I pictured millions of homes burning oil, cars, truck, etc. and wanted to know what effect they have as "thermal pollution". In my mind, they would have to, but alternatively, once I am outside my house, I cannot feel the heat inside even though I know that all that heat eventually leaks outside (otherwise I would only have to heat my house once for the winter!).
I got tired of the Global Warming "Debate" based on "feelings", mine as well as others. That is when I decided to use some simple math.
So I decided to calculate how much energy it would take to heat the Earth's atmosphere one degree. It turns out if we take all of the oil produced for 56 years and burned it (assuming 100% efficiency and 100% heat retention) we could raise the temp of the atmosphere 1 degree.
Here are the calculations, which I think are accurate to within 10% (+ or - 6 years). These numbers do not prove or disprove "Global Warming", but are simple data that I thought was missing.
The Mass of Atmosphere (in kilograms) x energy needed to heat one kilogram of gas one degree.
The answer is: 9.46 x10^21 Joules.
Worldwide, 84.455,000 barrels of oil is produced daily. That is 1,294,695,150,000 gallons per year. Oil contains 1.3x10^8 Joules per gallon, making the energy 1.6831E+20 Joules per year.
Dividing 9.4576E+21 by 1.6831E+20 gives 56 years to heat the atmosphere 1 degree.
Here are the calculations:
Total Worldwide energy produced by burning all the oil produced:
84,455,000 | x | 365 | x | 42 | x | 1.30E+08 | = | 1.68E+20 |
barrels/ |  | days/ | | gallons/ | | joules/ | | joules/ |
day | | year | | barrel | | gallon | | year |
Total Amount of energy needed to heat the Atmosphere 1 degree. 1840 is the specific heat of air in joules.
5.1441E+18 | x | 1840 | = | 9.4651E+21 |
kg | | joules/ | | joules |
| | kg | | |
Dividing these numbers, we end up with years:
9.4651E+21 | / | 1.68E+20 | = | 56.24 |
joules | | joules/ | | Years |
| | year | | |
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1 comment:
As an addendum to this, the earth receives energy from the sun. In one year, that energy, which is approx. 5.6x10^24 Joules, is equal to 33,000 years of burning oil, or, in 15 minutes we receive more energy from the sun than the combined energy of all oil burned worldwide.
That makes man made consumption statistically insignificant.
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