Horse manure, climate change and nuclear power – what’s the problem?

From Cliff Mass Weather Blog

cliff mass

Horse manure, climate change and nuclear energy

The “Great Manure Crisis” of the late 19th century provided some serious lessons for those concerned about the “existential threat” caused by global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

Thanks to new technologies, an anticipated crisis never materialized.

As recently as the beginning of the 20th century, desperate statements about the massive accumulations of horse manure appeared on the streets of cities around the world. Rising horse manure levels not only hinder travel but have the potential to become a major health hazard. For example, New York City has 150,000 horses, each producing 15 to 30 pounds of manure per day. Yes, and tens of thousands of gallons of urine.

The Times of London extrapolated the issue in 1894, not unlike current climate activists predicting the impact of global warming over the next century: “Fifty years from now, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.People are encouraged to travel less, avoid unnecessary travel, work from home, and collect waste generated by animals.

Sound familiar?

You can also imagine the story in the Seattle Times (then known as the Seattle Daily Times) if some wealthy Seattle foundation gave them funding for a “health lab”:

This horrific shit crisis never happened. Why?

Because of a new transportation technology, powered by internal combustion engines.

A very good lesson was taught to us today: Extrapolating the issue into the future, assuming technology remains the same, is problematic.

Today, a new crisis engulfs the media, Increased greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.

Yes, the Earth is slowly warming as concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are increasing due to human emissions.

But it would be foolish to simply extrapolate future increases in greenhouse gas concentrations because energy production technology will change profoundly in the coming decades.…I’m not talking about solar or wind.

Nuclear energy started with fission but was quickly replaced by fusion energy, which would provide essentially unlimited clean energy.

The false hope of wind and solar energy

Many people talk about wind and solar as the solution to global warming, but the truth is that they can only make a small contribution for a number of reasons, and their intermittency (available only during daylight and windy periods ), environmental impact and low energy density are significant issues.

Furthermore, demand for energy, especially electricity, is growing much faster than renewable energy can be installed. Why? Because billions of people are being lifted out of poverty and the energy demands of data centers are huge. Just to name a few.

Consider the U.S. energy consumption statistics (below). Energy consumption has increased rapidly over the past few decades Fossil fuels still dominate (But more gas and less coal). Wind and solar are very small in comparison.

The United States is actually one of the most renewable energy friendly countries. When considering the world as a whole (below), fossil fuels are even more dominant.

Solar and wind energy are not long-term energy solutions for humanity.

The core is. In the short term it is fission, in the long term it is fusion.

Fission energy is used extensively in some countries (for example, in France, where 70% of the country's electricity comes from fission), and today about 9% of the world's energy comes from fission. There are no major safety issues, fission energy is clean, and there are no air quality issues. New designs for small modular fission reactors will make them cheaper, more reliable, and less likely to suffer meltdowns.

Major energy users such as Amazon have committed to using such new technology fission reactors.

And there is fusion. Fusion energy is essentially unlimited and produces no nuclear waste.

Uninformed people joke that nuclear fusion will always be 20 years away. They are wrong. There is no theoretical reason for the practical application of fusion reactors. Dozens of private companies are working on prototypes, including Seattle-based Helion.

Fusion has broken even.

Microsoft has agreed to purchase fusion power from Helion starting in 2028

Guys…this is going to happen. Even if delayed by a year or two, fusion power generation will revolutionize the world's energy landscape, just as the internal combustion engine ended the poop “crisis” more than a century ago.

One more thing. Harnessing the nearly unlimited energy from fusion, we can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, called carbon dioxide sequestration. Some companies, such as BC's Carbon Engineering, are already working on prototypes.

So the next time you hear doomsday catastrophic predictions about global warming, think of horse excrement.

Relevant