According to Geophysical Research Letters, the Earth warmed half a degree last year due to reduced soot and sulfate particles. This was due to the pandemix quarantines. [Study Here](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2020GL091805)
So I’m genuinely asking: could increasing clean energy also cause global warming? Are we in a lose/lose situation?
In: Earth Science
Yes, in the extreme.
Let’s say we get hydrogen fusion to work. That’s super efficient, and it’s how the Sun makes power so we know it scales.
Take 8B people and have them use energy at the rate of US people (50GJ per person per year). That’s a lot of joules. If they use all that power in super efficient LED light bulbs, not so bad, though this will be a damn bright planet. Realistically, lots of that energy is going to go into heat. The Sun is still going to be just as hot, but less CO2 in the atmosphere will trap less of the heat.
If we presume the atmosphere returns to 1900 chemistry, will the global temperature return to 1900 levels? No. All those zillions of joules that go into heat will keep the planet warmer that it was when the atmosphere was more benign.
Are we all dead? No. Even 1960s temperature levels were pretty good. Warmer than 1900, but nothing like the “burn the whole planet down” stuff we have today. That said, the current temperatures don’t seem to have killed many people. Sure, they have killed some, maybe thousands, but thousands out of billions is not even a dent in the bucket. It appears that humans are pretty hard to kill, and even 2200’s coal burning Earth won’t have killed even most of them.
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