At 9:34 PM 2/9/5, Steven Krivit wrote: >It was my understanding that global warming was primarily because of solar >radiation hitting the earth, reflecting back towards space, but intercepted >by the greenhouse gasses which absorb the wavelengths of reflected >radiation and converts it into thermal energy, thereby creating a >transparent blanket. > >Not so much from the heat that is generated initially from terrestrial >sources. Yes? No?
This was my point in my prior post in this thread. Elimination of all of mankind's energy consuption is about equal to a half of a tenth of a percent decrease in energy trapped by the greenhouse effect. Similarly, if we reduced the solar input by a similar amount, roughly 0.04 percent, we could double our energy use with no net effect - provided there were no additional greenhouse gases generated. It is the emission and retention of greenhouse gasses that is the problem, not the waste heat from energy generation/utilization. Annual world energy use is about 1/2000 the energy the energy the sun sends us each year. Here are the substantiating calculations again (hopefully without any major errors, and with some errors corrected): The world energy consumption is about 400 quads/year, i.e. 400x10^15 BTU/y = 1.17x10^14 kWh/y, and is forecast to be about 470 quads in 2010. The world power consumption is thus roughly (1.17x10^14 kWh/y)/((365 d/y)*(24 h/d)) = 1.34x10^10 kW. The sun puts out roughly a kW/m^2, the earth's radius is 6.38x10^6 m, so the earth presents about 3.2x10^13 m^2 to the sun, thus obtains energy at a rate of about 3.2x10^13 kW from the sun. The total energy consumed by humanity is equivalent to a reduction in solar insolation factor by about 0.04 percent. However, since the energy provided by CF would for the most part *replace* carbon based fuel consumption, it is mostly an offset, thus global warming due to massive CF energy use would not occur. If we keep our nuclear plants and our rate of energy consumption then it is a full offset, meaning no net change. A large reduction in CO2 generation would occur, and without change to the overall energy balance. This should eliminate the greehouse effect, provided methane release and high altitude water vapor concentrations have not pushed us to the no return level. Regards, Horace Heffner
