I recently learned that waste heat will boil the oceans in about 400 years.
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All power plants create waste heat that contributes to global warming. At the moment, the contribution is fairly small, but if mankind flourishes it is bound to increase and eventually it will become a problem. The only thing we an do about it is to build an air condition for the planet. Scientists have come up with some ideas how to address the problem that I hope you will find entertaining.
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Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video jordibusque.com/
00:00 Intro
00:38 What is Waste Heat?
04:46 How Big Is the Waste Heat Problem?
08:29 What Can We Do About Waste Heat?
10:07 Reuse Waste Heat
12:30 Reduce Incoming Solar Energy
15:20 Improve Planetary Cooling
17:47 Planetary Air Condition
20:17 Summary
20:51 Learn More About Solar Power With Brilliant
#science #tech #climate
I'm doing my part to cool down the planet by leaving the door of the refrigerator open
Hahaha, way to make extra heat. Not that this is a real problem.
If the outside temperature is above the fridge temperature , what then ?
@Thierry Landrieu well Eskimos use refrigerators to keep stuff from freezing.
Ever check out how hot the backside of the fridge is?! lmao!!
@@lestermarshall6501 I can’t imagine how eskimos ate before fridges were invented . I must say I prefer warmer climates .
'So maybe one could just create artificial tornadoes to improve surface cooling. What could possibly go wrong?' Made my day. lol
We already are suffering from global warming.
What could possibly go wrong?Everything.
Look into geoengineering, ionospheric heaters, NEXRAD
I thought she was going to say it is a self-correcting problem!
2476 "known" nuclear weapons testing, daily "conventional" explosions, land mines, Agent Orange.... What could go wrong? Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
“The energy that comes from the sun is free energy. The plants can use it to grow and we can use it to power lawn mowers to cut the plants”. Pure genius.😂
@disregardedkitchen scapegoats or space goats?
My dog produces so much methane gas, she's definitely a gross polluter. But on a serious note. I was always amazed by the temperature of a City compared to outside the city by maybe twenty or Forty Miles. Same elevation, same land type and same wind current. Those big cities are radiating so much heat.
theyre made of concrete with no plants providing shade or converting the photons into sugar. With masses of humans and machines generating heat. So theyre giant heat engines and batteries. Another reason cities are horrible for the environment
I work in a city but live 45 minutes away. The temp drops at least 5 degrees when I leave the city.
maybe so but the surface area of earth covered by these hot spots is a drop in the bucket compared to the entire surface of the earth.
kill everything that isnt humIn
@@garymcmullin2292 this isnt remotely true. City "heat islands" are a huge problem
The serenity with which she made the joke about crematoria by saying "it's the only fat-burning workout that really works" made me fall out of my chair.
Artificial tornadoes: "what could possibly go wrong?"
Cremation is my last chance at a smoking hot body.
Ditto! There are layers here...
Now accepting Soylent Green volunteers (IT'S PEOPLE!!!) 📗📗
She actually said "it is probably the only fat burning exercise that really works." Not a very good joke from a German.
7:51 "Now It's unlikely that we'd get that far because we'd all die before that, which ought to slow down the economy a little." haha! Love her sense of humor!!!
Maybe the AIs will be running the economy by then, and they'll barely notice our disappearance?
Hi Dave. Not all businesses would suffer. Take undertakers for instance---. Cheers, P.R.
😆😆😆 Yes, exactly, because AI/silicon-based lifeforms would take over
Actually that's what the author Thomas W. Murphy Jr has pointed out (at least in his blogposts from a decade ago, as well as in his 2021 book and 2022 article) : «steady» exponential growth - as we have known it since the beginning of the Industrial Age - cannot possibly continue, because it quickly runs into absurdities like this one, which we might be able to deal with, but then it keeps getting... exponentially harder as we have to keep building bigger and bigger «air conditioning units», then leave Earth, then Earth becoming a tiny fraction of the economic output... then our whole galaxy (only 1350 years to equal it with only star power !)... and at some point we might even run into (what we at least currently consider to be) a fundamental limit of trying to grow the surface available to us for dissipation to the outside universe faster than the speed of light ! Or on the other hand into the economic paradox of energy becoming an arbitrarily small (and exponentially shrinking) fraction of the economy, which is not a stable situation because at some point some group controlling a microscopic fraction of the economy would be able to corner the whole energy market, at which point they can increase prices arbitrarily high, at which point its fraction of the economy would stop exponentially shrinking - rather the inverse - etc.
I dont know for the other renewables mentioned at 9:10, but isn´t their an addional effect for pv which wasn´t accounted for: PV modules reflect around 3-5% of incoming flux directly back into space. Grass, forest and sand reflect 25%, 15% and 40% respectively. From this PV modules should be installed on Water (0,06% reflection)? Additionally i think the geothermal example is more complex than one thinks. At least for an surface collector, I don´t see a problem at all. You´re just exchanging the heat, meaning the temperature of the earth cools locally and radiates less. In principle this should also hold true for deeper geothermal harvesting plants on a balance sheet, but ofc there the time delay is way bigger.
I live in Northwest Canada, we get 7 months of winter here, I love the idea of staying warm.
And your fish precooked in the ocean?
"Big data is a particularly source for hot air". The truest thing Sabine ever said.
Too bad her channel would get shabow banned if she mentioned the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex...
@@lorenzoblum868 I'm sure Sabine would never fall so low!
*Politicians have entered the chat
@@WeighedWilson government is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex ~ Frank Zappa.
@@lorenzoblum868 That's one of the funniest things he ever said - one of them. Oh, I wish!
Thank you, Sabine! Educomedy at its best. If only we could use the hot air from politicians to power things, we would really make a dent in this problem.
🧂
"Educomedy" added to my dictionary - must use it.
"Educomedy has been a thing in the USA for a long time. The most politically informed on average there get it through comedy programs like The Late show.
Politicians, like fossil fuels, are a problem we can do without.
Agreed... and just to help out - they can take the methanogen problem or whatever it is I have/my gastrointestinal tract has to blimp up and float away!
@7:54 Dangit, Sabine! Don't do that when I have a mouth full of coffee... I almost spat it all over my desk!
