A massive nuclear fusion experiment just hit a major milestone, potentially putting us a little closer to a future of limitless clean energy.
A massive nuclear fusion experiment just hit a major milestone, potentially putting us a little closer to a future of limitless clean energy.
It’s not limitless clean energy. It’s awesome, but technically it still uses water and turbines to turn the heat to electricity. In a world with vastly more electric demand this will eventually lead to global warming as well, because a lot of the heat is released into the environment.
That’s on a totally different scale though ;)
Do you have a source on the claim that nuclear fusion will lead to global warming? I did a very cursory search and I’ve found articles that talk about how the technology is being exaggerated but all the ones I’ve seen said that it does not contribute to global warming.
Sabine Hossenfedler did a video on the topic: https://youtu.be/9vRtA7STvH4?si=y4_KuLbd1DzKmIX8 Basically, it is an issue humanity will likely have to solve eventually, but nowhere near as pressing as our current problems.
If waste heat becomes a problem then we have been wildly successful beyond our most optimistic hopes. Signs point to that future being an utter fantasy. It’s squarely in the “good problems” category. I wish we could just choose between another order of magnitude increase in industrial output and increasing the temperature of the planet by a few degrees
I’ve seen her videos before and they’re fantastic. I hadn’t seen this one yet obviously. What I took away from this is for right now CO2 is the immediate threat but waste heat will be a problem at some point. If a doctor had a patient with cancer and a bullet wound. He or she will treat the bullet wound before ordering a round of chemo. If I can get all star treky, it sounds like some kind of perfect Maxwell’s demon might be the holy Grail in converting waste heat into free energy. Regardless though the immediate concern should be reducing CO2.
Just be careful. She’s known as a bit of a crank. Physics is happy to accept curmudgeons, but remember that there are more professional, experienced opinions than her’s alone.
For ex, you’ll see she has a video on trans people with some… specious conclusions.
I’ve personally seen little evidence of her being a crank. I’ve seen many claims and they mostly tie to her running a sort of consultation company, but no evidence of her or her firm promoting objectionable ideas. Sure she might oversimplify some topics, particularly economics and sociology. But I think her main critique in the trans video holds up… a lot of the research is poor quality and while not directly the fault of the researchers (although many of them do promote it) it is used to support hypotheses that were never tested.
I understand. Just keep an open mind, even negative people are usually trying to contribute in a positive way the only way they know how.
He’s assuming that making energy cheap and abundant will drive up demand as we find other uses
Historically this has been true but I’m not convinced. We’ve definitely entered an era where efficiency and low energy are important, and I think that trend will continue
More people will need AC, but AC is becoming much more efficient. The entire fossil fuel supply will be transitioned to electrical …… damn, maybe he’s right. I started thinking in terms of how I used electricity, as an American, and I believe it’s generally plateaued, but consider the vast majority of the globe does not yet live like an American and may want to ….
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Yeah at the scale of a Type I civilization probably one that is close to Type II. No reason to worry about it now. And even so we already have tech that can radiate heat into space without it heating the surrounding air.
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