I am Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and author of 13 books. AMA

Hahaha, your idea that we've ever constructed nuclear power plants at the rate we're talking about it laughable, completely false. Add China and India into it---2 billion people, most of whom don't have any of the skills necessary to do what we're talking about---and this is supposed to make this easier? So, you tell me that we can build, let alone continuously refuel, let alone operate, let alone distribute energy from, let alone continuously rebuild every fifty or one hundred years, something like, assuming populations don't grow and global quality of is at pretty much a bare minimum, about five thousand nuclear power plants and have them operating at 100% 2 GW capacity for, what, the rest of human history? You say that we have enough uranium mining capability to do this, though we don't, and you apparently admit we can't see a way to do this with seawater, good. Oh, but "we'll figure something out!" We've got one hundred more years of coal and a similar amount of oil or so to figure it out---plus hundreds of years of energy via fracking, as if the CO2 levels weren't unreasonable enough after coal and oil are gone---so I guess that means the magnitude of the problem we're discussing will just work itself out. It will be easier to mine and refine uranium in the future because, well, technology. Global fossil fuel consumption will go down, not up, oh goodie. All of this, this complete nonsense that you, apparently, believe to be possible (because, I guess, you're a better adjusted and more aware human being than I am) will happen "gradually," as if that makes it easier, and as "fossil fuel use goes down," because, I guess, a couple hundred-thousand rich people (who probably use 5-10 kW/person, so 15000-30000 nuclear power plants to extend their quality of life to the whole world) drive electric cars. I wish you could live five hundred more years, not a very long time, to see your impossible dream not come true. In the mean time, just write a letter to the your energy leaders and.explain your plan to them. I'm sure most of them will write back and commend your enthusiasm, and kinda leave off the part where you clearly have no idea how to do the things that you're talking about. I'm not reading or responding to anything you write back, because so far none of it has been reasonable, nor particularly relevant.

/r/IAmA Thread Parent