I visited friends in California. They had a swimming pool and air conditioning. The previous owners had not thought of running the pool circulation water over the hot roof in tubes to cool the house and heat the pool. They ran electric air conditioning, and electrically heated the pool !
yes its trasfer of latent heat energy from one source to another. Did you know the earth can be a heat battery? Pipe the hot water from the heat exchanger into earth pipes 300 feet down then over the summer it heats up the earth to supply warm water all winter long. The total power consumption is to make up for the remaining 10% or 20% to heat the house or non at all.
If the pool is cold, why would the house be hit?
@@spyder2383The asphalt shingles on the roof reflect heat while the pool water retains the coolness of the night. By circulating water through pipes which cross the roof the water is heated by the reflected heat and the sun. So it will pull cool water from the pool, and return hot water. It can be turned on and off depending on water and air temp This allows the pool to be used during the months when pools are generally too cold to swim in.
Yes. I made a solar heater for my pool in Vegas with $20 in black plastic drip tubing. I spread the coils out on my metal porch cover and using elbows hooked it to the spigot on the side of the pool pump. The other end went in the pool. Then I ran the pool pump from 10 till 2 instead of the middle of the night. The water comes out of the pipe at 110°. Free heat.
@@grumpy3543- free except for running the pump.
When I was 16, I brought this issue up to my physics teacher, "we are basically covering the earth with radiators" in regards to human expansion around the planet, with our homes and such, and made a point about all that heat. But he basically laughed me off and mumbled something about how it's too small to ever matter. On this day, I feel vindicated.
They've already solved the problem. There are plans to use infrared emitters to convert heat to infrared and just beam it out into space.
Also no one cares 🙂
Why is heat such a bad thing? The most diversity of life and this plan is was when it was warm. The only thing that decimates life is ice and cold. It’s kind of hard to have life, if all your freshwater is tied up in ice cubes
@@Ont785 Heat is not a bad thing. The problem is when there's too much heat. Or too little, like you pointed out. The warming of the atmosphere already causes problems, and if the temperature continues to rise, we'll eventually face more problems and they'll be more severe. "The only thing that decimates life is ice and cold." Simply not true. Overheating, fire and drought also do the same.
@@lclMetal We are a long way from having an ecosystem that we used to! The is the reason why the a dinosaur fossils all across northern Canada. The only thing keeping humans from migrating were the glaciers. If your freshwater is tied up an ice, there are no animals and there are no people. Gee, what would Canada do if we had a longer growing season and more animals foraging northwards? Stop the fear mongering
"The probably only fat burning exercise that actually works" - You made my day.
Love the dark humour
@@johnransom1146 I love all her humor.
I vote this as Sabine's best line so far in 2023.
It is cheaper to reduce the human population than to become space civilisation.
It's possible that you never bicycled 420 km / week at a fair clip for a few years.
Sabine, i follow your train of thoughts for quite some time, but this vid is beyond; came here for laugh, leave with jaw dropped. Hats off!
“And that’s what we’ll talk about today”, It’s becoming reassuring to hear that
Sabine's humor keeps getting better. She's hilarious! 😂
Yes but sometimes she goes too far . This time for exemple, I really thought she was taking this exponential thinking to the letter …. I viewed up to the end but couldn’t get this nagging out of my mind . Exponentials always have limits in real life …. That is so obvious… so why even consider a model based on exponentials ?
@@thierrylandrieu7441 You are correct. Sabine was Foul with the 1st part of this video and most especially by far the sickening clickbait title in order to get eye balls of both the coal-oil-gas-wealth Shill-Troll Junk-Science Liar-Imbeciles and also of the Guy McPherson General Purpose Imbecile set. Just to keep her Business Model healthy. I'll likely never think much good of her ever again.
@@grindupBaker I think I agree . Still there are some good videos …. And some people really think it would be good to cool the planet . Just thinking that makes me sick …. We were headed towards a cooling anyhow , and the carrying capacity of the planet 20 000 years ago was so small …. You know Peter’s law ? If something can go wrong it will , so a planet cooling system ….
Yes, but her delivery is so dry that it’s often difficult to distinguish between humour and seriousness.
Of course she is funny. She’s German. :)
"Plants can use it to grow, and we can use it to power lawnmowers to cut the plants down which is okay, because physics isn't concerned with the meaning of life" so brutal.
@@bobbytookalook it's an aesthetic irony.
@@bobbytookalook Who who think a German physicist had a sense of humour :P
"The only fat burning exercise that works", crematorium heated homes.
@@billboyd4051 that probably takes more energy than it's worth. Maybe heat from letting bodies decompose in the basement would be more efficient.
@@veganevolution Sabine spoke of a town doing it, thats why I quoted her.
"And if the ground's not cold, everything is gonna burn, we'll all take turns, I'll get mine too!" Pixies
Thank you for being a source of real education in a world that is full of confusion
„Big data is also often a source for hot air.” I really loved this one 😂
"What could possibly go wrong?" I love when she injects that into her videos! This sure isn't the first time...
well don't worry about that waste heat cause both you and I will be long dead before we have to worry about that waste heat in our life times🤣
well they learn... from 4 years to "we all gonna die" to 400 years now.
and in line with humanity the world says 'that sounds like someone elses problem, and someone elses problems are my favorite problems to ignore.'
"...because we'd all die before that, which ought to slow down the economy a little" 🤣 Thank you Sabine. I very badly needed that laugh
Unfortunately actual experiment disproves that hypothesis because we all died September 2019 owing to not much sea ice that year according to a "Guy McPherson" and the 0.00001% human billionaire psychopaths in bunkers can't possibly have been doing it all themselves for 3 years, so I think it's reached a Critical Social Tipping Point my British Railways mate Richard told me in 1976 where they calculated they only needed 12% more office staff at British Railways Reading and then they could remove the trains & track and the office staff could continue doing exactly what they'd always been doing, seamlessly without interruption or notice. I think this Critical Social Tipping Point has been passed by human species.
The millions of O'neal cylinders circling the sun will absorb enough energy to cool Earth.
