Climate Change(d)?

[Jimmy Higgins]

February in northeast Ohio was significantly warmer than normal with very little snow

A summary of the weather in Cleveland and Akron during February 2023

www.cleveland19.com

2nd warmest February on record in NE Ohio. Cleveland 7.8 degrees warmer and Akron 9.1 degrees warmer than average.

Yet another monthly sized anomaly that we are supposed to ignore because some think it is a delusion.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Upthread Steve mentioned that the waste heat from human-produced energy is only a tiny fraction of greenhouse heat from human-produced CO2.

But in this video, Sabine Hossenfelder tells us "I recently learned that waste heat will boil the oceans in about 400 years." If trends continue the waste heat will dwarf the greenhouse heat! Is this correct?

No.*

What assumptions are involved?

Dunno, haven't watched. Do you have a link to a transcript of what she says in the video?

She does say that wind- and solar-produced power do not generate new waste heat: They harness energy that would otherwise have been "wasted" (turned to heat) anyway.

Well that's certainly not true of solar power, which converts light into heat (mostly via electricity and whatever we use that electricity for).

If it hadn't encountered a solar panel, some of that light would have been reflected back into space.

Every solar panel on Earth reduces the planet's albedo, and causes some conversion of incident sunlight into heat.

I haven't done the maths, but I would bet dollars to donuts that this albedo effect is utterly minuscule - as is the effect of waste heat vs. heating due to atmospheric changes.

Waste heat isn't anywhere close to sufficient to boil even a small ocean in only a few centuries. She's dropped a significant number of zeros in whatever calculations misled her to that conclusion. Or perhaps has assumed that waste heat is somehow completely 100% contained by the atmosphere and cannot radiate out into the cold of space. Perhaps the atmosphere knows the difference between nasty artificial waste heat, and nice, natural, solar heat?






*Back of the envelope - solar irradiance is around 1.3kW per m². If we aren't generating over a W of power per m², we aren't adding as much as 0.1% to that heating.

US land area is ~10 million km², at 1W per m² that's 10¹²W, or 10TW of power generation required to produce 0.1% of additional heating. US power generation is around 0.45TW, so to add 0.1% to the heat delivered by the sun, the entire surface of the world, including the oceans, would need to generate electricity at more than twenty times the rate that the USA currently does.

I’ve watched her video. You should too. All of her videos are good.

Basically she was reporting in someone else’s result that if we assume that east heat rises exponentially for the next four hundred years the Earth’s surface temperature would reach that of water’s boiling temperature.

She then goes on to talk in more detail about what may be wrong about the underlying assumptions and about waste heat in general.

 

[bilby]

if we assume that east heat rises exponentially for the next four hundred years

If we assume that anything rises exponentially for four hundred years, we are (whether we know it or not) assuming that a disaster will ensue.

The question is why on Earth any sane person would make such a pointless and foolish assumption.

It's an extension of Malthus's idiotic idea that human population would continue to rise exponentially until starvation killed billions of us. Exponential growth in population lasted until the middle of the twentieth century, long enough for lots of smart people to panic, and then stopped, because we did something about it.

Without exponential population growth (which we haven't seen in over fifty years), exponential waste heat growth is a totally unjustified assumption.

Invitations to be scared or angry about stuff should almost invariably be declined. If there's a problem, we should look for solutions without fear or anger.

Climate change is a problem; We have a solution, and are implementing it far too slowly (indeed , in places like Germany, actively and deliberately going backwards) because of needless and unjustified fear. Fear is the mind killer.

Population was seen (and still is by far too many people who pay only cursory attention) as a terrifying disaster. But the solution wasn't totalitarian insanity like the Chinese one child policy, or some similar worldwide craziness; it was a contraceptive that was effective and able to be controlled by women; Coupled with widespread primary education for girls.

Waste heat isn't even a plausible disaster; But if it were, being terrified or angry about it would be counterproductive.

