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https://theconversation.com/two-trillion-tonnes-of-greenhouse-gases-25-billion-nukes-of-heat-are-we-pushing-earth-out-of-the-goldilocks-zone-202619>
"Since the 18th century, humans have been taking fossil fuels out of their safe
storage deep underground and burning them to generate electricity or power
machinery.
We’ve now converted coal, oil and gas into more than two trillion tonnes of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and added them to the
atmosphere.
The current result? The average temperature at the planet’s surface is about
1.2℃ hotter than in the pre-industrial era. That’s because adding new carbon to
the world’s natural carbon cycle has caused an imbalance in the amount of
energy entering and leaving the Earth system.
To warm the entire planet takes an extraordinary amount of extra energy. Recent
research shows we’ve added the energy of 25 billion nuclear bombs to the Earth
system in just the last 50 years.
Billions of nuclear bombs to produce 1.2℃ of heating – so what? It seems small,
considering how much temperature varies on a daily basis. (The world’s average
surface temperature in the 20th century was 13.9℃.)
But almost all of this energy to date has been taken up by the oceans. It’s no
wonder we’re seeing rapid warming in our oceans."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
