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Is the heat produced by fossil and nuclear fuel negligible? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 months ago by Ephera@lemmy.ml to c/askscience@lemmy.world
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We often talk about the climate impact based on greenhouse gases, but extracting fuel from the ground and using it in exothermal processes of course also releases energy as heat.

This is mostly¹ in contrast with renewables, which make use of energy that's not long-term contained to begin with, so would end up as heat in our atmosphere anyways.

So, my question is: Does the amount of energy released by non-renewables have any notable impact on our global temperature? Or would it easily radiate into space, if we solved the greenhouse gas problem?

¹) In the case of solar, putting up black surfaces does mean that less sunlight gets reflected, so more heat ultimately gets trapped in our atmosphere. There's probably other such cases, too.

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[-] Shawdow194@kbin.run 3 points 5 months ago

As for solar panels I think the word you're looking for is "albedo"

Off the top of my head I think it's close to earth's natural albedo anyway. Or even if it is a lower number and more energy/heat is absorbed it's so negligible. Only the tiniest fraction of the earth's surface would be/are covered in panels

this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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