Doomsday cult freaks. There's a 100% chance the interglacial epoch will end returning Europe and of Canada to year round winter. Could happen in 500 years, or maybe 5,000. But it is inevitable, the warm periods are shorter than the cold periods... We have 4 seasons per year, throughout a 70 year lifespan. The earth however, has its own cycles that are 10,000 - 20,000 years long, a 100,000 year cycle, and also a millions of year cycle. If it's too hot for your taste, just wait a thousand years. And don't worry, none of these things will bring about the rapture where all the air conditioned sinners are brought before the great climate gods where they will be judged and punished in the afterlife. Armageddon has been used so successfully to control populations for thousands of years. It's hilarious and disturbing to watch this happen during a time when anyone can read the actual science online for free. Even the ICC stuff is online and the cult members don't even read that stuff despite it being their own religious doctrine.
good ol' anti-natalism. hilarious.
The total power that reaches the earth from the sun is about 110,000 terawatts or 7,600 times more power than all of humanity produces, even assuming all of that power eventually became waste heat. Magnitudes matter.
After you've informed yourself by watching Sabine's video, refrain from reading the comments or risk becoming dumber for the effort.
Love your delivery of information!! Thank you.
Attempting to solve these issues with more efficient power plants runs into the Jevons Paradox: efficiencies create incentives to consume more energy.
I love when Sabine says, "What could possibly go wrong?"
I've never seen someone present scientific topics with such simple explanations for the layman, as well as keeping it fresh and interesting by interspersing some truly golden comedy in between. I truly wish I could have had you as my teacher, Ms. Hossenfelder! Keep up the brilliant work.
you do have her as your teacher ☺💜
Yeah she does alright so much so that I often find myself searching on her channel for clarification.
Neil Tyson - Dr Becky - Derek Muller - Scott Manley - Mark Rober and so many more do exactly what Sabine does.
There wasn't really any scientific topics in this video. Just rambling about waste heat, and if you think waste heat is a complicated subject, no wonder you believe this.
@@codejunki567 you lack awareness on how much regular people know about thermodynamics
I have a question after watching this. Does the balance of heat loss somehow explain the ice ages? Do we have any idea what causes and ice age?
In my view, the earth is quite large and changes temperature slowly. So there is a lot of inertia involved. Once the temperature starts to change, it takes some time for the cause of the change to cease so the temperature change can start reversing. There are also external causes, like big volcanoes or asteroid impacts that can cause cooling and upset the thermal balance. Ice caps reflect heat too, so once they grow larger it may take a while for things to warm up again.
I don't agree with all of your assessments but I watch all of your videos because you do such a great job explaining your conclusions. thanks
This is a problem I've been pondering over the last few years. Our fridge dumps waste heat into the house. The house is then conditioned (summer) and waste heat is dumped outside (via AC). Every conversion comes with losses and thus wasted energy. In the Winter (for those climates) -- something like a fridge could be almost directly coupled to the outside. Housing needs a better system to move heat around a living space with minimal conversion steps to minimize losses from each conversion.
in cold climates it's already cold, the fridge isn't doing much work anyway. In summer, try to open the door as briefly as possible, to keep hot air from coming in. Insulation will minimize the work done by the fridge. Think about this: if you cover the windows from outside, the sun hits those covers and they heat up. This is the same amount of heat produced if you let them in, only now it's inside. If you use AC, you pump the same heat out. What's the added heat? only the waste from operating the pump. Properly insulated houses cut down on a LOT of energy usage. Outside blinds too. Pump less, that's all. Cut down on energy use and the waste heat of our machines. Next step? properly designed airflow: natural cooling and natural heating just by thinking about airflow during design (hard to do once it's built).
@@MadsterV - That depends on how the temperature in the house is set. If you kept the environment in the home at the same temp (we'll say 20'C) all the time, the fridge will have to do the same amount of work all the time to keep the set temp. It always transfers the load to the HVAC of the home. But I would still be curious to see a stufy that explores "by how much".
@@benjammin1001 oh, I get it, yeah. From what I understand in many extreme cold climates, the "freezer" is just leaving stuff outside. Over here we don't do AC too often, because it doesn't dip too far below freezing but I could see myself unplugging it during the winter if it got worse, and just having a box outside.
Thought about it. It's a much, MUCH smaller volume of air to cool, and it's usually much better insulated too. The fridge will pump heat out only every once in a while (you can hear it when it does), not constantly like AC. You'll never notice your kitchen being hotter just because of the fridge. Also, unlike with AC, there is nothing inside the fridge generating heat, but human bodies produce heat constantly. On the other hand, we're talking about HEATING the house (in winter), so when the fridge pumps heat out, it's actually REDUCING the amount of work the AC does (by a negligible amount), In summer......I'd bet the difference would be hard to measure.
Yes, if we could use the cold outside to cool our homes that might help offset what goes on in the summer. But there is always waste heat
"Big data is another major source of hot air" 😆 🤣 😂 Great video Sabine. Very interesting and, as always, highly informative. Thank you 👍.
Crypto mining is doing an awful lot of environmental damage.
@@frankshailes3205 😂😂 Yeah and so is fake news like Sabines
Another thought train i would like to comment on seporately is : If you have two adjecent volumes of matter(spheres) having the same entropy but high energy then they do not have a net gain/loss from each other but they still radiate to each other in equal amount. Space has the high entropy low energy to dump energeticwaves into. So in essence we need to convert the spheres(matter) thermal vibrations into high energy waves(meta materials)that we can collimate and mirror in a direction away from each other. and shoot it back where it came from. But then we could reuse that energy and do it all again. I'm not making sense to myself unless there is something going on somewhere.
Good to have a full-length video again.
I'm here for the science, but also for Sabine's sarcastic jokes! She has a good sense of humor.
well good? i prefer the monty pyton
@@omblauman ahh yes me too... Monty Pyton, the fameist comedy troup from Youganda
@@omblaumanMonty Python famously didn't tell jokes, but they did absurdist satire.
@@ppetal1 Which brings us back around to Sabine.
@Peter Leonard Gates, it seems you're confusing the (mostly) British comedy troupe "Monty Python", who indeed, did not tell jokes, with "the monty pyton" (definite article, lower case m, lower case p, no h in pyton) who did. Also, please don't confuse "the monty pyton", with monty pytonn (with 2 "n"s) most famous for their dead toucan skit!
