Climate Change, do people really care?

It’s COLD in the winter and HOT in the summer , deal with it ! :exploding_head:

Things cool down faster than they heat up.

It takes more energy to heat something up than it does to cool it down.

Ice ages last longer than warm periods.

Constants.

The natural flow of heat from Earth’s interior to the surface is estimated at 47 + or- 2 terawatts. Geothermal HVAC systems take advantage of the natural heat loss. So, in other words, Geothermal HVAC systems are not having a negative effect on the Earth’s heat loss. The 47 + or- 2 terawatts of heat/energy naturally would have been absorbed into the atmosphere.

Geothermal HVAC systems are rated the most efficient and Earth-friendly systems available. However, they do come at a high cost. The average system for new home construction comes in at $7,000 per ton compared to an air HVAC system at around $3,000 per ton. There are government programs that can reduce the cost between 30% and 60%.

Is that really all the Earth is generating in an entire day or do you mean in a shorter time span?

If my math is correct, a 15 megaton bomb has ~17.5 terra-watt hours of energy potential, and we built hundreds of those. Surely there’s far more usable energy within the Earth than anything we’ve ever produced in the span of our species.

Think of it as TW hour.

So a rough constant of 47 at any given time? That does sound snug.

Just using them as an example of businesses who routinely drill holes into the Earth.

Some of these holes are pretty deep, such as the ones into the Falklands prospects.

There was a Russian attempt in the Baltic states (?) to drill very deep to see what they could find. The project was abandoned at around 35km total depth when there was no methane, at least not the anticipated amounts. It was getting a bit warm though. Equally there are South African gold mines where the temperature is quite elevated, and they are about 5km down IIRC.

edit: Seems the deepest hole is not actually that deep… at 12,262 meters that is just over 12 km
Ask Smithsonian: What's the Deepest Hole Ever Dug? | At the Smithsonian| Smithsonian Magazine

About 20miles SE of the center of Atlanta, GA.

Wow - and no AC…very impressive.

Those of us that live in the country rarely use our AC in the summer. Last summer I used the AC 3 times. The air blowing through the trees keeps the house cool.

When I had the house built I had a passive solar fireplace installed. It uses outside air for combustion. Under the fire box there is a SS coil that heats up a propylene glycol and water mixture and pumps it through piping installed under the floors of the Great Room, dining room and kitchen.

Ice Ages have come & gone. What caused those 3 k high ice sheets to melt? Certainly not human interference. Unless our ancestors were burning Woolly Mammoth farts.

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Our Earth is still cooling down since creation. What a hoot.

I’d forgotten, Chevron does have a decent-sized geothermal operation in Indonesia and the Phillipines. I don’t think that these holes are that deep, you need proximity to volcanic heat and water reservoirs that are just hot enough. However, the scale of power plants, on the order of megawatts, is a trivial rounding error compared to natural heat loss from earth to space in terawatts.

When I was young and foolish, I often went camping in bad weather, winter summer…all through the year. I especially loved winter camping. Often I just slept in the back yard in a tent. I love when it rains on a tent I’m in.

Now I am old and foolish…and I still love ambient temperatures and humidity.

The first ten years of my life were lived without AC. Our family cars had no AC until 1953. When I ordered my 1964 GTO, I got it without air. I had to add an under-the-dash unit after I married and allowed my wife to drive the car.

One can become chilled while sweating in the air flow of a fan. One should never remove body perspiration with a towel. It is there for a purpose…to cool the body.

Once upon a time, I was installing underground conduits for a linter room at a new oil mill. The building floor was to be poured on top of white sand. The summer sun was magnified by the reflecting heat from the sand.

I wore heavy khaki clothes, with long sleeve shirts, a straw hat and a towel covering my neck. I removed my wallet and cigarettes, went to the shower and soaked myself…then worked until my clothes were dry. Then I returned to the shower for another wetting under the shower. I never felt the heat of the sun. Some of my men required salt tablets and a couple of them suffered heat exhaustion. I felt fine.

The next day, several of them came in long sleeve shirts and filed through the shower as I had the day before. They were amazed at the cooling effect.

The next day, we worked in the rain…and finished a week’s worth of work in three days.

HVAC is designed for pansies.

I would like to nominate this for ‘Post of the Week’.

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Depends where you live. In my part of the country people die without A/C when temperatures reach 100+ degrees and high humidity.