We SO need a change in leadership.

Of course. And long before that happens the planet will get baked by the swelling sun. And it's going to run out regardless of whether we develop geothermal power or not.

Then prove me wrong mate.

We're not going to be taking heat out of the core. We're going to take a small amount of heat out of the shallow crust.

 

Me thinks Conroy must wear a tin foil helmet!

Icarus

 

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You know, now you've provided a citation and I just might invest another couple of minutes to have a look, but since you've already wasted 30 minutes, I'm not sure how much more time I can afford.

Think about this... had you provided your citations up front instead of telling people to do your work for you, then perhaps people might have been more receptive to your claims right from the get-go. It's kind of like Godiva said.. these are the rules of debate. When you make a claim, it's your job to substantiate it... instead of sending everyone else on a wild goose chase. If 50 people read your post, and each of them had to waste even 5 minutes looking up what you claim, then why shouldn't the onus be on you to save everybody that time and provide it up front so they could each use those 5 minutes getting educated to what you're claiming in the first place.

If for nothing else, it's polite. You seem to have trouble with that concept as well.

 

By the way, I'm curious what search words you used to get your results in 33 seconds.... I used your words (and combinations of) 'hole in magnetic field over South America U.S. satellite fried' and got an interesting mix of things, mostly about solar radiation and aurora borealis over the poles.

 

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Instead of oil, use coal. Oil is generally not used to produce electricity (there are notable exceptions) but coal, of course, is. I think only 3% of US power comes from oil, where as 52% comes from coal.

 

I bet the heat lost through mid-ocean ridges absolutely dwarfs what we'd be extracting each year.

 

How about this simple calculation? Our drills are typically 2 miles or less. The mantle and crust are 2000 miles of rock separating us from the core. So we only make a difference in the last 0.1% of the transmission. Now let us also assume we cover 1% of earth's surface with geothermal plants (1% may appear small, but it's more than half the area of US). We now can speed up the heat loss to a theoritical maximum of 1/100th of 0.1%. Whether the core heat will last for a 1000 years or 10 billion years that kind of change is immaterial.

I am very generous in the calculations here. That heat is going to be lost with or without geothermal plants. Rock is a bad conductor but if that heat has escaped 1998 miles of rock the last 2 miles is not going to stop it forever. Also hydrothermal vents, vulcanoes, hot springs, etc will release the heat lot faster than the geothermal plants.

But if it helps anybody sleep better here is a link which suggests most of the heat is from radioactive decay and should last for billions of years.

Probing Question: What heats the earth's core?

 

Clean coal:
University of North Dakota | UND Discovery: Issue 2

 

I don't have cites either. I studied this briefly in high school, and I'm not up on the latest research. Think of me as an interested observer with some maybe strange but interesting thoughts, for what they're worth.

Instead of Earth's core reversing direction, what happens if it just slows down? Or if the mantle slows down, relative to the core? Could the fluctuating magnetic field be caused by changes in the relative rotational speeds of the mantle, inner core, and outer core?

 

And how clean is the extraction and transportation of this product? Are there any rights violations involved? I would agrue there is not such thing as clean coal, not on any large scale usage.

 

We would have to start seriously reconsidering our reliance on electronics because an increase in solar wind's charged particles pressing on a weaker magnetosphere increases the likelyhood of geomagnetic storms thus crashing power grids.

Another unfortunate outcome of a weakening of the magnetosphere would be a possible loss of atmosphere because there is less magnetic field force able to deflect the solar wind. That would be bad. lol

I am not an astrophysicist so I could be wrong on this stuff. I just watch too many damn documentaries on the subject.