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Comment by RyEgswuCsn | Hacker News Reader

I feel that the issue at the moment is the more heat is being trapped due to a CO2-rich atmosphere rather than producing excessive heat. After all, the energy we produce is probably miniscule compared to the amount of energy Earth receives from the sun.

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That’s a good point.

But I still wonder what happens when we can cheaply generate orders of magnitude more energy. I don’t see how we would be stopped from causing problems with it.

If fusion is achieved I guess we can at least start to remove carbon from the atmosphere by spending generous amount of energy.

Though I do agree with you that once human mastered nuclear fusion, it will only be a matter of time before we have to start worrying about overheating our planet. A potentially Sci-Fi solution would be to build planet-scale radiators to disseminate the waste heat.

I am unfortunately also pessimistic about carbon sequestration. There is a game theory problem in that it only works if we get everybody on the same page for carbon targets. If I start spending energy to sequester carbon, I remove some pressure for others to limit carbon output.

We did fix the hole in the ozone-layer once, so there is that. But I agree, it won't be easy because generating energy from carbon sources is still going to be cheaper than building fusion plants for quite a while.

That being said, with today's social climate, I won't be surprised if countries race to do it just to boost their PR image; that would require some serious carbon-shaming though.

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