You have made an interesting WAG Bab. I intend to give it a lot of consideration as I try to understand your derivation better. I had hoped that the Sun was far ahead of mankind in this regard, but maybe that was wishful thinking. Perhaps I can still find one of those tickets to Mars before they all get sold out!
Could you recheck your source defining the 6000 to 1 ratio to see if that is the accepted value? I hope that you made an error of a few decimal places. I suspect that the 60 to 1 ratio is a little on the high side when I look at the problem from another perspective. Our test block of coal at 1 kilogram turns into mainly carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere. Since this gas only remains there for between 30 and 90 years (half life) then it seems a little bit of a stretch to consider that it allows for heat to be trapped equalling the original amount of carbon in a single year. Off the cuff I would guess 10% or so. If my WAG is better than your WAG, the X factor would be about 6. Who knows, but I think we can obtain a modestly close number by further investigation. Anyone else out there have a guess or fact that might help us? Dave -----Original Message----- From: David L Babcock <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, Aug 5, 2012 3:14 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:LENR Heat Vs. Coal Heat On 8/5/2012 11:21 AM, David Roberson wrote: It seems apparent that the final global consideration is that extra heat is released into the atmosphere, land, and water of the earth as a result of us burning fossil fuels. In other terms, one kilogram of coal results in the net earth heating of X times the initial heat outlay. I found part of the picture in Wikipedia: The ratio of all the energy incident from the Sun, to all the energy mankind used globally (in 2009?) was roughly 6,000 to 1. (I assume this was only the energy that involved payment, ie, almost all fossil sourced energy). Unknown to me is the added heat energy from "new" CO2 and methane. If our present rate of warming is caused by (really wild guess) 1% more retention of solar energy than "before", then that 1% is 60 times more than our total energy consumption, for x = 60. If you diddle in the all the renewable and nuclear parts it won't be much different. Hey, a wild guess is better than none. So if, if, if, all co2 sources get replaced by LENR, no problem. But bloody unlikely. Also, there WILL BE a huge increase in total energy usage, exponential, year after year after year. Might take us all of 200 years to get back in trouble. Ol' Bab. I would greatly appreciate it if some of our esteemed members join into this discussion. Do you consider my thought experiment completely off base or is there a way to get a handle upon the true X factor I am suggesting? Dave
