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Most of our energy sources (except nuclear and geothermal) are forms of solar. Wind, hydro, and fossil fuels are all just stored solar energy! The fact that th
by Reason077 5y ago
Most of our energy sources (except nuclear and geothermal) are forms of solar. Wind, hydro, and fossil fuels are all just stored solar energy!
The fact that they’re stored energy is what makes them particularly useful, though. If we were exclusively using solar directly then we’d need to store it ourselves, or build a global distribution grid to move energy from where it’s sunny to where it’s needed.
- blibble 5y agotidal too :) (extracting kinetic energy from the orbiting moon)
- mnd999 5y agoTaking that energy out of weather systems seems like a good idea too, given the extreme weather we’ve been seeing over the last few years. Perhaps it’s too small amount of energy to make a difference though.
- Someone 5y agoIf you go back far enough in time, everything is stored solar energy, but at even larger time frames than fossil fuels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation: “Although coal is known from most geologic periods, 90% of all coal beds were deposited in the Carboniferous and Permian periods” That was 300 million years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Origin: “uranium is only naturally formed by the r-process (rapid neutron capture) in supernovae and neutron star mergers” That happened 6,5 billion years ago. Geothermal is about 50% radio-active decay and 50% left-overs from when earth was formed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget: “Earth's internal heat budget […] comes from two main sources in roughly equal amounts: the radiogenic heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes in the mantle and crust, and the primordial heat left over from the formation of Earth.”