Hmm, thinking about it another way. Energy must move somewhere, and if energy is coming to earth from the sun, it must be absorbed somewhere. The concern with global warming, is that this energy is being absorbed in the air, thus increasing temperatures, and causing potentially bad things to happen. You also hear complaints about how the ice caps are melting, and that's because they too are absorbing this energy.
When we use energy, some of it gets radiated through heat to be consumed by the air around whatever is using the energy. The rest of the energy is merely absorbed somewhere else. Might lightbulb is radiating heat and light from the energy it gets. The heat gets absorbed in the air, and the light gets absorbed into the air and walls, etc. Eventually, this energy will probably be released as heat.
We can't indefinitely keep absorbing all this energy and expect everything to be fine in the very long run. If heat doesn't get radiated back into space, we'll run out of places where we can keep the energy absorbed. We also can't perpetually recycle the heat, since that would seem to violate the 2nd law where entropy must increase.
When we use energy, for the most part we are simply transfering it from one place to another, where it is absorbed from an energy source, emitted, then absorbed by other things. In the long run, we'd run out of places to absorb the energy on this planet, before it adversely affects us.
Heh, if you really want to be cynical, we'll eventually run out places to absorb energy period, in this whole universe, and this race and all other things will die out eventually it seems, but let me not go off on a tangent.
In the end, something must be done with the energy given here by the sun. Ideally we can absorb the useful sun rays and spit out the used up heat radiation.
In anycase, we are going to consume more energy, and simply trying to limit our energy usage will only be a temporary solution. Best thing we can do is make use of these solar rays, as much as we can, before it gets absorbed into the atmosphere. We can also find other places, other than our atmosphere to hold the used up heat radiation until such time when we can figure out how to spit the bloody stuff out. But, as we consume more and more energy, and we will, we are going to end up with more and more heat radiation, so global warming from CO2 isn't really the big issue.
I mean, even solar panels will warm our Earth it seems. Granted, it will take a while, but the energy created by these will be used up and create heat radiation. Same with wind power, and hydro power, etc. If we are going to use energy, green or not, we are going to have to put the energy somewhere.
Hmm, maybe actually I'm wrong. We know that the earth emits radiation back into space, and this actually isn't really useful as a matter of fact, making my whole premise wrong. Yes, energy usage in general will release heat, but our earth releases heat into space.
Yeah, tired. All of a sudden, I can see a lot of issues regarding my post. Well, I'll have to think on it more then. Seems like I've realized quite a bit already by just writing about it.
