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Why do we always phrase it as changing the climate instead of facing that it's an energy balance issue? Too much energy is entering the earth and getting trappe
by maerF0x0 7y ago
Why do we always phrase it as changing the climate instead of facing that it's an energy balance issue? Too much energy is entering the earth and getting trapped.
We can solve it by letting less enter, or otherwise sinking some of it. Consider if we stored the excess energy as chemical energy? or reflected some fraction of the energy back out away from us?
reducing consumption is a failing project and the greener technology gets the more people increase their consumption in a compensatory way (Heat – George Monbiot) ...
- willj 7y agoIt’s not just an energy issue. The abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contributes to ocean acidification.
- maerF0x0 7y agoThis is a good point. Thank you for pointing it out.
- millstone 7y ago"Energy balance" isn't the right diagnosis because the energy balance has not changed significantly: the sun is and has forever been the dominant energy source in climate terms. Broad-spectrum sunlight hits the earth, and is later emitted as infrared. CO2 is transparent to UV, but absorbs infrared. So global warming is a consequence of the fact that the major fossil fuel emission is opaque to a wavelength of light emitted by the sunlit earth. "Letting less enter", "stored the excess energy", and "reflected some fraction" are all huge engineering solutions to the global warming crisis. And I support them all! But space mirrors and geo-scale energy sinks are sci-fi, they will not save us any time soon. Reducing consumption buys time. Switching to renewables buys time too. Maybe you use renewable biofuels and capture the CO2 emissions: now your car is carbon negative, without launching a space mirror!
- Ono-Sendai 7y agoIt's absolutely an energy balance issue. The Earth is heating up, because it's radiating away less energy than its receiving.
- xxgreg 7y agoIt is phrased this way because the changing climate is what negatively affects civilization. While it is an energy imbalance which causes the climate to change, modifying the energy input or output via geoengineering will also cause the climate to change, even if the overall balance stays the same.