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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

> I acknowledge these sensibilities are mostly, well, wrong.

The scale of energy in the geothermal layers we can reach dwarfs our consumption and will take time greater than human existence to date to alter in a manner that impacts the orbital scale geophysics.

> And we're dumping the heat into the atmosphere which also doesnt really need additional heating.

The crux of the climate issue is our increase in the heat insulation properties of the atmosphere (now mainly via CO2, more and more by increased methane and water vapor) not so much the "heat" we output.

Vast amounts of energy arrive on the surface via the sun, most of this radiates away .. the increasing amount of "human activity related blanket" has been the cause of change in recent (few thousand years) climate stability.

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> The scale of energy in the geothermal layers we can reach dwarfs our consumption and will take time greater than human existence to date to alter in a manner that impacts the orbital scale geophysics.

Isn’t this thinking the type of naïveté that got us to the current situation in the first place? The CO2 in our atmosphere increased ~0.01% (absolute percentage of atmosphere) over the last 4 decades.

Scientists 4 decades ago explained away any concerns in the exact same way you did.

Granted, we need all hands on deck (including experiments like this) to reach our decarbonization targets, but let’s not downplay the unknown tail risks involved.

> Scientists 4 decades ago explained away any concerns in the exact same way you did.

You're confusing "O&G | Koch Bro's stooges" with "Scientists".

The notion of human activity affecting the atmosphere dates back more than a century, the real concern that industrial activity was having a detrimental effect became real in the 1970s .. and the pro Tobacco and pro Oil and Gas lobbying dates back to the same core PR agencies using the same tired "person in a white coat" arguments.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) raised human activity affecting climate as a real and present danger in the mid to late 1970s, the International Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988, etc.

Scientists had a firm grasp of the problem four decades ago and understood that the heat capacity of CO2 exceeded that of other gases .. they understood the relative scales and how little it took to tip a balance.

In a similar manner geophysicts understand the scale of global energy held in rotation, in internal heat, in GMF, and the history of crustal fission reactors versus core fission et al.

There’s a difference between scientists converging on the research objectives of understanding the impacts of greenhouse gases, and agreeing on the general prognosis from the increase in gases to take action.

Even in 1991, Roger Revelle—one of the earliest scientists to recognize global warming—cautioned against taking drastic action because of scientific uncertainty[1]. He is not your oil and gas stooge, Revelle authored the seminal paper on CO2 buildup in 1957[2].

> But should the United States assume "leadership" in a hastily-conceived campaign that could cripple the global economy, or would it be more prudent to assure first, through scientific research, that the problem is both real and urgent? We can sum up our conclusions in a simple message: The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this tine [sic].

While in hindsight it seems there was much scientific consensus opposed by industry, much of the skepticism was actually from the scientific community itself on the absence of certainty.

[1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.59...

[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/tellusa.v9i1.907...

Point being that Revelle had a grasp on the actual geophysics, knew that the ocean buffer for C02 absorption was not sufficient to counter the gas increase in the atmosphere ..

His specific doubt was about timscale and sensitivities .. he suggeted people wait until observed temp increases exceeded the noise threshold, he didn't doubt that they would.

Returning to the original point, human tapping of the earths geothermal energy will be confined for a veryt long term to no deeper below the crust than the atmosphere rises above.

On the matter of scale, if the earth was the size of a green granny smith apple (although 'spherical' (damn near), like a hypothetical cow) .. would the atmosphere be thicker or thinner than the skin on that apple?

ie. How's your grasp of the actual physics in both these cases?

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