Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory

boem@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 254 points –
Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory
nature.com
44

You are viewing a single comment

The earth generally has an overall fixed rate at which it can radiate heat into space.

We dig up millions of years of stored solar energy and release it as heat.

I really don't understand why people are surprised. Sure, it can get really complicated as you factor in varying cloud cover, solar output, greenhouse effect.

But long-term trend, it shouldn't surprise anyone that every joule of energy we pull out of stored carbon, or even mass->energy via nuclear. We are generating more heat now than the earth is used to radiating out.

So obviously the average temperature is going to increase.

Even if we find ways to store the energy back, it takes energy to do so, and therefore more waste heat in the end.

If we want to cool the planet, we have to increase the rate that we radiate heat out into space.

Waste heat will eventually be a problem, but we're far from the limit yet:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01652-6.epdf?sharing_token=yNwL92oPzcpklZSqVsr-ndRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N0u2htmeT1Hou6SrdtT_vjhsjDi8mPyrY6gILuO1cIPYM5r9vTrCV6dFSGWkHiq63t24rvELuWNN1w82farMIezAYiWj7ialZ8KkzI_SEgHP98WBPRE6PFu8lx9H4EP5A%3D

At present, the waste heat term is about four orders of magnitude smaller than the solar term. But at a growth factor of ten per century, they would reach parity in roughly 400 years. Indeed, the surface temperature of Earth would reach the boiling point of water (373 K) in just over 400 years under this relentless prescription. Clearly, extrapolating our recent — seemingly modest — 2.3% annual energy growth very far into the future quickly becomes ridiculous, and cannot happen.

This is not intended to suggest that waste heat is a bigger problem than, say, climate change from carbon dioxide emissions.

So that's something we're going to need to think about after getting greenhouse gas emissions under control.

If we want to cool the planet, we have to increase the rate that we radiate heat out into space.

Or generate less heat. Al La use less energy. As in downsize our oversized lifestyles. As in spend less money. As in go counter to capitalism.

1 more...