3 ms·

With abundant electricity wouldn't we face another type of global warming? We will would start to consume so much electricity that this will heat up the planet?

defrost 4y ago
Relative scales of various factors matter here: We aren't "heating up the planet" .. we're "insulating the atmosphere". Increased C02 (and the close following methane and water vapor increases) serve to trap more of the heat radiated outwards that would otherwise escape. The vast bulk of that heat comes from the visible light of the sun which passes easily through the atmosphere coming in, gets converted to IR energy as it warms the earth and oceans, and then escapes outwards. Our changes to the atmosphere have disturbed that balance. Your comment has some small merit, but you would need to work through the heat output of human generated power and then compare that to the daily heat energy originally from the sun that radiates outward.
- mcculley 4y ago
  > We aren't "heating up the planet" .. we're "insulating the atmosphere". We are doing both. We are doing more insulating than heating, but we obviously generate more heat.
  - defrost 4y ago
    Did you actually read my comment to the end? If so, how'd you do on the numbers?
    - mcculley 4y ago
      Of course I did. It is rude to suggest otherwise. Your blanket assertion followed by your long explanation is confusing and less helpful to anyone asking the original question than it would be without it.
      - defrost 4y ago
        Good, so by what rough order of magnitude does the sun heat us up more than human power generation then? Is it x10, x100, x1000, .. more? This is after all the part that matters.
        mcculley 4y ago
        I have no idea. Obviously we get more heat from the sun than we generate on our own. That does not make your blanket assertion true. The original question is a good one. We will use more energy as it gets cheaper (see monster trucks, Las Vegas, Dubai). We should be thinking of what we will do with the waste heat when everyone has a fusion reactor.
        defrost 4y ago
        Your repeated assertion that I made a "blanket assertion" suggests you're either someone with english as a second language or else someone who stubbornly digs in (unless there's another explanation here?). To be clear I made a qualified assertion; the phrase "Relative scales of various factors matter here" does the work. > Obviously we get more heat from the sun than we generate on our own. Yes - but, again, How much more? If it's barely twice as much (which seems unlikely) then heat from our activity is a major factor in all this. If it's 100,000x times more then I stand firm, heat from our activity has effectively zero impact on the AGW issue (although other by-products from our daily routines are the crux of the problem). If it's some other factor then what relative signifigance does our human heat generation have? > I have no idea. It's a shame you didn't grab an envelope and make use of the back, it's a classic Fermi problem [1] of the kind I and my class mates were posed in high school and the kind of thing many other HN commeters would delight in taking a run at. If you're feeling game you might like to start with the daily heating of the earths surface from the sun, and then look at the petajoules of energy generated and consumed per day and take a stab at guesstimating the waste (unused, released into the lower earths surface layer) heat as a percentage (or google efficiencies, etc). Have fun! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem
nova22033 4y ago
I'm not going to set my thermostat to 78 degrees because electricity is practically free.
- vincnetas 4y ago
  But some people would start driving 6 ton vehicles because fuel is free. Limiting factor for crytpo mining would be only number of hardware you can get (provided crypto survives for so long). Some people would probably do the math and decide that thermal insulation is too expensive, and run heating/cooling on max. I could probably come up with more examples. EDIT: from quick google query it looks like per day earth receives equivalent of yearly power consumption (not only electricity but also fuel). So we would need to x356 our energy consumption which is not that much unreasonable if you could have for example heated outdoor pool for free anywhere in the world.

defrost 4y ago

Relative scales of various factors matter here: We aren't "heating up the planet" .. we're "insulating the atmosphere". Increased C02 (and the close following methane and water vapor increases) serve to trap more of the heat radiated outwards that would otherwise escape. The vast bulk of that heat comes from the visible light of the sun which passes easily through the atmosphere coming in, gets converted to IR energy as it warms the earth and oceans, and then escapes outwards. Our changes to the atmosphere have disturbed that balance. Your comment has some small merit, but you would need to work through the heat output of human generated power and then compare that to the daily heat energy originally from the sun that radiates outward.

mcculley 4y ago
> We aren't "heating up the planet" .. we're "insulating the atmosphere". We are doing both. We are doing more insulating than heating, but we obviously generate more heat.
- defrost 4y ago
  Did you actually read my comment to the end? If so, how'd you do on the numbers?
  - mcculley 4y ago
    Of course I did. It is rude to suggest otherwise. Your blanket assertion followed by your long explanation is confusing and less helpful to anyone asking the original question than it would be without it.
    - defrost 4y ago
      Good, so by what rough order of magnitude does the sun heat us up more than human power generation then? Is it x10, x100, x1000, .. more? This is after all the part that matters.
      - mcculley 4y ago
        I have no idea. Obviously we get more heat from the sun than we generate on our own. That does not make your blanket assertion true. The original question is a good one. We will use more energy as it gets cheaper (see monster trucks, Las Vegas, Dubai). We should be thinking of what we will do with the waste heat when everyone has a fusion reactor.
        defrost 4y ago
        Your repeated assertion that I made a "blanket assertion" suggests you're either someone with english as a second language or else someone who stubbornly digs in (unless there's another explanation here?). To be clear I made a qualified assertion; the phrase "Relative scales of various factors matter here" does the work. > Obviously we get more heat from the sun than we generate on our own. Yes - but, again, How much more? If it's barely twice as much (which seems unlikely) then heat from our activity is a major factor in all this. If it's 100,000x times more then I stand firm, heat from our activity has effectively zero impact on the AGW issue (although other by-products from our daily routines are the crux of the problem). If it's some other factor then what relative signifigance does our human heat generation have? > I have no idea. It's a shame you didn't grab an envelope and make use of the back, it's a classic Fermi problem [1] of the kind I and my class mates were posed in high school and the kind of thing many other HN commeters would delight in taking a run at. If you're feeling game you might like to start with the daily heating of the earths surface from the sun, and then look at the petajoules of energy generated and consumed per day and take a stab at guesstimating the waste (unused, released into the lower earths surface layer) heat as a percentage (or google efficiencies, etc). Have fun! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

nova22033 4y ago

I'm not going to set my thermostat to 78 degrees because electricity is practically free.

vincnetas 4y ago
But some people would start driving 6 ton vehicles because fuel is free. Limiting factor for crytpo mining would be only number of hardware you can get (provided crypto survives for so long). Some people would probably do the math and decide that thermal insulation is too expensive, and run heating/cooling on max. I could probably come up with more examples. EDIT: from quick google query it looks like per day earth receives equivalent of yearly power consumption (not only electricity but also fuel). So we would need to x356 our energy consumption which is not that much unreasonable if you could have for example heated outdoor pool for free anywhere in the world.