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The world's fossil fuel companies risk wasting billions of dollars of investment by not taking global action to fight climate change seriously, according to the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Fatih Birol, who will take the top job at the IEA in September and is one of the world's most influential voices on energy, warned that companies making this mistake would also miss out on investment opportunities in clean energy.
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The World Bank and Bank of England have already warned of the serious risk climate action poses to trillions of dollars of fossil fuel investments and the G20 is investigating the risks. The think-tank Carbon Tracker has estimated that over $1tn (£0.6tn) of oil investments and $280bn of gas investments would be left uneconomic if the world's governments succeed in their pledge to limitglobal warming to 2C.
The warnings are based on policy proposals that are entirely creatures of human decisions rather than hard economic realities. Then again, all demand is ultimately the product of human decisions.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2015, @06:32PM
Thank you for the data, but I want to know how to calculate it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @04:25PM
You may be frustrated on this point, it's a rather more complicated problem than you're giving it credit for.
To start, most easy thermodynamic equations (like the Stefan–Boltzmann law) have underlying assumptions, such as:
* negligible internal resistance to heat transfer
* the system is already in thermal equilibrium or close to it
* the radiant exchange occurs evenly across the entire surface
which in the case of the moon are simply not valid.
If you're willing to do some research at a well-stocked library, check out the "Radiation Exchange Between Surfaces" chapter of Incropera and DeWitt's Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer. In my Fifth edition text (isbn 0-471-38650-2) it's chapter 13.
You can begin the analysis by figuring out the view factors between the sun and the moon, the Earth and the moon, and the Universe and the moon. Then pick likely radiant temperatures for the sun, earth, and the cosmic microwave background. You can likely convert the moon's albedo value into a reasonable approximation of its emissivity. Having all that, set up an equation where the sum of radiant exchange is zero, then solve for the Moon's equilibrium temperature.
What that will give you is the temperature the moon would be at if its entire volume were the same average temperature as its surface, which is not the case. It may actually be close, depending on the thermal resistance of the lunar bedrock; I don't know.
If you wanted to estimate the effect of the hot core, you'd also need an estimate of today's core lunar temperature and thermal resistance of lunar rock strata. Plug those values into an equation for steady-state heat transfer from the core of a sphere to its surface. (this is considered a one-dimensional steady state conduction problem, and covered in chapter three of Incropera and DeWitt). Using that you'd set the net thermal loss from the core to surface equal to the net radiant exchange between sun, earth, moon, and stars. Solving that equation should give a reasonable approximation of the Moon's average surface temperature.
Good luck!