im this (
>>2786911 >>2786857) anon, i just wanted to blogpost about my thoughts on climate change, mainly because i had a conversation irl about it recently and wanted to gauge reactions
its a real and mostly measurable thing, but its also (in my opinion) somewhat overstated. it came about because humanity found a cheap source of energy, just mine it up and power whatever machinery you want, and power machinery it did.
its no coincidence that the industrial revolution started pretty much exactly when james watt made a really good machine to extract energy from fossil fuels. they literally spawned the modern world and without them we would likely still be mostly peasant farmers and whatever else the world was like pre industrial revolution.
humanity got incredible bang (get it?) for the buck just by burning fossil fuels for about 300 years. its very likely that kids in a century will be talking about this time because its certainly the biggest change in human history and it just would not have been possible if not for fossil fuels.
i dont think it was a dumb idea, and if i had to go back in time i wouldnt change it either. theres still at least decades before we will find out if it was a mistake or not, but for now we just need to wait for a newer and cheaper source of energy
likely this will be fusion power (its going to be "invented" about the same time as climate change hits a tipping point, ie sometime in the future) and from there its pretty smooth sailing.
the problem with fossil fuels is that they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and co2 really good at trapping the energy we get from the sun. all it would take is dumping some fusion energy into pulling carbon from the air. its possible today to do that, its just not worth doing because it costs more energy to pull it out than you get releasing it (you just need a cheaper power source to make it worthwhile).
cont..
