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Page 3 of 18 The heat that we add to air directly is known. That added by CO2 doubtful. In the longer term, nuclear power puts far more heat into the environment than fossil fuels do. It is also far more dangerous for other reasons. Nuclear power's contribution to global warming is accounted for by assuming 8% of total anthropogenic global warming, or 1.3 x 1014 kWh/year = 1.3 x 1015 kWh in 10 years. Nuclear energy does not solve the global warming problem. It aggravates it. Anthropogenic global warming includes: energy released by flaring gas to access the petroleum underneath it, exploding bombs and other ammunition, nuclear tests, energy from burning oil and coalfields (as after the 1990 Iraq war), energy released during the production, incineration, or other uses, of plastics, paint and plastic thinners, lubricants, rubber tyres, artificial fertilizers and other petrochemicals. Q releases from many of these sources are not known as this is written. A total of 1015 kWh added to the environment since 1870 is assumed. Deforestation has been going on for thousands of years. Most deserts are manmade. About 200'000 km2 of land are permanently deforested annually [G24] . With 10 x 106 tons hydrocarbon fuel (including branches, bark, deadwood, undergrowth and humus) per km2, and 8 x 106 kWh per 106 tons of burnt forest, that is 1.6 x 1013 kWh of Q per year, or about 2 x 1015 kWh since 1870, assuming deforestation then was half what it is now.
The total anthropogenic Q added to the environment since 1870 is thus about 16.8 x 1015 kWh or 60.5 x 1021 J according to these estimates. This is enough Q to melt almost 200,000km3 of ice to water. The total volume of global water is 1.4 x 109 km3, of which 94% is seawater while 3 x 107 km3 (2%) of the water is ice in the form of glaciers and ice fields ([G22]). If humanity continues to release Q into the environment at the rate of 6 x 1020 J/year and all this Q melts ice, all the ice on the planet will have melted away in about 1800years. Nature also adds heat to the environment The earth's core is hot. Some of this heat seeps up to its surface geothermally. Ts increase further down below the surface of the earth. This is noticed in the bottoms of deep mines- it is hot down there. Volcanoes and 'black smokers' in the ocean can spew out a lot of Q. Solar, and other cosmic energies, radiate down onto the earth, and the earth radiates energy back into space. Under steady-sate conditions, the energy received by the earth is equal to that emitted from it in delicate balance. This balance is disturbed when humanity adds large quantities of Q and Φ to the air.
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