Every day 800,000 tonnes of fossil fuels are burned plus God knows how much wood. Is the earth getting lighter

Question

Is the earth getting that much lighter every day, as well as that much hotter?

Do the first two responders say that when 800,000 tonnes of solid feul burn, the smoke weighs 800,000 tonnes?

Many thanks to all for your informative answers, esp Mike and Keulenee. I esp like eggman's observation about the accumulation of cosmic dust (something else again, what?).
Thanks Serenity and Feel Good (F.G: I think your apprehensions are justified, at least as far as life on earth is concerned).

Answer 1

Every year the Earth picks up something like 4.7 million kilograms of cosmic dust so I think we are getting heavier.

The birth and death of people does not affect the net weight of Earth since people are made from the stuff that was already here to begin with, and their mass stays here when they die.

Answer 2

Technically, weight is dependent on mass of an object, and the amount of gravity acting on it. In relation to itself, the Earth has substantial mass, but gravity acting on itself in all directions opposing each other makes it, in essence, weightless in relation to itself.

In relation to the Sun, however, the Earth's mass in the Sun's gravitational pull is what keeps it in orbit. When trees or fuels are burned, they don't just dissappear into heat and light energy. The fire you see and heat you feel is the bonds of molecules being broken and the energy that was holding them together is being released. The free molecules then usually become gases, like smoke and ash, but there is just as much mass cumulatively. (So basically, if you could find the mass of a log, then burn it and trap all the smoke and ash, you would end up with the same mass, just not the energy holding it together.) So the Earth always keeps the same mass, and therefore, weight.

You're right that it is getting hotter because of this though, because those gases change the atmosphere and interrupt the balance, but the Earth doesn't get lighter for it.

Answer 3

The amount of air we breathe is small in terms of its mass weight but 800,000 "tonnes" (assuming this is metric tons = 2204.62 pounds) of just nothing but this same air we breathe is only a volume block less than one sixth of a cubic mile in size (= about .65 of a cubic kilometer). So if all fossil fuels burned every day in the whole world are just 800,000 tonnes in weight it equals the weight of just the air itself in a miniscule dot on the world map.

Much, much less than this for cosmic dust at 4.7 Kgs.

The mass weight of ordinary air all by itself is not often taken into account and it is quite substantial. One can readily see that it works very well when it comes to making the blades of a wind turbine rotate as wind moving at a certain velocity over the earth's landscape.

Answer 4

No. All the waste products of combustion are simply going into the atmosphere, which contributes to the collected weight of the Earth. Besides, plants and bacteria and other growing things pick up those "waste" products and put them back into the soil and oceans. Admittedly, the rate at which they are doing so is not enough to keep up, so the Earth is indeed getting hotter and smoggier. =P

Actually, the Earth *is* getting lighter, in point of fact. Little wisps of atmosphere are shed into space all the time. But don't worry -- it's constantly being replaced by outgassing from Earth's core and mantel. Old Terra Firma will stay pretty firma for a while to come. =)

Answer 5

Since a molecule of CO2 weighs 44/12 = 3.6 times heavier than a carbon atom, the smoke from fossil combustion is 3-4 times heavier than the fuel, but taking oxygen from the atmosphere.

All reactions are chemical, so the amount of mass converted into energy through the process is tiny, so one can assume the balance of matter is being preserved.

So fossil combustion makes the earth lighter, and the atmosphere 'heavier'. But the amount of buried sunshine lost and converted into greenhouse gasses is dwarfed by the amount of biomass produced by the earth every year, taking sunshine & oxygen from the atmosphere and converting it into biomass through photosynthesis.

Answer 6

Nope, but we're doing something really bad, that's actually so bad we actually couldn't possibly know the full extent of how bad it is. It goes beyond polluting the air.

Answer 7

every day there are 400,000 children born, and 320,000 people die, the increase in population offsets the weight balance in burning fossil fuels

Answer 8

No. The elements are only changed state