Earth's Energy Budget
The Earth can be considered as a physical system with an energy budget that includes all gains of incoming energy and all losses of outgoing energy. The planet is approximately in equilibrium, so the sum of the gains is approximately equal to the sum of the losses. All energy use results in waste heat. In order to use more total energy than presently and without raising the Earth's average temperature, that additional energy must be compensated for by using only sources that would otherwise have been wasted. For example, fusion power is a possible source of new power and will therefore exceed the Earth's energy budget, whereas increasing our use of solar voltaic energy is compensated by simultaneously cooling the land beneath the solar panels.
- Note on accompanying images: The figure opposite depicts only net energy transfer. There is no attempt to depict the role of greenhouse gases and the exchange that occurs between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere or any other exchanges.
Read more about Earth's Energy Budget: Natural Greenhouse Effect
Famous quotes containing the words earth, energy and/or budget:
“I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A budget takes the fun out of money.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)