4 ms·
That upper limit is probably orders of magnitude higher than we’re currently dissipating. We could blanket every city and town with permanently heated streets,
by pjkundert 7y ago
That upper limit is probably orders of magnitude higher than we’re currently dissipating. We could blanket every city and town with permanently heated streets, and - as long as we stopped pumping water vapour into the dry upper troposphere - we wouldn’t even notice an increase in temperature.
The big problems are 1) gigatons of soot coming over the north poles, permanently lowering the albedo of the planet and 2) pumping water into the dry upper atmosphere via jet exhaust, creating permanent cloud layers where they didn’t exist.
Solve those two issues, and we’d have a much more interesting debate...
- fao_ 7y agoYou missed out the ecosystem collapsing because marine life has died off, and the oceans and waters becoming acidic (which will affect trade, drinkable water, rain, etc.)
- mercutio2 7y agoSea ice radiative forcing and overall albedo effects are on the order of 10% of well mixed greenhouse gas radiative forcing. Short term cloud layer albedo effects are even smaller. If we switched all our greenhouse gas emissions to nuclear, I agree there’s huge room for localized waste heat. But reducing albedo effects isn’t going to help if we keep emitting greenhouse gases.