3 ms·

Please explain how "accelerating the burning" is supposed to cause fusion and global scale solar to pop into existence.

• baq 4mo ago
  No idea, ask fusion scientists, they might have answers on what they need built a lot of and quickly and whatever it is it’ll take energy to do it. I wouldn’t mind shortening e.g. the Iran war by a couple of days and redirecting the funding from that to fusion research and battery buildout.
  • mindslight 4mo ago
    So you agree that fusion power generation is not at the state where it can be straightforwardly built today, and you also have no idea what it might actually take to even research it to possibly get it there, but yet you're still asserting that "accelerating the burning" will surely cause whatever needs to happen to happen? Have I got that right?
    • baq 4mo ago
      Yes, pretty much, except getting to working fusion is not guaranteed - but the climate disaster is, so we have to make a bet. Solar and batteries are the obvious fallback plan. Nuclear should also be, but it’s a hard sell.
      • mindslight 4mo ago
        We seem to agree that there is a major resource allocation problem here ("shortening ... the Iran war by a couple of days"), but you still haven't explained how oil becoming scarce will cause breakthroughs in nuclear fusion to occur. I might accept the argument if it were just about solar (which mostly needs straightforward deployment). But nuclear fusion research requires spending large amounts of resources without any kind of guaranteed payout, so I would think it would only be hindered by energy becoming more expensive.
        • baq 4mo ago
          I'm not saying it will, I explicitly said it's a bet I think we should make. Your argument that it's only going to be more expensive going forward is something I agree with and indeed extra motivation to take the bet.