I’m very surprised this is never talked about. I used to think it was because that heat was very insignificant and globally irrelevant, but intuitively it was difficult to believe. You just made an interesting confirmation of that point
because climate scientists - at least those who believe in "green growth" - don't like to talk about that. those who do are mostly ignored (like timothy garret "civilization is a heat engine") or ridiculed as alarmists (like guy mcpherson; although he probably deserves that).
We use very little energy compared to the earth's imputs
It is when you consider active volcanoes and increased radiation due to a weakening magnetic field. This is bs.
Also if the ambient temp rises we need to use less power for heating (and more power for cooling). Overall, at temperate latitudes, more warmth is better.
Eh, but it's still rather insignificant. It only becomes a problem if people increase fossil & nuclear energy consumption 10x.
Love the dry humor! Great explanations!
Hi! Could planet heat patterns be used as biosignature to identify highly intelligent life in exoplanets?
I never comment on videos but I'll make an exception here. I just discovered this channel and I am amazed by the quality of content and the teaching style. I have studied this topic of so called "anthropogenic heat emissions" a while back and no one seemed to care about this, glad someone is putting this out there!
ᵗʰᵃⁿᵏˢ ᶠᵒʳ ʷᵃᵗᶜʰⁱⁿᵍ😊, ʷʳⁱᵗᵉ ᵐʳ ᶠʳᵉᵈᵉʳⁱᶜᵏ ⁿᵒʷ, 📝ʷⁱᵗʰ ᵗʰᵉ ʷʰᵃᵗ ˢᵃᵖ ˡⁱⁿᵉ 𝟏𝟖𝟐𝟓𝟖𝟎𝟐𝟏𝟖𝟓𝟔, ᵗᵒ ᵖᵃʳᵗⁱᶜⁱᵖᵃᵗᵉ ⁱⁿ ᵒᵘʳ ᶜᵘʳʳᵉⁿᵗ ⁱⁿᵛˢᵗᵐᵉⁿᵗ ᵐᵉⁿᵗᵒʳˢʰⁱᵖ ⁱⁿˢⁱᵍʰᵗˢ, 😊❤🙏,,
I studied Government Propaganda and determined that everything you are talking about falls squarely into that category. Sad
@@jomamma1750 Sadly, I have to agree with you. Normally Sabine makes excellent and even handed videos, but not where the subject of climate change is concerned. Academics need to be a bit more cool-headed. For sure, I am all for reducing fossil fuels (we still need plastics) and reducing any pollution including CO2 (currently rising yet long term still modest at 0,04% of our atmosphere). I can also have some sympathy for NGO/government promoted ‘exaggeration of fear’ for the good cause. But there are limits. There are people within our (un)elected leadership with a lot of influence who cannot distinguish between facts and exaggerated fear and they literally see humanity as a threat they need to deal with now. All software induced hockey stick models and theories from academics aside, we should first focus on UNBIASED measurement data sets. If it comes to temperature, ancient ice core measurement is the only thing free from academic modelling and bias. We thus need to look at the GISP2 Greenland data and recognise Earth’s climate is inherently cyclical. Climate has always changed and always will. The current changes are NOT out of long term bandwidth. As for short term changes in temperature; the most UNBIASED measurement is the rise of worldwide ocean water. It is monitored and currently stands at 1.8mm per year average, which is EXACTLY the average of ocean water rise since Pleistocene. Notice, the club of Rome 50 years ago predicted a 4 metre rise for 2025. Now in 2023, almost 50 years later we measure…. 9 cm actual increase. Let that sink in and lets collectively feel ashamed. IPCC even very ashamed. Again, yet we need to make the fuel transition but videos like these are of no help to humanity. As for Sabines Q increase due to increased human need of energy. It is historically insignificant to the solar radiation output fluctuations (scheduled to take a downturn next year). It is well withing the parameters Earth’s biosphere can stabilize. A higher Q in general means higher altitude cloud formation, thus higher albedo (thus more solar input shielding) and the higher CO2 in combination with higher Q output is a positive for plant life in general and specifically at higher altitudes, thus more absorption of CO2, downscaling Q. But regardless. Yes, we need to be careful and make the switch to nuclear faster. But no, CO2 and current fluctuations are well within parameters Earth can handle. Earth’s population is heading downwards after 2060. We can feed all and each individual is worth-while and welcome on this planet. We will be fine as long as we take good care of the environment. Earth will be fine in all cases longer term, long after we are gone. And if you still suffer from anxiety after watching Sabine’s video, pls be sure to also check out George Carlin’s ‘saving the planet’ for some relief.
@@RWin-fp5jn You've been reading the propaganda as well. I used to work at a science station, the actual Ocean rise between 1995 and 2015 was .020 of an inch total or 1 one-thousandth of an inch per year. Quit believing ANYTHING that these people say. It is ALL propaganda.
I think we are so advanced that we now try and shape the world to our liking and that isn't normal we are the only species evolved enough to do that, this us very off topic btw but I feel the earth will undergo its natural cycles and changes over the next 10 or 20 thousand years and by then at least one event would have caused 99% human population decrease, not total extinction but there's so many of us that if 1% survived or even just like 1 million people, the human race would rise and again just as we have over the last 10000 years, my point being we tend to separate our selves from nature from the universe but we are the universe, we are made up of the universe and the universe and earth doesn't care about humans it'd gonna undergo its natural order so it prospers until it's end, so instead of trying to manipulate the earth. I've decided to take enjoyment out of looking the inevitable truth in the eyes, whether I'm here to see it or not the earth won't be here forever, nothing will and humans are just a moment in time just like the moment u just look to read this, life is just a collection of moments and we are trying to sway away from that truth and trying to make a new one, a truth where we can live forever and control planets and whatnot but maybe we were never meant to understand and conquer maybe we weren't meant to simply experience life, no one has experienced life in 100% the same way that you have, so what do you make of the world?
„You phone gets warm while you use it … but it’s not because it likes you so much.“, that’s why I love this channel, but also because of the intentional information of course.
Good to see this issue get attention. Tom Murphy's been going on about it for over a decade now. Of course, the issue isn't so much waste heat as the fact that exponential growth can't last.
