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Let's just suck out the energy that powers the internal convection that powers the magnetic field that prevents the solar wind from stripping the atmosphere of
by prewett 4y ago
Let's just suck out the energy that powers the internal convection that powers the magnetic field that prevents the solar wind from stripping the atmosphere of water, what could go wrong? On a small scale, no problem, but "powering the Earth" with the dynamo that prevents us from becoming Mars/Venus? It'll be great until we suck too much energy out. CO2 will seem like a cakewalk by comparison. At least we know the planet is livable with high levels of CO2, and we know that the rocks and trees soak up CO2 and that the ocean precipitates it out as limestone, so if worst comes to worst we can just wait a while. Once the dynamo stops, it's not restarting, and we've got maybe 50 million years until things are unlivable. Forever.
Now maybe we don't think we'll actually make it as a species for that long. But we should think about the risk, this time around.
- giantdude 4y agoSee Netflix show 'Into The Night'
- googlryas 4y agoIf we take too much heat, we can just plant all of our nukes deep down and rekickstart the process.
- reallymental 4y agoI, and the director of the movie "The Core", agree completely.
- feet 4y agoIf we take out too much energy, will the gravity run out? That would be concerning
- jachee 4y agoIn an all-to-brief summary: All gravity cares about is mass.
- rad_gruchalski 4y agoI believe that Futurama has answers.
- vagrantJin 4y agoI think you overestimate how much energy humans use. We are just very inefficient. Also, said "dynamo" has been running for a few billion years. We've no concept of how long that is. No mental model. Im sure the the planet will be just fine.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoWhat exactly do you mean by "fine", that you're so sure of? I hear the phrase a lot, "the planet will be fine". Sure it'll continue to be a ball of matter that orbits the sun a few billion more times, so in that regard it'll do pretty fine as a planet. That's not what people are concerned about when they say they're worried about Earth though.
- drtgh 4y agohttps://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/428/could-the-earths-core-lose-its-heat/16307#16307 https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/428/could-t... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget [2] https://yearbook.enerdata.net/electricity/electricity-domestic-consumption-data.html https://yearbook.enerdata.net/electricity/electricity-domest... Internal heat generation is estimated by Davies and Davies (2010) to be roughly 47 Terawatt. With a surface area of 5.1 × 10 m^2, this translates to roughly 0.1 W/m^2. CL4P-TP comment: "The earth produces 20TW[1] of thermal energy from radioactive decay in the mantle. This is the amount of warmth that the earth generates, so it should give us a ballpark idea of how much heat we would need to remove from the earth in order to make an impact on the earth's internal temperature. To summarize the heating situation under earth's crust, the existing heat comes from two sources in ~equal parts: radioactive decay, and leftover heat from the earth's creation[1]. Lots of heat hits the earth from the sun but gets radiated back out; It doesn't really have anything to do with internal temperatures[1]." "As far as I can tell from that wikki page: Current heat in the earth: ~50% radiation, ~50% leftover Internal heat budget: Geothermal Power Consumption + 47TW transferred from the mantle to the crust and beyond[1] - 20TW generated from radiation = Core cooling rate Core cooling rate without geothermal: 0 + 47TW - 20TW = 27TW The world consumed 22,000 TWh in 2017[2]. That means an average power consumption of 2.5TW. If all of that was geothermal, we'd be increasing the cooling rate of the earth's core by about 10%."