Mercury wrote: ↑October 17th, 2022, 10:30 am
Tapping into, and utilising some small portion of the heat energy earth emits everyday anyway would not increase the total amount of heat discharged into the atmosphere...
Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑October 17th, 2022, 11:16 amYes it would. Unless you know of a way — any way — in which energy can be used/consumed/dissipated with 100% efficiency? If not, then energy use adds heat to the biosphere.
Talking to you!!!
Sorry, couldn't resist. But you're wrong. The earth's emission of geothermal heat, to say nothing of heating by the sun - are off the charts by comparison to human sources of heat.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hea ... genic_heat
"Anthropogenic heat is a much smaller contributor to global warming than greenhouse gases are. In 2005, anthropogenic waste heat flux globally accounted for only 1% of the energy flux created by anthropogenic greenhouse gases."
And that's burning vast quantities of oil, gas and coal. Not, as I suggest - utilising heat energy that was being given off by the earth anyway. It's not an issue. The issue is heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses - and magma/electricity/hydrogen a carbon free source of truly massive amounts of energy.
What's very difficult to appreciate is how such vast quantities of energy spend would change the equation with regard to population and planetary resources. I assure you 'Limits to Growth' is not true if you have limitless clean energy to spend - and supplying that amount of clean energy is technologically possible.
A quad is a quadrillion btu. World energy demand today is around 600 quads.
Status of the Magma Energy Project
Dunn, J. C. (Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM.)
Abstract
The current magma energy project is assessing the engineering feasibility of extracting thermal energy directly from crustal magma bodies. The estimated size of the U.S. resource
(50,000 to 500,000 quads) suggests a considerable potential impact on future power generation. In a previous seven-year study, we concluded that there are no insurmountable barriers that would invalidate the magma energy concept.
This is how we must approach sustainability - from the supply side, with boatloads of clean energy; not by stamping on people to reduce demand!