But the video says that the problem with waste heat is that it has exponential growth. Which is it?
@@DF-ss5ep waste heat is the result of energy use, which is coupled with economic growth
@@DBagg-zz4ip Yes, so if exponential economic growth can't last, then exponential energy consumption can't last, so we will never have this problem
@@DF-ss5ep Right. The problem is our political-economic system is built around the assumption of growth
Growth being "exponential" is always nonsense.
Another problem of reducing incoming sunlight I hardly ever hear anyone mention is that reducing sunlight coming in reduces photosynthesis, reduces the production of oxygen from ocean organisms responsible for over 70% of the oxygen we breath! Given that these organisms are already being reduced by ocean warming and pollution, care to guess what will happen to the oxygen in our atmosphere if it stops being replenished at the rate is has been for the last, oh guess, 500,000 years? I don't know about you, but, my guess is that lowering oxygen levels are not a cognitive plus!
🇨🇦/🇺🇸... I've been wondering about this for DECADES! I even wrote to and asked the host of Canada's CBC radio's science program "Quirks & Quarks" and they were quite "duh??" about it. They couldn't believe that anyone would ask such a question! Thanks for addressing this!!
Me too. I’ve wondered about heat.
"Big data is a particularly great source for hot air" - almost spit out my food! Haha!
A typical hurricane drops ~0.6 inches of rain/day across a roughly circular area of ~540,000 square miles. This translates into ~5.6+ billion gallons of rain/day. Specific hurricanes drop more or less rain; for example, in 1978, one of the rainiest hurricanes on record, Hurricane Amelia, dumped an average of 48 inches of rain along her path across Texas! But this extraordinary rainfall is the key to understanding how much heat hurricanes transfer from the oceans into space: As tropical systems draw air across the surface of the warm ocean, water evaporates and is pulled upward. As the warm, moisture laden air spirals upward around the eye of the storm, the water vapor cools and condenses into clouds and rain. And condensation releases the latent heat energy (or the energy that was required to turn liquid water into water vapor). Just how much energy is released? Good question! The latent heat energy released by an average hurricane is ~600 terawatts, or ~80X our current annual global electricity generating capacity!! So the miniscule amount of waste heat Sabine Hossenfelder is whining about in this video is NOT a problem!
These are my favorite posts. I have learned more from this, than 4 years at the University.
"the only fat burning exercise that actually works" - I choked on this. I love your channel!
In "3001: The Final Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke this problem is mentioned as happening in the 21st century and fixed by covering half the Earth with reflectors. I didn't pay much attention to it, until now.
Seems like an easier solution would be to just stop relying on a growth-based economy. We've only been rapidly increasing our rate of consumption, our population, our environmental impact for a few hundred years. Population growth is already ending -- we could choose to end the other 2 as well. Any way you slice it, capitalism is bound to be a relatively short-term temporary affair.
@@dr.zoidberg8666 No growth means that new technology doesn't develop. Population growth means more people to think of solutions to cancer and energy, or to design new video games and clothes. When the world's population was 1 billion, everybody lived in extreme poverty.
@@williamanthony915 No, it doesn't. It means consumption doesn't increase over time. Almost all technological development is done by the public sector, not the private sector. It turns out that profit is a terrible incentive for actual innovation because real fundamental R&D is very costly & uncertain.
@@dr.zoidberg8666 So the government made the personal computer, not Steve Wozniak? The government made the iPhone, not Steve Jobs? The government made re-usable rockets, not Elon Musk? Prior to 1900, the government didn't fund energy research, and things like electricity and the steam engine were invented. If we left phone R&D to the government, do you really think it would've been as beautiful as the iPhone?
@@dr.zoidberg8666 I personally invest a lot of money into small modular nuclear reactors (in a private company research and developing them). It's an uncertain investment, and the whole process is very costly, but there's a chance it will produce a lot of money for me, which is why I do it.
Ive been wondering about this for years 😅 Thanks!
The "use less energy" part you briefly mentioned in the end should not be an unthinkable afterthought
I love the humorous interjections Sabine delivers with complete deadpan expression in her lectures. If Jack Benny had been a physics professor, his lectures would be like Sabine's.
"that it's free doesn't mean it insists on taking guns on its trip to the mall" lol, so naturally delivered.
One of the largest wastes that has always bothered me is how we design all homes with isolated wast heat generation. For example, refrigerators, water heaters, stoves, ovens, dishwashing. clothes washers etc. They all use energy to work and products large amounts of waste heat, that often we then use more energy to cool the home to compensate. All of those devices which radiate waste heat should be tied together via a common thermal bus. devices that can use the heat like heat pumps or heat pump based water heaters, that can extract the heat from the bus would lower their own energy consumption while performing their work, and lessen the waste heat produced. In larger settings like apartment buildings the overage of waste heat could be pumped through large geothermal grids installed below the building. If the heat is trapped below the building in cold months residents could tap into this like any geothermal system. Other potential uses, could be water purification. There are devices on the market now that take 5v power and with water and salt product sodium hypochlorite, aka bleach (for anyone who doesnt know). So for 1.250w you could make a small quantity of bleach for cleaning or sterilizing. I'm certain other simple reactions could be used to capture waste heat via peltier devices and be used in a home setting.
I like the way you think.
Then imagine 3 or 4 hundred million households adopting the fix. There is no limit to our technophilia.
That's a really tough problem to try and solve. We currently don't even capture "waste" natural gas from oil wells, it gets flared off instead of saved and used. That's a relatively easy problem to solve compared to what you just suggested.
G'day, Oh, I say ...! Why hath nobody ever thunk of such a thang before thus, then, one wondurrz. Perhaps EVERYBODY who already knows the answer will sit silent while YOU go ahead and build one functioning Unit, for all those still wondering to observe your Results. My guess is that you WILL encounter a variety of the Principle of Elbarsoles, Arselbows, and even ElbArsEyeBalls... En Elbow is easy to design, and so is an Arsehole, but to build an Elbow which can also work as an Arsehole is as difficult as making a simple Arsehole which will function as an Elbow..., and an Elbow that works as an Arsehole, Eyeball and Testicle is really really difficult to imagine. So, if you can figure out how to retrofit your House so the Waste Heat from your Toaster and Hair Dryer, Computer and Microwave, with that from your Refrigerator and Air-Conditionining is recycled to produce your Electricity, while furnishing all your hot Water... After that, you might like to show us how to use the Waste Heat from your Road-Vehicle to operate your Washing-Machine. Ready...? Get set....,; Off You Go Then....! Double-Quick Olde Bean, Time is of the Essence ! Such is life, Have a good one... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !
