<p>Basically, we can ignore the heat we release compared to the effect of the <span class="math-container">$\ce{CO2}$</span> we release.  To be more specific:</p>

<p>Heat we release has only a temporary effect because heat is radiating out to space.  In fact you can get an idea of how long it takes for newly released heat to radiate away by checking how quickly temperatures drop when the sun sets.  It's fast. </p>

<p>The heat we released a year ago is gone.  In fact, probably the heat we released yesterday is basically gone.  There's no cumulative impact.   The extra heat we release now is effectively decaying exponentially in time as the system tries to get to its equilibrium, and its half-life is pretty short.  However, that equilibrium it is trying to reach is determined in large part by the <span class="math-container">$\ce{CO2}$</span> concentration.</p>

<p>Our release of <span class="math-container">$\ce{CO2}$</span> is cumulative.  The <span class="math-container">$\ce{CO2}$</span> we released 10 years ago is still having an impact on current <span class="math-container">$\ce{CO2}$</span> levels, and will continue to have an impact for many, many years.  The <span class="math-container">$\ce{CO2}$</span> we release now is being added to this.</p>

<p>If we turn off industry, our impact due to heat released will be gone within days or weeks at most.  Our impact due to <span class="math-container">$\ce{CO2}$</span> released will take much longer than a human lifespan.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2014-12-15T01:08:30.603Z
2019-04-14T21:35:24.463Z
2019-04-14T21:35:24.463Z
Joel
<p>Disclamer: I am not an atmospheric or climate scientist; corrections are welcome if I have anything wrong.</p>

<h2>Human heat production</h2>

<p>According to the <a href="http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/key-world-energy-statistics-2014.html">IEA</a>, world primary energy consumption in 2012 was 13370 million tons of oil equivalent, which works out to being $5.6 \times 10^{20}$ Joules. Averaged over a year, this equates to $17.8\,\mathrm{TW}$. Wind, solar, etc., are a negligible part of this, but it does include a small but noticable amount of hydro and biomass. Strictly speaking, all of the hydro and some of the biomass should be excluded as they are simply a short-term "reuse" of energy that has already arrived from the sun, and not "new energy". Let us use the figure above but treat it as an upper bound.</p>

<p>The area of the earth is $5.1 \times 10^{14}\, \mathrm{m^2}$(source: Wolfram Alpha), which means that the figure above comes out to $0.033\,\mathrm{Wm^{-2}}$, a comfortingly close match to the figure given in the literature in Sabre Tooth's answer.</p>

<h2>Energy from the sun</h2>

<p>According to the Wikipedia page "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget">Earth's energy budget</a>", average solar insolation on the surface of the earth, taking into account day and night, summer and winter, is around $240\,\mathrm{Wm^{-2}}$. The figure that we should use is higher than this, as some is absorbed in the atmosphere and contributes to warming, but let us treat this as a lower bound. Multiplying by the surface area of the planet gives us an incoming energy flux of $1.22 \times 10^{17} \, \mathrm{W}$, or 122 petawatts.</p>

<h2>Comparisons</h2>

<p>Total human heat production, then, is in the order of 0.01% of the energy from space, and as such one might consider it negligible. By contrast, the total energy imbalance that results in global warming - <em>including</em> any effect from anthropogenic heating - is <a href="http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_16/">estimated</a> to be approx 300 TW, or 20 times the total anthropogenic heat output.</p>

