[Grad-postdoc-assn] Fwd: News Alert: Mon Jan 26

[Maura Hagan]

NCAR Fellows-
   FYI, I'm appending this interesting article which includes a quote  
from
Mark Flanner. Best regards.
--Maura

Begin forwarded message:

>
> The Other Global Warming
> 01/25/2009
> Boston Globe
> Venkataraman, Bina
>
> Return to Top
> Even if we contain the greenhouse effect, says a Tufts  
> astrophysicist, we'll have another heat problem on our hands
>
> Human civilization will heat up the planet; the glaciers will melt  
> and the seas will rise. It's a familiar refrain by now, with a  
> familiar solution: stop pumping out the greenhouse gases that trap  
> the sun's heat.
>
> But even if we bring the greenhouse effect under control, says a  
> Tufts astrophysicist, the earth will warm up anyway, thanks to a  
> completely different source of heat that we create ourselves.
>
> Over the next 250 years, calculates Eric J. Chaisson in a recent  
> paper, the earth's population will start generating so much of its  
> own heat - chiefly wasted from energy use - that it will warm the  
> earth even without a rise in greenhouse gases. The only way to avoid  
> it, he says, is to rethink how we generate energy.
>
> His paper examines the planet's growing pool of waste heat, a  
> widespread phenomenon that nonetheless has been little studied as a  
> cause of climate change. Nearly everything that uses or generates  
> energy - chiefly power plants, but also cars, snowblowers,  
> computers, and light bulbs - squanders some energy as wasted heat.  
> And the larger and more energy-hungry the human population grows,  
> the more waste heat remains in our atmosphere.'What this means for  
> humans is that this is the ultimate limit to growth,' said Dennis  
> Bushnell, the chief scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, who  
> urged Chaisson to publish his idea. 'As we produce more kilowatts,  
> we have to produce more waste heat.'Chaisson's prediction suggests  
> we need to change our energy policy - not just by keeping emissions  
> low, but by shifting toward power sources that don't add new heat to  
> the earth's system.
>
> The culprits in the waste-heat problem are not only dirty fossil  
> fuels like coal and oil, but also some 'clean' power sources like  
> nuclear and geothermal energy, which still add to the problem by  
> pumping new heat into the atmosphere. The only way to stop waste  
> heat-induced global warming, in Chaisson's view, is to rely on  
> energy that already reaches the earth's surface: sunlight, and the  
> wind and the waves that it powers.
>
> Critics say Chaisson's paper describes a scenario so far in the  
> future, and so dependent on projections, that there's simply no way  
> to know if it will come to pass. They also say it could distract us  
> from the far more urgent problem of greenhouse gases. But the idea  
> has piqued the interest of several scientists from around the world  
> who see an opportunity to avert a crisis before future generations  
> have to face it. And in a broader sense, it also suggests a new  
> framework for decisions, one that appreciates the long road we - and  
> our planet - have traveled in our evolution from the microbes of the  
> primordial oceans and the stardust of the cosmos.
>
> That kind of long-range thinking is exactly what drew Chaisson's  
> attention from astrophysics to the topic of global warming. His  
> research typically focuses on the origins and evolution of stars and  
> galaxies, and during a seminar on climate change in 2007, Chaisson  
> asked himself: If we look at the earth as a spinning ball in space,  
> reliant on the Sun, but where people plow new energy sources, how  
> long will it be before all that new energy heats the planet up? He  
> scribbled out some rough calculations to predict the eventual  
> explosion of waste heat.
>
> The concept was not entirely new to him. With his mentor and friend,  
> the late astronomer Carl Sagan, Chaisson had often discussed the  
> notion that no civilization on any planet could survive over the  
> long term unless it relied on energy from 'its parent star.''It just  
> came as a no-brainer,' he said, of the waste heat idea.
>
> Chaisson published his paper last year in a journal of the American  
> Geophysical Union. Since then, he has received a flurry of e-mails  
> from intrigued researchers and has spoken about it at conferences  
> from the West Coast to Europe.
>
> His predictions are based on a simple but fundamental law of  
> science: Energy can't be perfectly harnessed, but tends to  
> dissipate, usually in the form of heat. The concept, also known as  
> entropy, is laid out in the inviolable second law of thermodynamics.
>
> In practice, this means that any machine we run, whether a car  
> engine or a power plant, not only does the work we're asking it to  
> do, but emits heat - a lot of heat. Think of touching a lightbulb,  
> or holding your hand over your exhaust pipe after your car has been  
> running for only a few minutes. The heat you feel is energy  
> radiating uselessly into the air. On a much larger scale, the same  
> thing happens when we burn coal or oil, run a nuclear plant, even  
> bring geothermal energy up from beneath the earth's surface.
>
> Altogether, humans waste about two-thirds of the energy we produce  
> on earth. More than half of the energy it takes to run a car's  
> engine, for example, is squandered as waste heat, most of which  
> pours out of exhaust pipes. Power plants regularly release more  
> energy in waste heat that they make in electricity. Currently, all  
> this heat makes little difference for our climate: it mostly  
> dissipates into space. But the more energy humans use to fuel our  
> societies and to feed our populations, the more waste heat we will  
> emit. Eventually, as more economies industrialize, and as the  
> population grows, that heat will become a significant problem.
>
> Even if we capped all greenhouse gas pollution, Chaisson calculated,  
> in roughly 300 years the planet will warm at least 3 degrees  