@@WarblesOnALot the age of aquarius beckons.
maybe we could use a scaled down version of the chimney, or other sources which generate power from waste heat (wind turbines, hydroelectric), to power radio antenna arrays which can beam the radio off the planet in wavelengths to which the atmosphere is transparent. maybe light of shorter frequencies may be better, i'm not sure, but the general idea is just to use thermal energy to power light emitters which generate light with wavelengths to which the atmosphere is transparent.
1:13 Actually, green house gases don't exactly add heat. They prevent heat from being radiated away from Earth, but not all heat radiation is prevented. We'd know since we'd feel slightly overcooked by now, if it did.
Man-made tornado: What could possibly go wrong? That comment along with the observation about fat-burning had me laughing out loud. What a great way to attract attention to a topic that I have always wondered about. Great job Sabine!
You know, with the man-made tornado's we could have the flying cars without a source of "free energy" to move the car. We also could having the flying pigs and , as a result , the solar shield bult on the moon. I feel like the new Elon Musk already ! 😂🤣
Another one: _Big data is a particular great source for hot air_
@@PolCornelis 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Man made horrors beyond our comprehension.
Sabina really is the master of explaining physics and science to people without much of a science background. She is the teacher I always needed...
Try PBS's KZhead channel spacetime. Matt has cover so much physics really well..
Weird, because it's one of the few explanations that I hated.
🙄🤫how much do you make for fake reviews
@@richinoable I take it you don't agree?
@@johnkooy5327 top level assumption. Mmhmm
Wouldn't that heat still be generated as the fuels naturally break down and release the stored energy? So wouldn't the net effect be exactly the same?
What would be the best way to harness nuclear decay emissions for conversion into electricity?
I know nothing about science and randomly stumbled upon this channel a few months back, but I enjoy the content and hints of sarcastic humor included in each video. Thank you for being so informative on things I know nothing about! I find it refreshing to watch alongside my usual KZhead binge watch sessions :)
Watch one every week and before the year is out you will know more than 95% of all politicians
And you will still know nothing about science.
@eriktempelman2097 95% of all politicians. A Yank politician who is on the "I'm with science" team, not the "my money's from mega-money-burning-carbon" crowd said "Greenland lost 12.5 BILLION gallons of water in a SINGLE DAY ! Can you believe it !???" It was actually 12.5 billion tonnes of water in 1 day, which is only 4.1 times Greenland's regular daily Spring+Summer ice loss since hundreds/thousands of years ago and the "spectacular" 12.5 Gt on that single, absurdly unusual, July day is now just 2.7 times Greenland's regular daily Spring+Summer ice loss. Politicians. LOL.
Her videos are awesome
Because this has nothing to do with science. Politics + Engineering Science.
I've been thinking about this issue myself for years. I always wondered: "But what about all the added up heat of everything producing it, aside from any greenhouse gas effect?". Glad to see a video about it.
This problem is actually very easy to solve. We just need to nuke the ice cap on the north pole and use a fleet of big ships to push the pieces of broken ice in the atlantic and pacific oceans...
Heat pollution already has a significant local impact for big power plants, and on rivers and lakes used for cooling. Anti-renewable energy and pro-nuclear sentiment, built up over decades through PR, strategically dismisses the subject.
So the question becomes, why has the temperature only increased 1.1 degrees Celsius in the last 250 years then? Why isn't the temperature increase accelerating as quickly as we create more waste heat year over year?
This is a foul junk-science video title about apparently a paper crafted by imbecile scientists who predict that humans will use 10,000 times as much energy as right now in just 400 years. Absolute garbage, precisely matching your so-called brain.
@@kayakMike1000 This is a foul junk-science video title about apparently a paper crafted by imbecile scientists who predict that humans will use 10,000 times as much energy as right now in just 400 years. Absolute garbage, precisely matching your so-called brain.
3:02 Heat exchangers can get heat from air converted into energy, but the problem with that is, it's a small amount vs. great cost. But... Lets say you have hot air from the tropics and cold air from the poles, the temperature difference is great enough to create energy with, almost to the point of being positive from cost to production. Once solar power allows for such to provide the cost of production, some of that wasted heat can be made useful again, and with it being converted to other types of energy, despite the cost, no longer add to global warming. In short, using some solar power to convert heat back into other energy, removing it from the global warming. The only other way to get rid of excess heat is by forcing it to be emitted from Earth, which is also a costly endeavor.
Brilliant lecture as ever, Sabine, thank you. Unfortunately one of the major factors we seem to be overlooking is the 8 billion humans giving off carbon dioxide and heat, both biologically and with their heating, motor cars, consumer demands for goods manufactured predominantly from plastics (mainly fossil fuel derivatives) and cutting down all the trees, etc. Without having done any of the maths, I would suggest if a global catastrophe were to half this number (projected to be around 9.7 billion by 2064 according to a survey by The Lancet ) the problem would probably just go away. Covid didn't make much of a scratch on that number, what can Mother Earth come up with next to protect herself, I wonder...?
I've never thought about the use and just a delay in the waste heat from solar power, excellent discussion. Those sure were some huge numbers being thrown around for mitigation schemes. Seems like that would buy a lot of solar panels.
Solar isn't that great because solar panels are only 25% efficient and plus you'll have to use them to charge batteries. Some solar plants have been abandoned because they're crap.
@@chompchompnomnom4256 The abandoned plants are not solar panels but the mirror to heat molten salt idea, which was badly implemented. Solar panels are fine, you are correct that storage is a issue most don't appreciate fully but with the advancement of numerous battery technologies we are probably going to have solved that in the next 5 years (will still take 20 years to deploy probably).
