Is the heat produced by fossil and nuclear fuel negligible?
Is the heat produced by fossil and nuclear fuel negligible?
We often talk about the climate impact based on greenhouse gases, but extracting fuel from the ground and using it in exothermal processes of course also releases energy as heat.
This is mostly¹ in contrast with renewables, which make use of energy that's not long-term contained to begin with, so would end up as heat in our atmosphere anyways.
So, my question is: Does the amount of energy released by non-renewables have any notable impact on our global temperature? Or would it easily radiate into space, if we solved the greenhouse gas problem?
¹) In the case of solar, putting up black surfaces does mean that less sunlight gets reflected, so more heat ultimately gets trapped in our atmosphere. There's probably other such cases, too.
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Let me borrow an image to put some numbers around it:
So, in one hour, the Earth receives more energy from the sun than us humans generate in an entire year. If we took all of the energy we generated over a year (and not just the waste heat) and converted it into heat, we wouldn't even be adding half of one percent to the system. Our direct contributions to the system are minuscule. The problem is we're pumping out green house gasses like there's no tomorrow. And those directly increase the amount of solar energy the Earth retains. And when we start keeping 1 or 2 more percent of that insane amount of solar energy, it adds up really, really fast.
Not that it changes things much, but pretty much that entire 163,000 TWh ends up as heat, not just the waste. Pretty much the only energy that doesn't is light and other transmissions that get radiated into space.
Thanks.
Source for that image: https://explainingscience.org/2021/10/18/opportunities-for-solar-energy/