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Is the heat produced by fossil and nuclear fuel negligible? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/askscience

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] meco03211 11 points 2 weeks ago

That heat is kinda overshadowed by the giant ass ball of fusion shitting metric shit tons of energy at us.

It got a bit technical in the middle. Hit me up if you need that ELI:5.