When I was a kid there was a lot of talk in the news, on TV talk shows, at school, and at home about overpopulation. How the world was getting just too crowded. That was with a population of about 2.5 billion. Today we have a population of about 7.5 billion and almost no one speaks of over population any more.
Birth rates seem to be declining naturally (though very slowly), then there’s all this “gender identity”(1) stuff going on recently and other threads in our current social fabric that are all suggestive of a biological response among the Human Herd to too many people. Homosexuality, non-sexuality, genderless identities and such are a natural response among most mammals when subjected to extreme population stress. So are sudden outbursts of anger and violence, depression, hopelessness, the Herd turning on itself and still more manifestations of extreme population stress that you probably really don’t want to know about.
This chart is pretty much self-explanatory, yes? The last 200 years are the real problem.
However… one of the most serious side-effects of overpopulation is Heat, lots of it and on this scale that means Climate Change, among other things.
Nothing special here… just a normal day. People, people, people
The media does the extreme disservice of discussing almost exclusively CO2 and now (the fad of the week) methane also, but these are very minor aspects of the entire climate change syndrome the Earth is going through right now. Ultimately the problem is heat.
Humans are generating (liberating, actually, as you’ll see below) more heat than the planet can shed. That’s the simplest possible statement about global warming that any one can make. That plus: it’s happening right now; today.
Apparently a newscaster on one of the pacific islands standing knee-deep in sea water on what had for centuries been farmland does not make an impression on the American consciousness (if there is such a thing(2)), so let me just say it: Heat. Sea level rise. Island going away. Get it? The people on that island suffering unimaginably because of what America and it’s many wanna-be followers and copiers have done over the last 150 years, or so.
To be fair, what they / we all did was through ignorance, but it could have been stopped at least 70 years ago when the word was being spread by Those Who Could See.
When you run your car most now know that it pushes CO2 out into the air. We used to know that the car also produces all sorts of other poisons and noxious compounds. What’s rarely mentioned though is that it also produces heat. Out the tail pipe. In the tires from friction as they roll down the road (actually why tires wear out as fast as they do). And in the engine compartment, where you could literally bake a chicken while on your way some where. Heat. And more heat.
Multiply that by several billion (how many cars and other vehicles are in the world? Does any one know?) That’s A LOT of heat.
Oh, but it must radiate back out into space, yes?
No. And no. And NO.
The Earth receives a bunch of sunlight constantly and continuously, 24×7, on the day side of the planet. Night where ever you are means it’s day light some where else, after all. Heat, and light, and other forms of energy constantly coming in and being absorbed by the air, the land, the sea… plus interactions with the magnetic fields, van Allen belts, etc. A lot of energy comes in.
Then on the night side of the planet, 24×7, the planet radiates heat out into space at a pretty fixed rate. Land, sea and air have a tendency to hang on to heat, at a certain rate; cooling off takes time. Only so much of the “extra” heat can get dumped into space during a given night. Cloud cover and atmospheric particulates (you know, air pollution?) can slow that down.
For billions of years, the Earth was in balance between the heat / energy coming in on the day side and heat / energy being bled off on the night side. Balance. That difference between those actions gives us the average temperature of the world, as we experience it.
Small, occasional variations. Massive volcano explosions causing a mini nuclear winter for a few years, but then the particles settle out and the energy balance gets back to normal. Any number of known (and unknown) meteor impacts similarly would put the world into a temporary “nuclear winter” including the hypothesized one that ended all animal life on this planet for anything larger than a mole, say, about 65 million years ago. So much for Raptor civilization.
Then CO2, methane and other “green house gases” also make it harder for the planet to radiate off as much waste heat as it has been used to doing for the last several million years. So even without all the extra heat Humans manage to liberate into the system, we’d still have a problem because we’ve been using petroleum instead of corn alcohol. (What? Just hang in there; I’ll get to it.)
The plant world (which was far more extensive not that long ago — did you know People created both the Gobi desert and the Sahara? Just as we are currently and with great energy creating the Amazon Desert) participates in this by capturing some of the solar energy and converting it into organic molecules, complex substances which take years to create in quantity — and then people come along and in a short time even by Human standards destroy large sections of it, ultimately burning it all and releasing that stored energy.
These large molecules store a lot of energy. That’s why wood burns, yes?
As a side-effect of the plant world’s constant industry, CO2 gets breathed in from the air and free oxygen is exhaled, while the carbon — of the CO2 — becomes part of those long chain organic molecules, which we then turn into paper, oils, medicinals, buildings, sun porches, bon fires, furniture, tooth picks, etc.
