Earth owes its inherent comfortable temperature level from the adequate heat given off by our sun within the “Goldilocks zone” of our Solar System. But despite the regulated heat levels given by this almost fateful mix of initial variables, the threat of global warming due to carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases always looms by.
But is it really fair for us to put all the blame on global warming in these heat trapping gases? Unknown to us, there might be other, more plain factors that might contribute to the overall increase in Earth’s temperature.
Generated Energy and Global Heat
There is a claim that every source of energy could potentially cause an eventual increase in the Earth’s temperature. This came from a research paper made by E. J. Chaisson that suggests waste heat, when added up together could be a contributing factor to global warming. Since waste heat is always inevitably produced by any source of energy, all power plants, engines, generators and even appliances and temperature control devices could be directly responsible for a possible global temperature increase.
Though the claim of this research might seem a little too outrageous, we cannot really deny the fact that our civilization had already experienced a significant and exponential increase in energy demand over the past century. A statement about waste heat affecting the Earth’s temperature would not really sound too surprising if we take our entire global energy production output today into account.
Implications and Predictions
We could probably see where this is heading now, but the primary implication of the waste heat idea is that global warming is an inevitable phenomenon that would eventually be caused by any kind of sufficiently advanced technology created by a planet-bound civilization. Even if we are to reduce carbon emissions to zero now, our alternative energy sources when combined together would still create enough waste heat as the number of power generation farms and plants grows.
In fact, the research predicts that if the world’s population plateaus at 9 billion by the year 2100, we would have had enough energy that would produce the waste heat required to increase Earth’s temperature by 3 whole Celsius degrees for the next 320 years after that. Of course, the problem would definitely get even worse if we can’t find a way to stop carbon emissions from increasing by then.
There are a few exceptions to this energy = waste heat relation though, and one is the use of solar energy. Unlike most other kinds of renewable energies that use chemical and atomic reactions to create energy, solar energy can directly “transform its fuel” into electricity with significantly less waste heat produced (within the system at least). Wind energy could also prove to be very useful in this regard, since it also produces relatively little waste heat, even if it has a few minor negative points that just might make it less eco-friendly than it looks.
Despite the supposed “doom talk” for alternative energy sources due to waste heat, it is important to realize that the research was not meant to downplay the importance of renewable energy in any way. We think it was simply meant to oversee the energy technology development curve of the human race as a single planetary civilization.
Source ; theenvironmentalblog
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