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Energy, Water, Climate and Cycles

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Energy, Complexity and Wealth Maximization

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Abstract

The sun, which continuously energizes our solar system, radiates about 4 × 1014 terawatts (TW) of power, in all directions. Since a terawatt is a thousand Gigawatts (GW) and a million Megawatts (MW), that is an extremely large amount of power. The unit of power, terawatt (TW), is convenient because it is about the right size for discussions of energy use in the global economy. The Earth intercepts only a tiny fraction of that enormous solar output, viz. 174,260 TW, or 340.2 ± 0.1 W per square meter of the Earth’s silhouette or intercept surface.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The results shown in Fig. 6.2 are significantly different from earlier and more widely published results compiled by Trenberth et al. (2007), especially with respect to evaporation and rainfall. The new results, based on more sophisticated sensors, are more trustworthy.

  2. 2.

    It has been suggested that a deliberate policy of increasing the iron supply to the plankton could help to “manage” the atmospheric level of draw down the CO2.

  3. 3.

    El Niño (the Christ child) was originally the name given to a warm coastal current that appeared off the coast of Peru around Christmas time, each year. Now, however, it refers to the abnormal conditions.

  4. 4.

    I am grateful to David Wasdell for pointing out this relationship, even though I think he relies too much on it.

  5. 5.

    I was unable to find the original reference, which was not cited by Wasdell.

  6. 6.

    The physics is actually quite complicated, and there are still significant uncertainties; research in this area is now very active. See IPCC (1995, p. 201 et seq).

  7. 7.

    Another important source, that will be much harder to control, is agriculture, especially grass-eating animals—cattle, sheep and goats—that rely on bacteria in their second stomachs to digest cellulose. These bacteria generate methane as a waste product in the process.

  8. 8.

    For instance, the oxidation reaction N2 + O2 → 2NO is highly endothermic. It does not occur spontaneously at normal temperatures and pressures (otherwise the atmosphere could not contain both molecular oxygen and molecular nitrogen). Once NO is formed, however, further oxidation reactions do occur spontaneously— albeit slowly—until the most oxidized form of nitrogen (N2O5) is reached. Dissolved in water, this is nitric acid (HNO3). In thermodynamic equilibrium, oxygen and nitrogen would be combined in this form.

  9. 9.

    In the more general case, the rate of photosynthesis can be expected to depend on the concentrations of all the essential nutrients—especially C, N, S, P—in biologically available form.

  10. 10.

    The origin of natural gas is currently in doubt. For a long time it was assumed that natural gas was entirely biogenic and associated mainly with petroleum. Now it is known that gas deposits are much more widely distributed than petroleum deposits. It has been suggested by several astronomers that much of the hydrogen in the Earth’s crust may have originated from the sun (via the “solar wind” proton bombardment).

  11. 11.

    To be more precise, an environment lacking nitrates, manganese oxide, iron oxides or sulfates. Recall the earlier discussion of “redox potential” and bacterial sources of oxygen for metabolism.

  12. 12.

    Opal is a form of silica used for the shells of diatoms.

  13. 13.

    If the oceans were to freeze the weathering rate would fall to zero, allowing the atmospheric CO2 level to rise due to volcanic action. It has been shown that this feedback is sufficient to assure that the oceans would not have been frozen over, even during the Earth’s early history when the sun was emitting 30 % less energy than it does today (Walker et al. 1981).

  14. 14.

    Most bacteria and animals can only utilize organic nitrogen, mainly as amino acids.

  15. 15.

    Denitrification bacteria reduce nitrates (NO3) to obtain oxygen for metabolic purposes. They do not metabolize ammonia. Thus the denitrification flux from fertilizers depends somewhat on the chemical form in which it is applied. The N2O/N2 proportion depends on local factors, such as carbon content of the soil, acidity and dissolved oxygen. It must be acknowledged that the combined uncertainties are quite large. Thus, for instance, a recent US study sets the N2O emissions from fertilizer at 1.5 Tg/year, as compared to only 1 Tg/year from fossil fuel combustion. Other estimates in the literature range from 0.01 to 2.2 Tg/year (Watson et al. 1992).

  16. 16.

    The reaction is 4NH3 + 3O2 = 2 N2 + 6H2O.

  17. 17.

    To be sure, CO2 was present in the early atmosphere and carbonic acid (H2CO3) is CO2 dissolved in water. But CO2 is not very soluble, and the oceans are essentially a saturated solution. Moreover, carbonic acid is a very weak acid as compared to sulfuric and nitric acids.

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Ayres, R. (2016). Energy, Water, Climate and Cycles. In: Energy, Complexity and Wealth Maximization. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30545-5_6

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