Clock ticking on fusion decision

[Matabiri]

And how do you know, that the most important research is about energy?
Fusion power will not have any importance before 2050 and it is only of great importance, when thinking about larger time scales, something like 200 years, so hurry is not necessary with fusion, it will not help with global warming.

It's not just about global warming.

What do you think will be the major sources of energy in 50 years?

 

[Carn]

It's not just about global warming.

What do you think will be the major sources of energy in 50 years?

AFAIK there is enough coal to produce all needed energy for 150-200 years, oil and gas alone would last 20 years, fission fuel last for for 30 years supplying alone.
Water gives a fine steady and cheap 5-10% of needed energy.
Reducing energy use is also possible, even with little ill effects to some extent(for US guys, there exist cars, that need 5l/100km instead of 20 and they are ok), some prognsis suggest 20% reduction without big ill effects.

So with those 4 sources alone we could least the next 200-300 years, depending on how much energy saving is possible. Of course the energy costs would incrase, e.g. cars are more expensive if they are electricity powered by a coal plant(and look less cool, if their C value is good, which might cause health care cost for anti depressivs to increase greatly) and coal will get more expensive, when the easy accessible sources are gone, but we will not run out of energy supply, we will just have to pay more.
Then the question about whether we have fusion in 30 or 150 years is a pure financial one, getting fusion in 30 years requires more funding than getting it in 150 years, but then we have to pay 120 years longer for more and more expensive coal.

All is of course assuming, that we do not find unknown reserves and that we do not develop ways to exploit today unreachable sources. And that solar and wind power plants do not become cheap.

The Club of Rome prognosting in the 70s, that we would run out of oil around 2010, forgot to mention the unkown parameters of new reserves and new "digging" tech, which is why they were so far of with their guess. Furthermore i heard that thery made the mistake to count only the reserves named by corps, forgetting, that they of course do not name reserves, which are far too expensive to exploit with current prices. When oil, coal or whatever price increases, therefore the officialy mention reserves suddenly increases, as corps start looking around which reserves are now worth digging for.

Carn