By P Gosselin
By Frank Bosse
Klimnachrichten here
(Translated, edited by P. Gosselin)
The scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is an oceanologist and studied physics before his specialist training. He is therefore familiar with thermodynamics and its 2nd law, which states that with every change of state, the “disorder” increases, also known as entropy. This is reflected in warming. Growing entropy is a basic characteristic of our universe; without investing work, everything tends towards disorder .
You are probably familiar with this phenomenon. Growing entropy also prevents perpetual motion machines; every working machine also generates friction and thus heat and inevitably a loss of useful energy. So what does all this have to do with Stefan Rahmstorf?
He published the following post on Twitter (now X) on January 14, 2025:
Screenshot X
[In English: “Nuclear energy, whether from fusion or fission, has the problem of waste heat, just like fossil fuel energy. It is still small compared to CO2, but it will soon become a relevant warming problem with the growing energy demand by mankind.”]
In his tweet, he complains that nuclear energy generates waste heat and would therefore represent a further relevant problem for our planet, which is warming up due to greenhouse gases.
An astute reader will remember that astrophysicist Professor Harald Lesch also advocated precisely this thesis, even in a lecture to teachers(!). He failed as well to take into account that all converted energy (whether from wind, sun or thermal) ultimately leads to an increase in entropy, i.e. to heat. It all depends on the order of magnitude.
If humanity produces energy by burning carbon (which leads to the production of the “greenhouse” gas CO2), the problem is orders of magnitude higher. It reduces the escape of heat by radiation into space and accumulates its effect in the atmosphere, waste heat does not. This has long been known from the scientific literature.
What was the share of low-CO2 electricity of total consumption in Germany in January 2025?
Share of electricity produced in Germany from
solar, wind and hydro power in total consumption
How much of the total consumption was carbon combustion, the “rest” in the chart? Unfortunately, the average for the month was 61%, or just 39% low-carbon electricity. It fluctuated between an outstanding 9% and a completely inadequate 93% if you analyze the hourly data from “Agora Energiewende”.
In Germany, 90 GW of solar power and 69 GW of low-CO2 wind power have been installed; only around half of the total renewable capacity would have been utilized if the “installed capacity” had also been available.
In reality, however, photovoltaics contributed on average only 2% to total consumption, wind 29%, fluctuating widely between 1.7 and 67%. Renewable energies alone are therefore not really suitable for solving the CO2 emissions problem. The weather at around 50° north latitude is too changeable for this. That would be the logical conclusion of “climate enthusiasts” such as Professors Stefan Rahmstorf and Harald Lesch.
And why then completely counter-physical pretexts against the likewise low-CO2 generation of electricity by nuclear power, regardless of the weather? We don’t know. We only know that they are talking nonsense in order to oppose low-CO2 technologies, which were also recommended by the “Climate Council” IPCC, 6th Assessment Report, Working Group III as a necessary supplement for renewable energies.
Doubters of the greenhouse effect are sometimes rightly accused of denying the climate problem. But what are Rahmstorf, Lesch and Co. doing when they reject everything except green energies, which alone are probably only very inadequately capable of solving the climate problem (as shown in January 2025), by swearing about physics?
They are very effectively obstructing the solution to the problem. In the end, it makes little difference to the outcome whether you don’t want to see the challenge or only accept it inadequately with the help of bogus arguments.
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“He failed as well to take into account that all converted energy (whether from wind, sun or thermal) ultimately leads to an increase in entropy”
No, there is a difference. Thermal, nuclear etc certainly do add waste heat. But wind turbines?They take KE from the wind, but do not release waste heat, except a tiny amount from bearings etc. And the electricity produced will eventually be converted to heat. But the KE of the wind, without turbine, would have been converted to the same amount of heat anyway by viscous dissipation.
Solar too takes energy from the sun which would otherwise have been thermalised. That eventually returns as heat when the electricity is used, but without gain.
I think the amounts are too small to worry about, but the thermo is OK.
Perhaps look up the working temperature of the generator and gearbox in the Wind Turbine 🙂
Hint: Lookup wind turbine efficiency and what do you think the rest of the energy goes into a bit will be sound, not much in light so guess where most goes 🙂
Most have alarms at 80deg C and that isn’t because of global warming 🙂
You could also run a funny argument that especially ocean based turbines are sucking energy that would have otherwise have cooled the landmass and also added extra heat in from the turbines.
The electrical energy obtained by direct KE->VI is several megawatts. If any more than a small fraction of that were released as heat in the generator/gearbox, it would melt.
You really are that stupid and have no actual working knowledge. It’s called a radiator or a heat exchanger.
Here try learning something
https://www.akg-group.com/markets/wind-power-components-1/
That is the cooling system in a large turbine and the bigger the turbine the bigger the heat exchanger required 🙂
Perhaps even just google “Wind turbine cooling systems”
Yeah because without them they melt or catch fire 🙂
A turbine converts mechanical energy to electrical energy. That does not in itself produce waste heat. Yes, of course bearings etc generate heat which has to be disposed of. But that is nothing like the heat engines of gas turbine and nuclear, where heat generation is an intrinsic part of the process and is somewhere near 50% of the electrical power obtained.
You gave me a chuckle that a multi mega watt generator of any form did so without heat … you seem to have accepted that 🙂
Now you do a bait and switch to “waste heat”. See my comment above that you could argue that you are taking energy out of the wind on ocean areas that will have the effect of reduced cooling.
Nuclear reactor does generate additional not natural energy by converting energy from consuming matter so yes it will add to Earth heating. However you are talking about a drop in a bucket on the scale of energy coming in and out of Earth each day from space. You would need cosmic timescales to even measure it.
So in some ways this whole argument is hard because are we equating lack of cooling as additional heat and is that waste heat?
“You gave me a chuckle that a multi mega watt generator of any form did so without heat”
You don’t read very well. I said there would be heat generated in the bearings. Tiny, as a fraction of the total energy flowing through.
But you also don’t understand the thermodynamics. It’s just First Law. With FF and nuclear, you create heat. Some is temporarily converted to electric power, but this will end up as heat too. So all the heat you create goes into the environment.
With a turbine, naturally generated KE comes with the wind. That KE was always going to end up as heat through turbulent dissipation. But the turbine turns a fraction into electric power. It also turns a much smaller fraction into frictional heat. Some just passes through; some is turned into turbulent KE in the airflow, which will quickly degrade into heat. The point is that all these converted energy forms just come from the original natural KE. That was always going to end up as heat. The turbine processes change where and when that happens; they do not change the amount.
And if someone really wants to nitpick, the heat budget is not quite closed, because some of the electric energy might persist as electrolytic products, etc. But that is a tiny fraction again.
Nik, look up I^R losses. So great in large generators are the size of the loss (heat) that hydrogen gas cooling is used.
