|
Can global warming be a direct result of all the
oil we have removed, since oil I’m sure acts like
an insulation from the Earth's core temperature? |
Question Date: 2018-03-18 | | Answer 1:
In short, no. The energy imbalance of
the earth is estimated at +0.71 ± 0.10
W/m2 (positive indicating a net
gain).
Meanwhile, the mean heat flow through the crust
is approximately
0.092 W/m2 , or
roughly the uncertainty in the first measurement
(and an order of magnitude less than the total
imbalance). Even if all of that heat flow through
the surface was a result of the removal of an
insulating layer within the crust, the result
does not come anywhere close to the total
imbalance. In addition, oil does not form an
insulating layer within the crust. Oil does not
form a layer under the surface rock, and is not
even present in large underground oceans within
the crust. Rather, it
fills pores in the rock,
sort of like a sponge. This means that there
isn't really a "layer" of oil that could be
insulating.
Also, the
thermal conductivity of oil
(~0.12-0.13 W/(m-K)) is much lower than that
of the surrounding rock (various rocks from this
table, typically ~1+ W/(m-K)) . Thus, most of the
heat flow is through the surrounding rock already,
and removing the oil would not have much effect. A
further consideration is the fraction of the crust
which is/was made of oil. An estimate of the
total CO2 produced by humans and
industrialization (since 1751) is around
1.5*1012 tons. Due to the exchange
of hydrogen for oxygen/breaking of multiple
bonds/approximating as gasoline/etc. to go from
the hydrocarbons in oil to CO2, this
corresponds to roughly
3 x the mass of oil taken
out of the crust (so: mass of oil ~=
0.5*1012 tons). Compare that with the
estimated mass of the crust of
~3*1019
tons, and we see that the fraction of the
crust
that was oil is entirely insignificant.
| | Answer 2:
It has been estimated that humans have used
about one trillion barrels of oil since commercial
oil drilling began. A barrel of oil is defined as
42 gallons, or 0.16 cubic meters, so the total
volume of oil that has been consumed is
approximately 160 billion cubic meters, or 160
cubic kilometers (for comparison, the volume of
Lake Michigan is approximately 4,900 cubic
kilometers). If all the oil taken from the earth
were deposited on the earth’s surface, it would
make a layer of oil about 0.3 millimeters tall, or
about 20 billion times thinner than the radius of
the earth. If you were wearing a jacket that was
20 billion times thinner than you are wide, it
would be about the thickness of a single atom. So,
the influence of the insulation of the oil that
we have removed is negligible at changing the
temperature distribution within the earth.
| | Answer 3:
No. The Earth's core spreads heat
through conduction and convection, and oil does
not stop conduction and actually helps
convection.
Global warming is more likely due to the fact
that carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas in
the Earth's atmosphere. Sunlight is mostly
blue, green, and yellow, colors of light that can
pass through the atmosphere. When this light
reaches the Earth's surface and oceans, it is
absorbed and becomes heat. The Earth then radiates
that heat away in the form of infrared light, a
color too red for your eyes to see but is still a
color of light. Certain gasses, notably carbon
dioxide and water vapor, do not allow infrared to
pass through them. Thus, the infrared light
gets trapped inside of the atmosphere. As a
result, the earth is getting warmed up by the
sun but can't get rid of its energy as easily,
which means that the temperature goes up.
There are other possibilities for what might be
causing global warming, and some of them are
natural. It is likely for example that the sun
has become slightly brighter in the last hundred
and fifty years, and this would warm the Earth
up too because it means that there is more light
that gets absorbed in the first place. The effect
that humans are having that is warming up the
planet, however, comes from burning chemicals
that contain carbon (oil being one of them), which
releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
| | Answer 4:
It is the combustion of oil to produce
CO2 gas that causes global warming.
CO2 is a gas that does not allow
Infrared Radiation (IR) from the earth's surface
to go back into space. Instead CO2
molecules absorb the IR photons that are emitted
from the earth’s surface… and that warms the
atmosphere.
Heat from the INTERIOR of Earth does not warm
the atmosphere … the heat flowing from deep in
Earth is very, very, very small.
| | Answer 5:
Global warming comes from us burning the
oil and other fossil fuels in the earth, and from
burning wood. This Wikipedia
link gives 4 causes.
Here's an article about how hot the earth's core
is:
here
It doesn't say anything about global warming.
There're lots of rocky layers between
earth's hot core and us. Also, if oil removal
directly caused global warming, don't you think
the surface of the earth would be sinking down
from all the oil lost?
Click Here to return to the search form.
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright © 2020 The Regents of the University of California,
All Rights Reserved.
UCSB Terms of Use
|
|
|