Your second plot is log vs. linear, so it implies shit like "If you want to move from Hungary/Uruguay/Costa Rica levels of 'social progress' (80) to U.S. levels (85), it'll take somewhere around 10x as much energy consumption."

Yeah it also says things like "Mexico is further on the 'social progress index' than Russia despite using a tenth as much energy" so I think we can point to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on there.

I'm a much bigger fan of solar than "inventing new breakthrough technologies" myself (and have been) but I also know that solar has been incremental for seventy years while you yourself have pointed out that fusion research has been under-funded for nearly that long. I also know that 70 years means three generations of physicists and electrical engineers have been taking incremental whacks at it which means it's an incremental science at this point full of people really good at increments and that's not your jam, dawg.

Edit: Uhhh. OK. OK so imagine... imagine if we built some sort of fraction of a Dyson shield (around the Earth)?

ಠ_ಠ

So look.

The injection of aerosols into the stratosphere is thought to have been the largest since the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, with a total mass of SO

2 of about 17,000,000 t (19,000,000 short tons) being injected – the largest volume ever recorded by modern instruments (see chart and figure).

Satellite measurements of ash and aerosol emissions from Mount Pinatubo

This very large stratospheric injection resulted in a reduction in the normal amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface by roughly 10% (see figure). This led to a decrease in Northern Hemisphere average temperatures of 0.5–0.6 °C (0.9–1.1 °F) and a global fall of about 0.4 °C (0.7 °F). At the same time, the temperature in the stratosphere rose to several degrees higher than normal, due to absorption of radiation by the aerosol. The stratospheric cloud from the eruption persisted in the atmosphere for three years after the eruption. While not directly responsible, the eruption may have played a part in the formation of the 1993 Storm of the Century.

We're trying to keep global warming down to less than a degree, degree and a half, right? We've been at 0.1 degree per decade since the '70s, which sucks, but if you're willing to go "I want a Dyson Egg-beater whooshing around in orbit" I'm willing to go "get in the plane, Smithers":

Early studies suggest that stratospheric aerosol injection might have relatively low direct cost. The annual cost of delivering 5 million tons of an albedo enhancing aerosol (sufficient to offset the expected warming over the next century) to an altitude of 20 to 30 km is estimated at US$2 billion to 8 billion.

Let's just redneck it. A 787 has a service ceiling of 43,000 ft, and flies at 39,000 feet all the time. That's troposphere for mid-latitudes. Its MTOW is 254t with an empty weight of 132t - I can put that sucker up with 120t of goo. 5 million tons is 42,000 flights is an average of 114 flights a day for a year. Let's say I can do two flights a day per plane and I'm at 60 planes.

Southwest owns 736 planes right now.

And yeah "storm of the century" and "ozone layer" and all that but you know what? there are many increments between "a few flights" and "60 planes spewing goo twice a day for a year".

Note that I DON'T want to do this instead of using less energy, switching to solar, and cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

But if it buys us time?