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Interesting fact: Nuclear fusion, even if we'll make it work, won't stop global warming, because the heat it creates heats up the earth enough to bring us outsi
by aquafox 3y ago
Interesting fact: Nuclear fusion, even if we'll make it work, won't stop global warming, because the heat it creates heats up the earth enough to bring us outside the Paris agreement: https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1605967891928596481 https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1605967891928596481
- aquafox 3y agoWhy the down votes? What is factually wrong with that statement?
- coolspot 3y agoDidn’t downvote you, but having unlimited energy source is worth it and can allow us to remove heat from earth. Human-caused CO2 alone contributes 2.1W/sqm while all current human energy production is 0.04W/sqm . Removing extra CO2 alone would offset 50x energy production growth. Then you can do things like placing reflective satellites between earth and sun.
- pfdietz 3y agoBecause the argument involves unlimited future growth in energy use. Compared to the current energy use, fusion (assuming it could be made to work practically) would indeed solve global warming.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoThe burning of 1 kg of coal heats the earth in two ways: A) the energy that is produced immediately (about 24MJ) B) the excess energy absorbed from the Sun over many subsequent years, caused by CO2 emitted burning that coal. The B is much larger than A. The fusion only produces A, but not B.
- constantcrying 3y agoThe threat of the earth heating up by 0.3 degrees due to energy production is irrelevant or at least absolutely worth it as a tradeoff for working fusion. The dangers of climate change is not that the earth heats up by some small amount, the earth can easily cope with that. It is that continued greenhouse gas emissons are causing a ever increasing heatup due to trapped solar energy. (It is also extremely strage that he argues for geothermal in his comments. Does he not realize what that is? Literally heating up the surface of the earth with energy from below.)
- slashdev 3y agoAssuming I trust the math, that’s plotting exponential growth in energy usage out for 80 years, and assuming a fully nuclear grid. Neither of those is likely. Lastly the Paris accord is a pipe dream that will never happen. A target to aim for, and miss. Nothing more.
- andbberger 3y agothis is a basic consequence of thermodynamics and true for all power generation. the only thing to be done to minimize waste heat is to to increase temperature of the hot side of the heat engine, with ie advanced fission reactors. and fusion never had any advantage over fission anyways, other than that people aren't scared of it yet.
- RivieraKid 3y agoOne immediately apparent flaw of this argument is the assumption of energy use growing by 10x over a century. But in developed countries, energy use per capita has been roughly stable for decades. The 2 main drivers of energy growth will weaken over time (population growth + countries becoming developed). Also, if energy use does increase by 10x, the solution is simple, build giant refrigerators powered by fusion energy to cool the atmosphere. (joke)
- MichaelZuo 3y agoI could see a plausible 10x growth if literally the entire world achieved within the ballpark of 2023 US levels of per capita wealth.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoI don't understand the conclusion. According to the article, we currently emit 2.1w/sqm in greenhouse gasses. If we had 10x energy and it was all fusion - it would be 0.4w/sqm. This sounds like a massive improvement. Additionally, I'm highly skeptical we'll be using 10x the energy in 100 years - when there's likely to be significantly less people, and everything is getting more efficient. Sounds like the same argument that China is going to continue growing 10% per year for the next hundred years, because it did for the last 30 years. No. China's workforce is going to decline massively. It will be so much harder for them to grow at the same rate, it would take a real miracle to keep growing at that rate.