Where did you get your figures?
You said: “The sun drops something on the order of 100,000 TW on the Earth. Geothermal energy from radioactive decay inside the Earth runs about 44 TW.”
What time periods are those TW’s generated in? (hours, days, years)
You said: “All of this, basically, is radiated back into space (or we’d be a ball of molten iron by now).
I would disagree with you on that information.
My idea is that SOME of it is radiated into space and some of it is accumulated (stored) as heat energy in the global water and atmospheric molecules, and some of it escapes the Earth’s atmosphere in the form of exited atoms.
The last point is what the NASA’s upper atmosphere studies may verify.
Polar Fountain
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1997/ast09dec97_3/
ATREX
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/missions/atrex-nightlight.html
You said: “I don’t think we’re going to be cooking our planet with our energy use any time soon.”
I agree with that point for two reasons, one is that there is a lot of water and air on the planet, they can absorb a lot of energy before becoming too hot to boil.
The second point is that the air is easier to boil off the planet than the water, so before the water starts boiling the air will have disappeared into space.
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Re: All nuclear and fuel-burning power plants create waste heat.
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- HEAR YE HEAR YE, The threatening THEORY explained again. (originally from Mysteries of the Multiverse)
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