4 ms·

> the fiery core of the Earth that's moving those plates around is an approximately 45 terawatt engine; human civilization is currently around 19 terawatts Oh

• saalweachter 3y ago
  If you want to feel small again, on the other end of things, 173,000 terawatts of sunlight hits the Earth. Earth's biosphere uses something like 1% of that (depending on your definition of "used", but whatever), so we have Earth's biosphere at something like 1700 terawatts, dwarfing both us and Earth's fiery core.
  • teslabox 3y ago
    The energy of sunlight that hits the ocean is absorbed, and flows into the deep ocean. A smaller percentage of the energy that hits land is absorbed, but this rapidly radiated away at night.
    • saalweachter 3y ago
      Ok, one last one: global warming is basically that energy imbalance: the Earth is currently absorbing, on average, more energy from the sun than it radiates back, for a variety of reasons (change in atmospheric composition, change in surface reflectivity). That energy imbalance amounts to 500 TW.