Humans, especially over the last 6,000 – 10,000 years have increasingly found ways to tap into the planetary reserves of stored energy and release them in a hurry. What took 1,000’s or even millions of years to produce and store away has been and is continuing to be released in one heck of a hurry. Petroleum, tapping geothermal energy simply to run another steam turbine, indoor heating, heated swimming pools, air planes, wind mills (yes, even wind mills create heat), burning of yard trash, manufacturing all the Goodies we have become so addicted to…
Did you know the paper plant in Bellingham Washington produces (or did, at least) enough toilet paper to reach to the moon several times over every year? That’s a lot of trees no longer producing oxygen or locking carbon up into other forms, and a lot of power used and heat generated. There are other solutions than Toilet Paper, ones that don’t involve a ten billion dollar a year industry (yes, 10.1 billion dollars a year for toilet paper).
Fires on the beach. Bar-b-ques. Stoves and ovens. Microwave ovens — that’s heat, too. A billion gigawatts of energy and more every year put into wireless transmissions to cell phones, computers, “smart houses,” blue tooth headsets and car key fobs, microwave transmissions around the globe, satellite transmissions to and from space: all of it becomes heat.
Now unprecedented numbers of forest fires every year, due to decades of a never-quite-acknowledged drought. Really, climate change is not new, people.
All this electrical and mechanic energy comes from what was stored, static energy forms buried in the Earth or working as integral parts of the system (such as the massive forests that used to exist over much of the Earth’s surface) being released all at once. Most of the Big Energy Release has been in the last 200 years, which is an eye-blink at best to the Planet. Millions of years worth of Energy Storage let lose in practically over night.
That’s way too fast for the planet to accommodate.
Frankly, it’s impossible to understand why there even is a debate about Climate Change. It’s very simple; the logic is undeniable. However, the usual debate doesn’t discuss it in these terms. The debate focuses on tiny aspects of the problem, and a small piece, a specific tidbit is always easier to deny or explain away than is a whole picture.
Why is gasoline a problem? It’s putting CO2 in to the air that was never (in the Human terms) in the air before. Where corn alcohol as fuel would have been recycling CO2 from the air and not adding billions of tons of a greenhouse gas to the mixture. But then certain folks would not have become ludicrously wealthy from their oil fields.
Why is nuclear power a problem? For one thing, it’s heat based. Nuclear power plants are just steam turbines, powered by the biggest and longest lasting heat source Humans have so far invented — completely ignoring the longest lasting more powerful heat source already available to them: the Sun. Plus, the typical commercial grade nuclear reactor is run by plutonium which is actually manufactured in a Uranium-based power plant, which is usually reserved for creating nuclear weapons. Breeder reactor it’s called. Plutonium has a half-life of 25,000 years, but is only useful for power generation for a short time, maybe 15 years, which leaves us with a material no longer useful (at our present level of engineering) but will continue to be radioactive for a very, very long time.
Why are wind mills a problem? They are, but, in spite of what some folks will tell you, not one that’s at the top of the list and would be (and are, in some of the more rational nations) a definite improvement.
Why is “clean coal” a problem? Because there’s no such thing. That was certain Powers being deliberately misleading to the Herd, looking at profits instead of the General Good. At best, burning coal releases heat and CO2, and at worst releases a lot of toxic garbage and particulates into the air (which can further foul up the weather patterns, produce acid rain, and so on).
Why is Killing off the Whales a problem? Because whales were (still are to what ever extent they still exist, maybe 1% of their previous population) one of the major ways that the ocean turns over, surface and deeper regions. Whale’s dive, some of them as deep as 3,000 feet, then come back up. Go again as far down as they care to, come back up. This creates a mixing of the upper and lower layers of the waters, which are at wildly different temperatures, oxygenation levels, amounts of organic material, and other things. It is possible that the near genocide of the whales over the last 4,000 (yes, four thousand), but especially in the last 900 years, is a major factor behind the increased occurrence of El Nino and La Nina, the ocean phenomena that now get so much blame for chaotic weather. Without a constant mixing of upper and lower waters, differences build up and “explode” all at once, with great force. Like a series of small earthquakes, causing little or no damage, versus one big one. Both releasing similar amounts of energy, but the series of smaller ones is kinder. In this case, the whales may have been what was allowing for the “smaller quakes” (barely noticed, if at all) versus the Big Quake of El Nino. (No: climate change is not a simple issue. Don’t think it for one moment.)
Why are lawn mowers, leaf blowers and such a problem? Because these 2-cycle engines, besides being the least efficient gasoline engines ever made, release lots of heat and half-burned fuel into the air, as well as cutting back on the amount of exercise people get. They suck in Oxygen and release CO2, ethane, methane, heat, half-burned and unburned heptane and octane (2 factions of gasoline), which are poisonous to everyone. I repeat: everyone.
