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sai_c | 3 years ago

I hope i did not understand you wrong, but what I meant was the following. We create electric energy from source X. The electric energy is mutated to heat, or mechanical energy or what not (computers produce heat, electric cars mutate it into kinetic energy and so on). Energy is never destroyed, it just changes its form. So if we produce/consume more energy than now (yes that's just theoretical) would that contribute to climate change in a significant manner?

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DennisP|3 years ago

Eventually, yes. Right now waste heat is a tiny fraction of excess greenhouse heating, but if we kept multiplying our energy usage by a couple percent per year, we'd boil the oceans in four centuries.

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

If we invent fusion, I think we could grow exponentially for quite a while, but it'll mostly happen in space. Controlled fusion makes a really great rocket.