We often talk about the climate impact based on greenhouse gases, but extracting fuel from the ground and using it in exothermal processes of course also releases energy as heat.
This is mostly¹ in contrast with renewables, which make use of energy that’s not long-term contained to begin with, so would end up as heat in our atmosphere anyways.
So, my question is: Does the amount of energy released by non-renewables have any notable impact on our global temperature? Or would it easily radiate into space, if we solved the greenhouse gas problem?
¹) In the case of solar, putting up black surfaces does mean that less sunlight gets reflected, so more heat ultimately gets trapped in our atmosphere. There’s probably other such cases, too.
The greenhouse gas “problem” is necessary to survive. If the greenhouse effect didn’t exist, neither would life as we know it.
The issue with combusting non-renewables is that that energy used to be sequestered away from the carbon cycle, effectively allowing for a balance without too much overall disruption (certain natural events notwithstanding).
So now, with all this stored away, not-part-of-the-carbon-cycle carbon being burned up, we’re adding more to the carbon cycle, disrupting it, and causing a new higher thermal equilibrium (which has yet to be reached due to geological time scales). Side note: water is a better greenhouse gas than methane or carbon, but it’s accounted for.
Because the greenhouse effect still exists, and we’re adding more greenhouse gasses, the greenhouse effect will not allow heat to transfer to space as easily.
With solar being “captured” by a black roof, that would be mostly negligible, as a portion of that energy will potentially radiate away during the capture process. However, with more greenhouse gasses being dumped into the atmosphere, that radiative cooling will become less viable as time goes on, as it too will stay largely captured.
We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, otherwise it’ll cause a runaway effect. That part might be too late.