Stabilizing Climate Change and Keeping Oil in the Ground
WorldChanging Team, 14 Apr 10
Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
New Study Shows that a 70 Percent Cut in CO2 Could Stabilize Climate
Last year scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo reported that to stabilize the climate and avoid catastrophe, we will need to cut carbon emissions by a minimum of 70 percent. That level of reduction would stabilize atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at about 450 parts per million...
2008
Success is Winding Up with Oil in the Ground
Carey King, PhD, of the University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology, asks us: "Will we always be more capable in the future?" His answer leads to an examination of what a successful energy future might look like...
2005
Biodiversity Farming and Restoration for Profit
Alex Steffen looks at "mitigation banking" for fairy shrimp and suspects that we are seeing a glimpse of the future. That future? Biodiversity farming and ecosystem restoration for profit...
Other recent "look backs":
April 9
April 12
April 13
Here is a way to increase our energy supply without generating carbon emissions and highly radio-active waste.
www.fusionpowercorporation.com
It can be on line in ten years ... 35GWe!
Hal
Twelve Fascinating Little Known
Facts about the Use of Fusion Energy
to Generate Electricity
… the “Holy Grail” of clean green energy supplies.
1. Fusion has no carbon emissions. It is CLEAN - GREEN
energy. It is not a finite fossil fuel.
2. Fusion electricity can cost less per kW than Coal.
3. Fusion’s fuel supply is virtually unlimited.
4. Fusion energy can be harnessed in ways that create
little or NO highly radioactive waste.
5. Fusion energy development will create a new industry.
6. Fusion energy development will create hundreds of
thousands of new jobs.
7. Fusion energy development can restore America’s
position of world leadership.
8. Fusion energy sources can provide the nation with real
energy security … not just political rhetoric.
9. Fusion energy is supportive of nonproliferation.
10. Use of Fusion energy can improve the global standard
of living and the quality of life.
11. Fusion energy generation can fuel the nation’s and the
world’s economic recovery.
12. Fusion power generation can use currently known
technology - all vetted in the 1990’s and be on line by 2020.
Bonus Facts -
Fusion energy does not cost too much.
Energy paradigms take 30/40 years to change, that folks is 2050!
We must start now to meet the world’s future energy needs.
Fusion Power Corporation ©2010
Posted by: Hal Helsley on 14 Apr 10
The problem with fusion power is that it has been going to be 'available in ten years' for the last fifty.
Mind you, the same can be said of wind and solar power (at least, at commercially significant scales)!
Things do progress but, meantime, I think I will keep breathing.
Posted by: Tony Fisk on 14 Apr 10
Some people have been worried about fossil fuels running out "soon" for well over 100 years, and been wrong for almost all of that time. Does that mean we'll never run out?
Of course not.
Nor does overestimating fusion progress (mostly through overestimating how much funding would be available) in the past mean that we haven't reached that point now.
Also, the earliest serious predictions I've seen were saying "Fusion in 50 years" in the late 1950s. So if this Fusion Power Corporation gets heavy-ion fusion to work, or Lawrenceville Plasma LLC pulls a focus-fusion rabbit out of its hat, or EMC2 Inc's polywell fusor scales up as well as they expect it to, or General Fusion Corporation's steampunk reactor works... they were right! (you call it to within a decade, and you're right.) The diversity of approaches and breadth of interest in this technology is higher than it has ever been, and more than anything that gives me hope SOMETHING will work out.
I'm not saying we should count on unproven technologies to get us magically out of this mess-- and even with fusion, we have a lot of work to do to move towards a sustainable future-- but, hey. With the headlines talking about oil shocks by 2015, we need something to give us hope.
Posted by: Tyler August on 15 Apr 10
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