Well, at least for a few hundred years but then:
> if you plot the U.S. energy consumption in all forms from 1650 until now, you see a phenomenally faithful exponential at about 3% per year over that whole span. The situation for the whole world is similar. […] the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate [in energy consumption] (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. […] And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.
Source: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
The population will most definitely not continue to grow (in fact it will start to decrease slightly the more countries reach "developed" status), and the energy consumption per-capita will also stagnate. After all, there is a huge difference between going from living in a log house to a modern apartment with utilities and AC, and not much of a difference between one laptop and a slightly better one some years down the line. Also, attitudes towards environmental protection are changing with the generations so we are likely making different decisions 50 years from now.
If you increase the amount of energy flowing into the human body, the metabolism increases as well (although almost never proportionally - there are many variables) to compensate.
Similarly, it's rather unlikely that humans will continue to use exponentially increasing amounts of energy, unless we intentionally do something to effect that. Human population growth, which is partially driving energy consumption, is not exponential (it would be exponential absent of resource constraints or cultural factors, but guess what - both of those are in effect rather strongly in the real world) - and neither is energy consumption per capita. For instance, from 2005 to 2020, the US gained 30M people[1] while keeping energy consumption roughly constant[2].
[1] https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co...
In a way, the US (and Western countries) are outsourcing their energy consumption.
Exactly, the original link I posted is more or less an argument against infinite economic growth.
The same goes for infinite growth. In the close future it sure looks infinite, but I'd say it's infinitely hard too to predict what will happen in say a 100 years (a fourth of the time before we hit the heat death wall predicted here).
That text is exactly an argument against infinite economic growth – and it carries out said argument by looking at energy consumption (which necessarily grows with economic activity).
We would have the same (if not higher) energy consumption per capita on any other planet. And unless that planet is humongously large (which would also increase its surface-level gravity, thus rendering it uninhabitable), the relation between surface temperature and energy consumption will be similar[0]. Now there's only a finite number of planets in our solar system and leaving our solar system, say in the direction of Proxima Centauri (the star nearest to the Sun), amounts to traveling ~4.2 light-years. At a velocity of 0.1c (which is a lot – especially if you're trying to move an entire species[1]) that means a travel time of 42 years (as seen from our current frame of reference). Any velocity lower than that and we're getting into hundreds-of-years territory, so we'll be needing space ships across we can live for generations.
Also, a space ship is not that different from a planet, in that it also has to obey thermodynamics. So the surface temperature issue there is just the same. (In fact it's worse, since our space ship will likely be smaller and we also need to factor in additional waste energy of the space ship's propulsion engine or whatever we're using.)
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law
[1]: Or, say, half the species (or whatever amount necessary to make the total energy consumption on the planets we already inhabit drop to levels such that the planets' surfaces don't start to boil).
We can barely speculate about such a world, but interstellar travel would not be much of a challenge with that sort of energy abundance. We'll find a way.
On an interstellar ship far from a star, I think you're more likely to freeze to death, because temperature in space is near zero Kelvin.
Inside the solar system however, you could reflect away the received radiation (and heat) using mirrors.
I wonder, in a strictly thermodynamic way (ignoring CO2 etc), how big of an impact it would have to remove all internal combustion engines in land-based transportation and power generation (coal plants).
ICE's have like a 30-40% efficiency? Compared to electric engines 80-90%. But on the other hand, you probably consume quite a bit of energy producing the batteries...
Per unit of storage, Wikipedia says the lifetime storage capacity of batteries etc. relative to energy needed to construct them is:
Lead acid: 5 times construction energy; Vanadium redox: 10; LiIon: 32; Pumped hydro: 704; Compressed air: 792.
I can’t remember where I’ve seen this, but I think a unit of PV produces all the energy it took to manufacture after a month or two.
If you mean overall? As a rough guide we emit about 35GT CO2/year which is about 9.5e12 kg carbon; burning carbon releases about 32MJ/kg; so about 3e20 J/year, or 9 TW, or 19 mW/m^2.
There’s more energy in the hydrogen in gases and oils, this is just a ballpark estimate of the thermodynamic output of burning that much does to directly heat the planet.
Global energy use is around 170,000 TWh/year (1). This includes electricity generation, as well as fuel for transport, burning wood for heat, etc.
Heat flow from mantle is 403,000 TWh/year (2)
Solar irradiance is ~1200W/m2, which adds up to massive 5B TWh/year.
Extra radiative forcing from greenhouse gases in IPCC scenarios is ~3W/m2, or around 12.5M TWh/year.
The radiative forcing is two orders of magnitude larger than our energy use.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...
The 1200-ish W/m/m figure is hitting a flat plate circle, not hitting the whole spherical surface.
Taking 173,000TW of continuous solar energy* times 24h/d times 365.25 d/yr yields a little over 1.5B TWhr/yr
Hand-warmers can keep part of the body warm for a few hours. Coats can keep the whole body warm for years.
Kinetic energy will end up getting converted to waste heat nonetheless.
> or bound carbon
This seems hard to imagine. We're dealing with waste energy here, so a very high-entropy type of energy. Bound carbon is low-entropy, so the conversion is impossible[0] unless we put that entropy elsewhere.
As an analogy, consider a fridge: It brings your food from a high-entropy (high-temperature) to a low-entropy (low-temperature) state but in order to do that it also has to produce waste heat (entropy) on the outside.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
Eventually it all decays to heat, as per the 2nd law of thermodynamics
If you were to use 100% of solar panel energy to heat up something else the overall balance would be 0.
Contrarily, nuclear fission/fusion that releases energy from its fuel, ultimately heating up the planet.
I honestly can't tell if you are joking. The energy expenditure to get anything into orbit would produce more heat than you are offsetting.
He's basically describing a giant air conditioner... it's definitely theoretically possible.
How to tell an undereducated journo.
