Monday, February 26, 2007
Watching the Oscars last night, I found the award(s?) won by An Inconvenient Truth thought provoking and wondered if the people involved have faced what I think of as the Really inconvenient truth: Global warming, if it hasn't happened yet due to man's influence, will certainly happen at some point, for one simple reason: There's going to be far too many of us on this planet.
Depending on who you read, global warming may be a) not happening, b) happening due to natural causes, or c) due to man's activities. Without entering the debate about the present situation, I think it's a safe bet that if the population grows unchecked, global warming will have to happen, just due to inefficiencies in energy conversions.
Take Earth as a thermodynamic system. Heat comes in from the sun. Heat bleeds off by radiation, and perhaps in some other ways. All energy utilizations that have their source in materials located on Earth have inefficiencies that manifest as heat. In the past, this additional heat was an insignificant amount when compared to the total heat from the sun. Perhaps today it is significant. I don't know, but consider this: In 1820, world population was 1 billion. 2 billion in 1930. 4 billion in 1974. 6 billion in 2000. If this trend continues, any efficiencies gained by better gas milage, less driving, and the like, will be utterly swamped by the greater number of people making use of energy sources at all.
So, then what?
Who's going to tell whom they aren't allowed to breed?
Depending on who you read, global warming may be a) not happening, b) happening due to natural causes, or c) due to man's activities. Without entering the debate about the present situation, I think it's a safe bet that if the population grows unchecked, global warming will have to happen, just due to inefficiencies in energy conversions.
Take Earth as a thermodynamic system. Heat comes in from the sun. Heat bleeds off by radiation, and perhaps in some other ways. All energy utilizations that have their source in materials located on Earth have inefficiencies that manifest as heat. In the past, this additional heat was an insignificant amount when compared to the total heat from the sun. Perhaps today it is significant. I don't know, but consider this: In 1820, world population was 1 billion. 2 billion in 1930. 4 billion in 1974. 6 billion in 2000. If this trend continues, any efficiencies gained by better gas milage, less driving, and the like, will be utterly swamped by the greater number of people making use of energy sources at all.
So, then what?
Who's going to tell whom they aren't allowed to breed?
# posted by goldpython @ 8:02 AM 
