Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by science4sail 53 days ago
> thousands of megajoules of energy evvery second

On a planetary scale, gigawatts are nothing. The total amount of energy that Earth receives from the Sun is about 100,000,000,000 megajoules of energy every second, 99%+ of which gets dissipated as heat.

If this is about the climate, then it's important to remember that climate change and pollution ultimately are not a meaningful threat to Earth as a planet - both Earth and its life have been through far far worse[0][1][2][3]. They are only a threat to humans[4].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_therm...

[4] https://humoncomics.com/mother-gaia

1 comments

good to know, this reminds me of a quote that "the planet Earth existed before humans and will exist after us"