Right now, we are at a crossroads
wrt energy.
Not exact matches
WRT to resources, you can not intelligently discuss limits in terms of «boundaries» or net
energy, etc., because it is a system with pieces, some of them critical.
We will need to sacrifice a significant amount of profligate
energy usage in order to reduce our carbon footprint to a level that will a) have a positive consequence
wrt climate change, and b) allow developing nations to build some quality of life, especially in health care, education, and minimal comfort.
Hint: define sensitivity as the change in free
energy dissipation
wrt the temperature of the warmer interface.
The basic premise in all this is that were looking at an
energy balance and perturbing the system by looking at the
energy differential
wrt to various contributions to the system.
What would seem to matter more —
wrt climate and not weather — is the total
energy content of the oceans and atmosphere.
During an eclipse the entire atmospere is receiving less
energy from the sun, and the response to that
wrt air temperature is very fast.
wrt to the rejected
energy for transportation: you're right.
I'll say the division of atmosphere -, ocean - and land - centric models is an important one as ocean holds the most heat, atmosphere is the modifier of absorbed
energy, and land is the most complex (in carbon cycle) and important
wrt agriculture, maybe equal amounts of code / computing time should be assigned to all of these?