Do you think humans are helping cause Climate change?

[HappySqurriel]

fordy said:

HappySqurriel said:
If the money that has been wasted developing wind, solar and/or fast breeder reactors had been directed towards liquid salt thorium breeder reactors we would have enough safe, clean and efficient energy today to produce as much power for everyone in the world to have a much higher standard of living than people in western developed nations currently have.

While breeder reactors are a financially viable option, I'd still call that pushing the overall problem further down the track. Yes it's a good idea, but what about when Peak Thorium hits? And don't start with the 'oh that's YEARS away' crap. That's the kind of mentality that got us in tis predicament in the first place.

There are 2 permanent solutions to the problem:

1. Gathering of energy directly (or indrectly) from the Sun

2. Nuclear fusion

NONE of these will ever be financially viable unless money is put towards them to make them cost efficient. It's rather unfair to those who say that 100th generation steam and coal turbines are outpacing 2nad or 3rd generation solar for efficiency. Of course! What do you expect?!

It might suprise you to know that your government HAS put money towards the research of sustainable fusion, along with several other countries, and by the looks of your anti-government posts, you're most likely against it.

We can power the world on 5,000 tons of thorium per year and there are 34 million tons of thorium in the world which means we will run out of thorium in about 6,000 years ... I believe it is kind of foolish to worry too much about a problem that might occur thousands of years from now; we (realistically) have no idea what kind of technology people that far in the future will have to produce energy from alternative sources.

With where research was at in the 1970s before funding was pulled from thorium research (probably) because it could not be weaponized, we could have (probably) had viable large scale thorium reactors in the early 1990s. If we're lucky we will be in a similar position with solar and wind power in 2050, and (realistically) I can't see us getting there in our lifetime.