful. That said, I don't think we should count on fusion to get us out of this when renewables are a good-enough solution that's available now and they're cheap. (If storage is an issue, perhaps that means we should be investing in long-distance transmission lines so we can, for instance, power North America at night using solar panels in the Sahara.)
throwaway5752 5y ago
Usable fusion doesn't exist today and the problem is immediate, it is that simple. We are at the point of solving it with what we have, not helplessly waiting for a deus ex machina.
gnfargbl 5y ago
We already have a huge gravitationally confined fusion reactor on tap. We need to get much better at using the energy it provides us, and quickly.
adrianN 5y ago
There is no reason to believe that fusion will be a particularly cheap source of power.
tarsinge 5y ago
Why wait for fusion when we could use fission, a decade old proven technology with risks dwarfed by the problem at stake?
- Teknoman117 5y ago
  a decade? Try a half century. Everyone (especially the environmental activists) need to come to the realization that we've long passed the point where we have the luxury of being picky over what we replace our fossil fuel (carbon emitting) energy sources with. While everyone has been arguing about hydroelectric versus nuclear fission versus truly renewable sources versus "just wait for fusion", the energy consumption of humanity has been exponentially growing and satisfying that desire primarily with carbon emitting sources of power. All options need to be on the table. Mandate solar panels on roofs, mandate battery storage in homes, build utility scale PV and solar thermal plants where it makes sense, build wind farms where it makes sense, get over our fear of fission and build many small, yet passively safe nuclear fission plants and the necessary fuel recycling facilities to reduce the need for spent fuel storage. Tell anyone who thinks that renewable power sources look ugly to shove it. Rather than focusing our collective energies on developing more energy generation tech, pivot to figuring out how to sink carbon we've already emitted and use existing generation solutions until the problem is controlled. Then start looking at the future again and offline whatever is obsoleted.

melling 5y ago

We keep coming up with crazy ideas to address climate change instead of going after the big problems I wrote a blog about it a couple years ago. Basically, we needed to stop using coal years ago http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-climate-change/ http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-c... Google tried to make renewable land cheaper than coal in 2007 https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2014/11/30/why-google-stopped-trying-to-make-renewable-energy-cheaper-than-coal/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2014/11/30/why-... We could have bought ourselves another decade by dealing with coal sooner

giantg2 5y ago
Even if we eliminate coal, there's still too many people and too much consumption.
- melling 5y ago
  The idea was to buy another decade or so to let technology advance, etc Coal is extremely bad for CO2 emissions, and we already have options
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I think it's a little late to be able to buy that kind of time. Maybe if that was implemented a decade ago. It seems many of the options are still small scale experiments or face energy storage issues... or have social issues like nuclear.
    - melling 5y ago
      Yes, a decade from now, we'll need an even bigger miracle.

ansible 5y ago

Yes, it is bleak. We'll be talking about nuking a volcano at some point, just to cut down the sunlight falling on the Earth.

jessaustin 5y ago
At this time, albedo modification is not politically correct, because it would still work whether human action is the main driver of global warming or not.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]