Of course there will be. Even burning a small fraction of the Thorium lying in spill heaps today will achieve that. In February 2019, when Tsinghua Uni demos the worlds first commercially viable fusion reactor, everything will change.
We will:
- convert cubic kilometres of seawater into potable water per day and irrigate the Sahara and the Outback.
- convert atmospheric C02 to carbohydrate fuels (while there are still need for them)
- extract cubic killometers of C out of the atmosphere and oceans for construction material.
- Drop the excess blocks of diamond into the mariana trench, those that we don't use for road base.
- etc
Is this your own prediction, or something that the university has announced publicly? I haven't heard anything about it.
> Until the day that we burn zero CO2 whatsoever
That day will come. And we'll then be at the point where its time to use cheap renewables to pull CO2 back out of the air and store it in a stable state where it can't be burned again.
problem with computer types is we think that high tech will rule and fix all. and that mind boggling high tech is around the corner always.
Then we are surprised when a Neanderthal wins the Presidency who says he WILL burn more coal. doesn't even matter if it's not economic.
Maybe instead we should become more aggressive. Turn off Trump's twitter. Turn off gmail & facebook in red states.
There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense. Until the day that we burn zero CO2 whatsoever, you're better off using the electricity as electricity and thereby burning less carbon than burning it and then trying to get it back.
And even at that point, we already have a thing that converts sunlight and CO2 into solid form. Plants.
In theory what you could probably do is cultivate algae in the ocean and then scoop it up in a net, bury it in the ground and repeat. But the scale needed to make a dent is harrowing.