I actually like to sometimes discuss this stuff in a non-politics form. An Al Gore centric discussion is boring. Pointing out that you are, in fact, surrounded by thousands of contained chemical fires is more useful than crying about funny men in funny suits and arguing over whether or not you think we need more trees, less oil, and global independence, or whatever politics is involved.

It was relevant to the discussion at hand, anyway. Al Gore is not; he drives a Hummer, which is not a bicycle. George W. Bush rides mountain bikes, he can be relevant from time to time.

Though, aside and off-topic, I'm amused a sci fi writer got to this. I've made the argument a few times on slashdot. I've also made the argument that things like solar power will inevitably lead to the increased retention of solar energy on this planet, and its conversion directly into waste heat (all mechanical energy is eventually lost as heat, otherwise we would have perpetual motion; things that move eventually grind to a halt from friction with air/surfaces, converting their momentum to heat, which covers the part of the energy used to do actual work rather than converted directly to heat). I make no assertions as to quantity; solar energy may indeed release less energy into the system than stored chemical energy, either in fossil (long-term, releases ancient CO2) or biofuel (short-term, releases freshly collected CO2 and collected solar energy) form, although I suspect fresh bio-storage will have limiting factors attached to it and would eventually become food for animals and thus release as heat anyway.

Anyway, short version, I take things way too deep and look at every part of the system at once. My previous explanation for this was always that I can simulate the entire universe in my head (it's not difficult, really); but recently I just shrug and tell people I play Go, and let them wonder how the hell that's relevant to anything (it is).

You really don't want to park your bike right next to a camp fire, let alone off the exhaust port of a small furnace. It seems silly to me that refrigerators, ovens, and home generators aren't on a switched vent, where the cooling exhaust (stoves have an exhaust port, and refrigerators have a huge passive radiator on the back; generators have a water pump radiator driven cooling system with a fan if they're in danger of overheating) is pumped out of the house in the summer, and circulated in the ventilation system in the winter. All of these things are massive heat sources, and it would make sense to me to use the generator as a contributor to your electricity usage and heating in the winter time, supplementing both. What the heck do you do with gas furnace exhaust? You pump it outside! You may as well do the exact same thing (burn stuff and heat-sink it to the ventilation system), but try to use the lost waste heat for something... like powering a dynamo?

These things are all hot!