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Steam Engine

We waste enough heat per year to melt many 1000's of km³ of ice

Humanity's total energy consumption in 2004 was 4.71 x 10²⁰ J = 1290 x 10¹⁵ J per day ([w04]??).

Humanity's energy consumption is increasing about 4% per year. It will thus be around 6.2 x 10²⁰ J = 1.72 x 10¹⁴ kWh per year in 2015. That is enough heat to melt 1860km³ of ice to water. All energy produced in all power plants is finally left in the environment as Q. This includes friction, resistance heating, line losses, electro-smog and the like. Assuming that global warming started in 1870 and progressed linearly since, then the total Q released into the environment by the energy industry since then, and until 2015, is about 4.5 x 10²² J or 12.5 x 10¹⁵ kWh.

It is assumed here that the 4.71 x 10²⁰ J consumed in 2004 include waste. If that is not so, the anthropogenic global warming data presented here seriously under-estimate the phenomenon. This is almost certainly the case for nuclear energy consumption.

Nuclear power plants are less efficient than fossil fuel power stations. They transform less of the Q produced inside them into electric power than fossil fuel power stations do. Besides, only about 10% of the total Q released by the nuclear fuel rods is used inside these stations. The rest goes straight into the environment when the used rods are left to cool in basins and final storage depots. This nuclear waste Q is never included in global warming energy totals.

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.

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.

Forests absorb solar radiation and CO₂ without heating._.

It would seem that the debate on global warming should take the proven anthropogenic Q component into consideration first. There is, rather, much argument about the greenhouse effects of gasses in the atmosphere and influences of sunspots. It is thus relevant to examine how the energy received by the earth from outer space warms the earth.

Radiant energy can travel through empty space. Heat energy (more precisely enthalpy) is a property of mass. A material body contains more enthalpy when its molecules move faster, further and vibrate internally with greater force or speed.

Radiant energy is usually converted into enthalpy, or vice versa, when radiation interacts with matter. Radiation can go right through matter or be modified by it. Sunlight can be focussed through a lens onto a piece of paper to set that paper on fire. Sunlight can fall on a material and be absorbed by it without warming it if the sunlight is stored chemically in that material - as is the case with photosynthesis in plants. Plants cannot store Q in ambient air chemically; a plant left in a warm room with no sunlight dies.

A hot (ex: black metal solar water heater) surface can be heated further by sunlight, regardless of its initial T. Heat (SQ or LQ) cannot flow from a material at a given T to a body with a higher T unless some substance evaporates off the colder body into the warmer body. Some sunlight is converted into enthalpy as it passes through greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Microwave energy is readily absorbed by _L.H₂O- for instance, in a cup of coffee.

Much of the solar energy falling on the earth is not converted into Q. Sunlight falling on a forest does not warm that forest. The leaves in a dense forest have a huge surface area. Solar radiation falling on them is partly stored photo-chemically as sugars, cellulose and other carbohydrates. On hot, dry days, huge quantities of _L.H₂O evaporate off those leaves carrying off much LQ with it so that there is little T increase- and possibly some cooling. When sunlight falls on dark, dry rock, it is converted into Q that heats the air above that rock and dries it further. Such hot, dry air blowing through a forest turns it to tinder. This results in huge forest fires that kill the land so it remains dry and very difficult to reforest. Fossil fuels store solar radiation that fell on the earth millions of years. When they are burnt, Q is released into the environment which was never on the planet before.

We are solar powered. We need sunlight stored by photosynthesis

Are their lives less important than ours? Or is life a single web- if we kill them we kill ourselves?

Plants store solar radiation energy, not Q. Herbivores eat that stored energy and convert it chemically into the energy their bodies and brains need to function. Warm-blooded animals used such stored energy to accelerate their metabolisms. We are ourselves powered indirectly by solar radiation stored in plants and in animals that eat plants. Yet we are busily destroying the living cover of the earth that we need to survive.

The surface of the planet receives about 10²²J solar energy per day and radiates about that much back at night. That is 8000 times more than is consumed by all humanity ([w04]). A small fraction of the solar energy that falls on earth is transformed into atmospheric enthalpy by greenhouse gasses. Different gasses get more of the blame depending on whose causes are being pleaded.

