[Eddy_Viscosity2]

The indefinite growth theory is discussed in this chance meeting of an economist and a physicist.

"Alright, the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate, we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase."

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

[imgabe]

Not all methods of using energy require releasing heat to space. Solar energy uses heat and light that comes in from space and converts some portion of it to useful work, reducing the amount of heat that needs to be released to space.

That also ignores the fact that technology gets more efficient. A laptop today uses 50W and is thousands of times more powerful than a roomful of computers 50 years ago that used thousands of watts. It’s doing much more and releasing a fraction of the heat.

[midoridensha]

Same with wind energy: wind is ultimately created by solar energy heating the atmosphere, so wind turbines are simply removing some energy from the atmosphere and converting it to useful work.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Its still exponential growth so it will eventually mean all possible useful wind and solar is used up. Then what?

[cercatrova]

If we truly used up all solar and wind power on the planet (which is a mind-bogglingly large amount of energy) there is still nuclear fission which is also a very large amount. Then if we invent fusion, that's basically infinite energy for free. And on top of all that, Earth is not the only planet, and the Sun has energy that does not only hit the Earth, so we can be construct a Dyson sphere.

Energy from our human scale today is basically infinite when we count all the sources available to us.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Solar and wind were brought out up because if any other energy source (like fusion) was used, then waste heat would be generated that would eventually (at exponential growth scales) boil the planet. And we could only, even the best case scenarios, ever only use a fraction of the available wind and solar that exists. Biological life is also solar powered so there's only so much you can take before that's an issue.