David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote:
> I had hoped that my arguments would start a discussion about the effects > of global warming mitigation attempts and to frame the information in a > manner that would clarify any solutions based upon the underlying problem. > I was thinking of commenting on this but I am busy preparing for ICCF17. I am not sure I understand your assumptions. Global warming is caused by CO2, not by waste heat from energy generation. Waste heat does cause "heat islands" in cities, and this does affect the weather. It also makes things several degrees hotter locally, in some urban areas. But that has nothing to do with global warming. Waste heat from energy generation -- cars, factories, electric power, cooking and everything else -- quickly escapes from the atmosphere. I think it takes about a half hour. After the sun goes down in the Sahara desert, the air cools down in about a half hour. The sand does not trap and radiate much heat. By midnight it is actually cold. If we were to increase total energy output by a large factor with cold fusion, it might cause more heat islands and other disruptions. However, I think it is likely that cold fusion will lead to less primary heat generation overall. It will be more efficient, because of things like cogeneration. Even if we end up using more energy, there will less primary generation. For a while, anyway. You have to realize that our present energy systems are incredibly inefficient. Especially electric power. See: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/NRELenergyover.pdf If primary energy generation increases too much I hope we will move heavy industry into space, with space elevators. That will free up the land now taken up by factories -- another bonus. I would like to see all blast furnaces, automobile plants, semiconductor plants and so on located 35,000 km away. A lot of that stuff probably works better in a vacuum anyway. The ultimate clean room! Or in pure nitrogen. We will never run out of industrial real estate up there. Loud noise and disruption do not travel far in a vacuum. There is plenty of room at the top -- to reverse Feynman's dictum. There is also unlimited amounts of raw material. Probably a trillion times more easily accessible material than there is on earth. So we should transfer all mining and refining up there too. I discussed this in my book after consulting with various experts. - Jed
