Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed.
At present,
the waste heat term is about four orders
of magnitude smaller than the solar term.
But at a growth factor of ten per century,
they would reach parity in roughly 400
years. Indeed, the surface temperature
of Earth would reach the boiling point
of water (373 K) in just over 400 years
under this relentless prescription. Clearly,
extrapolating our recent — seemingly
modest — 2.3% annual energy growth
very far into the future quickly becomes
ridiculous, and cannot happen.
This is not intended to suggest that
waste heat is a bigger problem than, say,
climate change from carbon dioxide
emissions.
So that’s something we’re going to need to think about after getting greenhouse gas emissions under control.
Waste heat will eventually be a problem, but we’re far from the limit yet:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01652-6.epdf?sharing_token=yNwL92oPzcpklZSqVsr-ndRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N0u2htmeT1Hou6SrdtT_vjhsjDi8mPyrY6gILuO1cIPYM5r9vTrCV6dFSGWkHiq63t24rvELuWNN1w82farMIezAYiWj7ialZ8KkzI_SEgHP98WBPRE6PFu8lx9H4EP5A%3D
So that’s something we’re going to need to think about after getting greenhouse gas emissions under control.