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Re: population growth & physics ed



On Thu, 18 Jul 1996 09:23:19 -0400 (EDT) Michael N. Monce said:

Of course, silly me. The atmosphere does convect doesn't it.
Compared to solar radiation the number I got was small, but was none the
less impressive; a whole lot of joules being used by the internal
combustion engine. Thanks.

You are right, the number is impressive. While I think we need to be very
careful about drawing conclusions for our students, I do think it is
appropriate that we do try to give our students some perspective on the
problem. Not only do I compare fossil fuel supplies to incident solar energy,
but I also point out that if we were to try to replace fossil fuels with
biomass grown for the purpose,it would take roughly all our available US
cropland to do the job. This helps give them some feel for just how impressive
the amount of energy we use really is.

By the way, in addition to convection, you want to also consider radiation as
an energy transfer mechanism.