> Celsius, if our non-renewable energy use increases in line with  
> historical trends and UN projections of population growth. Though 3  
> degrees might sound small, such a rise in average global  
> temperatures would lead to dire consequences, including significant  
> sea level rise and mass extinction of species, according to  
> scenarios outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
>
> The impact of waste heat from power plants, cars, and factories can  
> already be measured in certain ways. The lakes, rivers, and oceans  
> around nuclear power plants heat up as the water used to cool  
> reactors is discharged into them. And waste heat contributes to  
> 'heat islands' in cities. A 2007 study of Tokyo showed that summer  
> temperatures in neighborhoods with office buildings are warmer by  
> nearly 2 degrees Celsius when air conditioning units are running -  
> because as the units cool the insides of buildings, they also pump  
> heat into the air.
>
> The only way to stop this wasted heat from warming our atmosphere is  
> to avoid generating it in the first place, which means using the  
> energy that naturally comes to the planet. When a wind or wave  
> turbine spins, or a solar panel collects rays, they're using energy  
> that's already part of the system.
>
> Today, many climate scientists view waste heat as a negligible  
> problem compared to greenhouse gas emissions. The heat-trapping  
> effect of greenhouse gases has 100 times the effect on global  
> warming that waste heat does, said Mark Flanner, a researcher at the  
> National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who uses  
> computer models to simulate waste heat. Flanner agrees with  
> Chaisson, however, that it will play a much larger role over the  
> long term.'If we assume the current growth in nonrenewable energy  
> use, the heat flux will be of equal magnitude to the greenhouse  
> effect 200 years from now,' he said.Still there are several big  
> unknowns in Chaisson's predictions. One is his assumption that power  
> plants and engines will continue to be quite wasteful. History  
> suggests that societies tend to become more, not less, energy- 
> efficient as technologies improve. Today's machines are far more  
> efficient than yesterday's, and if that trend continues, the problem  
> of global waste heat could be slower to develop - although the laws  
> of thermodynamics say it's impossible to reduce wasted energy to  
> zero.'We just don't know if there is a point at which energy use  
> will level off,' said Yangyang Liu, an atmospheric scientist at  
> Brookhaven National Laboratory who was intrigued by Chaisson's  
> paper, but thinks it may overestimate waste heat's contribution to  
> long-term global warming. 'The efficiency to convert energy to work  
> will also probably improve over time.'Also uncertain is how much  
> waste heat the planet's oceans can absorb before the overall  
> temperature rises. And Chaisson's starkest scenarios assume that the  
> human population will grow at certain rates, although it could drop  
> sharply from widespread disaster or disease.
>
> Since his paper was published in July, the most frequent criticism  
> Chaisson has heard is that the waste-heat problem diverts attention  
> from the far more urgent question of how to tackle greenhouse gas  
> emissions. If we cook ourselves with carbon dioxide first, critics  
> say, waste heat will make little difference. 'I can't show that the  
> estimates are wrong,' said John Merrill, an atmospheric physicist at  
> the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography.  
> 'But I can say that there are many hurdles caused by climate change  
> and other environmental and social challenges that we need to  
> address a lot sooner than this set.'Chaisson concedes that in  
> looking 300 years into the future, not just 50 or 100, his critique  
> sits outside current debates over climate change. But he warns that  
> taking a long-term view is vital to human survival - even if the  
> coming environmental catastrophe is something that neither we, nor  
> our children, are likely to see in our lifetimes.'It's true, it's  
> not important now,' he said, while sitting below a timeline of the  
> universe in his office at Tufts. 'But from the point of view of an  
> astrophysicist, we shouldn't be digging up any resources on our  
> planet when we have plenty of energy coming from our parent star,  
> the sun.'Long-range ideas like Chaisson's are uncommon in the realm  
> of policy, where the pressure is great to deal with present-day  
> challenges that affect people alive today. But such long-term  
> thinking has been an important thread in the environmental movement,  
> and holds an undeniable grip on the popular imagination. Rachel  
> Carson's early and influential book 'Silent Spring' opened by  
> imagining a future in which pesticides had killed all the songbirds.  
> More recently, last summer's animated blockbuster 'Wall-E' set its  
> story on a post-apocalyptic Earth, a wasteland heaped with trash.
>
> In the hope that thinking far, far ahead will catch on among  
> scientists and policymakers, Chaisson has been spreading his  
> perspective. Foundation for the Future, a Seattle-based nonprofit  
> dedicated to contemplating the 'long-term future of humanity,'  
> invited him to present at a meeting in Paris hosted by the United  
> Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
>
> Energy has been the key ingredient that has sustained human life,  
> the growth of our intelligence and civilization, Chaisson told them.  
> But the way we are making it could thwart our evolution, and our  
> survival, if we do not adapt now. 'Humans are part of an evolving  
> universe stretching across billions of light-years of space, and  
> billions of years of time,' he said. Then he asked, 'Who are we to  
> think that change ought now to stop?'Bina Venkataraman writes about  
> science for the Globe.
>

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