Long‐Term Global Heating from Energy Usage

Chaisson, Eric J.

doi:10.1029/2008eo280001

Cited by 48 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Values of F m can be estimated by analyzing society's use of energy by our relatively recent hominin ancestors. The following few paragraphs gauge energy usage among different types of human groups throughout time, illustrating how, in turn, advancing people used increasing amounts of energy beyond the 2-3000 kcal/ day that each person actually eats as food [5,[41][42][43][44].…”

Section: Human Society As An Example Of Cultural Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy rate density as a complexity metric and evolutionary driver

Chaisson

2010

Complexity

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The proposition that complexity generally increases with evolution seems indisputable. Both developmental and generational changes often display a rise in the number and diversity of properties describing a wide spectrum of ordered systems, whether physical, biological, or cultural. This article explores a quantitative metric that can help to explain the emergence and evolution of galaxies, stars, planets, and life throughout the history of the Universe. Energy rate density is a single, measurable, and unambiguous quantity uniformly characterizing Nature's many varied complex systems, potentially dictating their natural selection on vast spatial and temporal scales.

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Section: Human Society As An Example Of Cultural Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy rate density as a complexity metric and evolutionary driver

Chaisson

2010

Complexity

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“…As it stands currently with the values shown in the last section, Hong Kong is far from its limit as energy demands for maintenance have not yet started to overtake energy demands for growth. Should its patterns of resource consumption and pollution continue to grow (Warren-Rhodes and Koenig 2001) with energy demand, pollution, resource scarcity, or thermal impacts of global energy demand (Chaisson 2008) may become the limiting factors to its further growth as In further reference to Fig. 6, should all things remain equal, it can be expected that production and energy use of cities are thus likely to increase because many sustainability plans, economic strategies (EPA 2008;Rossokha 2009) and technological innovations (Heavenrich 2005;Bertoldi and Atanasiu 2007;Koomey et al 2011) involve improvements in energy efficiency and reductions in per unit energy use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From a physical sciences perspective energy gradients are a necessary, though not sufficient condition, for the formation and maintenance of local order in any open system, such as non-equilibrium chemical systems (Nicolis and Prigogine 1977), life and ecosystems (Schneider and Kay 1994). The concentration and availability of high quality energy has allowed for increasingly larger and denser agglomerations of energy use over time (Chaisson 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Energy for Growing and Maintaining Cities

Bristow

Kennedy

2012

AMBIO

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Herein we develop a means to differentiate between the energy required to expand and the energy required to maintain the economies of cities. A nonlinear model is tested against historical data for two cities, Hong Kong and Singapore. A robust fit is obtained for Hong Kong, with energy for maintenance close to that for growth, while Singapore, with a weaker fit, is growth dominated. The findings suggest that decreases in either of the per unit maintenance or growth demands can simultaneously cause gross domestic product (GDP) and total energy use to increase. Furthermore, increasing maintenance demands can significantly limit growth in energy demand and GDP. Thus, the low maintenance demands for Hong Kong, and especially Singapore, imply that, all other things being equal, GDP and energy use of these cities will continue to grow, though Singapore's higher energy use for growth means it will require more energy than Hong Kong.

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“…Chaisson (2008) provides a global perspective on warming associated with heating resulting from energy usage and indicates that the amount of potential global warming is significant, but occurs slowly relative to the projections of warming due to increasing greenhouse gases. De Laat (2008) also note the potential role of heating from energy use, noting that this is a highly regionalised phenomenon.…”

Section: Urban Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regionalizing global climate models

Pitman

Arneth

Ganzeveld

2011

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Global climate models simulate the Earth's climate impressively at scales of continents and greater. At these scales, large-scale dynamics and physics largely define the climate. At spatial scales relevant to policy makers, and to impacts and adaptation, many other processes may affect regional and local climate and perhaps trigger teleconnections that provide significant feedbacks on the global climate. These processes include fire, irrigation, land cover change (including crops and urban landscapes), and the emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds by vegetation. Many of these interact within the atmosphere via dynamical, physical, and chemical mechanisms that lead to boundary-layer feedbacks. It is unlikely that any of these processes have a significant global-scale impact on the Earth's climate in the sense that the amount of warming due to a doubling of well mixed greenhouse gases would change if these processes were explicitly represented in climate models. These phenomena are usually local in space (e.g. urban) or in time (e.g. fire) and probably do not provide the on-going and sustained forcing to affect the global climate. However, for most impacts and adaptation research it is the regional and local climate that defines climate risk. At these scales, processes missing in climate models can have a substantially larger local-scale impact than the additional radiative forcing due to increasing greenhouse gases. Thus, while climate models are well designed for global and continental scales they exclude a suite of important processes that are locally and/or regionally important. We review these missing processes and highlight the research required to resolve the representation of these regional-scale processes in climate models. We also discuss the experimental methodology required to rigorously determine whether these processes are restricted to a local or regional-scale role or whether they do trigger robust teleconnections that would demonstrate global-scale significance.

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Long‐Term Global Heating from Energy Usage

Cited by 48 publications

References 4 publications

Energy rate density as a complexity metric and evolutionary driver

Energy rate density as a complexity metric and evolutionary driver

The Energy for Growing and Maintaining Cities

Regionalizing global climate models

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