There was an interesting trio of articles in the Wall Street Journal this week with seemingly conflicting messages.
Hold the Nuclear Fusion Hype
Headline Number One: Hold the Nuclear Fusion Hype
The breakthrough is exciting but its practical use as an energy source may be decades away.
What the experiment proved is that scientists can recreate the physical reactions in stars. But scaling the technology and making it commercially viable by most scientists’ accounts will likely take another few decades.
How Fusion Works and Why It’s a Breakthrough
Headline Number Two: How Fusion Works and Why It’s a Breakthrough
The Energy Department has announced the first gain in energy from fusion in a laboratory—the first time fusion reactions produced more energy than it took to induce them. Last week 192 laser beams at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility heated and compressed a capsule of hydrogen to previously unattainable temperatures and pressures, igniting fusion reactions that produced 50% more energy than the laser beams had delivered.
Nuclear-Fusion Breakthrough Accelerates Quest to Unlock Limitless Energy Source
This is the third headline and the article has the most details. The link below is a a free link. The article merits a close look and has some very interesting diagrams.
Headline Number Three: Nuclear-Fusion Breakthrough Accelerates Quest to Unlock Limitless Energy Source
Experiment yields net-positive energy, a milestone in effort to develop nuclear fusion as a source of clean power.
Researchers said that shortly after 1 a.m. last Monday, they fired the largest laser in the world into a tiny cylinder holding a diamond capsule containing hydrogen isotopes. For a brief moment, the laser delivered energy that exceeds the entire U.S. power grid, in an attempt to compress the capsule’s fuel to reach densities, temperatures and pressures that are higher than the center of the sun. In the moments after the shot, the researchers weren’t sure what had happened.
“The shot goes off. It takes only a few billionths of a second, and so we need an exquisite suite of diagnostics to measure what happened,” said Alex Zylstra, the principal experimentalist on the project. “And as the data started to come in, we saw the first indications that we had produced more fusion energy than the laser input.”
It is premature to talk about building fusion power plants, said Gianluca Sarri, a professor of physics at Queen’s University Belfast who wasn’t involved in the new research. “There are technical issues that need to be solved still before it becomes an energy source,” he added.
“We are still not gaining electrical energy” Dr. Sarri said.
The lasers at the National Ignition Facility are less than 1% efficient, according to Jonathan Davies, a senior scientist at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. The facility used hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the laser light needed to produce about 3 megajoules of fusion energy.
Same Thing, Different Lead Message
All three articles say the same thing inside, but the initial message looks vastly different.
- Hold the Hype
- Fusion Breakthrough
- Limitless Energy Source
The articles and headlines are accurate. They don’t really conflict, they just provide a different initial message.
The details in the third article show the problems ahead. Scientists were successful but it took hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the laser light needed to produce about 3 megajoules of fusion energy.
Yet, I find it fascinating that scientists were able to produce temperatures as hot as the sun without anything melting or blowing up.
The extreme temperatures and pressures—similar to those in the cores of stars and giant planets and in exploding nuclear weapons—triggered a fusion reaction. The hydrogen atoms combined to form helium, releasing a tremendous amount of energy at the same time. The Dec. 5 fusion reaction produced 3.15 megajoules of energy, a gain of about 1.5 times.
Pomp of Activists and Politicians
This weekend AOC’s climate change documentary earned only $80 per theater despite rave critic reviews.
OutKick reports AOC’s Clime Change Documentary Fails Hard
Film critics say the film titled “To the End” is splendid. It holds a 88% “fresh” critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. The doc has not yet generated an average rating from the audience.
But despite critics raving about AOC’s beauty and intelligence, moviegoers have shown no such interest in the film.
The documentary earned an average of just $81 per theater during its debut weekend. “To the End” sits atop no lists of box office successes.
A failure this great falls on par with the embarrassment that is Jemele Hill’s book sales. Per publishing data, Hill’s new self-purported journey in overcoming racism has sold just $5,034 copies after a month.
AOC, Hill, racial hysteria, and climate change propaganda play well on social media. The press loves those women and their “issues.” Yet most of the country does not care.
There’s minimal demand to buy a ticket to watch rich, privileged women stroll around and screech about climate change.
Totally Boring Trailer
If that’s not overwhelmingly boring, what is?
The hype is constant and has been consistently wrong. The word did not end in the 10 years after which activists said it would.
The world will still be here in 2050.
UN Seeks $4 to 6 Trillion Per Year to Address Climate
On October 29, I noted UN Seeks $4 to 6 Trillion Per Year to Address Climate
Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. A rise of 1C to date has caused climate disasters in countries from Pakistan to Puerto Rico.
What Would It Cost?
Hooray! Only $4 trillion to 6 trillion per year.
“A global transformation from a heavily fossil fuel- and unsustainable land use-dependent economy to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investments of at least US$4–6 trillion a year,” stated the UN report (page 26 of 132).
Q: US$4–6 trillion a year for how many years?
A: Based on figure ES.6 (lead chart) least eight years.
Q: What Percent of GDP?
A: 4 to 9 percent for developing countries, and 2 to 4 percent for developed countries.
And developing countries will gladly fork over up to 9 percent of GDP every year for eight years.
Yeah, right.
