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This is the most striking proof that fossil fuels are causing global warming I have ever read: simple energy conservation thermodynamics principal. The fossil f

This is the most striking proof that fossil fuels are causing global warming I have ever read: simple energy conservation thermodynamics principal. The fossil fuels store energy from the sun of ancient times. Think of them as batteries with high energy density. Combustion releases that energy in form of carbon that prevents a proportion from the energy coming from the sun from being reflected back into space as infrared waves. Basically it’s like releasing the heat (the energy) from the sun of ancient times and preventing it from escaping into space at the same time. Basically the earth has become a pressure cooker.

sandworm101 5y ago
There are some regulators at play too. Higher carbon+heat leads to better conditions for plant, which absorbs carbon and generates swamp... Which will be pulled underground to make more oil. We have overwhelmed such systems but they can correct our actions if given time.
- zyngaro 5y ago
  I am sure the earth will have time to adjust but not « us ». That was my understanding of the phenomenon at play. I may be wrong but it don’t understand the downvote. My comment wasn’t political.
- zyngaro 5y ago
  Also higher carbon and heat seem to cause the ice caps and the glaciers to melt down faster than plants can absorb the excess heat. You could also say that it’s a regulator but I’m not sure it’s good the humanity in any way.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    And more and warmer oceans provide more space for plankton to eat carbon. Nature almost always a regulatory process at the ready. The question is only its capacity.
    - zyngaro 5y ago
      Sure life will adapt or change or not. But I am not sure we will. We have now reached the point where we can stop using fossil fuels and dumping carbon into the atmosphere.
albertgoeswoof 5y ago
That’s not evidence of global warming, you’d have to prove the energy released is large enough and not radiated away / stored back in some other way. Unfortunately global warming is real and there’s plenty of evidence for it. Your mechanism isn’t really the issue though, it’s the greenhouse gases trapping new energy from the sun which is the basic root cause.
- zyngaro 5y ago
  Exactly what I was saying. Some of the those greenhouse gases is coming from fossil fuel combustion.
- dTal 5y ago
  It is interesting to consider just how much excess energy it would take to directly upset Earth's thermal balance. In 3001: The Final Odyssey, Arthur C Clarke predicted a thermal crisis caused by abundant free energy. Is it plausible? Total solar insolation is in the region of 1.8x10^17 W, which is some 10,000 times greater than the total energy use of humanity. This is not so far out when you consider our exponential energy use over the past few centuries! If growth does not slow (which it must), we could expect to use that much energy in about 4 more centuries. But we could expect to hit problems before then. What percentage of disruption to Earth's energy budget leads to visible effect? Our current imbalance due to greenhouse gases amounts to roughly 1 Watt per square meter, or 0.1%. At our current rate of growth we'll reach that in a mere century! So even if we switch entirely over to nuclear power starting today, and continue along our merry way safe in the knowledge that we're producing no greenhouse gases, in 100 years we'll have a similar warming problem from energy alone.
  - eloff 5y ago
    Isaac Arthur on YouTube talks about this quite a bit. Given limitless cheap energy like nuclear fusion, the ultimate limit on human population is not land or water but the waste heat that we generate. We're very far from that being an issue today, but in some dystopian future where we turn earth into Coruscant, that could be a thing. I hope instead we stabilize our population or move to settlements in orbit. I'd like to see the land we currently use for food to be rewilded in a world where we can grow food in orbit and in vertical farms / artificial food factories. It would be nice if future humans mostly lived in cities or space habitats and the earth mostly went back to nature.
maxerickson 5y ago
The direct heat contribution from combustion is minuscule.

sandworm101 5y ago

There are some regulators at play too. Higher carbon+heat leads to better conditions for plant, which absorbs carbon and generates swamp... Which will be pulled underground to make more oil. We have overwhelmed such systems but they can correct our actions if given time.

zyngaro 5y ago
I am sure the earth will have time to adjust but not « us ». That was my understanding of the phenomenon at play. I may be wrong but it don’t understand the downvote. My comment wasn’t political.
zyngaro 5y ago
Also higher carbon and heat seem to cause the ice caps and the glaciers to melt down faster than plants can absorb the excess heat. You could also say that it’s a regulator but I’m not sure it’s good the humanity in any way.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  And more and warmer oceans provide more space for plankton to eat carbon. Nature almost always a regulatory process at the ready. The question is only its capacity.
  - zyngaro 5y ago
    Sure life will adapt or change or not. But I am not sure we will. We have now reached the point where we can stop using fossil fuels and dumping carbon into the atmosphere.

albertgoeswoof 5y ago

That’s not evidence of global warming, you’d have to prove the energy released is large enough and not radiated away / stored back in some other way. Unfortunately global warming is real and there’s plenty of evidence for it. Your mechanism isn’t really the issue though, it’s the greenhouse gases trapping new energy from the sun which is the basic root cause.

zyngaro 5y ago
Exactly what I was saying. Some of the those greenhouse gases is coming from fossil fuel combustion.
dTal 5y ago
It is interesting to consider just how much excess energy it would take to directly upset Earth's thermal balance. In 3001: The Final Odyssey, Arthur C Clarke predicted a thermal crisis caused by abundant free energy. Is it plausible? Total solar insolation is in the region of 1.8x10^17 W, which is some 10,000 times greater than the total energy use of humanity. This is not so far out when you consider our exponential energy use over the past few centuries! If growth does not slow (which it must), we could expect to use that much energy in about 4 more centuries. But we could expect to hit problems before then. What percentage of disruption to Earth's energy budget leads to visible effect? Our current imbalance due to greenhouse gases amounts to roughly 1 Watt per square meter, or 0.1%. At our current rate of growth we'll reach that in a mere century! So even if we switch entirely over to nuclear power starting today, and continue along our merry way safe in the knowledge that we're producing no greenhouse gases, in 100 years we'll have a similar warming problem from energy alone.
- eloff 5y ago
  Isaac Arthur on YouTube talks about this quite a bit. Given limitless cheap energy like nuclear fusion, the ultimate limit on human population is not land or water but the waste heat that we generate. We're very far from that being an issue today, but in some dystopian future where we turn earth into Coruscant, that could be a thing. I hope instead we stabilize our population or move to settlements in orbit. I'd like to see the land we currently use for food to be rewilded in a world where we can grow food in orbit and in vertical farms / artificial food factories. It would be nice if future humans mostly lived in cities or space habitats and the earth mostly went back to nature.

maxerickson 5y ago

The direct heat contribution from combustion is minuscule.