Star Wobbles - A New Hope?

Recently I have been corresponding on Facebook with the disciples of St Greta of Thunburg.   You don’t have to be too bright to realise that St Greta is promoted rather assiduously by someone or some people somewhere as it is unlikely that a 16 year old did just start a global movement with only a piece of cardboard.  But let’s not go into that … We Don’t Have Time…

Her claim that the climate apocalypse is coming may well be true but I always find it interesting how few people are interested in the more pressing reality … that the oil is running out.  Here Dr Colin Campbell explains why for non-petrophysicists …

My cynicism as to the effectiveness of her campaign was not very welcome but really one only needs to look at this graph to see that whatever words have been produced in the past fossil fuel consumption seems to continue to rise year on year and all the environmental lobby can claim as a result of their protests is that maybe if they weren’t there this graph may have gone up faster…

When this is pointed out apostles divide into several camps.  Well, at least she’s doing something.  You’re doing nothing.  You’re a “triggered” misogynist.  She’s a child – Well, I left school at 16 and so I just feel “so what?” about that…

Somewhat harder to divine is how she or her followers actually intend to cut carbon emissions.  There is a reason the graph for fossil fuel useage goes up and up and it’s not just capitalism.  The burning of fossil fuels since the mid 19^th century provided energy and technology for an exponential world population growth…  

By now you should have an idea that even leaving aside the chances of us all dying from rising sea levels the current situation is unsustainable.  A massive cut in fossil fuel usage is necessary purely on the grounds that there ain’t much left and this isn’t sustainable.  This will have to happen or there will be huge resource wars or… there will be huge resource wars and this will happen.  When it does …if we haven’t found a solution millions will die.  The idea that this can be ameliorated by us all making small actions like riding bikes, using public transport, not flying and returning to horse and cart is laughable.  The low carbon economy costs - so if you want to reduce carbon someone has to pay and the question St Greta's followers can't answer is who pays and how much? 

The only other solution that I can see that doesn’t end in a massive extinction event or worse – mass poverty – is for someone to produce the fusion reactor.  Naturally as soon as I suggested this some luddite started on about nuclear fission… for if anyone were to ever solve the energy crisis then St Greta and her friends just wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.  For those of you who aren’t physicists fusion is squashing hydrogen atoms together to make helium which releases energy as matter is turned into energy.  Whereas nuclear fission is breaking apart Uranium and Plutonium atoms rather randomly which produces poisonous isotopes with huge half lives…

So …given the first fusion bomb was detonated in the 50s why hasn’t the fusion reactor ever been developed?  Well, there are prototypes but the main problem is that when you get a fusion reaction going it’s very hot (Well, this is the same process that goes on in the centre of the sun) – in the region of 100,000,000C so huge magnetic containment fields are needed to hold the plasma.  This is very difficult but not an impossible dream.  We’re nowhere near where PM Boris would like to imagine/lie but … the length of time a reaction can be sustained for has massively increased from nanoseconds to almost a second.  The latest project is the ITER (costing only US$14 billion to start with) which should be online in 2035 … just about when the oil and gas and coal runs out.   So there is a tiny hope and I'm clinging to it ... don't know why as I'll probably be dead by 2035 but...

Craig Bennett from Luddites of the Earth said: “Why throw money away on tech-fix pipe dreams, at precisely the moment that onshore and offshore wind and solar are delivering better returns than ever before?”

Look at the above graphs Craig…