What happens to heat waste produced by energy generation? What happens to heat waste produced by energy generation on earth that must be there according to the laws of thermodynamics? So, it never dissipates and remains on earth?
 A: Take for example a conventional coal fired power plant as used widely in most countries.
About 40% of the energy from burning the coal is converted to electricity, and the remaining 60% is lost as heat to the environment.
The 40% of the energy that gets converted to heat is used by us consumers and eventually gets converted to heat and is lost as heat to the environment.
So all the energy used by burning coal (or gas, or from nuclear energy) eventually ends up in the environment, where it heats up the air/rivers/seas/whatever. However the amount of heat lost to the environment is small compared to the amount received from the Sun and generated inside the Earth.
A: The energy does not necessarily remain on earth. Earth maintains an energy balance with its surroundings. The sum of the energy reaching earth through radiation and the energy produced on earth must match the energy leaving earth through radiation. If the latter is too low, earth will warm up, thereby increasing its blackbody radiation and restoring the balance.
However, the energy production on earth (including the production in the core) is generally an extremely small term in this equation.
A: Ok so I have done a little reading and the thermosphere absorbs much of the heat coming in, however the mesosphere and thermosphere dont interact very much making it doubtful and of the heat produced on earth is emitted into space. Think of the earth as a closed room the heat we produce is absorbed by atoms closest to the source and dissipates the farther away you get. So you have a number of heat sources warming atoms and molecules the heat is absorbed and spread out till it reaches the average temp for a area, anything above this temp would be a heat source everything below would be a cooling source. Here is the issue in having if the earth is a enclosed space then everything that produces heat is warming the planet, the heat rises compressing the cold air above until it condensates and rains, but as of recently we have had less rain more heat, unusually less winds. The lack of air movement tells me that the air is hot all the way up during the summer time, what ends up happening os the rising heat warms the falling cold air to the point where they equalise stunting weather patterns diring the warm months, and the extra heat being produced during the winter rises rapidly resulting in more powerful storms.
A: The heat generated by combustion of fossil fuels is slowly building in the environment. Contrary to atmospheric degradation theories. We have gone from a half a million camp fires to burning billions of gallons of oil.
