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The time has finally come for geothermal energy

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160 points riordan | 3 comments | 17 Nov 25 13:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.593s | source
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rspoerri ◴[17 Nov 25 15:32 UTC] No.45954454[source]▶
at some point we will figure out that because we took some much energy out of earths core that it stops spinning and causes the magnetic field to collapse ;-)
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Retric ◴[17 Nov 25 15:35 UTC] No.45954492[source]▶
Not really how that works. Also earths core is being heated from nuclear decay and tidal effects. It’s getting 10’s or TW worth of heat until the sun expands and eats the earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_internal_heat_budget
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1. zdragnar ◴[17 Nov 25 16:18 UTC] No.45955007[source]▶
The world's total energy consumption (most of which is fossil fuels) is currently estimated at 620 exajoules, or 17TWh / year.

Assuming zero growth in energy consumption (hello AI), extracting even half of that seems like it would be consequential.

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2. Retric ◴[17 Nov 25 17:40 UTC] No.45955914[source]▶
10 TW * 1 year = 8,760 TWh / year. The current rate of energy production is ~42TW and slowly dropping over billions of years, so even after efficiency losses gathering 1% of what’s produced is several times current energy consumption.
3. dbeardsl ◴[17 Nov 25 19:27 UTC] No.45957182[source]▶
I believe this is off by 5 or 6 orders of magnitude.

Looks like it's more like 200,000Twh / Yr

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption