5 ms·

I recently thought... sure everyone says it's the CO², but then I saw articles that said, the CO² didn't change as much as they said it did. 4% of the atmospher

I recently thought... sure everyone says it's the CO², but then I saw articles that said, the CO² didn't change as much as they said it did. 4% of the atmosphere or so, because water takes it up and some kinds of stones do the same. What if we generally just generate too much heat? And the heat gets trapped in the atmosphere? Every time someone uses energy, it generates heat. Everytime we make energy from hydrocarbon, we generate heat. Would there be a way to let the heat go to space? Or if we want to preserve it on earth, a way to turn heat back into hydrocarbon?

donpdonp 7y ago
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
feb 7y ago
CO2 did increase a lot. The ratio of CO2 in our atmosphere got up by more than 40% since 2 centuries ago. And that's despite effects which slow down the CO2 increase, like absorption by the ocean. Source: https://www.co2levels.org/ https://www.co2levels.org/ edit: fixed increase ratio from 1800 to now.
- elihu 7y ago
  It hasn't tripled; we've gone from about 280 ppm to about 420 ppm. That graph's y-axis doesn't start at zero. (That isn't to say that 420 ppm isn't really bad.)
  - feb 7y ago
    You're right. My tired brain bugged when seeing 30% lower than today.
  - Animats 7y ago
    That's what's so striking. For most other global warming phenomena, the actual change recorded to date isn't that big. But for CO2, it's huge.
knodi123 7y ago
> And the heat gets trapped in the atmosphere? That's what CO2 does. It is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps heat that would otherwise have escaped into space. > Or if we want to preserve it on earth, a way to turn heat back into hydrocarbon? It is literally impossible to turn heat, by itself, into anything useful. That's the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and it's a cruel mistress. It's nice to think about alternative solutions to these problems, but you need to have at least a basic understanding of basic level physics if you want to discuss this sort of thing.
- addicted 7y ago
  My biggest frustration with global warming deniers has been that I understood the basics of global warming as a 6-7 year old, when I first read something about the greenhouse effect (it wasnt even in the context of global warming). The only basic pieces of information you need to understand climate change are: 1) The greenhouse effect exists. That is, when you have something like glass, it will let energy in in the form of light, but it won't let as much energy escape once it's converted to heat. This concept can be grasped by anyone who has walked into a car that has been parked out in the sun. And by the massive clue in the name, that is the existence of greenhouses. 2) Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas. That is, it acts like glass does in a greenhouse. This is harder to believe from first principles, but it's not that hard to believe. For me the clinching explanation (again, as a kid) was learning Venus was hotter than Mercury. And there is no reason to believe folks are lying about this, and I don't believe anyone is even contesting this. 3) Understanding how fossil fuels came into existence (basically, organic material trapped over centuries in the ground. again, the clue is in the name) and understanding the CO2 lifecycle, and how burning fossil fuels adds material to the CO2 lifecycle that was not there earlier. This isn't something that can be determined easily by a kid from 1st principles, but it's something that no one is really contesting either. Once you accept these 3 fairly straightforward basic physics phenomena, global warming is inevitable. The only questions are whether the release of CO2 is significant enough to have an impact, where we have to rely on measurements and scientists. But seeing that there was a fairly standard progression in how deniers would first deny global warming was ever happening, then deny that it was anthropogenic, then claim it wouldnt have as negative an impact, and now claim that well, it's too late...let's look at mitigation; I was able to filter them out when they were at step 1 itself. Aside: I also want to point out the horrific misunderstanding people have about the terms "global warming" and "climate change" which are fairly self descriptive, but apparently is a nefarious effort to "hide the spike". Global Warming (i.e., more energy in the earth's ecosystem due to the greenhouse effect) leads to Climate Change (that is, changes in our climate behavior). One is a cause, and the other is the effect. Both are valid and orthogonal concepts, and not some sort of conspiracy.
eloff 7y ago
I am actually curious about how much land use changes and heat from human activities contributes to climate change. Theoretically the limit to the number of people we could support on earth with unlimited energy (eg cheap fusion) is not limited by space or food or water (the later solved by energy) but by simple thermodynamics. We'd cook ourselves if there were too many of us. Note this happens at many orders of magnitude more population than we currently have.
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  IIRC someone crunched the numbers that even with unlimited fusion power, if you extrapolate the growth in energy use in the 20th century, we could only continue for ~200 years before significantly increasing global temperature due to waste heat. An innocent-seeming 5% growth turns in to four orders of magnitude if it continues for two centuries.
  - eloff 7y ago
    Fascinating. Of course any exponential growth tends to come to an end long before the impossible predictions, but it still highlights what a unique time we live in where we take growth of the population and the economy for granted. It has to slow down in the "near" future. Near being probably fifty years or more.
- newvoiceoldphne 7y ago
  Black-body absorption, ie : asphalt. Urban heat bubbles are real.
jellicle 7y ago
Taking your comment seriously: People have done the math on the heat directly released by burning fossil fuels, and it isn't that high. What CO2 does is keep more of the SUN'S heat on Earth. And that turns out to be a much more important contribution to the temperature of the Earth than the heat directly released by burning fossil fuels. Current CO2 levels are a full 50% higher than they were 80 years ago or so, and that makes a big, big difference.
greenshackle2 7y ago
The total yearly energy consumption of the world is equivalent to a couple hours of the total sun energy hitting the surface of the Earth, so, I doubt it. https://www.sandia.gov/~jytsao/Solar%20FAQs.pdf https://www.sandia.gov/~jytsao/Solar%20FAQs.pdf
noonespecial 7y ago
All that is insignificant compared to the heat output of a certain nearby star. The star's output is so significant that even the tiniest change in how that energy is absorbed and retained has large effects on the little planet. So we find ourselves where we are.
- thfuran 7y ago
  To elaborate, the solar energy hitting earth is about 1,000 W per square meter near the equator near noon. The total per capita energy consumption in the US is roughly 10,000W. That means that the energy hitting the Mediterranean Sea (or clouds above it) in a single hour in early afternoon is roughly equivalent to the total annual energy needs of about 250 billion people at US per capita energy usage. And The Mediterranean is only about half of one percent of the planet's surface area.
audunw 7y ago
Peter F. Hamilton had a sci-fi scenario where that was a real problem. In the Greg Mandel books I believe. We invented cheap fusion, and build so many fusion reactors that the added heat creates insane hurricanes all over the planet (if I remember correctly) But yeah, I think it'd take an unbelievable amount of heat production to change the atmosphere directly. But the thing is the sun does bombard us with a mind-blowing amount of heat energy every day, so that's why changing the amount that's trapped by the atmosphere by a very tiny amount can have devastating consequences.