Sabine, your ironic, tongue-in-cheek humor just slays me! Love it!👍
Sadly, she sais unscientific things that fit the political agenda. We can easily start an ice age (bring dust to stratosphere with a controlled nuclear winter. Now what will she do in ice age, when a glacier approaches her house? (spoiler: she thinks, that loosing her grants funding is much more real, than the global warming, ice age, etc).
And they say Germans have no humour... There's a Mercedes which obeys spoken commands. "Windscreen wipers on" etc. To the command "tell me a joke" it responds, "this is a German car. We do not tell jokes! "
@@leonardgibney2997 And there’s always German politics to keep people laughing! 😋
It is cheaper to reduce the human population than to become space civilisation that builds stuff in space.
"What could possibly go wrong?" That got me laughing.
Loving your sense of humor. Makes your already great videos a joy to watch.
11:22 Aalborg is my town's "twin/sister town". Here in my town in Holland we also use heat waste from a nearby power plant. Downside is that Vattenval is the only provider in this area, so the prices are kinda high (also pre-2022), but at least it works.
"Another option is to reduce the amount of power that comes from the sun." Geo-engineering in all of its forms is without merit. The phrase, "What could possibly go wrong?" comes to mind.
Winter is coming, will be the coldest winter in living memory. Spring was running 4 weeks late this year and summer failed to arrive and it is looking like autumn will be will arrive early.
Where? In US northeast, we had a very hot winter. Very little snow, hight temperatures, no major storms where I live. Schools didnt close as they usually do. Not coldest in living memory at all. Hottest.
I love your indepth summaries of a wide range of topics. Thank you so much for making the science digestible!
she is the best
Not only is Sabine. Hossenfelder an excellent communicator of complex ideas, but is also a gifted humorist. The dry, wit and the deadpan delivery has me listening so closely I find my mind enriched and stretched. Thank you for challenging my presumptions and misconceptions and for doing so in such a well composed manner. What a gift to the topic of physics and to our general cultural evolution.
Temperature of the ocean off the Florida coast reached 101°. That is hot tub temperature. I think we are warming up at an alarming rate. Far far faster than ever predicted😢
Exactly why I designed a water heater (boiler) that is powered by the waste heat of builtin computer. The waste heat is sufficient to deliver hot water for a small family. Using software based on distributed technology allows multiple 'compute' boilers to behave like a datacenter, but at the same time with very low waste. Combined with local solar panels to power the computer it is the most green datacenter ever built.
"powered by the waste heat of builtin computer" 80 watts (1 W is equal to 3.41 BTU/h) or 272.8 BTU/h. "It was originally defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit." Thus, a typical 40 gallon hot water heater being used to cool a computer would give each gallon 6.82 BTU/h. Since a gallon is a bit over 7 pounds, That's a bit less than 1 degree (F) per hour of operation. It would take several days of continued operation to heat water to lukewarm.
I'm yet to finish the video, but so far, I believe this is the best and most valuable video you ever did! I read and think a lot, but it would've never dawned on me, that this effect might get noticable at one point in time 😯
Your channel is very good at explaining things in layman's terms, and you are never boring. Thank you.
So simple and full of fallacies. Perfect for the uninitiated layman.
@@gickygackers On the contrary, I'd say her channel was pretty accurate. At what point in this video did she commit a fallacy?
@@vaughanpratt6469 predicting the year the oceans boil is a fallacy.
The discussion should have included an essential step in the natural wind. Most of the solar energy goes into the water cycle. Solar energy evaporates water along with evapotranspiration. The latent heat rises to release heat higher into the atmosphere, where it radiates more easily into space. The lifted air mass goes down near the 30th parallel creating the Farrel Cell cycle. My book Pluvicopia explains how to accelerate Latent Heat up into the atmosphere. Pluvicipia is a powerful Air Conditioner for the planet. It also generates free energy from the Latent heat through lifted water and created winds. The same mechanism as regular wind, but instead of using the 6000 km Farrel Cell, it establishes 6km Pluvicopia cells to power wind turbines much more cost-effectively; through constant wind. Pluvicipia concentrates and manages the water cycle energy transfer into space to replace fossil fuels, fix all the other problems caused by fossil fuels, and repair the biosphere. It's a win-win-win, except for the fossil fuel industry, which can replace their business models by making trillions of dollars from the water cycle.
Increasing efficiency of our energy consuming devices, does of course reduce heating of the planet - the energy input required is reduced. For example an electric car may only need 30 KJ to travel from A-B due to higher conversion efficiency from battery to wheels and recycling some of the energy normally lost in heating the brakes.
My mom used to yell at me for leaving the door open and heating the outdoors. Now I finally understand.
Speaking of the cirrus clouds, a study that was started before 911 in the US, found the sunlight striking the earth in this area increased as planes, which leave contrails, were restricted from flying across the Midwest US, where the study was being conducted. Really look forward to your videos and saw you quoted in my subscription of Science News, which gave me a laugh.😄
also the banning of high sulfur bunker fuels for ships , basically burning asphalt, reduced particle sin the atmosphere which increased solar warming by not blocking the sun.
@northvegassailrabbit3642 Yes indeed. You authors couldn't determine whether the night time cooling because less cirrus cloud was greater than the day time warming or less than the day time warming. They stated that right at the start of the published scientific paper. Ever since then liars everywhere have been ignoring that crucial finding and lying that fewer contrails will increase global warming and by some absurd junk-science amount like a large fraction of a degree, all based entirely on lies and nothing at all. We even had a liar on our CBC Canada "science show" pronounce that huge lie out to the Public on our national radio (bit like living in Ruzzia eh).
It bugs me...planes flying above thirty thousand feet cross us (San Antonio, Texas) hundreds of times daily, not landing here. What should be clear sunny winter days are often overcast with spreading contrails by eleven AM. Can it be for safety, in case a plane got into trouble? I doubt it. But with an open mind of the moment, I think it is a coordinated effort to shade the surface transportation traffic emissions to hold down the NOx and Ozone (smog). Thence, my problem in the afternoon as the "saved" smog precursors and the city island heat dome extend out northward to where we live...MyRadar app notifies me that the air is less than healthy, bad for poor breathers, or downright bad for anybody.
