Re:Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet
by Tadpole9181 on Sunday March 02, 2025 @05:59PM
(#43236189)
This also ignores that the Earth already has a flux of 50TW per year, so it's only an increase of about 40% (and even less, when you consider that intentional extraction would slow the flux of all surface area above it).
Not only that, but Earth's internal heat is being renewed constantly via things like radioactive isotopes and tidal forces.
Re:Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet
by giantg2 on Sunday March 02, 2025 @08:33PM
(#43237366)
So what happens if we slow that flux? That's spread across the globe. What's the impact if those numbers are localized?
Radioactivity and tidal forces create a fixed amount a heat and that heat dissipates at a given rate, right? So what happens if we change that rate of dissipation/extraction?
The point is, it's all handwavy. Seems familiar to just about everything we've done before - fossil fuels, plastics, PFAS...
Re:Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet
by Tadpole9181 on Sunday March 02, 2025 @09:23PM
(#43237633)
You do know we actively use geothermal plants right now, right? It has almost no effect? Let alone compared to the effect of climate change.
The biggest concerns are specific techniques for pumping water, which (sometimes) can cause small earthquakes.
So if we switched to 100% geothermal (a few orders of magnitude more than we're actually discussing using), we'd be using on the order of a hundred trillionth of the energy per year?
[0] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/51920/amount-of-...
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption