Posts by mark

Gas crunch: Jatropha, kudzu, algae and magic to rescue

@SpeakerToAliens

"A lot of money" is relative. The total budget for the ITER reactor is something like 10bn euros over a 30 year period. That isn't much compared with the approx $120bn (in todays money) over 13 years that the apollo program cost, or the $24bn (in todays money) in 5 years or so that the manhattan project got through. And ITER is funded globally, not by a single nation.

The manhattan project engaged the cream of the scientific talent pool, and about 130,000 people in total. Thats an operation as large as any modern corporation, all devoted to a single goal. Were we to adopt a similar strategy now, i.e. gather the worlds top physicists and engineers and fund them with say 0.1% of US GDP ($13bn per annum, still only a fraction of the cost of the iraq war), I'd expect a working fusion power station would happen sooner rather than later.

Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap

@Various

The book (as opposed to the article) addresses a number of issues that have been raised above such as the increased efficiency of electric cars & comparison with existing numbers such as the tyndall ones.

It may contain a few dubious estimates but by and large it's a pretty well thought out starting point for a reasoned debate. It's led to me getting out my electricity and gas bills and old MOTs and working out how much of this is my fault.

Well done el reg for bringing this to our attention.