Let’s assume the WT electrical generator runs at 95% efficiency, that’s 5% loss from an output of, say 4MW. Quite a bit of heat to get rid of in a small case high in the air…
Nick has no physical science training so I²R losses in a generator probably mean nothing.
Here are two links, one for AC and one for DC.
https://www.electricaleasy.com/2014/01/losses-in-dc-machine.html
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/electrotechnology/chapter/part-8-ac-generator-efficiency-and-power-losses/
Another loss with DC generators is in the electronic inverters. Even at 90% efficiency, there is considerable waste heat. Don’t forget the panels themselves get warm and must lose that heat at some point.
As you say, there are also environmental changes that can be as important as waste heat. Environment changes can change the “entropy” or disorder of an ecosystem. Killing birds, bugs, bats etc. can cause higher disorder. It isn’t all about heat.
Google:
“How hot do overhead power lines get?
Apart from the fact that overhead transmission lines (OTL) use AFL types, there can be found also high temperature low sag (HTLS) conductors [14]. For HTLS, the limiting temperature may be from 150 °C up to 250 °C.”
Not a response to the Gorman post, just trying to add something – almost all of it turns to heat, light and sound. Mostly heat. Luckily Earth is relatively large.
Now you have gone into fully stupid mode as per Steve answer you quote the inefficiency do some maths apparently you are qualified in that field.
Energy can not be created nor destroyed only converted from one form to another. Where do you propose that inefficiency goes to hide?
It goes to heat as Steve noted I2R windings loss but there are more such as eddy currents and induction phase slip..
Hey don’t believe me read a basic first year 1 engineering text
https://www.sdbidoon.com/document/dc-machine-28-03-2020.pdf
The bearing loss is TINY compared to the ARMATURE losses.
Basic answer any large generator motor gets bloody hot no matter what turns it.
Your response is stupid period and sorry I pull no punches there.
All the losses are small compared to the power that is converted. But again, you are missing the point. This is First Law stuff. With FF or nuclear you create new heat, and that gets into the environment. With wind, everything is generated from the energy of the oncoming wind. Nothing is added to the environment. Various conversions happen – chiefly electric power output, but also internal losses. The electric power generated will, one way or other, end up as heat. And it is exactly the same amount of heat as the wind would have generated through viscous dissipation if it didn’t encounter the turbine..
“create new heat” ?
nick, pedal faster, you are still going backwards.
“With FF or nuclear you create new heat”
an hour after
“Energy can not be created nor destroyed only converted from one form to another.”
I guess I must be troll feeding. Oops.
With FF or nuclear you convert energy from other stable sources into heat.
The old canard about stop digging when you are in a hole applies here.
Is the chemical energy in the drive battery of a forklift raising a pallet to the top of a stack converting energy to heat or energy to heat and potential energy?
You simply don’t know enough science and physics to be able to converse on this subject intelligently. And the proof is you own words you post on here.
Nick,
Do you really? Use uranium as an example. Each natural isotope has a decay chain, with isotopes od different half lives sending decay heat into the environment at different rates.
What a commercial nuclear reactor does is speed up the release of heat. It cannot create energy, which can only be changed from one form to another. Geoff S
Yes, of course. But speeding up by many orders of magnitude.
What about plutonium?
Umm… So you’re saying that the fission of the radioactive materials in a nuclear plant doesn’t happen until they are refined and concentrated? I have been under the impression that radio active decay of stuff like uranium was constant and measurable as “half-life”. Doesn’t the stuff produce heat as it decays and we just speed up the process by refining and concentrating it to fuel a reactor? I’m not a nuclear physicist so maybe someone who knows could comment.
Rick C,
Sorry, I posted my comment before I read your similar one. Geoff S
Don’t forget transformers Leon. : )
Thermodynamics and heat transfer are both engineering subjects of which you have no qualifications, experience or understanding. Please stop your misleading comments and look up true facts. May be you could ask the right questions of an AI program that has gone past its original bad programming and looked at engineering data.
Concur Nick if you are that ignorant with thermodynamics you really can’t comment.
“Thermodynamics and heat transfer are both engineering subjects of which you have no qualifications, experience or understanding.”
Here is a partial list of my scientific journal publications on heat transfer.
And yours?
Only answer I can come up with are … too long in academia, not the same Nick Stokes or memory issues.
Seriously most high school kids would be able to tell you the answer and you actually argued it.
So are we clear generator and motor inefficiency mostly becomes heat and friction losses are tiny in that unless you have a seized bearing.
Turning a motor or generator with wind or any other doesn’t change that fact.
Your focus on inefficiencies obscures the main point. Generators take energy from somewhere, and make various conversions which all end up as heat in the environment. For even the electricity product that is true.
The difference is the source of energy. For FF, say, the energy you put in is chemical energy from substances that otherwise would have laid buried for eons. For nuclear it’s more complicated, but similar.
But for wind, you are taking energy from a source, KE of wind, which was already out there in the environment, and was already going to end up as heat quite soon. You just make conversions that let you make that process useful to you.
It’s not just inefficiencies. You are promoting wind and solar as if extracting the energy in the wind and from the sun is cost free. You don’t know that. I don’t know that. No one knows that today.
There are unknown unknowns to be determined as to the costs of extracting enough enough energy from the wind to close every FF and nuclear plant on this earth. There will be ramifications to extracting energy from winds that have blown for eons.
There are unknown unknowns to covering the earth with solar panels and preventing sunlight from being absorbed into the Earth’s soil so we can close every FF and nuclear plant on the earth. What will it do to all the small microbes, viruses, nematodes, etc. Are you sure you know?
In my long life I have learned to beware those who tell us something is free. It doesn’t work that way. At some point the piper must be paid. At some point you need to realize you don’t know every unknown unknown and reconsider whether you should be more discreet in telling people that they don’t know as much as you do.
You cling to the meme that wind power is “free” like a drowning man to a life preserver. 1. Conversion of one energy to another is never close to being insignificant as far as losses are concerned. It takes WORK to accomplish. That work generates heat that is lost, and it’s always more than “bearing friction”. 2. Wind farms cause a loss of wind downrange. That downrange wind does work in the environment. It scatters pollen. It disperses humidity. It strips leaves from trees so they can contribute to the ecology. It even disperses UHI. And on and on and on…
You are trying to minimize the impacts without even understanding what the impacts are – kind of where climate science is today, trying to forecast climate without admitting they don’t know enough to do so.
Generators are very efficient, but the internally heating of the windings and cores is heat converted from the wind turning the mechanism. You seem to think that the heat from mechanical friction is the only heat factor.
Power transformers can have efficiencies as high as 98%, but they still have to immerse them in oil and the containers have fins to dissipate the heat. The heat is entirely of product of slight resistance of the windings and the eddy currents in the core. This is also true of electrical generators.
I am thinking that the fact that maybe you forgot what keeps the earth hot under the crust. Your radioactive heating is heating the earth one way or the other, might as well get some use out of it.
