Earth's heat budget

[Arjan Hulsebos]

On Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:09:15 +0100, M Holmes wrote
> I looked it up for y'all. Now wikipedia isn't exactly academic
> references. OTOH this page isn't a kick in the arse from the last
> figures I did read. If anyone has anything significantly different 
> though, let's have a gander...
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_energy_budget
> 
> So lessee:
> 
> Solar radiation (incoming) 99.978%
> 
> Geothermal (coming up from underneath): 0.013%
> 
> Fossil fuels (us burning shit): 0.007%
> 
> Nukes will add a little to that, but nothing significant.
> 
> So: Geothermal energy is producing twice the heat we produce and the 
> Sun is giving Earth something over ten thousand times as much heat 
> as we're producing. As I said: we have a long way to go before we're 
> a player in that game.
> 
> For the record, the IPCC (the scientists who worry about global warming
> by running computer models about what things might be like in the
> future) have *never* *ever* claimed that the heat produced by humans 
> is a problem.
> 
> They have claimed that human production of waste gases is significantly
> or even largely responsible for increasing the proportion of those gases
> in the atmosphere and that this causes global warming by trapping 
> more heat from the Sun.
> 
> Some scientists outside of the IPCC agree that global warming is
> happening, but disagree that human industry is a big part of the 
> reason. Patrick Moore of Sky At Night fame has noted that 
> temperatures on Mars, Titan and a couple of Jupiter's moons have 
> also risen.  He notes that this is not caused by humans and that he 
> believes there will be much surprise when one of the solar cycles 
> turns in the 2030's and things cool down here, meaning that reality 
> fails to match up to the computer models of the IPCC.
> 
> Relevance to this argument: the original contention was that nuclear
> power will increase global warming as a direct result of the heat
> produced. Since it'd take us quite a while to ramp up nuclear energy 
> to anywhere like the energy produced by fossil fuels, and since that 
> in itself is an insignificant part of the heat budget of the Earth,
>  I submit that we should find nuclear power Not Guilty and dismiss 
> the client.
> 
> I now await the summing up on the part of the prosecution.

First of all, the problem with all this is that the system's non-linear and
very likely chaotic. That means two things: 1) trying to figure out what will
happen in the very near future is usually not difficult (the weather tomorrow
will be very much like the weather today), but on longer timescales it's not
possible anymore. 2) small differences in starting conditions lead to big
differences quickly. So adding .0001% energy to the system may just make a big
difference very fast.

Furthermore, why add to the problem if you don't have to? 

There's also a political angle to this. Nuclear power means big installations,
huge investments, hence big power companies. You might prefer generating your
own energy with windmills, solar panels, whatever you fancy.

Gr,

Arjan H
 
--------------------------------
Rock in the 70ies:
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