0 PPM CO2?

19 thoughts on “0 PPM CO2?”

1. Perhaps the CO2 referred to by this statement is that of the hot air expelled in speech.
   Seems reasonable.Report

2. How much urushiol before we’ve reached unsafe levels?
   http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/features/climate-change-brings-super-poison-ivyReport

   1. Poison ivy doesn’t bother me.
      I am more concerned about the latent aggression of cacti becoming more viable by genetic alterations due to climate change.
      That could turn out to be a real pain in the . . .Report

3. We have yet to hit peak idiot though.Report

   1. We have top men working on it right now.Report

      1. Who?Report

      2. He’s on first, so he’s not working on it, that’s for sure.Report

      3. He’s not working on it is on Third.Report

4. On the other hand, the sentence is actually clear and understandable.Report

5. Thread hijacking in progress… Today, Lockheed Martin issued a press release (following statements by the CEO yestereday) implying that they could produce a working 100 MWt nuclear fusion heat source in ten years, given funding. They’ve made noises about their fusion work before, but this is a pretty strong and clear claim.Report

   1. Hot damn. Awesome, bloody awesome news.Report

      1. No, hot fusion.Report

   2. nuclear fusion…in ten years

      Heh, that’s the standard joke, right, @michael-cain?Report

      1. The usual form of it is that 30 is the universal constant for the number of years we have to wait for commercial fusion power to be available. IIRC, ITER’s current timeline says 27 assuming no further slips in the schedule. Of course, ITER has never finished anything on its timeline on time (or within budget, for that matter), so 30 still seems safe. Lockheed claims to have invented a new magnetic confinement strategy that is inherently stable.Report

      2. Magnetic confinement at 100 MWt, do they project it will operate above unity? Typically those types have problems with local immission rates.Report

      3. @michael-cain

         So is the joke 3 times as funny, or only 1/3 as funny?Report

      4. Magnetic confinement at 100 MWt, do they project it will operate above unity?

         Since they claim that such reactors could provide all of global base load electricity by 2050, we have to assume that the answer is “yes.” Just me, but they certainly seem to be handwaving on a number of engineering issues that ITER/DEMO are intended to test. OTOH, even if they didn’t reach unity, but could build a working device in a year or two, they could answer some of those ITER/DEMO questions — like heat extraction and how certain metals respond to that sort of neutron flux — much sooner than ITER/DEMO will.Report

      5. So is the joke 3 times as funny, or only 1/3 as funny?

         You tell me. Last week a small group of Swedish and Italian researchers claimed that they verified the operation of Rossi’s E-Cat cold-fusion device (which, Rossi asserts, fuses nickel and hydrogen to form copper), with a one-pound E-Cat producing 1.5 MWh of excess heat over the course of 32 days. The responses from the experts who have read the paper seem to largely be “You measured excess heat how?” with an implied “What a bunch of idiots.” If true, combine it with a simple Stirling engine at 15% efficiency and it produces enough electricity to power an efficient suburban household, plus space heating and hot water.

         Is that infinitely funnier, or not funny at all?Report

      6. @michael-cain

         It is certainly… interesting.

         I’ve seen so many such reports over the years, where observing scientists are initially baffled, but deeper investigation either results in discovered chicanery, or active stonewalling by the “inventor” such that the actual mechanism is never discovered.

         I remain skeptical.Report

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