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Notes
(And back-room workshop.)

Note  1   
Note  2    Are Environmentalists Just Plain Pig-Ignorant About Nuclear?
Note  3    How BIG is Global Warming's heat compared to man's fossil fuel and electricity heats?

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Note 1:  The amount of energy trapped by photosynthesis each year is immense, approximately 100 terawatts, which is about six times larger than the power consumption of human civilization.  - - Wikipedia, Photosynthesis.

 

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Note  2:  Environmentalism's Harm.  Are Environmentalists Just Plain Pig-Ignorant About Nuclear?

An inconvenient truth for the "willfully blind" antinuclear environmentalists: 
Nuclear electricity produces less than 1% of fossil fuel's carbon dioxide.

Vattenfall, the Swedish energy company, produces electricity from Nuclear, Hydro, Coal, Gas, Solar Cell, Peat, and Wind energy and has produced accredited Environment Product Declarations for all these processes.  Vattenfall finds that, averaged over the entire lifecycle of their Nuclear Plant including Uranium mining, milling, enrichment, plant construction, operating, decommissioning and waste disposal, the total amount of CO2 emitted per KW-Hr of electricity produced is 3.3 grams per KW-Hr of produced power.  Vattenfall measures its CO2 output from Natural Gas to be 400 grams per KW-Hr and from Coal to be 700 grams per KW-Hr.  Thus nuclear power generated by Vattenfall emits less than one hundredth the CO2 of Fossil-Fuel based generation. In fact, Vattenfall finds its Nuclear Plants to emit less CO2 over their lifecycle than even green energy production mechanisms such as Hydro, Wind, Solar, and Biomass.  
GHG Emissions from Electric Supply Technologies DanielWeisser.pdf

GAS ATTACK! by Santos' CE David Knox (Australia).      

"One thing I would note about advocates of nuclear is that they often ignore natural gas and its role in power generation. Often, they gloss over the existence of gas and simplistically abbreviate the debate to one of ‘if renewables fail, then we have to go nuclear’ as was reported in last week’s Advertiser. Gas already delivers close to 70% of the carbon intensity reduction that a shift from coal to nuclear would achieve in eastern Australia, but at far less expense and with none of the sociopolitical challenges. In short, the real competitor to nuclear power in Australia will be natural gas."

Response by professor Barry Brook in 'Brave New Climate.'  "Consider the greenhouse gas intensities. From the recent meta-analysis in Energy by D. Weisser (2007). These include upstream and downstream emissions, so are more conservative than the optimistic figures Knox gives for gas in his talk, which only considers operating stage emissions (aside: these are zero for nuclear):

Coal                                     = 950 to 1,250 kg CO2eq / MWh
Combined Cycle Gas Turbine = 440 to 780 kg CO2eq / MWh
Nuclear                                = 3 to 24 kg CO2eq / MWh

Australia’s cumulative yearly GHG emissions from the electricity sector would be 17 times greater than if we went for nuclear (88 Mt vs. 5 Mt)."

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Back-room workshop. - Located on the web site to access reference items stored within the web site.

Note  3:  How BIG is Global Warming's heat compared to man's fossil fuel and electricity heats?

How BIG is Global Warming's heat
compared to man's fossil fuel and electricity heats?

Quad: This unit is used by the U.S. Department of Energy in discussing world and national energy budgets.  A Quad is a unit of energy equal to 1015 (a short-scale quadrillion) BTU,   or 1.055 × 1018 joules (1.055 ExaJoules or EJ) in SI units.  As you can see, a Quad and an ExaJoule are pretty darn close to the same thing. 
A quadrillion is 10^15 of anything.  A petaWatt (pW) is also 10^15 watts.  Mtoe however, is "Megaton of oil equivalent" used by people who think in barrels of oil.  The 72 year old U.S. educated electrical/electronics engineer author thinks in BTU, Watts, and pounds.

Global Warming's additional annual heat in Quads:  (From "A Plan for Our Planet." Part 1.)  Since the earth has 120 * 10^12 square meters of surface, and Global Warming adds an extra 2.4 watts per square meter (the maximum net anthropogenic component), this extra 2.4 watt imbalance comes to a constant net gain of 288 trillion (1012) watts of heat, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Diagram from Wikipedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun 
 

In one second that's 288 * 10^12 watt-seconds    or Joules. 
In one hour that's 288 * 10^12 watt-hours.                                        At 3.41 watt-hours per BTU, that's        84.5 * 10^12 BTU.
In one day that's    24 * 288 watt-hours  or 6,912 * 10^12 watt-hours.  At 3.41 watt-hours per BTU, that's    2,026   * 10^12 BTU.
In one year that's 365 * 6,912   or 2,522,880 * 10^12 watt-hours.        At 3.41 watt-hours per BTU, that's 740,000   * 10^12 BTU    or 740 * 10^15 BTU    or 740 Quads.
Since the end of WWII (1945) that's an extra heat accumulation of 48,100 Quads.

