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Even if civilization on Earth stops polluting the biosphere with greenhouse gases, the Earth may still get too hot to bear. Why? It’s all about the second law of thermodynamics.Errr, please explain…?

In fact, with almost everything that we do we are polluting the planet with waste heat.

The second law of thermodynamics is the “famous but elusive ‘entropy’ rule which stipulates that order tends to crumble and energy tends to dissipate, and its main outcome is thermal waste.” Did we lose you there? Don’t worry; we lost us there too.

Let’s keep it simple. Basically, when energy breaks down, or dissipates, it generates heat. And because our lives now are so energy intensive, particularly with the use of fossil fuels to power just about everything that we do and consume: heat is an unavoidable by-product of the energy extracted from any non-renewable resource. And as we know, much of the energy that we use to go about our daily business comes from non-renewable energy sources.

The effects of a heating biosphere are already well known and there are multitudes of impacts that the planet will experience as a result of this warming. But in assessing these scenarios, many scientists have been overlooking the second law of thermodynamics.

Even if we manage to sequester all the greenhouse gases, our planet will warm by 3 degrees in the next 300 years. 3 degrees is the very figure that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regards as the tipping point for the worst of the predicted impacts of global warming. All because energy dissipates into heat.

We’re certainly not super-brainy physicists, but we can connect the dots and can suggest a solution: ditch the fossil fuels and turn onto renewable energy. Now.

Click here to read the full article in New Scientist.