4 ms·

Don’t forget about heat death. More energy being used heats up the as atmosphere, it doesn’t simply just disappear.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> More energy being used heats up the as atmosphere We’re nowhere close to this being a problem. (Our total energy production is dwarfed by the natural flux.)
- 0x0203 2y ago
  Since it seems like you've seen data pertaining to this, do you have any good/reputable sources? I've tried asking in various places about what percentage of planetary warming is due to direct heating from energy consumption, vs. greenhouse gas effects vs. natural causes, but usually just get accused of being a climate change denier and told to go educate myself. I'm really just curious about methodology, want to build a better mental model of how it works and how it's studied, and have never seen any discussions/papers talking about direct heating effects, so don't know where to start.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > what percentage of planetary warming is due to direct heating from energy consumption, vs. greenhouse gas effects vs. natural causes Humans produce 20 TW of power [1]. (15 if we remove solar, wind and hydro.) The Sun delivers, to the Earth, 44,000 TW [2]. So raising the amount of the Sun's energy the earth retains by 454 parts in a million (329 if we remove solar, wind and hydro) adds to the Earth the energy of our entire civilisation. That is why emissions are the problem. Not our direct heat production. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum... [2] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/135642main_balance_trifold21.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/135642main_b...
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      More significantly, indirect heating from increased greenhouse gases is about 400 TW.
      - vixen99 2y ago
        Link?
        pfdietz 2y ago
        Thanks for making me check, I was off a bit. It's actually more like 1400 TW. Must have dropped a digit when I remembered that. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-023-06775-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-023-06775-x > the total radiative forcing (RF) by human activities of approximately 2.72 W m^−2 (Masson-Delmotte 2021) (with the radius of the Earth of 6.4e6 meters and surface area = 4 pi r^2).
  - kolinko 2y ago
    It’s quite easy - we have numbers for humanity’s electricity and heat production. We also know how much atmosphere and oceans weigh, which we can multiply by specific heat of air and water. From this you can calculate how much we’ve heaten up the atmosphere/oceans - even ignoring the loss of heat to space/ground our impact is neglible. Here is chatgpt doing the math - https://chatgpt.com/share/e/5d28257f-f51b-40e7-8742-75d75e2d80ba https://chatgpt.com/share/e/5d28257f-f51b-40e7-8742-75d75e2d... - it’s roughly correct.
Beijinger 2y ago
Well, yes, kind of. But the Stefan–Boltzmann law has the temperature^4 means the earth should radiate it back into space. No?
hollerith 2y ago
That is not what "heat death" means.
alxmng 2y ago
You might enjoy Sabine Hossenfelder's video exploring this "I recently learned that waste heat will boil the oceans in about 400 years": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRtA7STvH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRtA7STvH4 It turns out we can probably solve this by building planetary chimneys 5km tall that move heat to the outer atmosphere.
kolinko 2y ago
All the energy we ever produced and are likely to produce in the forseeable future has neglible impact on the atmosphere’s temperatures. (Unlike co2 ofc) Here is gpt doing estimates - the numbers are similar to the ones I calculated by hand some time ago: https://chatgpt.com/share/e/5d28257f-f51b-40e7-8742-75d75e2d80ba https://chatgpt.com/share/e/5d28257f-f51b-40e7-8742-75d75e2d...

> More energy being used heats up the as atmosphere We’re nowhere close to this being a problem. (Our total energy production is dwarfed by the natural flux.)

0x0203 2y ago
Since it seems like you've seen data pertaining to this, do you have any good/reputable sources? I've tried asking in various places about what percentage of planetary warming is due to direct heating from energy consumption, vs. greenhouse gas effects vs. natural causes, but usually just get accused of being a climate change denier and told to go educate myself. I'm really just curious about methodology, want to build a better mental model of how it works and how it's studied, and have never seen any discussions/papers talking about direct heating effects, so don't know where to start.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > what percentage of planetary warming is due to direct heating from energy consumption, vs. greenhouse gas effects vs. natural causes Humans produce 20 TW of power [1]. (15 if we remove solar, wind and hydro.) The Sun delivers, to the Earth, 44,000 TW [2]. So raising the amount of the Sun's energy the earth retains by 454 parts in a million (329 if we remove solar, wind and hydro) adds to the Earth the energy of our entire civilisation. That is why emissions are the problem. Not our direct heat production. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum... [2] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/135642main_balance_trifold21.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/135642main_b...
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    More significantly, indirect heating from increased greenhouse gases is about 400 TW.
    - vixen99 2y ago
      Link?
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        Thanks for making me check, I was off a bit. It's actually more like 1400 TW. Must have dropped a digit when I remembered that. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-023-06775-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-023-06775-x > the total radiative forcing (RF) by human activities of approximately 2.72 W m^−2 (Masson-Delmotte 2021) (with the radius of the Earth of 6.4e6 meters and surface area = 4 pi r^2).
- kolinko 2y ago
  It’s quite easy - we have numbers for humanity’s electricity and heat production. We also know how much atmosphere and oceans weigh, which we can multiply by specific heat of air and water. From this you can calculate how much we’ve heaten up the atmosphere/oceans - even ignoring the loss of heat to space/ground our impact is neglible. Here is chatgpt doing the math - https://chatgpt.com/share/e/5d28257f-f51b-40e7-8742-75d75e2d80ba https://chatgpt.com/share/e/5d28257f-f51b-40e7-8742-75d75e2d... - it’s roughly correct.

Beijinger 2y ago

Well, yes, kind of. But the Stefan–Boltzmann law has the temperature^4 means the earth should radiate it back into space. No?

hollerith 2y ago

That is not what "heat death" means.

alxmng 2y ago

You might enjoy Sabine Hossenfelder's video exploring this "I recently learned that waste heat will boil the oceans in about 400 years": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRtA7STvH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRtA7STvH4 It turns out we can probably solve this by building planetary chimneys 5km tall that move heat to the outer atmosphere.

kolinko 2y ago

All the energy we ever produced and are likely to produce in the forseeable future has neglible impact on the atmosphere’s temperatures. (Unlike co2 ofc) Here is gpt doing estimates - the numbers are similar to the ones I calculated by hand some time ago: https://chatgpt.com/share/e/5d28257f-f51b-40e7-8742-75d75e2d80ba https://chatgpt.com/share/e/5d28257f-f51b-40e7-8742-75d75e2d...