THE VIDEO SHELF · waste heat and energy growth
I recently learned that waste heat will boil the oceans in about 400 years.
Sabine Hossenfelder explains that waste heat from ever-growing energy use could eventually boil the oceans in a few centuries, whatever the energy source. She discusses proposed ways to cool the planet.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN cites it in energy debates as an illustration of the long-term thermal limits of exponential energy consumption growth.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Sabine Hossenfelder
- Topic
- waste heat and energy growth
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 5
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2023–2024
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
It’s based on extrapolation of current trends, so I doubt it’ll actually happen. Besides, we’d all die before it got to that. But here are some sources that describe it: [VIDEO] (commentary from Sabrine Hossenfelder, highly recommended) [LINK] [LINK]
nostromo on Hacker News · 2024-01
In What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)You might enjoy Sabine Hossenfelder's video exploring this "I recently learned that waste heat will boil the oceans in about 400 years": [VIDEO] It turns out we can probably solve this by building planetary chimneys 5km tall that move heat to the outer atmosphere.
alxmng on Hacker News · 2024-06
In Fusion tech finds geothermal energy application
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.