In article , Tim Watts
scribeth thus
Peter Scott wrote:

On 23/04/2011 12:01, Tim Watts wrote:
Peter Scott wrote:

I will ignore the comments you make about me and my knowledge, as you do
not know.

If we produce all of our energy from nuclear sources where do you
imagine the 'waste' energy will go? Out into space?

Why not - that's where most of the rest goes.

Perhaps. Do you know?

I'm pretty sure of it, yes. Where else could it go when the earth is in
steady state?

Where do you think it goes? The earth is a big non black body radiator. It
receives solar input on one side, releases some extra stored energt as
people burn fossil and nuclear fuels and radiates from all sides all the
time.

The projected footprint of the Earth is about 1.3e14m2, the solar radiation
receieved from the sun about 1.3kW/m2 so the solar gain of the earth is
around 1.6e14 kW in total which is 160,000 TW

If we factor in cloud cover and ice and reduce the solar power being
absorbed to 1/10 as a big fat guess, that's still 16,000 TW

If Britain needs 50GW peak (we'll assume constant as a worse case) and
Britain has around 1/50 of the earths population, then assuming everyone
uses that much energy (another huge overestimate) the total power generation
for the world would be 2.5TW.

All the wild fudges I've put help the case you've postulated but I think
you'd agree that an extra 2.5TW out of 16,000TW is bugger all, even if the
heating of the earth due to extra input was non linear.

It's a real beer mat calculation so feel free to find errors. ;-

Well collecting that from some obscure places like oceans etc
perhaps;?..

--
Tony Sayer