People who invite you to outrage or fear are never your friends, and should be to fuck right off, in no uncertain terms.

 

[Shadowy Man]

if we assume that east heat rises exponentially for the next four hundred years

If we assume that anything rises exponentially for four hundred years, we are (whether we know it or not) assuming that a disaster will ensue.

The question is why on Earth any sane person would make such a pointless and foolish assumption.

I don’t know why. I am just explaining what Sabine was talking about. She is very rational and gives great explanations of science not at a dumbed-down level. I enjoy her videos. It wasn’t her argument, she was just talking about it and the subject of waste heat and climate change.

 

[lpetrich]

 Thomas Robert Malthus - he proposed that human population increases exponentially with time, while utilized land increases linearly. That is a horseshit argument. The exponential increase is no problem, it's the available land that's the problem. More people means more colonists available for unused land, meaning that the amount of utilized land increases exponentially at the same rate. But there is a problem: running out of land. That is a soft limit, since people move into more and more marginal land, with lower and lower productivity, but that is a limit just the same.

Malthus considered three solutions:

• Moral restraint - not practicing any form of sex until one is in good enough economic shape to take good care of children
• Vice - birth control, abortion, and likely also alternative sex acts, though he was vague about that
• Misery - famine from population overshooting productive capacity of the land

Malthus and vice - Resilience

That left vice: a category that included prostitution, abortion and infanticide, but also “promiscuous intercourse, unnatural passions, violations of the marriage bed, and improper arts to conceal the consequence of irregular connexions.”

Population Growth: Malthus

The closest he came to defining vice explicitly was not until the publication of A Summary View, wherein he listed the checks of vice that operated in a preventative manner: "the sort of intercourse which renders some of the women of large towns unprolific; a general corruption of morals with regard to the sex, which has a similar effect; unnatural passions and improper arts to prevent the consequences of irregular connections," (Summary... p. 250). With these delicate terms, Malthus referred to prostitution, venereal disease, homosexuality, and, notably, abortion and birth control.

He might also have mentioned what he might have called "peccatum illud horribile inter Christianos non nominandum" -- translated from Latin: "that horrible sin, among Christians not to be named".

There is a fourth solution: sterilization. Present-day sterilization techniques, vasectomy and tubal ligation, do not interfere with sexual performance. However, they were not practical when TM wrote "An Essay on the Principle of Population", published in 1798. The first known vasectomy was done on a dog in 1832, and by the late 19th cy., it was done on our species to treat enlarged prostate glands.The first known tubal ligation was performed in 1880.

A more drastic solution is to remove the gonads, and that has been done on men for millennia: castration, called neutering when done on domestic animals. Removal of ovaries is much more difficult, and it was first successfully done in the late 19th cy.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

if we assume that east heat rises exponentially for the next four hundred years

If we assume that anything rises exponentially for four hundred years, we are (whether we know it or not) assuming that a disaster will ensue.

The question is why on Earth any sane person would make such a pointless and foolish assumption.

I don’t know why. I am just explaining what Sabine was talking about. She is very rational and gives great explanations of science not at a dumbed-down level. I enjoy her videos. It wasn’t her argument, she was just talking about it and the subject of waste heat and climate change.

I've got to imagine that with time, we'll have more and more gadgets and gizmos, but we'll also have ridiculously more amounts of efficiency.

Even today Just look at lightbulbs. Those incandescent light bulbs were around 10 to 15% efficient. Switching to CFL or LED bulbs, which use 1/3 or less electricity, are more than 80% efficient, reduced a gargantuan amount of waste heat in the aggregate. This is just light bulbs!

And efficiency for electronics comes with HUGE payoffs, as developing alternative systems that use less energy provide longer usage.

Left unchecked, this would be a problem, but I think the benefits of managing it far outweight the cost of managing it.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

 Thomas Robert Malthus - he proposed that human population increases exponentially with time, while utilized land increases linearly. That is a horseshit argument. The exponential increase is no problem, it's the available land that's the problem. More people means more colonists available for unused land, meaning that the amount of utilized land increases exponentially at the same rate. But there is a problem: running out of land. That is a soft limit, since people move into more and more marginal land, with lower and lower productivity, but that is a limit just the same.

