Re: Glib rejoinder
I'd go with option 3. Ask for a demo of it (only got a bomb? Fine, we've got test ranges for that) and tell him that if it works then for a major scientific advance on a level not seen since Einstien he's awarded a pass with honours by government fiat, and has a job offer for a million a year with a thirty billion budget a year to build it outputting commercial scale energy, as he's just obviously singlehandedly solved the global warming problem if he can build something with the power of an atom bomb in his flat on a shoestring budget.
Large amounts of cheap CO2 free energy solves basically all of the worlds problems.
Water levels rising? Split sea water to hydrogen and oxygen on a large scale. Massively energy intensive of course, but if you've got practically unlimited cheap and CO2 free energy...?
CO2 Sequestration? Again, energy intensive and therefore currently expensive, but if we have practically unlimited cheap and CO2 free energy...?
Not enough drinking water in Africia? Stick in lots of desalination plants and turn the huge desert into a garden. All you need is fresh water and an oil style pipeline to move the water around. Making a new continent's worth of vegetation would also have a quite significant effect on atmospheric CO2 when it starts getting pulled absorbed by the plants. Again, possible if you have practically unlimited energy because just a matter of scale rather than a matter of new technology.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