<p>(As an aside: Initially when writing this I thought "human fuel use is 5% of the planet's energy imbalance - that's significant!". But of course the greenhouse effect results in an imbalance that is a <em>proportion</em> of the total radiated energy, and human energy makes an insignificant difference to that total radiated energy.)</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-05-17T16:33:59.260Z
It is very small but, what is its perturbing effect? Local scale unequal heating, however, small may cause big weather and climate effects. I can think of the Lorenz's " butterfly effect".
Gemechu Fanta Garuma
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-14T10:15:51.507Z
2014-12-14T10:15:51.507Z
Semidiurnal Simon
<p>I published some research results on the anthropogenic heat's impact on the warming, it seems the waste heat is the dominating contributor of the warming we have seen so far, it increased the temperature of surface air, land surface and ocean surface and simultaneously raise the sea level, providing strong scientific support from thermodynamic point view.</p>
<ol>
<li>Global Warming Thermodynamics, <a href="https://www.scirp.org/(S(351jmbntvnsjt1aadkposzje))/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=118741" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.scirp.org/(S(351jmbntvnsjt1aadkposzje))/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=118741</a>.</li>
<li>Waste heat: the dominating root cause of current global warming, <a href="https://environmentalsystemsresearch.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40068-020-00169-2" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://environmentalsystemsresearch.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40068-020-00169-2</a>.</li>
<li>The Nature of Climate Change-Equivalent Climate Change Model’s Application in Decoding the Root Cause of Global Warming. International Journal of Environment and Climate Change, 9, 801-822. <a href="https://doi.org/10.9734/ijecc/2019/v9i1230160" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://doi.org/10.9734/ijecc/2019/v9i1230160</a></li>
</ol>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-08T00:58:47.207Z
Just a note to readers: "published" tends to carry a suggestion of heavily peer reviewed and critiqued.  These are self published, so something Quinghan Bian wrote and called it publishing.  So it's to take with a grain of salt.  And while I tend to be fair bit of a skeptic advocate and often encourage independent questioning, it looks from the writing that it probably hasn't been subject to heavy refinement or constructive challenge
JeopardyTempest
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-08T00:59:04.980Z
(beyond the writing refinement, conclusions such as the indicating that taking apart temp-CO2 data into carefully selected year groups [of varying size] suggests "no definitive correlation exists" between temp and CO2 because some of the subgroups lack high R^2 seem poor to me.  Note the changing scale [looking at Fig 1 in the SCIRP writing].  It's like concluding major rainfall can't be the real cause of traffic slowdowns because on days its lightly drizzling traffic is mostly consistent and the minor variations aren't explained by slight rainfall differences))
JeopardyTempest
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-08T01:09:40.730Z
But regardless, this isn't the medium for debate on the credibility of your paper. If you have found valid results, I believe they'd typically be able to make headway in journals (there can certainly be issues of pride & inertia sometimes in the process, but as someone quite entirely independent from the research world on these topics, or really any financial or reputation gains at all in all atmospheric sciences as of this point... I can't see a great conspiracy or such, so the onus is on you to go to the criticism and overcome it to real publication).
JeopardyTempest
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-08T01:09:43.953Z
So I raise points not to enter some big debate point by point whatsoever... but to just to show some representative concerns to others, so to encourage them not automatically  trust such papers, as it's just your writings, plus citing sources predominantly of a few others who have similarly faced little critique and self published.  So posting them as if they are just normal journal article references and saying things like 'they provide strong scientific support...' comes across a bit manipulative/particularly biased.
JeopardyTempest
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-07T16:23:04.210Z
2022-10-07T16:23:04.210Z
Qinghan Bian
<p>Anthropogenic-sourced greenhouse gases are commonly cited as the main source for human-caused climate change. However, something that I never see discussed is the actual heat produced by human activities. It could be that it's negligible, but I'm still curious to see quantitative data.</p>

<p>For example, a running engine in a vehicle produces $\ce{CO2}$ due to fuel combustion, but the engine also produces heat. What about heat produced from ovens, fireplaces, incandescent lighting, etc.? Ignoring the carbon footprint of such activities, can the heat alone be sufficient to affect the atmosphere on a global scale?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-02-01T16:31:06.807Z
Yes, it does cause some warming. The important thing that both sides never bring up is the fact that we won't be burning fossil fuels much longer. Burning stuff from the ground is so very very primitive. In about 50 years ... maybe a little more we won't be burning any fossil fuels. Why is everyone so worried about something that is on the brink of going away (burning fossil fuels). The damage we do over the next 50 years is very very very minor compared to all the benefits and progress of having energy.
slindsey3000
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-05-02T02:15:06.670Z
@slindsey3000 You may call me selfish, but I'm worried because the damage we do over the next 50 years coincides almost perfectly with my remaining lifespan.
kingledion
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-08-03T11:54:55.707Z
A brief, but clear and rigorous (and, I suppose, original and unknown), mathematical deduction concerning global warming caused by the thermal energy-to-mechanical conversion plants also referred to as "heat engines" (e.g., automobile heat engines, steam and/or gas turbine plants) is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8195660.
The importance of this brief note is due to arriving at a function of time that expresses the relationship between the contributions of a heat engine to global warming due to CO2 and dissipation from second principle of thermodynamics, respectively.
In this rega
Giacomo Lorenzoni
<atmosphere><climate-change><thermodynamics><radiative-transfer>
How does anthropogenic heating affect global warming?
Gimelist
# How does anthropogenic heating affect global warming?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-12-14)

