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One thing that has been on my mind lately is wondering if having easy fusion would be bad. I am 50. All my life, we have been told that workable fusion would e

One thing that has been on my mind lately is wondering if having easy fusion would be bad. I am 50. All my life, we have been told that workable fusion would end our energy problems. But now we have the climate crisis, which is a result of inhabitants of the planet not being responsible for externalities. If we all had cheap fusion reactors, wouldn't humanity just use a lot more energy, creating waste heat and dumping it into the atmosphere? I'm not convinced humans can be trusted with cheaper energy if it leads to more waste heat.

RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
I feel that the issue at the moment is the more heat is being trapped due to a CO2-rich atmosphere rather than producing excessive heat. After all, the energy we produce is probably miniscule compared to the amount of energy Earth receives from the sun.
- mcculley 5y ago
  That’s a good point. But I still wonder what happens when we can cheaply generate orders of magnitude more energy. I don’t see how we would be stopped from causing problems with it.
  - RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
    If fusion is achieved I guess we can at least start to remove carbon from the atmosphere by spending generous amount of energy. Though I do agree with you that once human mastered nuclear fusion, it will only be a matter of time before we have to start worrying about overheating our planet. A potentially Sci-Fi solution would be to build planet-scale radiators to disseminate the waste heat.
    - mcculley 5y ago
      I am unfortunately also pessimistic about carbon sequestration. There is a game theory problem in that it only works if we get everybody on the same page for carbon targets. If I start spending energy to sequester carbon, I remove some pressure for others to limit carbon output.
      - RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
        We did fix the hole in the ozone-layer once, so there is that. But I agree, it won't be easy because generating energy from carbon sources is still going to be cheaper than building fusion plants for quite a while. That being said, with today's social climate, I won't be surprised if countries race to do it just to boost their PR image; that would require some serious carbon-shaming though.

RyEgswuCsn 5y ago

I feel that the issue at the moment is the more heat is being trapped due to a CO2-rich atmosphere rather than producing excessive heat. After all, the energy we produce is probably miniscule compared to the amount of energy Earth receives from the sun.

mcculley 5y ago
That’s a good point. But I still wonder what happens when we can cheaply generate orders of magnitude more energy. I don’t see how we would be stopped from causing problems with it.
- RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
  If fusion is achieved I guess we can at least start to remove carbon from the atmosphere by spending generous amount of energy. Though I do agree with you that once human mastered nuclear fusion, it will only be a matter of time before we have to start worrying about overheating our planet. A potentially Sci-Fi solution would be to build planet-scale radiators to disseminate the waste heat.
  - mcculley 5y ago
    I am unfortunately also pessimistic about carbon sequestration. There is a game theory problem in that it only works if we get everybody on the same page for carbon targets. If I start spending energy to sequester carbon, I remove some pressure for others to limit carbon output.
    - RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
      We did fix the hole in the ozone-layer once, so there is that. But I agree, it won't be easy because generating energy from carbon sources is still going to be cheaper than building fusion plants for quite a while. That being said, with today's social climate, I won't be surprised if countries race to do it just to boost their PR image; that would require some serious carbon-shaming though.