With FF and nuclear, you create heat. Some is temporarily converted to electric power, but this will end up as heat too. So all the heat you create goes into the environment.
You ever heard about district heating ?
Please STOP Nick… it’s like watching a boxing match and you’re being beaten to a pulp, but are too stupid to drop to your knees and accept defeat… Oh, the humanity.
Re: heat vs waste heat
How much of what is not called “waste heat” at the electrical generator becomes heat when the electricity is consumed? e.g. My computer gets warm when I use the internet..
Of course it generates waste heat. Do you think large generators and motors do not have losses? Guess again.
Nick is right! In part at least.
Right that most steam powered generation is less than 50% efficient and loses >50% of the primary energy released in combustion of the fuel (the change in total electron binding enrgy of the constituent molecules) as waste heat to the environment.
At current levels of a global 20TW of generation that is 0.08W/m^2 of warming on my calculation elsewhere here, assuming its all nuclear at 35% thermal efficiency.
Combined Cycle Gas Turbine generation (CCGT) is the best. Open cycle gas turbine is about 40% efficient, so 60% is waste heat. CCGT uses a gas turbine whose exhaust gasses are used to make heat recovery for further steam generation possible, Thermodynamic efficiency is (T2-T1/T1) from memory and GTs exhausts are v.hot. HIgher thermodynamic efficiency. So the exhaust boils the water that creates more steam to drive another turbine.
https://www.ipieca.org/resources/energy-efficiency-compendium/combined-cycle-gas-turbines-2022#:~:text=A%20combined%2Dcycle%20gas%20turbine,or%20as%20a%20mechanical%20drive.
CCGT is about 60% thermally efficient in large scale onshore plant, so that is 50% better than open cycle, and also clean burning. MIEE
I^2 x R in the coil wiring = W.
wot about the heat to make/replace the gearboxes made in China, get them up in the air, fix them when they are down, and eventually replace them at five times wot they are worth … then sell them on. Scams begat scams, often with more legs.
Before they became climate dipsticks, there was a time when scientists at CSIRO were real people who solved real problems … However, over time as models became their rage, they gave the real people tax-free prizes and let them go.
All the best,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
Given his response it’s obvious he has total ignorance of power generation so you probably need to cut him some slack it’s not an area he understands at all. I dare say there are plenty of commentators who have no idea how these things work.
He still believes that wind and solar result in huge decreases in the amount of fossil fuels being burned.
Yes, and ignores the cost of and emissions released in the manufacturing and installing of wind turbines… and the decommissioning.
Megawatt is a unit of power not energy.
He also does not look at the energy and CO2 chain, from mine to long-term storage in a hazardous waste site.
On that basis, wind at 20 years and solar at 25 years is grossly energy and CO2 intensive compared to nuclear at 60 to 80 years, or reservoir hydro at 100 years
C’mon Nick.
I agree that the author in his criticism went down an unrelated rat hole for no apparent reason. But that’s what you spent most of your comment on.
Then at the end you add that the amounts are too small to worry about. Well yeah. I didn’t even bother to do any math, the amounts are too small by orders of magnitude to matter. For Rhamstorf to imply that it might become a problem is not just anti-science it is anti-human. The corruption is breath taking.
I call out the “CO2 can’t do that” crowd on a regular basis here. Nothing less than your full throated repudiation of Rhamstorf is acceptable. You need to call out the BS on your side of the fence too, and I don’t think I’ve seen a bigger pile of BS than this since Mike’s Nature Trick.
The headline is about Rahmstorf’s supposedly bad thermodynamics. It isn’t bad. I think that is worth pointing out.
It isn’t bad it’s just wrong it is never going to be a problem. All I can think is perhaps he was making a physics joke and we have lost that context.
So your excuse is that a poor choice of headline means that the actual quote by Rhamstorf need not be addressed?
That’s pretty evasive, even for you.
The headline was about Rahmstorf’s tweet.
I have been addressing Rahmstorf’s tweet.
Once again, evasive.
“I call out the “CO2 can’t do that” crowd on a regular basis here.”
You meant to say that you demonstrate your ignorance of physics on a regular basis here, right? Maybe you should leave the physics to those of us who have studied it?
If you are part of the CO2 doesn’t warm the earth crowd, then I seriously doubt you have actually studied physics. If you misunderstood what I meant, sorry for not being more clear.
You don’t get to say anything about “warming” or “CO2” until you know what “radiation” and “power” mean. So far, you have demonstrated no clue about any of these concepts. So you should probably sit this one out. Remember, I am not the one with the nonsensical claim that objects can “emit power” regardless of the condition of their surroundings. That was you.
“If you are part of the CO2 doesn’t warm the earth crowd”
Technically, I would be part of the “objects do not emit power” crowd – you know, the one that knows their physics?
(Of course “objects” includes CO2, along with everything else. And from this, yes, it follows that colder atmospheric CO2 cannot “warm” the already-warmer Earth, nor can anything else that is colder than the Earth. No colder object can increase the temperature of a warmer one. If you can disprove this experimentally, there are several Nobel prizes in it for you, along with a preposterous amount of money.)
You are part of a different crowd, naturally, since you obviously wouldn’t know a “Joule” from a “Watt” if you tripped over them.
“I seriously doubt you have actually studied physics”
Really, davidmhoffer? Really? Who had to be schooled by ChatGPT on his fundamental physics concepts? Was that me? Of course not. No, it was you, you arrogant ignorant twit. Here again is the single word that contradicts everything you wrote about radiation, in one fell swoop, all of your hundreds of words of nonsense, by an AI that has read a lot more physics texts than both of us put together (and naturally every actual physicist will agree with this, as will every experiment you can perform, so you can readily confirm that ChatGPT isn’t hallucinating, in case you don’t trust it to get its physics right either – although, as you said yourself, getting this sort of basic thing wrong is unlikely):
Thank you David, because I was wondering what this article was even about (I think I still am). I’ve seen the calculation before and did it myself once but I asked my friend Perplexity this time:
The Sun provides roughly 10,000 times more energy to the Earth than all human activities combined (1.22×10^17 watts vs.
18×10^12 watts)
On your second point though – it has to be what CO2 above 280ppm can or can’t do right? The alarmists will allow that
subletymajor point to go unchecked any day of the week. In fact Nick does it somewhere else on this thread (knowingly, I’m sure).Yeah the headline was unfortunate because it allowed Nick to hijack the entire thread about something that wasn’t even relevant to the quote as far as I’m concerned.
The notion that if we went all nuclear to produce electricity that there would be enough waste heat to become a problem is just absurd. As you said, the sun drops 10,000 TIMES more energy than all human activities combined. For heat from reactors to be significant their waste heat would have to be north of 99.99999%. But they are more like 40% so crisis averted. Plus if the number was 99.99999% there’s probably not enough fissile material on the planet to build the number of reactors we’d need.
