Comment by willholloway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by willholloway | Hacker News Reader

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We can fix this, we can take the carbon out of the atmosphere [1]. There is reason for optimism. We. Are. Not. Doomed. The optimum level of carbon is probably slightly above pre-industrial levels. We definitely need to get back below 350ppm to keep human civilization... civilized.

400ppm+ is a trajectory to anarchy. The chimpanzee raiding impulse is alive and well in our DNA, a survival adaptation for stagnation and decline.

We have the technology, bio-energy with carbon capture and sequestration, its a scaling problem, but first we have to stop pumping so much carbon up into the air. We have made progress there as well:

1) Cheap Solar PV has arrived, growth has been exponential for two decades. [2]

2) Energy storage is possible. Think underground maglev trains, on circular tracks, working as massive flywheels.

3) Fusion is attainable in the time frame we need it in, if we increase research funding, but its not required. That said if we cracked fusion, we would have all the energy we would need to desalinate seawater and sequester carbon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics

>...Energy storage is possible.

Possible, but except for pumped hydro, it looks like still a lot of work needs to be done.

>...3) Fusion is attainable in the time frame we need it in, if we increase research funding, but its not required. That said if we cracked fusion, we would have all the energy we would need to desalinate seawater and sequester carbon.

I am not sure if fusion is attainable in the time frame needed or it would be economically viable in that timeframe. With fission we have working reactors right now and with a little more research effort we could soon have 4th generation reactors. With reactor designs like the integral fast reactor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor) there would be enough potential electrical generating capacity to last the world thousands of years. (Of course we should also keep investing in fusion research and energy storage.)

Breeder reactors like fast neutron reactor main advantage is less radioactive waste, there is enough of uranium in world to feed the old light water reactors for thousands of years too, but they produce lot of radioactive waste which could be used as fuel and inactivated in breeder reactors.

>Breeder reactors like fast neutron reactor main advantage is less radioactive waste,

Generally they will also have more passive safety features and in the case of something like the IFR, an even smaller chance of proliferation. Less nuclear waste might be the most important issue to most people though.

>... there is enough of uranium in world to feed the old light water reactors for thousands of years too

True, looks like I was really using the wrong units of time. Scientific American had an article where they estimated a 60,000 year supply at current rates. If we switched to the world using breeder reactors, probably more like hundreds of thousands or millions of years of fuel depending on the growth rate you use for consumption.

"The optimum level of carbon..."

Such a human thing to say.

Between that, and all the top comments as of writing this start out addressing how beautiful the data visualization is. That is why humans are doomed.

Mother nature is fine with or without us.

You're on the right track, but ditch fusion and flywheels. It'll be battery storage, wind, and solar:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/we-ve-almo...

And plain old demand shifting.

What's demand shifting?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response

Basically, instead of just relying on batteries, consumers of power can often also shift when they are going to consume the power. Spot markets and future markets can help here.

We already see that in industrial applications, where you can get power very cheaply, if you can tolerate arbitrary power cuts during peak hours.

Yup that's all true. But when the next president of the largest economy either doesn't believe in climate change or wants to increase fracking then we clearly have a long way to go before change happens.

Both party candidates believe in fracking. Not sure how we lower our CO levels while fracking is the new coal.

Coal releases far more carbon than natural gas.

> That said if we cracked fusion, we would have all the energy we would need to desalinate seawater and sequester carbon.

I've not heard this before. How does desalinating seawater help with sequestering carbon?

I think grandfather commenter is more worried about clean freshwater here. (A scarcity of clean freshwater might be one of the consequences of changing the climate and thus the water cycle.)

Why not just massive flywheels? What's the benefit of having a train go over tracks instead of having a large solid wheel?

Maybe bearing scale-up issues?

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