We often talk about the climate impact based on greenhouse gases, but extracting fuel from the ground and using it in exothermal processes of course also releases energy as heat.
This is mostly¹ in contrast with renewables, which make use of energy that’s not long-term contained to begin with, so would end up as heat in our atmosphere anyways.
So, my question is: Does the amount of energy released by non-renewables have any notable impact on our global temperature? Or would it easily radiate into space, if we solved the greenhouse gas problem?
¹) In the case of solar, putting up black surfaces does mean that less sunlight gets reflected, so more heat ultimately gets trapped in our atmosphere. There’s probably other such cases, too.
Yes, it’s negligible. Before considering atmospheric attenuation, every day something like 15,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Watts (15 Zettawatts) of the sun’s power reaches the earth. SOURCE
So enough power hits the earth in a second to power the human population’s activities for many months at a time.
You would think that’s enough to put into perspective how bad energy trapping atmospheric emissions are, but nope.