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Mordisquitostoday at 2:18 PM2 repliesview on HN

Only as a technicality. If you find a geothermal hotspot and start to extract energy from it, the hotspot will eventually cool down faster than if you hadn't (which of course depends on the size of the hotspot and how much heat you're pulling out).

However, given that there's no downsides to cooling down a hotspot other than, well, no longer being able to extract energy from it, geothermal is a bit of an honorary "renewable".

Actual renewables ultimately all come down to recent[0] solar energy, which will never deplete their source however much they are used. All the energy in wind, hydroelectric and biofuels has recently originated in the Sun.

[0] I say "recently" because fossil fuels are all also derived from the Sun, but their rate of regeneration is a bit too slow compared to the speed at which we use them.


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seanmcdirmidtoday at 3:59 PM

A lot of hydroelectric depends on snow pack and glacier runoff that is being adversely affected by global warming. Solar and wind are the only robust hedges against a warm up that might ultimately severely curtail river flow.

We have a lot of uranium and nuclear is fairly renewable at least in the span of a few centuries. The waste issue is a problem.

KellyCriteriontoday at 3:24 PM

If it goes down, what happens to all the buildings using geo/earth heat with these probe heads to collect the energy?

Does this effect occur in lets say 10-20 years or is this longterm like 50y+?

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