The Environment

Posted by Admin on Jul 14, 2006 at 07:05 PM
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The environmental impacts of fusion

• Global Warming
• Desertification, Desalinization
 
• The Economy

This page is under construction. Eventually, we hope to summarize the environmental impacts of different sources of Energy. This includes global warming, air pollution, the dangers of coal mining (e.g., a couple thousand people die each year working in Chinese coal mines),the land use impact of mining operations, oil spills, oil wars, nuclear power plant melt-downs and radioactive waste disposal, threatened animal habitat from mining and hydropower, the impact on rivers and deltas from hydropower, and more! The cost of renewables also needs to be taken into account. This includes the materials needed for solar panels and their recycling issues, the not-in-my-back yard issues with wind power and so on.

We want to paint a clear picture of environmental impacts from current energy sources to help people visualize how the removal of those stress factors will change daily life in the environment.

Here are some notes on Global Warming (under construction)

• Burning Fossil Fuels has been linked to Global Warming
 
• Itemize global greenhouse gasses from various sources - a nice graph or pie chart here.
• Summarize what the Kyoto Protocol seeks to accomplish in terms of emission reduction (because later we’re going to compare how many of the kyoto goals can be met by switching to fusion.)
 
• List the estimated cost to the economy and prolonging of poverty that critics say would result from the Kyoto approach
• True to our “skeptic friendly” approach, include links to people who dispute that global warming is even a problem.
 
• Point out that this controversy causes a lot of stress and ill-will between people, those who are afraid of global warming and feel they have to do something to save the world from it, and those who feel this first set of people is just using anything as an excuse to kill the economy - commie greenies! (or whatever)
• Focus Fusion to the rescue -Renders the argument moot, and by simply switching energy sources, reduces greenhouse effect better than (ideally) kyoto (need a nice Chart here comparing focus fusion to Kyoto.)

the impact that freeing up energy would have in other environmental issues seperate from direct environmental impacts.

• Irrigation? Desalinization? Hydroponic skyscrapers? What is on the wish list of things that the environment needs that could be facilitated with much cheaper/more secure energy supplies?
 
• On a related note, the environmentalists have me worried with this global warming thing, and not even Bjorn Lomborg can soothe this fear.
 
• Because if they are right and the temperature is already too high, it seems to me that it is already too late to do anything and the planet is going to be seriously unstable as far as weather and climate are concernede.
• So my next “speculation/future” interest is in terraforming, mitigating global changes, playing with the micro-climate, and perhaps an unlimited supply of energy as provided by fusion could help out in that department.