Anthropogenic-sourced greenhouse gases are commonly cited as the main source for human-caused climate change. However, something that I never see discussed is the actual heat produced by human activities. It could be that it's negligible, but I'm still curious to see quantitative data.

For example, a running engine in a vehicle produces $\ce{CO2}$ due to fuel combustion, but the engine also produces heat. What about heat produced from ovens, fireplaces, incandescent lighting, etc.? Ignoring the carbon footprint of such activities, can the heat alone be sufficient to affect the atmosphere on a global scale?

**Tags:** atmosphere, climate-change, thermodynamics, radiative-transfer

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Yes, it does cause some warming. The important thing that both sides never bring up is the fact that we won't be burning fossil fuels much longer. Burning stuff from the ground is so very very primitive. In about 50 years ... maybe a little more we won't be burning any fossil fuels. Why is everyone so worried about something that is on the brink of going away (burning fossil fuels). The damage we do over the next 50 years is very very very minor compared to all the benefits and progress of having energy.  
> **username_2**: @username_1 You may call me selfish, but I'm worried because the damage we do over the next 50 years coincides almost perfectly with my remaining lifespan.  
> **username_3**: A brief, but clear and rigorous (and, I suppose, original and unknown), mathematical deduction concerning global warming caused by the thermal energy-to-mechanical conversion plants also referred to as "heat engines" (e.g., automobile heat engines, steam and/or gas turbine plants) is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8195660. The importance of this brief note is due to arriving at a function of time that expresses the relationship between the contributions of a heat engine to global warming due to CO2 and dissipation from second principle of thermodynamics, respectively. In this rega  

---

## 3 answers

### Answer by username_5 on 2014-12-14. Score: 15

Disclamer: I am not an atmospheric or climate scientist; corrections are welcome if I have anything wrong.

## Human heat production

According to the [IEA](http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/key-world-energy-statistics-2014.html), world primary energy consumption in 2012 was 13370 million tons of oil equivalent, which works out to being $5.6 \times 10^{20}$ Joules. Averaged over a year, this equates to $17.8\,\mathrm{TW}$. Wind, solar, etc., are a negligible part of this, but it does include a small but noticable amount of hydro and biomass. Strictly speaking, all of the hydro and some of the biomass should be excluded as they are simply a short-term "reuse" of energy that has already arrived from the sun, and not "new energy". Let us use the figure above but treat it as an upper bound.

The area of the earth is $5.1 \times 10^{14}\, \mathrm{m^2}$(source: Wolfram Alpha), which means that the figure above comes out to $0.033\,\mathrm{Wm^{-2}}$, a comfortingly close match to the figure given in the literature in Sabre Tooth's answer.

## Energy from the sun

According to the Wikipedia page "[Earth's energy budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget)", average solar insolation on the surface of the earth, taking into account day and night, summer and winter, is around $240\,\mathrm{Wm^{-2}}$. The figure that we should use is higher than this, as some is absorbed in the atmosphere and contributes to warming, but let us treat this as a lower bound. Multiplying by the surface area of the planet gives us an incoming energy flux of $1.22 \times 10^{17} \, \mathrm{W}$, or 122 petawatts.

## Comparisons

Total human heat production, then, is in the order of 0.01% of the energy from space, and as such one might consider it negligible. By contrast, the total energy imbalance that results in global warming - *including* any effect from anthropogenic heating - is [estimated](http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_16/) to be approx 300 TW, or 20 times the total anthropogenic heat output.

