I’ve definitely turned into the paranoid nutcase within my friend group in recent years, I hate that everything is “smart” nowadays requiring an app/internet connection & account, just to do basic things that didn’t require any of that before.
What’s some things currently making you ramble like an old man?
thinking that waste heat is a rounding error and not worth accounting for / reducing.
will be pretty fucking dumb to get co2 under control only to find out that we’re still heating up the planet with every recharge, we’re literally pumping heat into the ground (yay heatpumps! wait, shit) and we think it’s ‘free’, but eventually even that will add up, and be ever so much more apparent once the fossil fuels stop burning, but the temps keep climbing.
everything we own or make dumps all it’s resistance generated heat right into our atmosphere.
Well, yes, but also no. The heat released by fossil fuels absolulety increases the total energy of the atmosphere, but the other half of a zero carbon society is that it is powered by renewable energy sources.
If we are generating electricity by slowing down atmospheric winds or capturing sunlight incident on the planet surface, then any “waste heat” from the usage of that electricity will be energy that was already present, and therefore have no net heating effect.
Also CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap heat from the Sun. Waste heat doesn’t do that.
Indeed we would have to use a fuck ton more energy for the waste heat to be a problem
I think you underestimate how much energy hits the earth from the sun. The total amount of energy humans use in a year hits the earth in an hour. How much heat we give off is pretty negligible.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. You jump immediately to an assumption that disregards my premise. I’m aware the threat is small compared to the threat from climate change largely induced by C02 emissions, but we’re just getting rolling.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2023/09/10/chatgpt-was-built-in-iowa-using-artificial-intelligence-microsoft-west-des-moines/70819093007/
tell me this doesn’t represent a problem long term. we’re only going to create more and more waste heat.
and one of the oft-cited solutions to keep people cooler, more efficiently, is to dump that heat into the ground. when thousands were doing it around the world, meh. when billions are doing it constantly in order to stave off cooking from a climate gone mad… it’ll add up.
I’m not suggesting we go full luddite but I don’t think people are giving these subjects their due.
Are we opposed to trying the satellite/sphere thing that blocks out the sun for a bit to cool off the planet? I’m not sure I’m really against it, though pereputal pollution is still not optimal. Plus if you start that project you have the basis for the next project… The Dyson ring/sphere
But heat radiates out to space it doesn’t accumulate in the atmosphere like CO2 does. Plus if we switch to a fully renewable grid you aren’t introducing any new heat to the system just moving it around.