About 15 years ago I published a paper on “Life, hierarchy, and the thermodynamic machinery of planet Earth”. This paper was quite influential for me as it clarified many things about how the second law of thermodynamics applies to the Earth system.  It led to quite a few applications of thermodynamic limits in climate science and renewable energy that worked really well and that I found insightful because it allows us to do climate science in a simple yet physically-based way.  The follow-up paper just published provides a summary of this approach and explores potential, more concrete applications of how the biosphere optimizes its form and functioning, and on life on Earth and beyond in general.