The argument about our energy production or losses are specious but often conflated as a valid argument.
Do the maths – I dare you !
If you consider man’s total energy output of ± 3.5 x 10^20 J per year and we dumped all of this energy into the oceans (1.35 Billion cubic kilometres), it would raise their temperatures by ±0.00006°C an immeasurably small amount. Even if we magically dumped the thermal output of the world’s remaining fossil fuels (i.e. the next 450 year’s worth of fossil fuel use at current consumption) into the oceans overnight it would raise its temperature a barely detectable 0.028°C
If you walk up a flight of stairs the temperature will change by 0.030°C due to Boyle’s Law – that’s 20 times more than U$6.9 billion has (theoretically) accomplished and it’s entirely unnoticeable !
I said the amounts would be too small to worry about.
Well then you agree with most here and disagree with quote.
Nick,
“too small to worry about.”?
There is no minimum change to the initial conditions of a chaotic system which may result in completely unpredictable outcomes.
Even the IPCC stated “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
You may choose to dismiss reality, but reality may not care what you think.
i
OK, here’s the maths. You’re saying man generates 40 terawatts. That is about 0.08 W/m2 averaged over the Earth surface. CO2 forcing is reckoned about 2 W/m2 (I may be out of date). That is about 25 times more.
OK, here’s the maths. You have man releasing about 40 terawatts of heat energy. CO2 forcing is about 2 W/m2, or about 1000 terawatts. So it’s 25:1. Not to worry about, but not nothing.
“OK” is questionable. Regarding the statement
The fact is that for all intents and purposes all the energy from the fusion or fission ends up as additional heat, not just the “waste” part.
Meh, maybe there’s a context to this that I’m not aware of in Stefan’s defence. But on the other hand I do feel like he’s going to be a future historical figure that wont fair well.
“The fact is that for all intents and purposes all the energy from the fusion or fission ends up as additional heat, not just the “waste” part.”
I don’t think he said otherwise.
Frank and others are overthinking. It is just First Law. With FF and nuclear you add new energy, and that eventually gets to the air as additional. But with wind you intercept KE that was already present. It ends up as heat, but was always going to. You have just varied the timing. And likewise solar.
That’s not fair
Scientists who become advocates, lose their objectivity and become snowflakes will become excellent case studies in the future. Mann will be in chapter 1.
You might even say something like
Haha, yes ironically they’re pretty good at being in circuses.
Dear Nick,
I read this essay twice and I don’t think either of you know what you are talking about!
Yours sincerely,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
Nick, for once, is correct.
Wind does not add energy to the earth’s systems. Windmill generators transform atmospheric kinetic energy into electricity, and that returns to the atmosphere as kinetic (aka thermal) energy..
The sun adds energy to the earth’s systems. Does not matter if it heats the ground/water/air or is converted into electricity.
Burning coal, oil, and natural gas add thermal energy to the earth’s systems. Over the eons, planetary energy (core and gravity/pressure) makes those fuels. Even given that latency, it still applies.
Nuclear is one to consider as well. The radioactivity when underground does not seep (much) above ground, but when used to run a steam turbine does add energy to the earth’s systems.
How wind power could contribute to a warming climate
Anything on earth is by definition in “earth’s system” 🙂
I suspect like Nick you are trying to define something like “Earths Natural Systems” but the problem is once you start trying to extract work and energy.from those systems that gets hard because then they are no longer pure. A couple of windmills not going to be a problem but on a massive industrial scale there is going to be issues and you are going to pollute the systems you just don’t call it that yet.
I will give you an example a gravity slingshot around earth
https://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath114/kmath114.htm
Where does the extra energy come from to propel the craft faster well from earths speed around the sun you make earth move slower by a tiny amount in doing it. Not a problem as long as you don’t do it on super massive scales.
Climate zealots want to believe that massive industrial scale renewable energy is going to wonderful and clean.There are no free lunches in physics on that scale there will be effects such as Bruce2000 has linked. The secondary problem for renewables is they haven’t even yet got rid of the need for backup FF generation so it’s like doubly bad.
I am a pragmatist, people do stupid stuff with good intention all the time. All you can do is grab the popcorn and enjoy the show.
I, too, am a pragmatist and a skeptic.
And I was only clarifying things. Yes, anything on or in the earth is, by definition, in “earth’s system.”
I am not trying to define anything beyond a valid definition. As I pointed out, hydrocarbons and coal are manufactured by natural process, with the difference in latency versus consumption being significant.
The energy released is added to the earth’s energy system and ultimately will assist in creating new fuels but on timescales of millions of years.
Wind and solar are niche technologies and have niche applications. Application on grid scale is doomed to failure.
You are making a distinction without a difference. ALL energy on Earth and in the solar system comes from the sun and cosmic energy. No energy is created or destroyed on Earth. It is all simply transferred or converted from one form to another. Burning fossil fuels is just a conversion of stored solar energy, in the form of chemical energy, into thermal and mechanical energy.
The distinction I made was the energy in the environment does not add energy to the environment. Cosmic radiation, gravity, sun, do.
Expanding to encompass the solar system is not what I did.
They are not fossil fuels. Hydrocarbons and coal are not fossils. I did also not that they were produced naturally using earth energy but the difference was in the latency of producing the fuels versus consuming the fuels.
Unless your generator is wound using super conductors, there will always be losses from the resistance of the wires. This is not a trivial loss, and it goes up with temperature. Beyond that, the energy needed to run the cooling system is also a loss.
You “think” the amounts are too small to worry about, but as usual for you, you never bother to actually find out if your guesses are even in the ballpark.
The best of the best electric generators rarely exceed 95% efficiency with 85% being, nominally, an acceptable value.
Worried about CO2 IR but not solar? Here’s the panel signature now you show us the CO2 IR signal.
Nick, he forgot that ALL converted energy ends up in heat (Entropie). And: Also turbines create “waste warming” as you state. A single turbine adds tiny values, 55% is the ideal Eta from the windfield, the ETA of a windmill ist about 0.3. The rest is wate heat but one cant’t use it because of the wide distribution. A nuke powerstation can do this in contrast: combined heat and power. This is what counts?
No it won’t.
Well perhaps on a cosmic timescale of billions of year neglecting earth will get swallowed by sun in it’s red giant phase in 5 billion years 🙂
Without our intervention Earth will run out of atmospheric CO2 long before the sun goes red giant.
When the level eventually diminishes below 80 ppm, the entire photosynthetic ecosystem will crash.
Long ago, I read an analysis showing that Earth could be saved from being engulfed by the sun, by causing Ceres to orbit between Jupiter and Earth.
The transfer of orbital angular momentum from Jupiter will cause the radius of the Earth orbit to slowly increase.
Apparently, this can be achieved if Ceres is made to have one orbital transit every 5000 years.
Isn’t it funny that all the immense heat from bush fires, just disappears by convection….
