[Orange1998]

It's in a race with a firm in Australia to be the first to generate power commercially by boiling water on the rocks 3 miles underground.

This sounds very risky. If the center cools then what.

[mhx]

This sounds very risky. If the center cools then what.

Then we just pump some of that global warming down there to warm it back up.

[SauronOfMordor]

This sounds very risky. If the center cools then what.

You're kidding, right? The amount of heat energy down there is huge, and constantly being renewed from the radioactive elements in the core

[mamelukesabre]

The molten core solidifies, the earths magnetic field disappears, and we get bombarded by meteors, and compasses don’t work, no more northern lights or aurora Borealis.

Maybe. I’m only guessing.

[Double Tap]

You are kidding, right???

At three miles down they haven't even reached a quarter of the way through the crust, never mind the "Center". Technology doesn't exist to drill through the thinnest parts of the crust yet, so no worries of cooling the core.

[Moonman62]

I’m guessing you’re joking. But anyway, all that heat gets out one way or another. We’d just be speeding up some.

[TheLion]

"This sounds very risky. If the center cools then what."

The earth's core will cool off naturally before we could ever suck all the energy out.

[RightWhale]

If the center cools then what

The center is not cooling but warming. This would let the excess heat production do some useful work before it is radiated to outer space.

[FYREDEUS]

if it cooled enough to stop rotating the Earths magnetic field could fail and we’d get zapped by radiation from space...IF you believe Hollyweird.

The sheer VOLUME of the molten material involved makes that impossible - if you could dump all the worlds polar icecaps, glaciers, AND oceans down a geothehrmal hole it wouldnt be nearly enough to noticeably cool it off.

Even a ‘Motie’ civilization would be hard pressed to exhaust geothermal energy...don’t let neoLuddites scare you about it.