The blame game

The IPCC, and many other official bodies prefer to place most of the blame on CO₂. Elsewhere, it argued that Φ is the main cause of global warming: "Whenever three or more contrarians are gathered together, one will inevitably claim that water vapour is being unjustly neglected by 'IPCC' scientists. Why isn't water vapour acknowledged as a greenhouse gas?", "Why does anyone even care about the other greenhouse gasses since water vapour is 98% of the effect?", "Why isn't water vapour included in climate models?"...Long-wave (or thermal) radiation is emitted from the surface of the planet and is largely absorbed in the atmosphere. Water vapour is the principle absorber of this radiation (and acknowledged as such by everybody). But exactly how important is it?

In terms of mass, water vapour is much more prevalent (about 0.3% of atmospheric mass, compared to about 0.06% for CO₂), and so is ~80% of all greenhouse gasses by mass (~90% by volume)....it's clear that water vapour is the single most important absorber (between 36% and 66% of the greenhouse effect), and together with clouds makes up between 66% and 85%. CO₂ alone makes up between 9 and 26%, while the O3 and the other minor GHG absorbers consist of up to 7 and 8% of the effect, respectively [w03].

Who benefits from this crime?

The heated debate about hot air

The heated debate as to which greenhouse gas effects are most to blame for global warming rages on almost without reference to the 10²⁰ to 10²¹ J of anthropogenic Q released into the atmosphere every year by the energy industry. This has been increasing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution at about the same rate as the atmosphere's CO₂- and for the same reasons.

Solar and other radiations from space beam down onto the earth and are partly trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses. Some, of these gasses, and other substances in the atmosphere (smog), also prevent radiations from space by reflecting them straight back out. This is the case for anthropogenic cloud- for instance, the vapour trails of jet aircraft. Some of the sulfur pollutants released by fossil fuel combustion also reflect energy back into space. Some convert such energy into Q and trap it in the atmosphere..

The controversy could be resolved if it were known how much Q really is added to the atmosphere per year due to anthropogenic CO₂. According to [G07](1998 CD), 5 x 10⁹ tons of CO₂ are added to the atmosphere every year. [w01] states that the annual CO₂ increment is 12.5 x 10⁹ tons- 4 times less. With 1.5 x 10¹¹ tons of CO₂ accumulated in the atmosphere since 1750 [G07]; and atmospheric CO₂ from 278 parts per million in 1750 to 365 ppm in 1998 ([G17]26, (IPCC 2001) the total weight of the CO₂ in the atmosphere in 1998 was 1.97 x 10¹¹ tons. That is 2.62 times more than the 0.750 x 10¹¹ tons indicated as the total weight of the CO₂ in the atmosphere given by [w01]

The amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere is open to debate. One reason for this is that there is so little of it that it is hard to measure. Different techniques yield different results. Spectroscopic measurements [w18] must be calibrated by tomoscopic or gravitometric measurements, both of which are imprecise by perhaps +/- 50%. CO₂ is a heavy gas- there is more of it close to the ground than high up. There is more in city air than in country air. Plants and oceans absorb or release it at different times of the year. Atmospheric CO₂ content is highly variable. This does not explain the 26800% discrepancy between [w01] and [G07], but does reveal the dubiousness of claims made for CO₂'s purported greenhouse gas effects.

Experimental Proof

The amount of heat absorbed by CO₂ as radiation passes through it, or is reflected back to the ground from the atmosphere cannot be measured with any precision in samples small enough to fit into a laboratory. The atmosphere warms as light beams are passed through it- but tends to rise and be blown away as it does so. The heating of CO₂ in the atmosphere also depends on geothermal heat radiated out to space, varying quantities of new heat, CO₂ and moisture added to the atmosphere by burning fuels, and the absorption spectra of other gasses in it. The overall impression is that CO₂'s greenhouse effect depends largely on smoke, mirrors and bristlecone pines

It would be of interest to compare the amount of Q trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse effects, and that added to it by the energy industry. Atmospheric CO₂ has increased by about 100 parts per million since 1870. The weight of the atmosphere at sea level is about 10 tons per m². The added weight of the CO₂ above one m² is thus about 1 kg. A kg of CO₂ occupies about 1 m³ under normal conditions. It would be relevant to place a 1m thick layer of CO₂ in sunlight to see how much Q (in kWh) is absorbed in it per day . This could be done by placing photovoltaic panels, or solar water heaters, above, and below, such a layer, and measuring power yields or T gains during the day.

