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:
“The earth had a single light afar,
A flickering, human pathetic light,
That was maintained against the night,
It seemed to me, by the people there,
With a Godforsaken brute despair.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)