Harry Veeder <[email protected]> wrote: I agree, that sooner or later global warming from waste heat will > become an issue...unless we can cancel the waste heat with waste cold > which is considered impossible according to the laws of > thermodynamics.
Nope. That would make refrigerators impossible. The Second Law states that heat cannot *of itself* go from one body to a hotter body. It *can* go but you need an external mechanism. Such as compressed and expanded gas moving around a loop. Since heat escapes in about a half hour, and since total the heat release from machines is far less than solar energy, I do not think this will ever be a problem. However, suppose we find too much waste heat at ground level from energy production is trapped in the atmosphere. It causes heat islands and even contributes to global warming. In that case, we need to build a gigantic refrigerator coil that dumps the heat outside the atmosphere. That is to say, something like space elevator, or at least a tower maybe 100 km high. Air temperature refrigerator fluid is pumped up the tower, out of the atmosphere, and then compressed. It is decompressed on the down loop. You might just pump ocean water temperature water up the tower and let it cool in space. I am not sure if that would work. It would work at night. Plan B would be a gigantic thin film parasol, to intercept sunlight. If we have a space elevator, I think it would make more sense to transfer heavy industry up, away from the atmosphere. I guess right up to the Clarke orbit (geosynchronous). You put the waste heat, noise and pollution 35,000 km away. You have to Think Big. - Jed