.. but tiny amounts from electric equipment, and mythical warming by trace amounts of CO2 doesn’t. 😉
People need to pay more attention to David Dibble’s short movies showing the air movement in the atmosphere.
Thanks for the honorable mention. 🙂
sorry for spelling your last name wrongly. !
No worries. 🙂
First time I’ve heard there’s a climate problem.
“It is still small compared to CO2, . . .”
Creating the CO2 makes the heat. Heat that gives us our civilisation. The CO2 is a plant food byproduct. Win-win.
Humans produce CO2, and often produce excess heat – evidenced by sweating, heat exhaustion or even heat stroke! Thank God for electricity to run fans and refrigerated air conditioning.
Mind you, someone writing “It reduces the escape of heat by radiation into space and accumulates its effect in the atmosphere, waste heat does not.” shows that Rahmstorf is not the only fantasist.
Heat does not “accumulate” in the atmosphere. That’s why the Earth has cooled since its surface was molten.
What is going on with the 2nd law of thermodynamics? It was redefined in recent decades, as “in a closed system, entropy can only increase”, or some thing like that. In 2004, Wikipedia said “The second law says that the amount of random movement, i.e. the entropy, can only increase in a closed system, i.e. that we cannot put this randomness in order without some external influence.“. But now when I go to Wikipedia, the page Second law of thermodynamics does not even say what the law is! The nearest it gets is “The second law may be formulated by the observation that the entropy of isolated systems left to spontaneous evolution cannot decrease, as they always tend toward a state of thermodynamic equilibrium where the entropy is highest at the given internal energy.” – which appears not to make sense, as the “given internal energy” is presumably the starting point. If entropy is highest at that point then it cannot increase later, and Wikipedia says the 2nd law says it cannot decrease. Why doesn’t it just say that entropy must remain constant?
The 2nd law, while I was at school, said “heat energy cannot transfer from a body at a lower temperature to a body at a higher temperature without the addition of energy“. Please can we go back to that law now. At least it makes sense, even if some people do misrepresent it by claiming that greenhouse gases break the 2nd law.
As for this article, I wonder whether it lost something in translation. Or maybe the author was struggling to apply the 2nd law? I think that the article is trying to say that under the 2nd law, waste heat from nuclear power is lost to space. That seems to me to be a lot easier to understand than the idea that the waste heat gets tangled up in some entropy somewhere.
In fact the tweet said nothing about entropy or second law.
Both are in the first parsgraph of the article.
Yes, that is Frank Bosse, not Rahmstorf.
I said “this article” and “the author”.
Jeezuz!
Trust not in Wiki.
That simple statement, makes far more sense Mike, than the scientific mumbo jumbo, found lying around the net. I thought I had a basic idea of entropy, then I found the ‘explanations’ confusing. My understanding was originally on the right track.
Another one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
I could make a physics joke here that we just need to measure the emissions a lot 🙂
If you don’t get the joke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics) and go to thermodynamics.
The lower atmosphere (troposphere) operates as an open cycle heat engine. The land and especially the oceans are the hot reservoirs of this engine. The working fluid is moist air and the cold reservoir is the middle to upper troposphere. From here the waste heat is radiated back to space, mainly by the water vapor emission bands. The piston is the atmosphere itself. As the moist air rises, it must perform mechanical work as it expands and cools. Internal molecular energy (heat) is converted to gravitational potential energy. As the air cools above the saturation level, most of the water vapor condenses with the release of latent heat and the formation of clouds. The lapse rate or vertical temperature profile in the troposphere is set initially by the convection. The lapse rate for dry air is -9.8 °C km-1. For moist air, an average lapse rate of -6.5 °C km-1 is often used.
Most of the heat from fossil fuel combustion or waste heat from nuclear reactors is removed by the tropospheric heat engine as convection. The rest is removed as net LWIR radiation emitted into the atmospheric LWIR transmission window in the nominal 800 to 1200 cm-1 spectral range.
The tropospheric heat engine operates at low temperatures and pressures. The IR radiation field cannot be analyzed by simple blackbody theory. A line by line radiative transfer analysis is required. At present the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is near 2.5 parts per million per year. The corresponding increase in the downward LWIR flux from the lower troposphere to the surface is approximately 40 milliwatts per square meter per year. This is too small to have any measurable effect on the tropospheric heat engine or the surface temperature.
Ramsdorf may be described as a born again mathematician. Born again Christians have chosen to believe in a literal interpretation of their religious texts. Born again mathematicians have chosen to believe that results from the simplistic equations used in their climate models are correct. The sacred computer code first developed by Manabe’s group in the 1960s and 1970s over rides the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
For further discussion on climate energy transfer see ‘Finding Simplicity in a Complex World – the Role of the Diurnal Temperature Cycle in Climate Energy Transfer and Climate Change’ by Clark and Rörsch, 2023. For more on the climate modeling fraud see ‘A Nobel Prize for Climate Modeling Errors’, Clark, 2024
Great summary, Roy. 🙂
Harold the Organic Chemist Says:
CO2 Does Not Cause Warming of the Atmosphere.
Shown in the chart (See below) are plots of temperatures at the Furnace Creek weather station in Death Valley from 1922 to 2001. In 1922 the concentration of CO2 in dry air was 303 ppmv (0. 59 of CO2/cu. m.), and by 2001, it had increased to 371 ppmv (0.79 g of CO2/cu. m.), but there was no corresponding increase in the air temperature at this remote desert weather station.
The above empirical temperature data show that claim by the IPCC since 1988 that CO2 is a cause of global warming and the control knob of climate change is fabrication and deliberate lie. The objective of this lie is to provide the UN the justification to distribute, via the UNFCCC and the
UN COP, doner funds from the rich countries to the poor countries to help them cope with global warming and climate change.
Hopefully, President Trump will put an end to the greatest scientific fraud since the Piltdown Man.
Since 71% of the earth’s surface is covered with H2O, how do we convince the people and the politicians that H2O is the main greenhouse gas by far and CO2 contributes very little to the greenhouse effect?
NB: The chart was obtained from the late John Daly’s website:
“Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at http://www.John-Daly.com. From the home page scroll down to end and click on “Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map” click on a country or region to access weather station temperature data. John Daly found a great many weather stations whose temperature data showed no warming up to 2002. Be sure to check out the temperature charts for Oz.
Might i suggest that water vapour is NOT a gas and is therefor not part of the ‘greenhouse’ gasses. I usually make the distinction because one can make a good argument for the minimal influence of those gasses on temperature. And simply use H2o in all its forms as Earth’s control/ transfer mechanism which includes LW outgoing radiation..
I visited your website and learned that you a maker of optical instruments. Do think you can construct a laboratory instrument to measure accurately the greenhouse effect?
If you can do this, you would win the Noble Prize which is worth about one
million dollars. You could put an end to Gov. Gavin N. destructive climate policies.
