Particularly in winter, when all the houses are being warmed by central heating, and all the nuclear power stations are pumping out maximum heat through their massive cooling towers, I noticed that the incoming weather from the Atlantic would stall or be diverted when it hit the massive heat island that is continental Europe. In Switzerland, France, Holland, Belgium and Germany, towns are often just a couple of kilometres apart.

I became convinced that waste heat in Europe had an immediate and direct effect on climate.

For a long time I’ve been looking for some quantitative estimates of the heating effect, but there has been none that I can find and all the diagrams of major atmospheric energy flows never show it. IPCC ignores it as a forcing factor. I think it is real and underestimated.

The energy associated with annual solar insolation is about 5.5E+24 Joules.

The conclusion of IPCC (AR4) – when annualising the 1.6W/M-2 – is that current net effect globally of human activities is 204TW.

Put another way, this means that the energy contribution of human activity, as attributed by IPCC, is 204TW (or in the order of 10^14 watts). The energy delivered by sunlight is in the order of 10^17 watts. That’s a factor of 10^3, or roughly 1,000 times greater.

======================
Global Energy consumption is defined as marketable energy.

In producing electricity, two-thirds of the heat value of the nuclear or coal fuel is released to the environment [http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf03.html].

The amount of electricity produced globally from nuclear fuels in 2005 was 2,768TWh . This equates to 9.96E+18 joules of the energy.

In generating this electricity, twice this amount of energy is released direct to the environment for cooling, either into the atmosphere or into water . This equates to 1.99E+19 joules, which is the value of the energy transferred as heat direct to the biosphere globally as a result of generating electricity from nuclear fuel sources in 2005.

Calculating the energy-cost of extracting the fuel source from the ground and getting it to the power station can get quite complicated – so to get a better idea of what is the possible amount of heat being released to the environment, it may be useful to look at the heat energy contained in the coal, gas and oil we are extracting.

These following production figures for petrochemicals come from http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2007/key_stats_2007.pdf.
>> Crude Oil: 3,939Mt extracted 2006, equates to 1.64E+20 joules energy
>> Natural Gas: 2,977Bcm extracted in 2006, equates to 1.14E+20 joules energy
>> Hard Coal: 5,370Mt extracted in 2006, equates to 1.26E+14 joules energy
Total energy in petrochemicals extracted in 2006 was 2.78E+20 Joules.

The annual “order of magnitude” for the total possible heat from extracted fuels (including nuclear, but ignoring the 2005/2006 timing difference) comes to about 3E+20 joules energy potentially being added to the biosphere annually. This is a trivial amount compared to the energy of the total annual insolation (at 5.51E+24 Joules) … only about one 10,000th.

However, to determine the relative significance of this amount of added heat, perhaps we need to look at it in terms of how human activities are influencing the environment more generally. IPCC gives us this figure, which is a warming effect of 1.6 Watts per square meter [ar4-wg1-spm.pdf, page 3].

Converting the IPCC figure of 1.6 W/m-2 into Watts results in an annual figure of 204TW, or 6.45E+21 Joules net energy being added to the global thermo-dynamic system annually.

In reaching this conclusion, the IPCC has considered the effects of greenhouse gases, ozone, stratospheric water vapour, surface albedo, aerosols and linear contrails. It has not however considered the effect of heat being released directly into the environment.

Using these figures highlights that the contribution of direct heat could be an additional 5% – which now seems to be a little more significant , especially when compared to one 10,000th , which we previously thought was a relevant basis for comparision, and dismissing the effect of direct heat add.

Not all of the energy extracted from Coal, Gas Oil, Nuclear and Geothermal sources ends up in the biosphere as heat. However, more than half of the energy of the extracted energy source is “lost” to the environment at some point due to process efficiencies; and it all ends up in the environment eventually, in some form or other. This extra added heat has either to be radiated to space, or the temperature of the climate system will rise.

Developing better knowledge about the amount of heat energy being added directly to the environment will help us get a better understanding of what is actually going on in our climate system. A better understanding in this area will help us make smarter decisions about where to focus our precious time and effort in combating the warming that we generally believe is taking place.

Radius of Earth = 6,378.1 kilometers
Solar Constant = 1350 w/km^2 (low figure)

Area of earth disk = pi*r^2 = 128,800,490,577,636 m^2

Area *solar constant = 5.4e+24 J/a

US annual energy consumption = 100 Quads (Quad = 10^15 BTU or 10^18 J/a)
also = 10^20 J/a (which all turns into heat eventually h/t Robert A Cook PE above)

US annual energy consumption is 4 orders of magnitude less than the annual insolation.

Now US energy consumption = 25% of world energy consumption, but
US population = 6% of world population. but total world at US level would still be more than 3 om less than insolation.

If another ice age approaches we might have to turn up the heat.

I would love to see those “calcs”. Sounds like a load of crap to me.

i have done same calcs. throw in charcoal and wood. all the supposed global warming can be explained that simply.

moreover it is never considered in the IPCC formulation

From above about solar panels – covering the good state (?) of AZ to power everything else .. “”

Some nice number crunching there Robert.

I think you need to crunch a couple more numbers though. There’s that “you could save $3000 ….” due to the Georgia subsidy !

