re: #197 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

Here I will apply it to climate change (as mentioned in the video.)

The “doomers” are pushing harder the idea that there cannot be, and some asserting there should not be, a “soft landing”.

This is a subject for a long discussion, but here I will raise the problem of waste heat.

Currently, waste heat compared to trapped solar energy, is much smaller than the latter.

Annual energy addition to the surface of the Earth-system, by waste heat, is estimated to be 1.5% of that of trapped solar energy.

But something overlooked by many is that most of that waste heat is generated by a small minority of the planet.

The US consumes about one sixth of all the energy used by us humans on the planet.

But we are only a bit over 4% of the planet’s population.

IF we believe that all humans have a right to live the luxurious life we Americans have, then the waste heat figure will go up dramatically.

What this means: a global civilization living at American standards will heat the surface of the Earth about one third as fast as the trapped solar energy. Up from just 1.5%.

This means after 3 centuries, a global civilization will have raised the surface temp around 2C just from waste heat alone.

This, btw, is why movie representations of global advanced civilizations are just wacky. Take Star Wars for example, with the center of the Empire on a planet covered by a giant city. Said planet would be boiling hot.

So yes, the doomers have a point.

Any civilization in which humans use machines that require energy (and they all do), will end in disaster.

Or should we say apocalypse.