Meanwhile, the EU is burning more trees and coal. Burning trees is magically deemed environmentally neutral.
What a hoot.
Exploring the Massive Clean Energy Boondoggle of Burning Trees as Carbon Neutral
Please consider Exploring the Massive Clean Energy Boondoggle of Burning Trees as Carbon Neutral
To the shock of everyone with any semblance of common sense, we are clearcutting forests and burning the trees based on the idea the process is carbon neutral.
Meanwhile, President Biden is sucking up to Venezuela so that it will pump more oil. Note that Venezuela’s oil is sour, loaded with sulphur.
For details, please see President Biden Makes Oil Overtures to Venezuelan Dictator Nicolás Maduro
Hypocrisy, You Bet
https://twitter.com/LynneMcCarthy/status/1594226829673611264
President Biden, the UN, and the Climate Lobby Seek to Spread More Fossil Fuel Misery
Also consider President Biden, the UN, and the Climate Lobby Seek to Spread More Fossil Fuel Misery
Team Biden in Action
On November 12, president Biden’s climate ambassador, John Kerry, made this statement:
“It’s a well-known fact that the United States and many other countries will not establish…some sort of legal structure that is tied to compensation or liability. That’s just not happening.”
Guess What Happened
In case you are wondering about the Secretary-General’s statement regarding a loss and damage fund, John Kerry signed up for it at the conference.
What about solar energy roof tiles?
I am glad you asked. President Biden is more concerned over a couple hundred manufacturing than promoting solar energy. Tariffs have driven up the costs that few want to install the roof tiles.
Where we will get the metals for batteries and how we get clean energy from the desert to Chicago cheaply are both mysteries. The attempt adds to inflation.
And China is going gangbusters building coal-powered electricity plants.
Reparations, bribes, inept tariff policies, sucking up to Venezuela, and mandating policies that are not close to being ready are all part of the Biden-AOC-Warren packages.
Hype or not, fusion is a far better bet on fixing the problem than the misguided stupidity of politicians and activists.
This post originated at MishTalk.Com
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Mish
“If there is a climate problem, science will find the answer, not politicians or activists.”
I find this statement odd.
First : Scientists are already telling us there “IS” a climate problem. There is no “IF”. And you seem to put a lot of faith in science to solve this problem, yet you don’t seem to have faith in science when it tells you that the problem even exists. How do you reconcile that?
Second: Scientists have been working on the many climate problems and answers for decades. But there is no single “answer”. There are literally many thousands of answers that science is working on. And almost all these answers are going to cost a lot. In fact, they cost so much, that most people, including you Mish (and me), balk at these costs, because we don’t want to pay them.
Third: Scientists can tell us what the problems are, and they can tell us what the solutions are, but they are powerless to get us to pay attention to them, or to act. Currently, some decision makers in the world are completely ignoring the scientists. Other decision makers are listening, and paying lip service to scientists, but not really acting much on the proposed solutions. Scientists are NOT the ones who will solve the problem, because they have no power to do so. All they can do is keep working on their scientific research that helps to identify the problems and identify the solutions. It will take a lot of spending by governments and companies to actually implement these solutions.
Net result: Due to our continued inaction, I expect the climate problem to keep getting worse until the costs to the world’s economies far exceeds the costs of fixing the problem.
Lol! You think China deliberately released covid?
And finally: The demand for energy is still growing worldwide. And since we are not yet building enough renewable energy to satisfy this increasing demand, that means we will need more fossil fuels, including oil and gas, for many years to come. Yet oil and gas companies have not been making the necessary investments for almost a decade now that would provide the needed future supply. Which means that long term upward pressure on oil and gas prices will continue as we move through the rest of this decade.
Which is why I remain heavily invested in oil and gas companies.
Since the USA is rapidly regrowing more forests than it cuts down every year because of the financial incentives to grow forests and harvest them, trees in the USA is absolutely carbon neutral. IN fact, they are more than carbon neutral, they are absorbing more carbon than is burned. WIth trees at least, capitalism is helping the problem of atmospheric carbon.
I go into my backyard, break some trees apart with an axe, and load them into my fireplace. Completely oil free wood. I don’t even use a chainsaw much, just get them for free.
Currently, my county takes all wood byproducts from tree service companies, and runs them into an energy hog wood chipper and tosses them in the forest. They are going to produce carbon no matter what. By turning that wood into firewood, you are actually preventing the use of oil to heat homes that otherwise would be used.
Yes, if you pelletize the wood and ship it across the world it’s not carbon nuetral, but that’s not what most people do with wood. Wood absolutely can be carbon neutral, and the way MOST people use wood, it truly is carbon neutral
Wood as a fuel source will absolutely be carbon neutral if managed correctly. You aren’t going to save money on your fuel costs using pelletized wood and there are actually very very few people that do that. Using the rare use of wood and making a case that that’s what everyone does is a logical fallacy.
People who burn wood that would otherwise be wasted is 100% carbon neutral, and that’s what is being encouraged in Germany and other places at the moment. They are trying to be smart in reducing the need for Russian oil by reducing waste in other ways.
All wood that is wasted produces the exact same amount of carbon whether it rots in the forest or whether it’s burned in a fireplace.
Even Tambora reduced the air quality for just a few years, but only by like 1%. A 1% reduction in solar collection is meaningless.