Will Geothermal over heat the world?

Question

i need to write an essay on how geothermal heating may take the heat out of the earths crust, or over heat the world we live in because of all these holes in the ground...im not asking someone to write it for me or anything, just your thoughts, but most helpful would be some links to sites that have info i could use, im having trouble finding any

Answer 1

Geothermal heating systems don't drill all the way down to the mantle or core (the hot parts of the planet). They typically only go down a few hundred feet where there's a fairly constant temperature (warmer than winter air temperature for heating and cooler than summer air temperature for cooling).

Hot rock geothermal electricity generation, however, drills somewhat deeper holes, but still not all the way down to the hot mantle areas.  This technology finds areas with hot rocks just a few km below the surface, drills into them, pumps water down, and then uses the rising steam to run a steam generator.  Since the heat released is used to power our modern lifestyles, it won't cause the planet to overheat.

Answer 2

Well...think of this.  More than 95% of the mass of the earth is hotter than 10,000 degrees.  Thankfully, all of it is beneath the thin shell or crust that covers the earth.  Earth is not a solid mass, but a continually shifting 'floating' group of shelves that float on this ball of lava.  The lava is held in it's oval shape by gravity.  When these shelves move and hit each other they build up pressure, which is abruptly released as an earthquake.

So far, we haven't had a big release of heat from the deep earth environment, not enough to overheat the world as you said.  Nobody can say for sure, but so far there is no reason to feel it would ever happen.  More and more new homes are using geothermal energy for their heating and cooling and apparently it works flawlessly in even the coldest climates.