I live in Burnaby, BC where the carbon tax on fossil fuels is $80 per tonne of the CO2eq. The carbon tax will increase to $95 on April 1. This tax has caused great increase in the cost of food and has to go.
Roy emits some more drive-by nonsense:
“The corresponding increase in the downward LWIR flux from the lower troposphere to the surface is approximately 40 milliwatts per square meter per year”
No it isn’t. Prove it.
CO2/CH4/N2O forcing (W/m^2) (Meinshausen data)
1979 = 1.53
2025 = 3.22
(3.22-1.53)/46 yr = 0.037 W/m^2/yr;
38 milliWatts/year since 1979
Where are you getting those imaginary “forcing” numbers from, Pat?
All this talk about waste heat warming is nonsense. In the Northern hemisphere it is winter and in many areas temperatures are well below
0 deg C. In Helena, the temperature is -27 deg. C.
BTW, the entropy of a closed system can decrease. If I put a sealed bottle of H2O in freezer, the entropy of the water decrease as ice forms and continues to decline until the ice reaches the temperature of the freezer.
I’m not a physicist or engineer nor do I have any background in thermodynamics so this may be a totally off-base question, but to freeze the bottle of water doesn’t the water have to release heat to the freezer, and doesn’t the freezer have to do work (if that’s the correct term) to dissipate that heat and cool the freezer back down (even if only a minuscule amount)?
Harold specified that the bottle of water is sealed, making it a “closed system”, because it cannot exchange matter with its surroundings. It can still exchange energy, though, so its entropy will indeed decrease while the entropy of the surroundings increases (more), as he says. (Then, as you said, the freezer’s compressor has to do the work you mentioned to maintain the desired temperature inside the freezer, transferring that energy, with its entropy, and some more as waste heat, to the exterior.)
And in doing so demonstrated that he does not understand the thermodynamics. A closed system in thermodynamics means there is no energy transfer across the border of the system.
No, a closed system *can* exchange energy. An isolated system cannot. An open system can exchange both energy and matter.
Well, there’s a distinction between “closed” and “isolated”. “Closed” just means “no matter transfer”, and “isolated” further means “no energy transfer”. How useful these distinctions are in practice, given that matter and energy are interchangeable via Einstein’s equation, is left as an exercise for the reader 🙂
You are not describing a closed system. In your case, the energy transfer happens through the waals of your sealed bottle, and thus in a thermodynamic perspective the bottle is not a closed system.
Encyclopaedia Britannica on 2nd Law of Thermodynamics:
https://www.britannica.com/science/second-law-of-thermodynamics
===
There is no climate emergency. Carbon dioxide is innocent.
‘They are very effectively obstructing the solution to the problem.’ and I fail to see the ‘problem’.
The entire climate scare is based on wild guess predictions and exaggerations by professors.
Many with Ph.D.’s
They always skip the first step on the assumption ladder by claiming global warming is a problem.
They never say why.
Warmer winter nights (TMIN) in colder nations are not a problem
Warmer summer afternoons (TMAX) in the tropics could be a problem, but are not a symptom of greenhouse warming.
I don’t get the debate with Stokes
What is his point?
Every huma activity generates waste heat and often CO2 emissions. When you heat your home, some heat escapes. When you jog, your body releases heat. You don’t eve need movement to generate heat.
For example: One time in a fancy restaurant with the wife, a very attractive woman walked past our table. I stared at her “assets”. She generated heat even though I never moved. Then my wife gave me a hard time for staring. That generated more heat. So much heat was generated that I had to take off my jacket and loosen my tie. Since that time, in 1977, my wife has tries to trick me dozens of times by pointing and saying: “Check out that girl” … but I never look, because I know “that girl” will be grossly obese with a mustache. This is a true story and the key to a good marriage.
Fortunately, our planet does a good job of dissipating heat, that mainly comes from th sun. Putting more CO2 in the atmosphere impedes the cooling process a little, but the small change in the climate from more CO2 is pleasant.
When people claim climate change has been a problem, ask them how the past 50 years of global warming has been a problem for THEM. Don’t debate the latest climate predictions. Just mention predictions have been wrong for the past 50 years.
“but the small change in the climate from more CO2 is pleasant.”
There’s no evidence CO2 is making any changes to the Earth’s climate. That’s pure speculation.
There is 128 years of evidence including measurements of the greenhouse effect at night where the incoming back radiation IS the greenhouse effect. The only way to increase that back radiation over time is by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Because there is no evidence of increased night cloudiness, And no evidence that humas can directly add water vapor to the atmosphere. That leaves CO2 as the cause of increasing nigh back radiation.
You are just stubborn and prefer to ignore all evidence that contradicts your WRONG pre-existing beliefs. That leaves you perpetually confuse about climate science.
All of that “back radiation” was initially lost by the source – Earth. Heat lost by the Earth cools it, it doesn’t heat it.
No one in climate science seems to want to do basic science. The amount of heat lost is the integral of the radiation to space.
Scenario 1: No CO2. Minimum temp at night falls to 5C because there is no CO2 to slow down heating.
Scenario 2: CO2 in the atmosphere. The nighttime temp falls to only 10C because of the slowing of heat loss.
Radiation loss in Scenario 1 starts at 5C at sunrise and progresses during the entire day. The beginning radiation is 5^x (a true black body would be 5^4).
Radiation loss in Scenario 2 starts at 10C and progresses during the entire day. The beginning radiation is 10^x.
Which scenario will show the most heat loss – i.e. the integral of the radiation curve over the entire day?
I’m not entirely sure that most climate scientists even understand that the earth radiates away heat during the day as well as at night. I am damn sure that they don’t understand that the mid-range value of the daily temperature is *NOT* what you use to estimate heat loss – because the heat loss is an exponential function and not a linear function.
The fact that heat loss is an exponential function is a natural negative feedback on temperature. As temperature goes up, radiative heat loss to space goes up by an exponent resisting any actual change in temperature. The only thing that can overcome this is increased energy input generated from OUTSIDE the system, i.e. the sun getting hotter or fewer clouds reflecting heat away.
Missed it by that much
278.15^x and 283.15^4
Yep. Another problem with climate science, they don’t use Kelvin. The heat loss is still the integral of the curve, not the mid-range value. And the curve starting at 283.15 will have more heat loss than one starting at 278.15. There *is* a point where heat in = heat out. That exponential curve will always tend to drive the temperature to that equilibrium point. It’s a natural, and huge, negative feedback that I never see climate science ever mention.
Just an example of T⁴.
270⁴ x 5.67×10⁻⁸ = 301
280⁴ x 5.67×10⁻⁸ = 348
[(280 – 270)/270] x 100 = 3.7%
[(348 – 301)/301] x 100 = 15.6%
So radiation goes up much faster than temperature.
Your CO2 theory doesn’t account for the warming of the 1930’s.
There was less CO2 in the atmosphere during the 1930’s, yet the temperatures were just as warm then as they are today.
