It Will Never End

I guess I should out myself politically.

I'm a big friend of the coal, and oil, and natural gas industries.

I like to drive my car, keep cool in summer, and warm in the winter. As long as I am a fan of those results I intend to support those who bring me such results.

It is probably a personal failing on my part.

However, for other reasons (there are limits on the supplies - not immediate or even decadal, but for sure limited if we expect another 10,000 years of high energy civilization) I am working on a very interesting fusion reactor:

IEC Fusion Technology blog

If it works (I'm about 90% confident) carbon caps and all the rest will be unnecessary. The migration will be relatively swift due to the low cost. However, our civilization already produces about 1/5,000th as much as energy as we receive from the sun. i.e about 1/10th to 1/5th as much as the warmists claim is changing our climate. Such an energy source could cause complaints about it overheating the planet. i.e. we trade CO2 for actual energy output. This will be especially true if the third world raises its energy use levels to current first world rates which would imply a total human energy use level of 3X to 10X current levels.

So I don't expect the politics to ever end.

Oh, yes. Because of its high specific energy output such a reactor would be ideal for reducing the cost of space travel by a factor of 10X to 100X. Then the "it was perfect before humans arrived" folks will complain about the alteration of the Martian climate. Or mining asteroids will alter the gravitational balance of the solar system. There will always be something.

Inspired by a discussion at Climate Audit