Black-top / macadam / concrete road surfaces are also a problem. The sunlight (especially the ultraviolet) that used to be intercepted by plants, trees, grass and such and turned into bio-mass, is now intercepted by billions of miles of road and gradually radiated back into the environment as heat. Like when your car gets so dang warm when left in the Sun: ultraviolet passes through the glass into the car, is absorbed by the seats and such, and re-radiated back as heat, but heat won’t pass so easily through glass, so the car becomes a greenhouse. Because internal warming is happening faster than the energy coming in can re-radiate back out of the car. Just like the Earth, go figure.
Air Conditioners create more heat.
Refrigerators create more heat.
Ice makers create more heat.
Power plants to run air conditions create more heat.
Nuclear plants are more heat (and will be for 1,000’s of years).
Coal-fired plants create more heat.
Computers create more heat.
Cell phones create more heat.
Wireless signals in the air create more heat. (Lots of it)
All large-scale manufacturing creates more heat.
Street lights create more heat.
TVs create more heat.
(Are you getting the picture?)
No: climate change is not a simple issue. It’s multi-faceted.
Thousands of factors, and that’s just the ones we know about so far.
The problem with a system like Planet Earth, at least to a Human mind, is that no matter how complex you think it is, no matter how much of it you acknowledge, it’s even more complex than that.
Ok, moving on…
We have many sloppy, lazy ways of doing things, and these produce tons more waste heat than they have to, if these things were properly done, completely done, if the designers and manufacturers weren’t so dead set on the laziest way of making money in the shortest period of time(3).
But even if we fix all these engineering and attitude problems, there is still the issue of heat. We will still want to warm our houses against a cold winter(4) (though a properly designed house does not have to be either warmed or cooled; it will keep itself just fine), and we will want to cook our food (when appropriate), and we will still want to use lights at night (which also warm things) and so on. Many ways of producing heat that the natural world did not previously encompass.
The obvious solution is to address overpopulation. But that has serious political obstacles to it; meaning that far too many people don’t want to hear it, talk about it, address it, or even admit that it is a problem. A 10 year moratorium on having children worldwide would be a start — though only a start — but that’s never going to happen. So, baring a massive reduction of the Human Herd, we clearly need a different solution to the ultimate waste product: heat.
This is a problem that isn’t going to go away — unless Humans go away first, and it’s possible that we’ve already crossed that line — the next decades will tell the story. But we need to go on as if we are going to continue to be here, and we need to plan intelligently: not selfishly, not arrogantly, not from the point of view of profit or power or any of the other short-sighted, corporate-minded, contra-survival behaviors we have come to take as a normal part of the Human makeup (which they aren’t; that’s all recent stuff and just this particular culture, just the last few thousand years, but that’s another discussion). We need to figure out these problems for real, not according to next quarter’s returns, nor according to Who Gets to Win or Who Is King of the Mountain this Week. Like a very silly law suit that slowed down a critical Lunar shot just recently — that was nothing but Ego running away with itself, acting to defeat its own agenda because making the Moon commercially viable only counts “if I get to be the one who did it.” Crap…
There’s no room any more for the old style Corporate or Empire
rape and pillage of the Human Herd nor of the Earth. Not any more.
You went and used up your all margin on that.
Heat. It’s the ultimate waste product of any heavily populated civilization. Inescapable at our current level of engineering and of social awareness.
Given the above quote, think about this: whenever the American Congress shoves responsibility (for anything, really) off to the private sector as in “the private sector is better at solving these kinds of problems, that’s what free-enterprise is all about” they are lying. Either flat out lying, which is bad enough, or through plain ordinary ignorance, which is worse, as these people were entrusted to make the right decisions, and ignorance is not a luxury they can justify. Free-enterprise in its present form can not solve these problems, because that’s what created these problems. It really doesn’t take an Einstein to figure that one out, though certainly his voice adds weight to the sentiment.
There are solutions to individual parts of the global problem being generated every day. Easy and simple water purification. Energy recycling (as in capturing waste heat and putting it back to work). Better recycling of paper and plastics. Many other incredibly clever things. The problem is getting them put into wide-spread use. The problem is getting the average Joe and Jane on the Street to recognize the issue is here and now, not coming to us in 100 years. The problem is also getting them to realize all that without creating a mindless stampede in the Herd, but rather while creating a conscious change in life-style instead, one less wasteful. That does not mean doing without; it simply means less wasteful.
For instance, literal mountains of used and never-sold clothing are piling up in several parts of the world. I mean mountains!
Just one of very many massive piles of used and never-used clothing that are “thrown away” around the world. Usually in the smaller counties. “Excuse me, can I use your back yard for my garbage? I don’t want to look at it, and surely you will hardly notice the difference anyway, right?” (I think this photo is in Columbia, similar mountains exist in Africa, China and other places.)
