Abstract
Scrutiny and analysis of various energy applications show that the energy conversion to useful work or new products has been systematically inefficient. The global energy’s total effective conversion efficiency is estimated only about 20% and about 80% of the energy has been discharged into the environment. It is this energy that leads to the unbalance of the climate system’s energy budget balance and causes the global warming.
This article presents a simple equivalent climate change model to track the past global warming and to predict the future change trend at the global scale. The model comprises of an equivalent climate change surface air boundary layer, an equivalent climate change land surface boundary layer and an equivalent climate change seawaters surface boundary layer. It produces unique definitive relationships between the temperature changes and the heat entered the air, waters and land. The model can also be used to forecast future non-renewable energy consumption needed to keep the temperature rising under Paris Accord.
Analysis of currently available data by using this model confirms that temperature changes in air, seawaters and land closely correlate to the amount of heat discharged into the climate system from human activities. NASA and NOAA’s observations of temperature anomalies for the surface air, sea surface and land surface are well consistent with the temperature changes calculated by this model, especially the calculated results at the depth of 70 meters of the surface air boundary layer and NASA’s Lowess Smoothing trend are very close.
Flaring intensifies global warming. Reducing use of fossil fuels, nuclear and geothermal energies, developing surface renewable energies and increasing energy’s total effective conversion efficiency and thus reducing the amount of residual/waste energy are the paths to effectively and efficiently control global warming.