CO₂'s increased greenhouse gas effect could be deduced similarly by passing sunlight through a 1m thick layer of CO₂, then CO_2-less air below it, reflecting the sunlight off the earth back through the CO₂ layer to measure the heat trapped below the CO₂. Effects of the transparent material used to contain the CO₂ would be factored out by running the experiments with dry air instead of CO₂. CO₂'s warming effect could then be extrapolated for the entire earth and compared with anthropogenic Q inputs. Such simple experiments would probably reveal that CO₂'s contribution to global warming is negligible and, in any case, greatly clarify the global warming debate. Why has this not been done?

It could be the sun. Burning fuels is like throwing oil on fire.

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Melting poles and glaciers prove CO₂ is not to blame

There are other reasons for doubting that greenhouse gasses play a more important role in global warming than anthropogenic Q or solar activities. The earth is round. Solar energy falling on the equator, or passing through greenhouse gasses there, should warm equatorial regions more than polar regions for the same reason that the equator is hotter than the poles. Radiation adds as much heat to hot surfaces as it does to cold surfaces; air at a given T can only heat bodies with a lower T. If that addition is from radiation, it is initially in the form of SQ that raises the T of the bodies. Hot dry air does not absorb Φ and its LQ unless it is in contact with _L.H₂O, or Φ is added to it.

Equatorial regions are warming little. The poles and glaciers are melting rapidly in many places. The air around them is not warming or cooling much. The evidence is thus that LQ in the air is melting that ice- that LQ must be mostly anthropogenic. When warm, moist air melts ice, the ice is not warmed nor is the air cooled. LQ is lost by Φ in air as it condenses; it is transferred into ice as it melts. The evidence that the energy industry is largely to blame global warming is practically irrefutable.

'Self-reinforce' is a very strong verb  

Most anthropogenic Q released to the atmosphere does not go to melt ice. Hot combustion gasses are normally Φ under-saturated. Warm dry air often becomes hotter and dryer when combustion gasses are released into them. Automobile radiators heat air without wetting it. Hot, dry air parches the land. Forest fires break out more easily, and release much new Q, Φ, and CO₂ into the atmosphere. Warm dry air also absorbs Φ and CO₂ off oceans. Some of the Φ added to the atmosphere rises up in it and increases its permanent LQ store because moist air is lighter than dry air.

Some of the Φ added to the atmosphere rains back down. Rain falling on burnt, deforested lands usually does little to restore life there. Dry rock and bare soil have very small thermal inertia (specific heat). The ground cools rapidly when a little rain falls on it, and this cooling increases rainfall. Instead of falling in a gentle drizzle, rain thus comes in downpours that cause flash floods, mud slides and river silting. The earth is left deader and drier after the floods and fires than it was before. About 8 tons of topsoil erode off normal farmland per acre and year. Deforestation accelerates erosion and accentuates drought. Countries become less capable of supporting their populations while their armed forces are sent off to remote regions to fight terrorism. So-called terrorists are most easily turned into friends by helping them to restore their lands' fertility and to irrigate them.

As CO₂ and Φ accumulate in the atmosphere, their greenhouse effects become self-reinforcing. More Q, Φ and CO₂ released into the air from land and ocean surfaces increase their combined greenhouse effect, hence the amount of Φ and CO₂ released from the ocean, and the amounts of Q, Φ and CO₂ stored in the atmosphere- and so on. When threshold greenhouse warming effects have been attained, the process will continue to be self-reinforcing even if all anthropogenic atmospheric heating is stopped. Polar ice caps will melt away more rapidly if it is not. That is when real global warming will begin.

Burning fuels adds humidity and volume as well as heat 

Adding more heat to the atmosphere by burning fuels and forests is like throwing oil on fire. Much of the Q we add is LQ in combustion gasses and from cooling towers. Hot dry air can absorb much Φ without warming as its Q is converted to LQ. So the atmosphere continues to absorb vast amounts of anthropogenic Q while talk about greenhouse effects and rising Ts distracts the world away from global warming's real causes and dangers. The poles are not melting because air Ts are rising. They are melting because moist air is shedding LQ to them.

