In reply to Michel Jullian's message of Sun, 13 Aug 2006 02:58:42 +0200: Hi, [snip] >That's what I said, "unlimited cheap energy of non solar origin for the masses >will necessarily promote global warming", but I had no idea the effect was >that significant! The tenfold increase in global energy consumption you evoke >would only mean >1.2E14/1E10 W = 12 kW >for each of the ~10 billion humans the planet will bear in a few years, that's >about the consumption per average US citizen _today_ isn't it? > >It seems this is a real problem. Have you worked out the amplitude of the >global temperature increase in this scenario?
First, even a ten fold increase in energy use would only equal 1/1000 of the normal solar flux, so our influence would be minor. In the second instance, this is compensated for by an increase in temperature resulting in an increase in radiation. Since radiation goes as the fourth power of temperature, even an extremely small increase in temperature would be enough to dump the excess energy. (If memory serves, and I didn't get the arithmetic wrong the first time around, about 1/50 ºC would suffice). This is clearly trivial compared to the effect of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses (which would of course be eliminated by conversion to CF). Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition provides the motivation, Cooperation provides the means.
