Comment on “Long‐Term Global Heating From Energy Use”

Abstract

In a prominent article published in Tellus in 1969, Mikhail I. Budyko, with the Main Geophysical Observatory, Leningrad, Soviet Union, wrote that “all the energy used by man is transformed into heat, the main portion of this energy being an additional source of heat as compared to the present radiation gain” [Budyko, 1969, p. 618]. He pointed out that this heating was over and above any climate forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gases and—since energy use was growing geometrically—it was likely to result in the retreat of the cryosphere, accompanied by excessive and potentially damaging global warming, perhaps in 200 years or less.Eric J. Chaisson, in Eos (“Long‐Term Global Heating From Energy Use,” 89(28), 253254, 2008), does not acknowledge Budyko's research. Chaisson cites cosmic history and the history of the human species, but he provides no references to the conceptual history of the idea that human energy use could result in global heating. Budyko first published on the Earth's heat budget in 1948 and in 1998 received the Blue Planet Prize, sponsored by the Asahi Glass Foundation, for his lifetime accomplishments in quantitative climatology.