donpdonp 7y ago

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

feb 7y ago

CO2 did increase a lot. The ratio of CO2 in our atmosphere got up by more than 40% since 2 centuries ago. And that's despite effects which slow down the CO2 increase, like absorption by the ocean. Source: https://www.co2levels.org/ https://www.co2levels.org/ edit: fixed increase ratio from 1800 to now.

elihu 7y ago
It hasn't tripled; we've gone from about 280 ppm to about 420 ppm. That graph's y-axis doesn't start at zero. (That isn't to say that 420 ppm isn't really bad.)
- feb 7y ago
  You're right. My tired brain bugged when seeing 30% lower than today.
- Animats 7y ago
  That's what's so striking. For most other global warming phenomena, the actual change recorded to date isn't that big. But for CO2, it's huge.

knodi123 7y ago

> And the heat gets trapped in the atmosphere? That's what CO2 does. It is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps heat that would otherwise have escaped into space. > Or if we want to preserve it on earth, a way to turn heat back into hydrocarbon? It is literally impossible to turn heat, by itself, into anything useful. That's the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and it's a cruel mistress. It's nice to think about alternative solutions to these problems, but you need to have at least a basic understanding of basic level physics if you want to discuss this sort of thing.

addicted 7y ago
My biggest frustration with global warming deniers has been that I understood the basics of global warming as a 6-7 year old, when I first read something about the greenhouse effect (it wasnt even in the context of global warming). The only basic pieces of information you need to understand climate change are: 1) The greenhouse effect exists. That is, when you have something like glass, it will let energy in in the form of light, but it won't let as much energy escape once it's converted to heat. This concept can be grasped by anyone who has walked into a car that has been parked out in the sun. And by the massive clue in the name, that is the existence of greenhouses. 2) Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas. That is, it acts like glass does in a greenhouse. This is harder to believe from first principles, but it's not that hard to believe. For me the clinching explanation (again, as a kid) was learning Venus was hotter than Mercury. And there is no reason to believe folks are lying about this, and I don't believe anyone is even contesting this. 3) Understanding how fossil fuels came into existence (basically, organic material trapped over centuries in the ground. again, the clue is in the name) and understanding the CO2 lifecycle, and how burning fossil fuels adds material to the CO2 lifecycle that was not there earlier. This isn't something that can be determined easily by a kid from 1st principles, but it's something that no one is really contesting either. Once you accept these 3 fairly straightforward basic physics phenomena, global warming is inevitable. The only questions are whether the release of CO2 is significant enough to have an impact, where we have to rely on measurements and scientists. But seeing that there was a fairly standard progression in how deniers would first deny global warming was ever happening, then deny that it was anthropogenic, then claim it wouldnt have as negative an impact, and now claim that well, it's too late...let's look at mitigation; I was able to filter them out when they were at step 1 itself. Aside: I also want to point out the horrific misunderstanding people have about the terms "global warming" and "climate change" which are fairly self descriptive, but apparently is a nefarious effort to "hide the spike". Global Warming (i.e., more energy in the earth's ecosystem due to the greenhouse effect) leads to Climate Change (that is, changes in our climate behavior). One is a cause, and the other is the effect. Both are valid and orthogonal concepts, and not some sort of conspiracy.

eloff 7y ago

I am actually curious about how much land use changes and heat from human activities contributes to climate change. Theoretically the limit to the number of people we could support on earth with unlimited energy (eg cheap fusion) is not limited by space or food or water (the later solved by energy) but by simple thermodynamics. We'd cook ourselves if there were too many of us. Note this happens at many orders of magnitude more population than we currently have.

semi-extrinsic 7y ago
IIRC someone crunched the numbers that even with unlimited fusion power, if you extrapolate the growth in energy use in the 20th century, we could only continue for ~200 years before significantly increasing global temperature due to waste heat. An innocent-seeming 5% growth turns in to four orders of magnitude if it continues for two centuries.
- eloff 7y ago
  Fascinating. Of course any exponential growth tends to come to an end long before the impossible predictions, but it still highlights what a unique time we live in where we take growth of the population and the economy for granted. It has to slow down in the "near" future. Near being probably fifty years or more.
newvoiceoldphne 7y ago
Black-body absorption, ie : asphalt. Urban heat bubbles are real.

jellicle 7y ago

Taking your comment seriously: People have done the math on the heat directly released by burning fossil fuels, and it isn't that high. What CO2 does is keep more of the SUN'S heat on Earth. And that turns out to be a much more important contribution to the temperature of the Earth than the heat directly released by burning fossil fuels. Current CO2 levels are a full 50% higher than they were 80 years ago or so, and that makes a big, big difference.

greenshackle2 7y ago

The total yearly energy consumption of the world is equivalent to a couple hours of the total sun energy hitting the surface of the Earth, so, I doubt it. https://www.sandia.gov/~jytsao/Solar%20FAQs.pdf https://www.sandia.gov/~jytsao/Solar%20FAQs.pdf

noonespecial 7y ago

All that is insignificant compared to the heat output of a certain nearby star. The star's output is so significant that even the tiniest change in how that energy is absorbed and retained has large effects on the little planet. So we find ourselves where we are.

thfuran 7y ago
To elaborate, the solar energy hitting earth is about 1,000 W per square meter near the equator near noon. The total per capita energy consumption in the US is roughly 10,000W. That means that the energy hitting the Mediterranean Sea (or clouds above it) in a single hour in early afternoon is roughly equivalent to the total annual energy needs of about 250 billion people at US per capita energy usage. And The Mediterranean is only about half of one percent of the planet's surface area.

audunw 7y ago

Peter F. Hamilton had a sci-fi scenario where that was a real problem. In the Greg Mandel books I believe. We invented cheap fusion, and build so many fusion reactors that the added heat creates insane hurricanes all over the planet (if I remember correctly) But yeah, I think it'd take an unbelievable amount of heat production to change the atmosphere directly. But the thing is the sun does bombard us with a mind-blowing amount of heat energy every day, so that's why changing the amount that's trapped by the atmosphere by a very tiny amount can have devastating consequences.