Response to comments by John W. Russell on “Energy conservation in the Earth's crust and climate change”

Dear Dr. Rao,

We would like to thank the editor for the opportunity to respond to comments by John W. Russell concerning the paper (Mu, Y., and X. Mu. 2013. Energy conservation in the Earth's crust and climate change. J. Air Waste Manage. Assoc. 63:150–160).

As far as the result of present literature retrieval is concerned, there are many schools of thought concerning the reasons for climate change. In Hay et al. (2002), such hypotheses have been classified into 11 different descriptions. Although it has so far not been reported that huge exploitation of fossil energy caused insulation seals of the earth's crust to be damaged, the correlation between the increase of terrestrial heat flow and climate change is well documented.

The interior structure of the earth is like a huge flaming sphere with high temperature and pressure. Thermal conductivity of the coal and oil gas is the lowest in the earth's crust, which can be verified from the tomb's archeological study of the West Han Dynasty, named Mawangdui in Changsha. Aggregated rocks were not utilized in the Mawangdui Han Tomb, but the employment of the grease ingredient montmorillonite and the charcoal are used for seal purpose toward the grave, after 2100 more years, it is well preserved to tomb inside, associated with wooden coffin and the corpse, even including all the belongings, such as silk fabrics and the grain.

In addition, the coal and oil gas hold the property of efficient, everlasting thermal insulation. However, the earth's crust is composed of the rocks as solid jacket. These rocks include sedimentary rock, the granite, and the basalt, such rocks have more apparent thermal conductivity than fossil energy; the problem is they are short of the efficacy of thermal insulation. An example is the Peking Dingling Tomb of Ming Dynasty. The tomb's white marble and zebra-like rocks, which are six-layer, best quality, and the hardest, and are widely used for construction purposes, were unable to retain the completeness of the tomb owner, and as such the cadaver of Emperor Wanli has been decomposed in less than 400 years, only a dry skeleton remains there.

Life process of human body and all organisms must be conducted under particular temperature; however, subcutaneous adipose tissue underneath the epidermis has the better performance to thermal conductivity, and its own heating-conducting speed simply accounts for one in four compared with other tissues, it makes the heat within the organism less easy to transfer to skin surface and avoid its loss, all of these above are of great importance to keep the temperature not enough high even at low temperatures.

Oil gas, coal, and the fat CxHy matter of the hydrocarbon share the same function of the thermal insulation, thus oil gas and the coal can be compared with subcutaneous adipose tissue of the earth as a metaphor. Archeological instances, such as the tomb of West Han Dynasty, named Mawangdui in Changsha, have testified that oil gas and the coal possess the performance of efficient and enduring thermal conductivity. Thermal conductivity of the rocks is apparently higher than fossil energy; however, its effect of thermal conductivity cannot do better than fossil energy.

There must be the mechanism of thermal insulation supposed that the organism wants to live on the earth's surface (interior of the earth is more like the fireball). There is no doubt that oil gas and coal have the effect of thermal insulation from the perspective of physics. In accordance with the law of conservation of energy, fossil energy is the product of being acted by billions of years worth of high temperature and pressure in the earth's crust. High temperature stems from the earth's interior; therefore, the increase of terrestrial heat flow caused by huge exploitation of fossil energy, at all times equal heat that the quantum of being exploited fossil energy by human beings will flow back to the earth's surface (this is the law of conservation of energy). If excessive heat reaches the earth's surface from the earth's interior, this heat, without any doubt, will make the climate system answer. The gross of fossil energy having been exploited by our human being over the years corresponds to part of heats owing to the increase of terrestrial heat flow, after this part of excessive flow rate arrived on the surface of the earth, entered atmosphere layer, it will give rise to worldwide climate response. In regard to the loss of thermal insulation, massive amounts of evidence and reliable facts in our dissertation can back our own viewpoint (Gilichinsky et al., 1998; Haeberli et al., 1993; Lachenbruch et al., 1991; Pollack, 1991).

Finally, we would like to make repetition on the core content of this paper—as opinions of pathogenesis of climate change vary, but many solid evidences show that it is primary cause of global warming that because of industrialized exploitation activity of our human beings has damaged thermal insulation layer of crust interior, which makes the heat of the earth's interior excessively reach the earth's surface. On condition that our paper can be widely read, we are convinced that there must be more and more scholars to seek for irrefutable and incontrovertible, direct or indirect evidence.