It is time to base solutions to the global warming problems on honest science. It is assumed in classical thermodynamics that a working fluid (steam, combustion gas...) can only do mechanical work (W_mec) if it expands and pushes some object (piston, turbine blade.) as it does so. The fluid's volume increases as it expands whether it does W_mec or not. In accordance with first law of thermodynamics, the total energy in a mass remains constant if no energy is added to, or removed from, it. A fluid's P and T fall as it expands because the same energy is dispersed over a larger volume. It loses P and T faster if W_mec is also taken off it.

Why our heat engines do so little work

Heat engines within which a working fluid expands- for instance to push a piston down a cylinder- can only convert a fraction (Carnot coefficient) of the fluid's initial Q into mechanical (kinetic) energy W_mec. The rest is exhausted into the environment. This simplified calculation is approximately correct for dry air. When hydrocarbon fuels are burnt, their combustion gasses contain _G.H₂O. As such gasses expand, they lose P and T while doing W_mec until the _G.H₂O starts to condense. These gasses then stop doing W_mec because _L.H₂O shrinks as it condenses to _G.H₂O. They must be exhausted even though they still contain far more Q, mostly LQ, than was converted into W_mec in the engine.

This exhaust Q adds to global warming. The _G.H₂O released in the exhaust condenses to cloud if it is cooled- hence the clouds behind cars on cold days, vapor trails behind airplanes and over cooling towers of power stations (Fig.010). Existing heat engines waste about twice as much Q as they convert into W_mec

The solution to global warming was known 400 years ago.

Nature does not convert Q to W_mec the way we do it. Torricelli (1608-47), inventor of the barometer (Fig.020) already noticed that high pressure (H) weather (Fig.030), was usually sunny, clear and calm, low pressure weather (L) cloudy, stormy and cold. He proposed a sort of first First Law of Thermodynamics. Some of the Q absorbed by air in H weather is converted into storm-wind- W_mec in L weather. Q + W_mec remain more or less constant.

This interested sailors and farmers. They helped Torricelli to track winds and measure Ps and Ts. They found out that winds turn one way (counter clockwise) in L weather, the other in H weather.

One Torricelli's friends, Branca, suggested a turbine (from Latin turbo, whirlwind- Fig.040) which should have converted Q in ambient air into propulsion W_mec

J Black named latent heat in 1750. J Espy proved in 1841 that cyclones had to be latent heat powered [G08]. There is no other source of heat to drive them in the stationary wet warm air in which they start. They create their own internal low P and power themselves as they whirl down into that low P. Cooling must be massive inside a cyclone if much rain falls out of it. But it is volume, rather than T, cooling because LQ is volume Q. Atmospheric P helps dive a cyclone because air inside it shrinks at almost constant P as rain condenses out inside it.

How nature does it

Cyclones will get fiercer as the air above them gets warmer and wetter

This process is self-reinforcing (Figs090, 100). It can start with the flap of a butterfly wing that creates a minuscule vortex [G19], and grows to become a hurricane that wrecks cities and produces more power than all humanity's heat engines together. Once this has been understood, it becomes possible to devise engines that are mainly powered with ambient heat as Branca had intended.

Normal cyclones are self-inhibiting. The diameters of fully formed cyclones can be hundreds of km. Cyclones' ground-to-top-of-cyclone cloud heights are rarely greater than 4km. Air swirls in from their rims to their cores in flat hair-spring like spirals and then rises rapidly at their cores. These are emptied out centrifugally so that cold, dry, heavy air from above the cloud cover falls into them from above.

This cold air plugs the cyclone's core so that air swirling up between the plug and the inflowing cyclone air is compressed, warmed (Foehn effect) and becomes the clear eye through which one can sometimes look up to blue sky. The cold air plug also widens the core like a wedge so that centrifugal forces are reduced there and toothpaste-tube thermodynamic effects are partly inhibited.

And become   Monster Tornadoes

Cyclones would be a great deal more destructive if they did not plug themselves down. They, and their anti-cyclones, would continue to reinforce each other indefinitely if they did not do this. Nature normally regulates the weather so that, cyclone and anti-cyclone cells wander good-naturedly over the landscape providing sunny, warm- and wet, cool weather, as is needed by life below. They will cease to be good-natured if humanity continues to add Q to the atmosphere.

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