Now where does that come from? I suspect that the State of Georgia collects that money from somebody else in the form of taxes; likely a business paying taxes of some kind to the State. In order to have paid that tax, that business must have made a taxable profit, so using Georgia’s business tax rates you could figure out how much profit that was. Then taking the typical pretax profitability of Georgia businesses, you can determine just how much total business eneterprise that company had to perform to get that $3000 subsidy for your PE installation.

It’s a fairly good bet that most of that business enterprise would have come about through the consumption of existing fossil fuels; so just how much fossil fuel consumption and carbon footprint, went into subsidizing your “Clean green” PE renewable power system ?

So long as “alternative energy ” systems are taxpayer subsidized; the real costs and economics of those things will be masked.

The Jan 2008 issue of Scientific American magazine, hasa serious article about a large PE solar farm to be situated in waste desert lands of the American South West. The main PE farm is only 30,000 square miles of solar cells, and a smaller solar furnace steam plant is just another 16,000 square miles.
Now 30,000 square miles is 19.2 million acres, which is the exact size of a public wasteland park in Alaska called ANWR, where oil companies would like to drill on 2400 acres; about the size of the average California shopping mall (and parking lot)

Of course, in the desert southwest, every single square foot of that 19.2 million acres would be used for the PE farm, and the entire area would have to be cleared of human habitation, and visitation, because the whole place would be too vulnerable to vandalism/terrorism, so it would need to be fenced and guarded 24/7.

And a lot of environmental groups, plus California Senators and Congresspersons, went to a lot of trouble to protect those useless South west desert wastelands as sensitive desert habitat for endagered species, such as the desert tortois which is California’s “polar bear”.

No I’m not saying, let’s not do PE solar. but I don’t think it is as cheap and as green as it is cracked up to be.

Humans started out with nothing but renewable green solar energy (clean). We spent every waking minute clambering around in fig trees gather ing figs. It wasn’t very effecttive, and our numbers didn’t increase much until we discovered fire and stored chemical energy, which grew our popultation and sustains it now.

Green clean solar energy is certainly renewable, but it isn’t sustainable because it just gets here from the sun too slowly to replace our stored chemical energy. After all it took 4.5 billion years for the sun to store up all that fossil fuel energy that we have consumend in about 150 years or so; and we hope to prosper on solar at its replacement rate ?? I don’t think so.

REPLY: there is a nearby station, and comparison was done. check the link to Russ Steel’s website in the story above. – Anthony

My solution to global warming is for everybody to take out their air conditioners and put them in backwards. Set the thermostat and watch it get cold out.

John,
Will you pick up the tab on my electric bill? We are currently (pun) paying $0.18/kwh. I’m sure I could run up a months tab exceeding $500 just for the “cooling.” I don’t know if there is enough garbage for our local bio-mass plant to provide that much juice on a large scale although it could be cost effective in the winter!
Might try it!

48,680 tonnes Global Annual World Production U3O8 2007

2,977Bcm Natural Gas Production 2006 [http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2007/key_stats_2007.pdf]

5,370Mt Hard Coal Production 2006 [http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2007/key_stats_2007.pdf]

Pretty dense if they still believe in AGW ;-)

With Tony’s permission, I’ll address the real calc’s for solar power “areas” separately, but this “economic” analysis illustrates the assumptions and false economies that AGW-extremists blindly use. I’m in north GA, and had a 125.00/month electric bill in October. (175.00 or so in summer with the AC running.)

Plugged the numbers into a typical solar panel on-line calculator: It printed out this.

…

100 % of your bill is being supplied by your solar panel system.

This could be supplied by a 8.1 kw solar panel system.

The average price for a 8.1 system is $64800

Rebates

In Georgia you could save appoximately $3000 off the price of your solar system.
Your new solar system price is $61800

Step Four: Final Analysis

Your savings per month are $118
Your old power bill is $125.
Your new power bill is $7

You would approximately save $1420 per year.

This equals an increase in your property of approximately $21301

It will take approximately 17 years to make profit.

This takes into account federal rebates, property value increase and inflation of electricity prices at 5.4% anually.

Due to inflation, by the end of the solar panel payback time, your yearly savings would be $3472

Similarly, the value added to your property by year 17 would be $52083

Georgia has many other local rebates available that you may be eligible for.These could further reduce the price of your solar panel system.

Your solar contribution is equal to saving 23370 pounds of CO2 every year.
This is 117 tons in ten years. It is equivalent to planting 487 trees.
… End of screen.

Notice that a “real” electric bill of 1400.00 per year requires almost 70,000.00 in solar panel installation to replace.
The calculator is “assuming” that my house suddenly becomes “more valuable” with the solar panel (and lead-acid batteries in the basement ?) than without those extra appliances and death-traps.
Further this “value-added” becomes 52,000 over time (what time frame is NOT said!) but no depriciation of the solar equipment and panels over time is described. Does your car become more valuable and require less maintenance over time as it is used every day?
The calculator does NOT require the replacement of sealed or lead-acid batteries (2,000.00 to 3,000.00 every two years) as they chemically degrade with recharging.
Electric power rates AND rebates are assumed to inflation continuously at 5+% per year.
If I am to “make a profit” after 17 years, I hope the panel lifetime is substantially more than 15 years.
…

And all of this assumes that I cut down my neighbor’s trees to get the sunlight in the first place.