World's annual fossil fuel heat in Quads (From U.S. EIA's: World Energy Consumption .xls ):  2006 total Coal (128) + Gas (108) + Oil (172) Quads = 408 Quads.

The U.S. uses about a of about 100 Quads of energy annually.

 

 Would 10,000 Nuclear Power Plants Cook the Planet?. pdf   Are they cooking the books?

The world electricity numbers don't agree with the amount of coal, Oil, and Gas being burned.  (Right) From a 2009 IEA report.
Gas, Oil, and Coal electricity add up to 68% of 19,711 TWh or 13,403 TWh.
(This HAS to be Trillion KiloWatt hours or 13.4 * 10^15 watt-hours.)

13.4 * 10^15 watt-hours / 3.41 watt-hours per BTU = 3.93 * 10^15 BTUs or 3.93 Quads of electricity heat energy.
Since it takes about 3 watts of heat to make 1 watt of electricity, power stations would need about 12 Quads of heat. 
So, where the heck are the other 116 Quads (from the 128 Quads above) of coal's heat going? 

Several sites on the web say 88% of all coal is used to make electricity.  Where am I screwing up?

 

http://www.indexmundi.com/world/electricity_production.html  quotes the CIA Factbook with units being Trillion KiloWatt hours.

http://www.convertworld.com/en/energy/Quad.html  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun

The global primary energy production in 2004 was 446 quad, equivalent to 471 EJ. [2]

 

1 Joule-second = 1 Watt, 1J = 1 Watt-second.
Here’s another, simple way to look at it. Have a look at this page on Wikipedia on solar energy, in particular, this table:
Yearly Solar fluxes & Human Energy Consumption
Solar 3,850,000 EJ
Wind 2,250 EJ
Biomass 3,000 EJ
Primary energy use (2005) 487 EJ
Electricity (2005) 56.7 EJ

Primary (thermal) annual energy use by humans in 2005 was ~500 exajoules (EJ; see here for explanation of this and other energy terms), compared to 3.85 million EJ received from the sun. What if we quadrupled this thermal energy production by the year 2100, to 2,000 EJ/year? We would then be producing the equivalent of 0.05 % of the solar energy input.

 

 

Energy Units and Conversions

by Dennis Silverman
U. C. Irvine, Physics and Astronomy
 

Energy Units and Conversions

1 Joule (J) is the MKS unit of energy, equal to the force of one Newton acting through one meter.
1 Watt is the power of a Joule of energy per second
 

Power = Current x Voltage (P = I V)
1 Watt is the power from a current of 1 Ampere flowing through 1 Volt.
1 kilowatt is a thousand Watts.
1 kilowatt-hour is the energy of one kilowatt power flowing for one hour. (E = P t).
1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) = 3.6 x 106  J = 3.6 million Joules

1 calorie of heat is the amount needed to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Centigrade.
1 calorie (cal) = 4.184 J
(The Calories in food ratings are actually kilocalories.)

A BTU (British Thermal Unit) is the amount of heat necessary to raise one pound of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit (F).
1 British Thermal Unit (BTU) = 1055 J (The Mechanical Equivalent of Heat Relation)
1 BTU = 252 cal  = 1.055 kJ
1 Quad = 1015 BTU  (World energy usage is about 300 Quads/year, US is about 100 Quads/year in 1996.)
1 therm = 100,000 BTU
1,000 kWh = 3.41 million BTU
 

Power Conversion

1 horsepower (hp) = 745.7 watts

Gas Volume to Energy Conversion

One thousand cubic feet of gas (Mcf) -> 1.027 million BTU = 1.083 billion J = 301 kWh
One therm = 100,000 BTU = 105.5 MJ = 29.3 kWh
1 Mcf -> 10.27 therms

Energy Content of Fuels

Coal                         25  million BTU/ton
Crude Oil                 5.6 million BTU/barrel
Oil                         5.78 million BTU/barrel = 1700 kWh / barrel
Gasoline                   5.6 million BTU/barrel (a barrel is 42 gallons) = 1.33 therms / gallon
Natural gas liquids    4.2 million BTU/barrel
Natural gas                      1030 BTU/cubic foot
Wood                       20 million BTU/cord

 

CO2 Pollution of Fossil Fuels

Pounds of CO2 per billion BTU of energy::
Coal            208,000 pounds
Oil               164,000 pounds
Natural Gas 117,000 pounds

Ratios of CO2 pollution:
Oil / Natural Gas = 1.40
Coal / Natural Gas = 1.78

Pounds of CO2 per 1,000 kWh, at 100% efficiency:
Coal             709 pounds
Oil                559 pounds
Natural Gas  399 pounds