> is combined with oxygen to form carbon dioxide
Isn't that some mass will be get converted to energy while burning? So the weight of the resultant CO2 will be less than the fuel burnt.
Isn't that some mass will be get converted to energy while burning? So the weight of the resultant CO2 will be less than the fuel burnt.
The only way to reduce the mass of the Earth (including the atmosphere) is to beam the energy to space, for example using the energy using a giant laser pointed to the sky. A simple solution is to wait until the heat of the atmosphere makes some radiation that escape to space.
Anyway, even if all the energy we produce escapes, it's extremely small, so you can ignore it for all practical purposes.
But it's worse, because the Sun send heat to the Earth. So you have energy going out that decreases the mass of the Earth, and you have energy going in that increases the mass of the Earth. The average temperature of Earth is increasing, so inbound energy/mass is wining.
But it's more complicated because hydrogen and helium in the top of the atmosphere is blow away by solar wind, and solar wind brings some new hydrogen. My guess is that the mass of this exchange is much bigger than the mass of the exchange of energy, but I'm not sure.
[1] Modern books of special relativity don't like to say that the mass increase, because there are some technical problems. If there is no physicist nearby, it's a good approximation.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...
> In 2019 TES was 606 EJ and final consumption was 418 EJ, 69% of TES.
It looks like 75% of it is from fossil fuels. In a power plant that produces electricity, the output is less than a half of the heat produced by the oil/coal/gas. So 606 * .75 * 2 that is like 1000 EJ. In a simplified world, all that energy becomes heat that escape to space after a while.
To get the mass, you must divide it by c^2 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1000+ExaJoule%2Fc%5E2 and the result is 1200kg (24000 pounds) per year. That's like launching to deep space an elephant per year or a small car per month.
The total mass of the Earth is approximately 6×10^24 kg. So per year we are "launching" 2×10^-21 of the mass of the Earth, that is impossible to notice.
Fake Edit: I just noticed that I forgot to include the heat produced by natural radioactivity that is higher than the energy we use. It's probably also a small number compared to the mass of the Earth, but it's left as an exercise for the reader.
Fun napkin math but probably wouldn't make my list of top 10 concerns for humanity.