@@ronblack7870 interesting to see your comment from 5 months ago on something that got into the news only recently! 🙂
@@danielmcwhirter there is no "coordinated effort" to produce contrails. It just happens depending on the temperature and water content of the air. Apparently there are now efforts to redirect planes to areas or altitudes where contrails are not created to "save the climate" (which is nonsense as it is just water that will rain down quickly enough).
I really need you to create two channels because some I like to think about over morning coffee while others I listen to while falling asleep. This one has me waking up while it is sleep time and wanting a a cup of coffee which I really shouldn't be doing....
Wonder if those super chimneys could be built up next to mountains? That might be easier than free standing structures.
The practice of using waste heat to heat homes is as old as the industrial revolution. I used to live in Erie PA, and there are still wooden pipes (basically tree trunks that had been split in half, hollowed out, and then banded back together) underground there that used to delivered steam from a coke plant (coal that has been heated in an oxygen free atmosphere to be used in steel furnaces) to homes for heating.
I'm absolutely stunned. Your knowledge is impressive and the way you present it without even flinching is truly addictive. Thanks for doing this, you're amazing!
I enjoy her sarcastic wit that is subtlety interjected into the mix.
What the adi?
So you think the oceans will be boiling because of wasteheat in 4 centuries?
The energy that is used to power a Stirling engine doesn’t seem to care about entropy or is something else is happening?
Why do you think it doesn't care? There is lots of energy being converted into heat on Stirling engines
18:50 mark: What if instead of balloons we use really thick hot air bubbles? Then we could also seed the skin of the bubbles with some of that good atmospheric seeding stuff such that when the bubble pops at high altitude, the remnants of the bubble go on to seed the good clouds. Bonus: bubbles!!
Dear Sabine, I found your channel about a month ago and I LOVE your videos. They're absolutely addictive. In addition to their great educational value I also appreciate your reserved humor you perform with a straight face. :) You are awesome!
Awesome is the right word !
She's played with the humor content of the channel. Some videos went a little overboard with the jokes but this video is in just the right place in my opinion.
IKR best deadpan
Finn here, I was surprised to hear that byproduct heat from power plants isn't used for municipal heating by default everywhere else. It seems like such an obvious thing to do, so why not?
Propably because it serves capitalism better to invent a problem and sell the solution; Or as in this case, there's excess heat coming from power plants (solution to a problem of needing to warm up houses), so instead of recycling, let's let it all go to waste and then come up with a solution that requires additional circulation of money (effectively inventing a problem from the ashes of an old solution).
CHP was common in Eastern Europe. And then western technology took over.
It's cheaper that way. Late stage capitalism, is there anything it can't ruin and make worse?
We use it here in Bulgaria. I guess smaller countries tend to be more efficient with their power usage. However what I wonder is what happens with that heat during summer when nobody needs heating.
@@KuK137 The Nordic countries, apparently
Unfortunately there is another downside to burning fossil fuels: every time you emit CO2 you have used up oxygen and this could be just as much of a problem as global warming. A video on this could be interesting comparing the total of oxygen consumed by all living things on earth verses the consumption of human activity, car use, heating, power generation. This is probably a good case for nuclear power which doesnt use oxygen to make power. Also let us all know how long before we all die of asphixiation.
"It's free, but doesn't insist on taking gus to the mall" My god shes on fire, like our planet will be🥲
Seriously appreciate your videos Sabine, thank you so much for your time! ✌️
The thing about air conditioning is it doesn't magically make heat energy go away, it just moves it from one place to another (Inside your home to the outside, inside the refrigerator into your ktchen, etc.) and in the process creates even more heat like all electrical devices that aren't 100% efficient (which is all of them)
Yes, but it moves heat more efficiently than anything else we've tried; vapor-phase-change refrigeration gets you 3:1 joules moved versus joules required to do the moving.
Please make a video about radiant and Heatpanel I never understood why expensive panels are more efficient 😮
Using waste heat does not prevent it heating the environment, it might be used to heat a hospital first, but that is irrelevant, as the hospital is part of the same environment as the ocean. But this saves further conversion of electrical energy, thereby indirectly avoiding the production of additional waste energy. This may sound like nit picking, because it is.😁 The reason waste heat is significant is that it mostly ends up in ocean, instead of being radiated into space due to causing a higher black body temperature. At what average temperature will black body radiation = incoming radiation, given the current imbalance? ie at what temperature will the imbalance reach 0W net?
As I sit here shivering in a cold room, waste heat is low on my priority list.
amen to that
The way I see it, if "we survive that long" whatever the foreseeable problem was will have ceased to be a problem.
I mean, true, but only by definition. "If we survive long enough for the problem to no longer be a problem, the problem will no longer be a problem."
@@o0alessandro0o Well, what I was thinking was that if we survive 400 more years that problem will have likely either been solved through technology or human adaptability. Also, if human society somehow collapses either by war or social upheaval, this will still not likely be THE problem 400 years from now. So we will either have the technology to offset the warming, or we will be producing less waste heat.
@@answerman9933 That is not a significantly different definition, for certain values of "survive", "human" and "adaptability" :P
She keeps referring to CO2 but methane is a much worse greenhouse gas. The melting of permafrost will cause huge releases of methane. A graph of CO2 and global temperature doesn't show a correlation.
As soon as my mother-in-law dies, that will eliminate a lot of hot air. So we good.
Getting rid of waste heat was an interesting plot point from Arthur C Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey. In it, future humans had discovered vacuum energy and all of that free energy led to our of control waste heat. They use a solution similar to the meta materials described here.
Preado fan identified
Hmm, not "discovered vacuum energy", but how to make use of it. Same basic idea as in "The Songs of Distant Earth" with the quantum drive to make interstellar travel feasible.
This was also the case for the Puppeteers in Larry Niven's Known Space series. Their industry emitted so much waste heat that they physically moved the planet out of orbit around their sun and lit it artificially. Add four more planets for their agriculture, and you end up with the Fleet of Worlds.
It is cheaper to reduce the human population than to become space civilisation that builds stuff in space.
The concept of "vacuum energy" is as erroneous as the idea that because of electron orbits, atoms are mostly empty space. Both of these ideas are pure fantasy. For it to be true, all known physics would have to be incorrect. All physics builds on previous physics.