Climate Disruption, Renewable Energy, and Advanced Nuclear

Earlier in the week, we received the good news from our scientific community: following  the ban of CFCs and other compounds in the late 20th Century, the ozone layer that protects our Earth from harmful UV rays has made remarkable progress towards repairing itself. Of course, this makes us think of the current crisis with respect to climate disruption.  Can we simply ban a few chemicals, and expect the whole problem to evaporate in front of our eyes?

The short answer is no.  Yes, we can (and must) cut back on the 27 gigatons of CO2 we’re pumping into our atmosphere each year, mostly from the combustion of fossil fuels.  But, from antropogenic sources, we’ve already added about 500 gigatons over the last 100 years, and our oceans sequester only about 0.3 gigatons annually.

Winning this game will require developing vast amounts of renewable, carbon-free energy, which is why we should be committing to implementing solar and wind at a huge rate, but advanced nuclear as well.  Molten salt reactors based on thorium could be the single most important energy-related development in human history, and may come along just in time  to avert catastrope.