Disgusting, really. Waste at its worst. Waste with an Evil attitude.
You “throw something away” that some one else might still benefit from. Ok, fine. But what in the world do you think happens to it when you throw it away? It doesn’t magically disappear. It’s still there. And if there is that much unneeded clothing in the world in the first place, why, why, why are we still making more? Stupid. Criminally and perhaps terminally stupid. Make only what’s needed, not what you need to maintain your profits. (What, are you trying to be richest member of a dead and gone species? Snap out of it!)
Then there’s the basic, super-lazy style of engineering that runs amuck in our Western culture.
Current methods of power generation are utterly ridiculous. 19th century technology at best, with just a hint from Thomas Edison’s work. Nothing new. Let’s get it at least to 90%, huh? [That means abandoning the whole steam turbine thing, and finding another way to make electrons dance; but surely that’s doable.] But keep in mind *all* of it — 100% — still ends up as heat in the end, no matter how it was generated. Even the lights you burn at night heat things up. More efficient power plants would mean fewer power plants. That, at least, would be an excellent start.
That was just a couple examples of extreme and criminally stupid waste: “More Fashion than the Market Can Absorb” and “Traditional, Lazy Engineering” excusable because until now (baring the last 50 years where some of us were screaming “it’s bad! Stop it”) no one knew it was criminally stupid. But now we all know; so cut it the heck out!!
Heat. That’s the one problem, the bottom line problem around climate change and the other Elephants in the living room. CO2 is old news. Even methane is old news. That was a meaningful discussion 50 years ago, when The Powers That Be would not discuss such things, but not so much any more. They are still problems, but the system (i.e., the planet) is now so out of balance in so many serious ways. Ultimately, though, even if all these other problems get solved, heat will still be there. It’s the Big Waste Product of Civilization, no matter how technologically advanced it becomes(5).
The “debate” over warming focuses erroneously on CO2 causing the Earth to retain more of the Sun’s energy than otherwise. Recently methane has also been added to the talking points. Sure, ok, but the debate utterly fails to mention the much larger issue: the Human created heat that was never there before. The Human need to find the stored energy sources on and in the Earth and to release them as fast as possible. Failure, on both sides of the debate. Folks, on this issue Failure is simply not an option.
Well… actually it is an option, and in that case what ever form of life comes out on top 5 million years or so from now will hopefully be able to think things through a little better. Octopi maybe; they’re already pretty dang smart.
Breaking News (sort of):
According to a new 20 year study, 5 million
people worldwide die from extreme heat every year.
CoVid has killed “only”(6) 5 million total worldwide,
across two years, while climate warming has
killed at least twice that many in the same time
(if that study is correct, which, on perusal, appears likely).
One of the study’s lead researchers (per the report) said “this trend will continue because of climate change.” That’s not really rocket science to figure out, but voices that can add weight to the discussion do need to speak up. For some silly reason the Herd works that way.
Heat. Balance. Delicate systems. And for all but a hand-full of folks no way off this rock if it does all fall apart.
Think on it.
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(1) Not putting it down, just lumping it together under a handy term, and the concept has little to do with this posting, anyway.
(2) Yeah, extreme sarcasm, but not unjustified, is it?
(3) The usual objection to doing it right is “we can’t afford that” or “I’ll have to cut back on jobs if we do that” or some such silliness. Not true. The real reason they won’t go there is simple laziness, and the basic fear of change so many people indulge in. Those Who Make Big Decisions can not afford to indulge in such low-level irrationalities, however. That way lies Big Mistakes. In truth, they could make more money by doing things right, and leave a better world for their great-grandchildren — and everyone else’s.
(4) Assuming winters ever come back as they used to be. Winters have become extremely chaotic, occasionally cold, but mostly just stormy beyond recorded memory. Well, that’s what happens when a previously stable system is nudged off balance. I remember as kid back in up-state New York getting several feet of snow in a single night, more than once, as part of a typical winter. Back then. It’s not a typical winter any more. Even the artic is melting. The Siberian tundra is thawing — excuse me, has thawed out. Hello? Anyone listening?
(5) Well, alright. Probably. Given that I sit in here a primitive culture trying to guess what’s possible. By saying “not possible” about anything, I might just be one of those folks who “proved” flight was impossible and could never happen. Silliness, under-estimating Human ability. Perhaps all of this stuff in this posting is vapor and groundless fear. Perhaps. Would it be wisdom to just ignore it all, though? “One does not plan to fail; one fails to plan.”
(6) And I mean that most respectfully. The Pandemic, for all its silly and outrageous and BS aspects has also killed a lot of people. It’s real. It’s just not the Stand out there, but it is real, and those deaths were real. But so were the twice-as-many from extreme heat exposure in same period of time. Does the main-stream news deal with that at all?