While your statement is theoretically true, your reasoning in any practical or measurable sense is in fact wrong. An increase in the sun’s size of 12.4 ft when the sun’s diameter is 864,900 mi is like saying one grain of salt added to the water of an olympic-sized swimming pool will make it measurably salty. It’s a silly premise, especially when you know that the earth’s orbit around the sun varies by over 3,000,000 miles each year!
And while the total energy of a very small increase of the sun is impressive, our earth’s share of that increase of radiant energy is in fact immeasurable in any relevant human timeframe. Since 1978, scientists have been tracking this using sensors on satellites, which tell us that there has been no upward trend in the amount of solar energy reaching our planet .
It is interesting to me that your own numbers are disproving what you are writing. That 864,900 mile Sun diameter is the key. That means the new area each year is: new Area facing Earth = 1/2 X 4 Pi X newRadius squared minus 1/2 X 4 Pi X oldRadius squared, where the radius changed by 6.2 feet. Small radius change, but a huge radius squared = a huge new area of radiation that will reach the Earth, which of course has been varying in distance from the Earth since Day 1, and anyway what does that have to do with the increasing heat from the Sun? That is the bogus NASA argument that due to the changing distance, the extra heat form the Sun each year just disappears into space, somehow missing Earth and so does not affect Earth! It sounds good until you think about it. That is like putting a giant radiant heater in a large space, then putting a tiny globe somewhere in the room, then moving that globe around to simulate the changing distance from the Sun, then measuring heat received by the tiny globe and finding that yes, it does get hotter if the giant heater radiates more heat, no matter where the tiny globe is in the space. Of course it gets hottest when it is closest, and less hot when it is farther away. Earth’s electromagnetic field helps block some of the Sun radiation, so at the times when that field has disappeared and changed poles, or become weak, the Earth received the most radiation.
I am sure that the extra heat from the extra surface area of the Sun is very had to measure, because there are so many other variables that confuse the issue. But over millions of years, it has gradually added heat to the Earth that is melting the ice, heating the oceans slowly, and extending the growing seasons in northern latitudes and creating deserts in southern latitudes. Eventually we will run out of places where food can be grown. By then it will be too late to create some type of radiation shield for Earth. NASA wants everyone to forget about the Sun influence and instead concentrate on sending spaceships to explore for other habitable planets. We could instead spend the research money to develop a fleet of satellites that orbit in synch with the sun, generating large electromagnetic fields that block some of the Sun radiation. The fields could be adjusted to maximize crop growth but still block the extra heat.
You have greatly exaggerated the increase in radiant energy from the sun impacting the earth as a result of a 12.4 ft increase in the sun’s radius. To keep it simple I have used a comparisons of disk size rather than spheres, the resulting comparisons will be the same. Here are the facts:
If the sun’s radius is increasing in size by 12.4 ft a year, it’s annual rate of growth is 0.0020667 and the total area of the sun’s disk, will grow every year by (0.0020667 x 588,170,974,972 = 5,619 sq mi.)
The total radiant energy output of the sun is approximately 3.86 x 10^26 watts EVERY SECOND. If we stick with the disk-to-disk comparison it would be like the radiated energy from a 3-ft diameter light striking a dot the size of this period ( . ) from a 10 ft distance. The earth receives a tiny fraction ( about 173,000 terawatts of solar energy PER DAY.)
Even if you considered the increase over many human lifetimes, it’s not a measurable difference.
Your theories are a sharp contrast to the laws of physics. The only way a larger spherical surface area radiating heat energy changes the amount of energy impinging on a fixed point is by virtue of the radiating surface becoming flatter. To do that the growth would have to be many times more than the paltry 5,619 sq miles annual surface growth of the sun. It would be eons before it made a difference.
You assume that the Sun acts like a spherical surface. Not true. It has huge sun spots that spew spears of energy far into space, so far that the Sun might as well have a flat surface, as far as Earth is concerned. So it will be eons before it makes a difference? Right, it HAS been eons and it IS starting to make a big difference, NOW! If you can keep on believing what you have been fed, that will allow you to sleep much better. For me, I stay awake a lot of nights.
Sunspots and solar flaring may cause intermittent communications problems on earth and relatively innocuous heating in the upper areas of earth’s atmosphere. It’s more a magnetic phenomena than a radiant heat thing. It’s nowhere close to be a heating problem and has been going through 11-year cycles for as long as we’ve observed it.
I think you are looking at solar events that have been going on for billions of years and assuming their effects are subject to either cumulative or sudden gyrations that will affect humans within the next 100 years or so. Nothing could be further from the truth and common sense should suggest to anyone with a room-temperature IQ that our solar system dynamics, in terms of providing a bio-friendly environment, are about as stable as any place in the known universe.
The threat to our planet is coming from the “intelligent” life that inhabits our planet. It’s a case of fouling our own nest. I suggest to you that losing sleep over extraterrestrial threats to life on earth is a waste of time.
What? The Sun is NOT stable. It is the most unstable, chaotic object in the Solar System! Solar flares spew millions of miles into space and eject particles that reach Earth almost every day. To minimize the effects of the Sun is asking for trouble, equivalent to an ostrich burying its head in the sand.
As stars go, our sun is about as stable as it gets and has been since our earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. From the illustration below you can see that we still have over a billion years of stable performance before we are roasted like chickens on a spit. I suggest you don’t worry about it now, give it at least another billion years, THEN it’ll be time to worry.
Why do we see so many stories about how inconvenient it is to drive an EV on long-distance trips when the following facts exist?
A. Only 2% of trips taken by cars are over 50 miles.
B. Over 98% of trips taken by automobile are less than 50 miles.
C. 65% of US car owners have access to more than one vehicle. If they own an EV they likely also own a gas car. The choice is simple; “take the gas car on long trips!”
D. If their only car is an EV, “use public transportation for long trips!”
@billinin I am assuming those insurance estimates were for Las Vegas ?? Those are pretty incredible numbers. We have 4 cars on our policy, including a Tesla, and our total insurance cost is less than the price they quoted on the Tesla. Not sure what they used to get those numbers…
The Fox reporter’s first hand story is eye opening in that the manufacturer’s own estimates for mileage per charge was off considerably for each driving segment.
Additionally how many people will want to park their car overnight and go from 38 to 15 miles left? That is a battery loss of over 50% by presumably sitting in the cold.
@billinin
We all like watching news stories that reinforce our beliefs. But it doesn’t hurt to use a little eyewash from the real world once in a while.
Here’s what people in the real world pay for car insurance, I just copied it from my latest insurance statement:
Oct 18, 2023 - Apr 18, 2024
I watched the video, I didn’t make it. I saw the Fox reporter park a Tesla he rented one evening at a hotel it had 38 miles of charge on it. When he came out in the morning it had 15. He didn’t report what he heard someone else say about the car he reported his personal experience with a video.
The fib WAS the story. Why, if you wanted an objective anecdotal story to inform your listening audience, would you choose to base it on an 808-mile trip by an inexperienced EV driver in a rental car? The answer is simple, FOX NEWS wanted to make the EV look bad. And they wanted to please their FOX NEWS listeners.
If they really wanted to inform the audience about EVs they would have done something like a story of an EV owner’s typical day using and EV and talk about the pro’s and con’s of that experience.
You already know that 98% of trips taken by car in the US are less than 50 miles and that EVs take a relatively long time to charge. It appears you have a bad case of EV envy.
