The Role of Enthalpy of Reaction in the Process of Global Warming: What Can We Learn from Basic Thermodynamics*

Abstract

An increase of carbon dioxide content accompanied by an increase of the temperature is observed in the atmosphere during the last 200 years. This behaviour can be explained by examination of correlations between tree generally accepted data sets of the recent past, world population, carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere, and rise of global temperature as function of time. No return to climate situations from hundred thousand of years before present is necessary. The world climate is a dynamic equilibrium between all energy generating processes on earth, especially sun energy, and the radiation of energy into space. Since approx. 200 years the dynamic equilibrium is changed additionally by means of fossil energy carriers, whose depots were put on in passed geological epochs, a climatic disturbance was produced. It is shown that the consumption of energy per year by the mankind can warm up the atmosphere by about one degree. This quantity cannot be neglected in climatic calculations; therefore it is the cause of mankind made warming of the atmosphere. The qualitative analyses presented here have shown that the use of so-called renewable energy sources does not necessarily lead to the avoidance of global warming. It can be expected that some techniques will have no or even small effect. Especially the model calculations to the operation of wind turbines and its influence on the temperature of the atmosphere show that it is difficult to estimate their influence and cannot be foreknown.