Global Warming by Geothermal Heat from Fracking: Energy Industry’s Enthalpy Footprints

Abstract

Hypothetical dry adiabatic lapse rate (DALR) air expansion processes in atmosphere climate models that predict global warming cannot be the causal explanation of the experimentally observed mean lapse rate (approx.−6.5 K/km) in the troposphere. The DALR hypothesis violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. A corollary of the heat balance revision of climate model predictions is that increasing the atmospheric concentration of a weak molecular transducer, CO2, could only have a net cooling effect, if any, on the biosphere interface temperatures between the lithosphere and atmosphere. The greenhouse-gas hypothesis, moreover, does not withstand scientific scrutiny against the experimental data. The global map of temperature difference contours is heterogeneous with various hotspots localized within specific land areas. There are regional patches of significant increases in time-average temperature differences, (∆<T>) = 3 K+, in a ring around the arctic circle, with similar hotspots in Brazil, South Africa and Madagascar, a 2–3 K band across central Australia, SE Europe centred in Poland, southern China and the Philippines. These global-warming map hotspots coincide with the locations of the most intensive fracking operational regions of the shale gas industry. Regional global warming is caused by an increase in geothermal conductivity following hydraulic fracture operations. The mean lapse rate (d<T>/dz)z at the surface of the lithosphere will decrease slightly in the regions where these operations have enhanced heat transfer. Geothermal heat from induced seismic activity has caused an irreversible increase in enthalpy (H) input into the overall energy balance at these locations. Investigating global warming further, we report the energy industry’s enthalpy outputs from the heat generated by all fuel consumption. We also calculate a global electricity usage enthalpy output. The global warming index, <∆T-biosphere> since 1950, presently +0.875 K, first became non-zero in the early 1970’s around the same time as natural gas usage began and has increased linearly by 0.0175 K/year ever since. Le Chatelier’s principle, applied to the dissipation processes of the biosphere’s ΔH-contours and [CO2] concentrations, helps to explain the global warming statistics.