Heat we emit could warm the Earth

[n2doc]

01 December 2008 by Mark Buchanan

EVEN if we turn to clean energy to reduce carbon emissions, the planet might carry on warming anyway due to the heat released into the environment by our ever-increasing consumption of energy.

That's the contentious possibility raised by Nick Cowern and Chihak Ahn of the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at Newcastle University, UK. They argue that human energy consumption could begin to contribute significantly to global warming a century from now.

Cowern and Ahn considered an emissions scenario proposed by James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and others. Under this scenario, which envisages greenhouse gases being cut significantly through phasing out coal over the next 40 years, Cowern and Ahn calculate that the greenhouse effect will start to diminish by 2050, stabilising the climate.

But things may not go according to plan. The energy we generate and consume ultimately ends up being dissipated into the environment as heat. This input is relatively small today but might become significant in the next century, Cowern and Ahn suggest.

Their calculations show that if global energy use increases at about 1 per cent per year - slower than in the recent past - then by 2100, the heat dissipated could become significant enough to cancel out the benefits of cuts in emissions (www.arxiv.org/abs/0811.0476).

more:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026845.200-heat-we-emit-could-warm-the-earth.html

I would think that harvesting wind or Solar is a zero-sum game. Maybe Nuclear and Geothermal aren't, though.

[madokie]

1. I've often wondered about all the heat we put into the atmosphere

In order to heat my home right now I'm spewing some pretty hot air our the exhaust of my pellet stove. I know its a big world and all with lots of atmosphere but it has to have an effect on the temperature as a whole, doesn't it?

[kristopher]

2. Interesting article

I'd especially like to thank you for including the link to the original study: http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.0476

I think the title and abstract are worth posting:

Thermal emissions and climate change: a nuclear problem and a photovoltaic solution?
Authors: Nick E.B. Cowern, Chihak Ahn
(Submitted on 4 Nov 2008)

Abstract: Global warming is a consequence of 'temperature forcing', a net imbalance between energy fluxes entering and leaving the global climate system and energy generation within this system. Humanity introduces positive forcings through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, agriculture, and increasingly thermal emissions - heat released as a result of energy generation and use. Up to now, climate change projections have neglected thermal emissions, and typically assume a peak in forcing due to GHG emissions around the middle of this century <1,2>. Here we show that, if humanity's future energy use grows at just 1% per year, slower than in recent history, and if thermal emissions are not controlled through changes in technology, the total forcing due to all emissions will not peak and decline significantly as currently predicted, but after a slight dip will continue to rise. This problem can be combated by geoengineering <3> and mitigated by renewable energy sources that minimize waste heat. Such approaches could be combined in reflective wide-bandgap photovoltaic technology, which offers the possibility of a strong negative temperature forcing together with electrical power generation.