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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 (de
by 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 agoThe 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 agoOk, 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.