How do you account for that? Answer: You don’t. Instead, you ignore the written temperature records which show it was just as warm in the recent past with much less CO2 in the air at the time.
RG: “You are just stubborn and prefer to ignore all evidence that contradicts your WRONG pre-existing beliefs. That leaves you perpetually confuse about climate science.”
I think you are the one ignoring evidence, and that leaves *you* perpetually confused about climate science.
The bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick Chart you use to convince yourself that CO2 has an effect on the Earth’s atmosphere, is only evidence of fraud, not anything else.
The always skip on the first step which is the assumption ladder that CO2 is the climate control knob.
In an “If-Then” conditional clause, they go straight to “Then”.
You understand.
… scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is an oceanographer
ologistand studied physics before his specialist training.Professor Stefan Rahmstorf should be more concerned with properly accounting for the heat entering the abyssal ocean from sea floor along new and old mid ocean ridges which I estimate 8E+20 Joules per year, equivalent to 25,800 1 Gigawatt nuclear power plants discharging their energy directly into the worlds oceans.
You may ask where I found this ridiculous comparison – use this link.
If you are time constrained and don’t want to follow the link, here is a direct quote from the paper:
The ocean is therefore accumulating energy at a rate of 4E+21 Joules per year, equivalent to 127,000 nuclear power plants (with an average production of 1 Gigawatt) discharging their energy directly into the world oceans.
Heat generated by the entire sea floor averages around 0.08 Wm2. It has been going 24hr/7days/52 weeks/30 million years without a break.
C’mon man! It’s much more profitable to milk the taxpayers of their funds than worry about submarine volcanoes and spreading ridges! Next you’ll be asking humanity to start planning for the next OVERDUE glacial onset, when global temps drop 5-10 degrees!
It is highly unlikely that ALL the waste heat produced by humans over history will be able to slow, much less stop, the expansion of the icecaps and glaciers some time in the next 10,000 years! Even worse is the loss of CO2 from the atmosphere as biological and chemical processes precipitate the calcium carbonate that forms our limestones, marbles and dolomites! Worrying about a mildly warming planet is a fool’s errand, foisted on the young and impressionable; so that our benevolent masters can acquire power and wealth for themselves! A functioning brain would see it in everything they seem concerned about; free speech, populism, and low cost energy; all things that lead to prosperity and freedom for the undeserving masses!
Yes, just like how deniers of the Drake Equation sometimes are rightly accused of denying the Space Alien problem.
Brilliant! There is NO PROBLEM, so it’s not even relevant. There are a great many things that are both true and insignificant.
I DENY THE PROBLEM, I do not deny the insignificant enhancement of the life-sustaining greenhouse effect. The small enhancement is also beneficial!
Also, there are a great many things that are both true and irrelevant.
The earth has a surface area of 5.1 x 10^14 square meters.
The outgoing longwave radiation is about 240 W/m^2 rejected to space.
The total power output is therefore 1.2 x 10^17 Watts. or 1.2 x 10^8 GW.
Let’s say a 1 GWe nuclear plant rejects about 2 GW of waste heat.
Let’s build 10,000 of them for good measure. So 20,000 GW of waste heat from the power plants themselves, or 2 x 10^4 GW or 0.0002 x 10^8 GW.
Problem? No. Next question.
.
Waste heat from power plants is not a significant issue for nuclear. Heat energy residual in cooling water is only “wasted” if it is not used. Having a steady supply of thermal energy is a plus for some environments – such as here in coastal south Florida where manatees congregate in the discharge canals of our several nuclear power plants because the water is warmer than in the surrounding Gulf or Atlantic. Manatees need water of at least 72 deg F to survive. So having more nuke plants sustains a higher natural population.
There are a great many industrial processes that benefit from heat energy, such as disinfection of food products, promoting certain chemical reactions like hydrocarbon refining, metal ore refining, , etc. Where ever there is a concentration of such processes is a good location to place a small modular reactor.
Also, there are emerging nuclear technologies that operate at much higher temperatures than a typical rankine cycle power plant and thus convert a much higher percentage of thermal energy input to mechanical/electrical energy output – and thus produce much less waste heat.
So, first, please forgive the layman’s terms. Physics and thermodynamics were half-a-century ago for me; however, given that core principles had endured some 250 years by that time, I probably have at least a minimal grasp of the topics.
Energy capture in the form of work is ultimately about efficiency; what is the energetic component of the the source system and what is the ability of that system to convert that energy into work; the result of that conversion being (a) decreased energy capacity of the remaining elements of the system, (b) units of work, and (3) excess heat.
We talk about wind as if we are not removing energy from atmospheric systems. We talk about solar as if the panels are not hot to the touch. We gloss over the broader physical and thermodynamic implications because the details do not support our narrative … and because, should we discuss all of them we would be hopelessly lost in the details.
Nuclear energy is about 35% efficient and is dispatchable.
Wind is 45% efficient, is intermittent and is non-dispatchable … and don’t get me started on batteries/storage.
Solar is 20% efficient, is intermittent and is non-dispatchable.
All systems are going to deplete the energy level of the source, capture some energy, and generate waste heat. If you are going to have a growing and improving world, then that’s the cost.
At times, solar and wind efficiency is zero, when there is no electricity generated.
Nuclear Power Thermal efficiency is 35%
— The ratio of gross megawatts electrical (MWe) to megawatts thermal (MWt). This is a measure of how much electric power is produced for each unit of thermal power.
Solar and wind efficiency are judged by the percentage of wind energy or solar energy that gets converted to electricity. If we judged nuclear power by the percentage of energy in a fuel rod that got converted to electricity, the efficiency would be very small.
Nuclear power is only 3% to 5% efficient at extracting the available energy from a fuel rod.
In a typical nuclear reactor, only around 3% to 5% of the energy stored in a fuel rod is actually used to generate electricity before it is considered “spent” and needs to be replaced, meaning the vast majority of the potential energy remains unused; however, technologies like fuel recycling can potentially increase the percentage utilized significantly.
According to the theoretical maximum set by the “Betz Limit”, the best possible efficiency for a wind turbine is around 59.3%; meaning that a turbine can only extract up to 59.3% of the kinetic energy from the wind passing through it.
Windmills are typically from 20% to 40% efficient.
Both wind and solar efficiency will be reduced at times when there is too much sunlight or too much wind relative to the needed supply of electricity.
There are also efficiency losses from long transmission lines and DC to AC inversion too.
Climate “science” is a great achievement of diversity and inclusion. They have a proper percentage of people with intellectual disabilities in their professors.
The mistake is to assume there is a genuine concern about “saving the planet” and a genuine desire for a viable, low replacement cost alternative to energy from fossil fuels.
The whole Climageddon Industry would collapse – Oh the horror.
From article:”Doubters of the greenhouse effect are sometimes rightly accused of denying the climate problem.”
What climate problem? Please be specific.