Malthus considered three solutions:

• Moral restraint - not practicing any form of sex until one is in good enough economic shape to take good care of children
• Vice - birth control, abortion, and likely also alternative sex acts, though he was vague about that
• Misery - famine from population overshooting productive capacity of the land

There is one other consideration... people aren't bacteria. First world nations have lower birth rates that have a tendency to check growth. Money is an odd thing when it comes to having babies when it comes to a species.

 

[Elixir]

Even today Just look at lightbulbs. Those incandescent light bulbs were around 10 to 15% efficient. Switching to CFL or LED bulbs, which use 1/3 or less electricity, are more than 80% efficient, reduced a gargantuan amount of waste heat in the aggregate. This is just light bulbs!

I just switched out the led's in the cans above our kitchen island for incandescent bulbs. I had to either replace the dimmer switches (it's a 3-way) to be compatible with the LEDs or... go back to incandescents. I gave Mrs Elixir the choice and she was unequivocal that the redder light was easier on her eyes - and she's the "main" cook around here, so ...
I couldn't find a single incandescent bulb anywhere in the stores around here, but online I found a Company called 1000 Bulbs that had the incandescent spots I needed. Buy one, and shipping was $9. I bought 15 of them and shipping was $28. I could have bought the GE version for $7.59/bulb plus (smaller) shipping charge, but the rating (3000) hours is the same as the ones I got for $1.25 each. Further, the GE site had a popup that declared that the incandescents would be unavailable (starting some time this month iirc.) The LED compatible switches were going to set me back another $70 or so, plus the PITA of installing them...
Our new old bulbs are working just fine.

 

[steve_bank]

The predictions of Malthus were pushed out by modern agriculture.

Even before climate change began affecting agriculture and water there were populations not sustainable.

Look at what happened when Russia interrupted Ukrainian wheat.

Areas in Africa using up local wood for cooking fires.

Listened to a report last night on China's population.

They have gone from a one child policy and forced abortions to promoting kids even for unmarried couples.

Same as over here. People have one kid and can not afford or want more. Women want careers uncomplicated by kids.

China faces a large aging population with less young people to support them.

China is going through what we went through starting in the 19th century. Mirgraton form rural agriculture to cities.

Staring in the 80s as Cin's fishing fleet exhausted local resources they expand globally. Part of he South China Sea issue for China is annexing fishing waters.

In our global capitalist free market paradigm population has to grow, If not the system declines.

 

[thebeave]

Even today Just look at lightbulbs. Those incandescent light bulbs were around 10 to 15% efficient. Switching to CFL or LED bulbs, which use 1/3 or less electricity, are more than 80% efficient, reduced a gargantuan amount of waste heat in the aggregate. This is just light bulbs!

I just switched out the led's in the cans above our kitchen island for incandescent bulbs. I had to either replace the dimmer switches (it's a 3-way) to be compatible with the LEDs or... go back to incandescents. I gave Mrs Elixir the choice and she was unequivocal that the redder light was easier on her eyes - and she's the "main" cook around here, so ...
I couldn't find a single incandescent bulb anywhere in the stores around here, but online I found a Company called 1000 Bulbs that had the incandescent spots I needed. Buy one, and shipping was $9. I bought 15 of them and shipping was $28. I could have bought the GE version for $7.59/bulb plus (smaller) shipping charge, but the rating (3000) hours is the same as the ones I got for $1.25 each. Further, the GE site had a popup that declared that the incandescents would be unavailable (starting some time this month iirc.) The LED compatible switches were going to set me back another $70 or so, plus the PITA of installing them...
Our new old bulbs are working just fine.