(As an aside: Initially when writing this I thought "human fuel use is 5% of the planet's energy imbalance - that's significant!". But of course the greenhouse effect results in an imbalance that is a *proportion* of the total radiated energy, and human energy makes an insignificant difference to that total radiated energy.)

> **Comments:**
> **username_6**: It is very small but, what is its perturbing effect? Local scale unequal heating, however, small may cause big weather and climate effects. I can think of the Lorenz's " butterfly effect".  

---

### Answer by username_4 on 2014-12-15. Score: 13

Basically, we can ignore the heat we release compared to the effect of the $\ce{CO2}$ we release. To be more specific:

Heat we release has only a temporary effect because heat is radiating out to space. In fact you can get an idea of how long it takes for newly released heat to radiate away by checking how quickly temperatures drop when the sun sets. It's fast.

The heat we released a year ago is gone. In fact, probably the heat we released yesterday is basically gone. There's no cumulative impact. The extra heat we release now is effectively decaying exponentially in time as the system tries to get to its equilibrium, and its half-life is pretty short. However, that equilibrium it is trying to reach is determined in large part by the $\ce{CO2}$ concentration.

Our release of $\ce{CO2}$ is cumulative. The $\ce{CO2}$ we released 10 years ago is still having an impact on current $\ce{CO2}$ levels, and will continue to have an impact for many, many years. The $\ce{CO2}$ we release now is being added to this.

If we turn off industry, our impact due to heat released will be gone within days or weeks at most. Our impact due to $\ce{CO2}$ released will take much longer than a human lifespan.


---

### Answer by username_7 on 2022-10-07. Score: -2

I published some research results on the anthropogenic heat's impact on the warming, it seems the waste heat is the dominating contributor of the warming we have seen so far, it increased the temperature of surface air, land surface and ocean surface and simultaneously raise the sea level, providing strong scientific support from thermodynamic point view.

1. Global Warming Thermodynamics, <https://www.scirp.org/(S(351jmbntvnsjt1aadkposzje))/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=118741>.
2. Waste heat: the dominating root cause of current global warming, <https://environmentalsystemsresearch.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40068-020-00169-2>.
3. The Nature of Climate Change-Equivalent Climate Change Model’s Application in Decoding the Root Cause of Global Warming. International Journal of Environment and Climate Change, 9, 801-822. <https://doi.org/10.9734/ijecc/2019/v9i1230160>

> **Comments:**
> **username_8**: Just a note to readers: "published" tends to carry a suggestion of heavily peer reviewed and critiqued.  These are self published, so something Quinghan username_7 wrote and called it publishing.  So it's to take with a grain of salt.  And while I tend to be fair bit of a skeptic advocate and often encourage independent questioning, it looks from the writing that it probably hasn't been subject to heavy refinement or constructive challenge  
> **username_8**: (beyond the writing refinement, conclusions such as the indicating that taking apart temp-CO2 data into carefully selected year groups [of varying size] suggests "no definitive correlation exists" between temp and CO2 because some of the subgroups lack high R^2 seem poor to me.  Note the changing scale [looking at Fig 1 in the SCIRP writing].  It's like concluding major rainfall can't be the real cause of traffic slowdowns because on days its lightly drizzling traffic is mostly consistent and the minor variations aren't explained by slight rainfall differences))  
> **username_8**: But regardless, this isn't the medium for debate on the credibility of your paper. If you have found valid results, I believe they'd typically be able to make headway in journals (there can certainly be issues of pride & inertia sometimes in the process, but as someone quite entirely independent from the research world on these topics, or really any financial or reputation gains at all in all atmospheric sciences as of this point... I can't see a great conspiracy or such, so the onus is on you to go to the criticism and overcome it to real publication).  
> **username_8**: So I raise points not to enter some big debate point by point whatsoever... but to just to show some representative concerns to others, so to encourage them not automatically  trust such papers, as it's just your writings, plus citing sources predominantly of a few others who have similarly faced little critique and self published.  So posting them as if they are just normal journal article references and saying things like 'they provide strong scientific support...' comes across a bit manipulative/particularly biased.  

---

