Couldn't we have an infinite energy source?

That’s why the oil companies keep these devices under wraps. For our own good :D.


It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.

“What if everyone uses energy the way the US does?”
-KeithB
If everyone uses energy the way the US does today, the temperature of earth would be skyrocketing. I will not argue that point. But the problem with today’s energy is that it burns fossil fuels–this I believe is the problem, not energy consumption. Burning the fossil fuels creates greenhouse gasses which, as you surely know, raise the global temperature. If the US had the same energy consumption it has today, and used forms of energy that do not give off greenhouse gasses, I believe the global temperature would carry on as if there were no human intervention at all. So, in turn, if everybody consumed energy like we do, using forms of energy that don’t make greenhouse gasses, there would be no changes in temperature out of the ordinary.

When I was talking about heat dissipating, I just meant the heat created by humans would be so small that it would have no effect on the global temperature. Think of the poles as two huge air conditioners and the equator as one huge heater. Humans, no matter how hard they try, won’t be able to create enough heat to disrupt this IF there are no greenhouse gasses.


I realize I’m generalizing here, but as in most cases, I don’t care.
-Dave Barry

Sorry, but no. We humans can’t heat things up as FAST as messing around with the greenhouse effect can, but energy use at that level can most certainly heat things up.

The problem is that Earth cannot radiate away an infinite amount of heat, for the same reason that the dark side of Earth doesn’t immediately chill down to 3 degrees absolute. There is such a thing as thermal inertia – ever walk by a large concrete building after sunset and feel the heat radiating off it? Same principle. If we increase our planetary energy usage too much beyond current levels (and there are those who would assure you that we’re at the danger point already), we’ll have to go to great lengths to radiate away our waste heat – either by orbiting sheer reflective sheets to block incoming solar radiation or some method of tilting the balance in favor of cooling off the planet.


Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.

Unless, of course, the Earth’s atmospheric conditions are dynamically stable. Something that’s missing from a lot of the greenhouse discussions is the long-term reaction of the earth to changes in atmospheric temperature. For instance, if the earth heats up and causes higher evaporation rates, cloud cover will increase, increasing the Earth’s albedo and reducing the effect of solar heating. If you increase CO2 production, you stimulate plant growth, which acts as a carbon sink for the CO2, collecting it and distributing it back into the ground.

If the Earth didn’t have negative feedback systems keeping conditions relatively stable, it probably would have gone wildly out of control at some point during the hundreds of millions of years that complex life forms have been here. There have been countless massive disasters like volcanos and meteor impacts that have radically altered the nature of the atmosphere for short periods, and it has always returned to a level of equilibrium.

That’s not to say that we can’t make it damned uncomfortable for a while.

The U.S.A. is not the only high consumer of energy. The second and third world countries are moving up fast, burning down their forests, and polluting their lands with toxic chemicals where the land hasn’t erroded away.

It seems like the other countries are repeating our mistakes. Deforestation for crop production. Can you say Dust Bowl. Hydrolic mining in California. Can you say Marysville Flood. Chemical polution by improper disposal. Can you say Love Canal. Nuclear accidents. Can you say Three Mile Island. After us was the U.S.S.R. and Japan.

Comes too mind:

The over grazing by cattle in Austrailia, the same for Africa. The stream in Mexico that is full of battery acid. The use of murcury when processing gold in South America, and then dumped into the stream. The art of Europe that is being eaten away.

I don’t know what sort of indirect “greenhouse” type effect we might be having. But are you saying the heating directly caused by our energy use is going to be significant? Heat up, I can buy - heat up significantly, I’m not so sure about.

I could be convinced, but not without seeing your math I guess. Here’s my back-of-the-envelope take on it.

First, the average person in the US or Canada consumes about 10,000 watts from all sources (fossil, nuclear, etc). Let’s assume the entire world was using energy at this rate (which it isn’t currently), and that none of this energy would have been used otherwise. 6x10^9 people x 10^4 watts/person = 6x10^13 watts.

Now how much energy is the earth absorbing from the sun? Solar flux density at 1 AU is about 1380 watts/m^2. We can treat the earth as a flat plate of radius 6378 km. 1380 watts/m^2 * (6.38x10^6 m)^2 * pi = 1.76x10^17 watts.

So it seems to me that if everybody used energy like Americans do, it would still be just 0.03% of how much energy the sun is adding to the system, and that doesn’t even get into other things that are adding energy to the surface of the planet, nor that energy we use from some sources might have been dissipated anyway. Since the solar flux density is thought to change by several tenths of a percent somewhat randomly, I’m not yet convinced that direct heating from the entire world consuming energy like Americans would have any huge effect. But I’m open to arguments.


peas on earth

Hmmm… [frowning at numbers]… Bantmof, I’ll have to agree with you – even if we postulate your numbers are too low by a factor of ten, it still doesn’t add up to much. Guess I was taken in on that one. That’ll teach me to not do the math myself.

If somebody else feels like taking a stab at figuring out what our current energy usage is and contrast it with what we get from the sun, some numbers that seem fairly solid can be gotten from this DOE web site (I’m not gonna do it, at least not tonight… it’s 1 AM and I’m tired).


Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.

[quote]
And you’re planning to get the hydrogen from where, Llardball?

Getting hydrogen from water requires that it be electrolyzed. The energy that you get from this is equal to the energy that you get from recombining it.
Since neither the electrolysis nor the recombination in the fuel cells can be perfectly efficent, the net energy that you get out of the combination is less than what you put into it.~~~~Akatsukami

Solar power could be used to “crack” the water into it’s respective components, and the hydrogen stored or piped to areas where it would be used in fuel cells.

FixedBack

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”~~*G.K.Chesterton *

Yep, but note that the hydrogen per se is not an energy source of any kind, any more than an electric-power line is.
Hydrogen is an energy bucket; we can use it as a fuel, or to transport energy, where other forms might be less convenient or less efficient overall. E.g., a fixed surface solar system might work, depending on what one is using it for. It can’t be put on top of a car, though; as you suggest, FixedBack, the water must be electrolyzed elsewhere, and the hydrogen transported to the car.
Were every problem with using, storing, transporting, and distributing to be solved by dawn tomorrow, and the requisite infrastructure created by magic at the same time, it wouldn’t go a step to creating an infinite energy source. We’d still need a source of energy to run the electrolysis plants (and the rest of it). Fortunately, as I wrote earlier, we do have such sources.


Eh, what’s that? God’s calling me home? Oh, OK; must be dinner time.