Were the LED bulbs flashing or flickering? Or still glowing when the switch was off (i.e. ghosting)? Sometimes you can fix those problems by just replacing one LED bulb with an incandescent and leaving the rest LEDs. The problem is certain older dimmers need a minimum load (usually around 40 watts) to operate properly. LEDs are such low wattage, they often don't meet that 40 watt threshold and crazy shit starts happening.

 

[steve_bank]

Energy Star
ty[pcally have a max idle current, a shutdown mode.

ENERGY STAR

ENERGY STAR makes it easy for consumers and businesses to save money and protect the environment.

www.energystar.gov

Battery charging systems are components used to recharge a wide variety of cordless products, including power tools, small household appliances, and personal care products like electric shavers. Approximately 230 million products with battery charging systems are currently in use in American homes and businesses.
Conventional battery chargers — even when not actively charging a product — can draw as much as 5 to 20 times more energy than is actually stored in the battery! ENERGY STAR certified battery chargers, on average use about 30% less energy than conventional models.

ENERGY STAR certified battery charging systems use about 30% less energy than standard equipment.

On the question of energy to support EVs it was said Seattle has a surplus to deal with it due to conservation progrmas, like replacing incandescence bulbs.


Going from linear to switching power supplies in products had an impact


Energy Star is voluntary.

 

[lpetrich]

There is a variant of the fourth method that some people have practiced: castration as birth control. The  Moriori people did that, neutering some of their male babies. They lived in the Chatham Islands, about 800 km east of New Zealand's South Island.

 Eunuch is about neutered men, but does not mention this birth-control practice.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's an extension of Malthus's idiotic idea that human population would continue to rise exponentially until starvation killed billions of us. Exponential growth in population lasted until the middle of the twentieth century, long enough for lots of smart people to panic, and then stopped, because we did something about it.

There wasn't very good contraception in his time. Malthus' predictions held true until effective birth control came along.

Without exponential population growth (which we haven't seen in over fifty years), exponential waste heat growth is a totally unjustified assumption.

Agreed--there's no reason waste heat should be exponential, because waste heat doesn't create much waste heat.

 

[steve_bank]

As I posted previously. I asked the UW climate science center on the contribution of industrialwaste heat and they said it was inconsequential compared to greenhouse gasses.

Energy is proportional to a magnitude squared. mv^2/2.

In a simple resistive circuit like power line wires heat is (i^2) * r in watts where i is current and r is resistance.

In thermodynamics there are theoretical limits to efficiency. Industrial efficiency can be improved to a practical limit which can limit the amount of waste heat per capita, but it will always go up as population grows. At least within our paradigm of continuous global economic growth.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As I posted previously. I asked the UW climate science center on the contribution of industrialwaste heat and they said it was inconsequential compared to greenhouse gasses.

Energy is proportional to a magnitude squared. mv^2/2.

In a simple resistive circuit like power line wires heat is (i^2) * r in watts where i is current and r is resistance.

In thermodynamics there are theoretical limits to efficiency. Industrial efficiency can be improved to a practical limit which can limit the amount of waste heat per capita, but it will always go up as population grows. At least within our paradigm of continuous global economic growth.

I'm not saying it's impossible for waste heat to matter, I'm saying it's not exponential.

 

[Bearded One]

Larry Niven's Puppeteers sure had a problem with it.

 

[steve_bank]

As an approximation might be

Waste Heat = Joules = population(t)/dt*(joules/person)(t)/dt*efficiency(t)/dt

Of course the equations would become complicated to predct future waste heat..

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Larry Niven's Puppeteers sure had a problem with it.

Puppeteers had no means of birth control.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And Northeast Ohio went from April/May weather for almost all of February to March weather in March.

 

[TSwizzle]

Oh noes!!!!111!!!1!!111!1!!!!!1111

Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert. The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late. Kaisa Kosonen, a climate expert at Greenpeace International, said: “This report is definitely a final warning on 1.5C.”

Teh Gruaniad

An end of times, rapture like cult.