Computation of direct warming of atmosphere by burning oil

[PatentLawyer]

What is wrong with this computation ?

(1) Mass of Earth's atmosphere is 5 x 10^18 Kg.

(2) The heat capacity of dry air, Cp, is 1 KJ/Kg-K

(3) BP states that the amount of fossil fuels burned worldwide in year 2008 was 11,295 million tons. Round that to 11 billion tons. (This may be wrong. It is 2 tons per person. That seems high.)

(4) The energy per ton of that fuel is 42 GJ per ton, ie, 42 billion J per ton.

(5) Items (3) and (4) indicate that the total energy liberated by burning that fuel is 11 x 10^9 tons x 42 x 10^9 J/ton = about 500 x 10^18 J.

(6) If you apply that result to items (1) and (2), you can conclude that the liberated energy could raise the temperature of the atmosphere by 1/10 degree K. Of course, in theory, some of the energy went into mechanical work.

Thus, by this reasoning, the mere heat released by burning fossil fuel, over 10 years, can by itself warm the atmosphere by 1 degree.

What is wrong with this computation ?

Thank you.

 

[JaredJames]

What is wrong with this computation ?

If you only consider the heating from fossil fuels as the sole input and no outputs, certainly it would raise the temperature.

In a real life calculation you can't ignore the losses.

2 tons per person doesn't seem that much. Consider how many people don't use fossil fuels and then how much coal we burn through only producing something like steel.