Also, “burning carbon”, we don’t burn carbon. Diamonds are hard to light.
Like diamonds, graphite is difficult to burn. We do burn enormous amounts of carbon such as coal and charcoal.
Anthracite is a hard coal, is ca. 95% carbon and is used to make coke which used for smelting iron ore.
Harold coal is not the element carbon. Don’t fall for the word games used. We don’t burn pure carbon as suggested.
There is no climate problem.
Instead of “Carbon Capture” to eliminate CO2, maybe we should should try “Oxygen Capture” to eliminate CO2?
People have signed petitions to eliminate DHMO. Why not eliminate O2? 😎
[In English: “Nuclear energy, whether from fusion or fission, has the problem of waste heat, just like fossil fuel energy. It is still small compared to CO2, but it will soon become a relevant warming problem with the growing energy demand by mankind.”]
Start with “soon.” No definition, to can’t be incorrect, obviously. (/s)
Yes, our power generation adds thermal energy into the environment (air and water).
The point is, assuming the energy imbalance calculation of 0.6% is correct, then the devil really is in the details and every joule needs accounting.
Include the moon and other planets. Include cosmic radiation. Stop using the earth mean diameter. Include precession and wobble and orbital mechanics. Stop using the mean solar orbit and average solar temperature. Stop using a circle on axis to define solar input and averaging it over the average surface area. It is a sphere. The equator is closer to the sun than the poles. Small, yes, but accounting for all the details is important. Also the slop of the planet (even if assumed a sphere) near the pole means the W/m^2 is much less than at the equator. Put the proper latencies into it. EM goes a c. Molecule are moving a less the the speed of sound. Blackbody calculations must account for the heatsinking of the oceans and land when warming and for evaporation and convection/advection. No where in the models do the implement EM fields and waves equations, which are the basis for the sun warming the land and water.
A whole lot of details are omitted because the are not important?
Apologies for multiple typos. I went too fast.
I red fst so I msieed them.
After posting a comment, if you find typos, you can correct these. Move the mouse pointer to lower right corner of comment area, click on the small gear wheel and follow the prompts. You have five minute window for making corrections after posting a comment.
Let me add two big ones. Detail1: temperature and delta-temperature are not metrics for climate or heat. Detail2: clouds have a major impact on climate and “parameterization” is not a valid sustitution.
This doesn’t even begin to address the statistical incoherency of averaging data with different variances with no attempt at weighting.
Excellent!
To author of the above article, Frank Bosse:
You state: “He is therefore familiar with thermodynamics and its 2nd law, which states that with every change of state, the “disorder” increases, also known as entropy. This is reflected in warming.”
Your second sentence has a major failing in that it is not true universally. Hot objects in the universe are generally “winding down” in their energy content as they continue to distribute their energy into the cold (currently about 3 K average temperature) cosmos.
The best current science-based predictions are that the universe will eventually suffer a cold death as all energy equilibrates:
“The cosmos may never end. But if you were immortal, you’d probably wish it would. Our cosmos’ final fate is a long and frigid affair that astronomers call the Big Freeze, or Big Chill.
“It’s a fitting description for the day when all heat and energy is evenly spread over incomprehensibly vast distances. At this point, the universe’s final temperature will hover just above absolute zero.”
(source: https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-big-freeze-how-the-universe-will-die/ )
Total world annual energy demand amounts to approximately 1 hours’ worth of sunlight falling on the earth. There are 8,760 hours (plus a bit) in a year. Annual human contribution to the earth’s energy balance (~0.01%) isn’t even as large as the rounding error when trying to balance sources and sinks.
The biggest lie is the ridiculous notion that a warmer climate is worse. Once you dispose of that nonsensical idea, all the blather about any “problems” which will supposedly result from “warming,” regardless of the cause, become a waste of time.
Mmmm … doesn’t seem like the total waste heat would be that big. My bad number detector is ringing like crazy on this one. Hang on … ok, here are some numbers.
Annual global electricity consumption is around 27 petawatt-hours per year (10^15 Whr/year).
Nuclear efficiency is about a third, with two-thirds going as waste heat. If global electricity were all nuclear, about twice that would be given off as waste heat. That’s 54 PWh/year.
Divide that by 8,766 hours per year gives an average waste heat energy flux of 6.2 terawatt-hours (10^12 Whr).
And dividing that by the 5.1E+14 square meters of the earth’s surface gives an energy flux of 0.01 watts per square meter (W/m2) from the nuclear waste heat … be still, my beating heart …
Bear in mind that the 24/7 global downwelling radiation (longwave plus shortwave) is about half a kilowatt per square meter … not seeing how a waste heat warming of one-hundredth of a single watt per square meter will EVER be an issue, now or in the future.
Seems like my bad number detector is still going strong …
w.
Willis, you wrote –
“Bear in mind that the 24/7 global downwelling radiation (longwave plus shortwave) is about half a kilowatt per square meter . . . “.
Completely irrelevant. As Fourier said, during the night, all the heat of the day is lost. Elevated nighttime minima are due to anthropogenic heat, not sunlight or CO2. All energy production and use is eventually converted to waste heat, which flees to space – never to be seen again. No local “conservation of energy” to be seen.
Try explaining why the Earth’s surface has cooled from the molten state, using basic physics. You can’t, unless you are prepared to abandon silliness like your “Steel Greenhouse” and similar bizarre notions.
Feel free to whine about being offended, if you wish. Maybe you can name someone who cares about your “feelings”. I certainly don’t.
Pass. As I’ve said elsewhere, the best thing about writing for the web is that in many cases I can see which posts are not worth reading by just looking at the name at the top.
w.
By “not worth reading”, you mean that you can’t explain why the Earth has cooled to its present temperature.
Nor can any other GHE acolyte.
Others are starting to notice your refusal to accept reality, possibly. Keep dreaming, and all my best to you and yours.
Pass.
w.
LOL,
Translation: I can’t address the details of the comment which is why I make this useless word salad reply instead.
Having written something similar myself, I think the context to be used here is all the energy becomes “waste” heat.
I think the idea is more like the (nuclear) energy is additional to the sun’s energy and so provides additional warming.
Then everything you did follows (albeit x1.5) and Stefan is still being an alarmist moron who thinks people wont check his work.
Ah, I see your point, Tim, and you are 100% correct.
So the actual number for additional heat from nuclear is actually not
0.010 W/m2, it is
0.015 W/m2 …
… and yes, Stefan is still a quacked out, whacked out alarmist.
Thanks for checking my numbers, best to you and yours,
w.
“0.015 W/m2 …”
Is that supposed to mean something? Are you trying to sound scientific? If so, you might convince the ignorant or gullible that “0.015 W/m2” has some relevant meaning, but not anybody else.
You could always “pass”, and avoid having to explain that you don’t really have any idea what mean.
All my best to you and yours.
Pass. As the old saying goes,
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think” …
w.