Lotto said:
And do you think the work is meant to be, for example, (physical) work done on Earth by humans in power stations , or is it to be work done on Earth that is similar to work I do on a body when a push it and transfer it? This is the problem, I don't know how to understand the work. What do you think?
doesn't really matter who what does the work - a running jumping horse, a tree growing higher, a human made mechanical machine, ..
Make or post some assumptions and conditions. See post #2,
@kuruman is one way of going about it.
condition - planet remains habitable
assumption - question --> would the earth be habitable during an ice? would the earth remain habitable if it grows hotter and the polar ice caps melt? How hot/how cold? From where should we start - ice age/hotter earth/ now? Does it make a difference?
condition - same climate for future generations.
assumption - a steady state earth where the temperature if the earth remains constant, implying
condtion - energy in = energy out [ plus energy storage ]
You might want to adjust conditions/assumptions better - I just wrote these down perhaps too quickly. Think about them before accepting as fact.
Assumption -if you would like to concentrate on how much work humans can extract, then
Scenario - Cave man - no mechanical systems
Does the cave man lifting a rock higher to make a 'rock wall home' change the temperature of the earth?
Scenario - mechanical systems - cave man has progressed into a highly technological society.
A machine lifts the rock. Does the lifting of the rock change the temperature of the earth? Does it matter where the machine received its energy from - ie direct solar, hydro-electric, fission power plant, fusion power plant, hydrocarbon power plant( ie wood, coal, vegetable oil )
Scenario - sun is blocked off
One simplification is to use only fussion power plants to supply earth's energy needs, with the sun's energy reflected away from the earth.
Another is to block off the direct sunlight to earth, but then capture the sun's energy with some kind of solar array and beam that down to solar energy plants.
PS
Do we really have to go through all that mumbo-jumbo, or is there a more direct approach.