Where does heat energy go? If heat energy comes from a fire and rises up will it not eventually dissipate into the atmosphere and be "destroyed"? My theory is that it's converted into a different kind, but what kind I am not sure.

This is basic thermal physics that so few non-scientists and even scientists understand.

Air molecules in contact with the fire's hot plasma absorb heat energy and become more buoyant, causing them to rise toward space at a speed determined by the temperature difference. Anybody who's seen a live atomic bomb blast on Earth knows how fast the mushroom cloud rises, taking vaporized cities along with all that heat toward space until it hits an invisible barrier called the tropopause caused by low pressure and frigid temperatures and forms a mushroom cap.

Newton's Law of Cooling - Wikipedia

What are the processes that determine the strange shape of a mushroom cloud after a nuclear, thermonuclear or major chemical explosion?

As the heated air rises, it expands against decreasing pressure, trading heat for work via adiabatic expansion and cooling down, resulting in the atmosphere's thermodynamic lapse rate of 18.8F/mi. (9.8C/km) temperature drop with altitude, dropping to -60C at the tropopause.

Adiabatic process - Wikipedia

Lapse rate - Wikipedia

This is a continual process. Each parcel of air rises and cools until it merges with previous air at the same temperature. Being now cooler than the air below it, parcels of air now descend, warming up by reversing the adiabatic expansion into adiabatic cooling until equlibrium is reached.

The catch is that each thermodynamic process increases entropy, dispersing some of the heat energy irreversibly into the Heat Death of the Universe. That's why an atomic bomb mushroom cloud seems to freeze in the air and doesn't come back down like a tornado.

If any of the original surface heat energy reaches the top of the atmosphere, which isn't likely, only the polar air molecules, namely, CO2, H2O, and CH4 can radiate photons. Since almost all air molecules are N2 (78%) and O2 (21%), only the trace components CO2 (0.04%), H2O (0%-30%?), and CH4 (0.0002%) release original solar energy back to space, but the catch is that it's not kinetic energy from collisions but Planck black body radiation from the surface whose photons they can absorb and reemit. This is the basis of the U.N. IPCC's CO2-driven global warming hoax.

Almost all coalesced (solid, liquid, plasma) objects are close to ideal black bodies, meaning that they absorb and emit photons at all wavelengths, meaning all energies. The Sun's and Earth's surfaces are the main black bodies in Earth's climate system. The black body power-wavelength curve is constrained by the Second Law of Thermodynamics AKA Entropy to increase entropy the most possible, resulting in a single power peak at a wavelength determined solely by its temperature T in Kelvins, inversely proportional, calculated by Wien's Displacement Law.

Here's a free online Wien's Law calculator. Just type in T and it will tell you the peak power wavelength, which covers most of the emitted photons.

Online Wien's Law Calculator

The Sun is a black body radiator at 5500C, whose maximum power wavelength is about 0.5 microns. Solar photons make it virtually untouched through Earth's atmosphere (unless blocked by clouds or aerosols) to Earth's surface, where those not reflected are almost all absorbed (except for selected wavelengths that are reflected, giving a rich texture of colors), raising the temperature of the surface molecules slowly based on their heat capacities (so many K temperature rise per absorbed Joule). Due to the distance and other factors, along with cooling processes of conduction/convection, evaporation, and continuous black body radiation, Earth surface temperatures normally stay within the range of -50C to +50C.

Here's a graph of incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of Earth's atmosphere. The global Marxist politician-run IPCC that's pushing the CO2-global warming narrative to frame CO2 emissions as evil in order to shut down the fossil fuel industry likes you to be wowed by the distinct absorption/scattering peak labeled carbon dioxide at 15 microns, which is the Planck black body maximum power wavelength for an object at -80C, colder than dry ice (-78.5C).

What they don't want you to notice is the huge well in the "Total Absorption and Scattering" panel that extends from 8 microns to 13 microns, outside the peaks for CO2, H20, and CH4, meaning that after solar radiation reaches Earth's surface and heats it up to a normal temperature range of -50C to +50C (12.986 microns to 8.967 microns), the resulting Planck black body radiation completely bypasses those gas molecules on its way back to the top of the atmosphere, making the very claim of "greenhouse gases" that trap surface radiation and heat the Earth's atmosphere or surface into moose hockey, because the lion's share of surface heat energy isn't touched by atmospheric gas molecules, and only the puny tails are absorbed, which, even if 100% of it was returned to the surface, couldn't reheat it one iota.

There is a small peak labeled "Oxygen and Ozone", but again the IPCC fails to mention that these molecules are absorbing and reradiating solar energy above the troposphere to form a protecting shield against solar flares, as revealed by the big oxygen/ozone peak at 0.2 microns.

Did I mention the Second Law of Thermodynamics? It prohibits any object from raising the temperature of a hotter object by any means including conduction, convection, and radiation. If you heat an iron rod to 2000C and touch it to a cold rod at 0C, conduction will cause the latter to slowly heat up to 2000C and never go higher. If you place the hot rod almost but not quite touching the cold rod, it will do ditto from Planck black body radiation, but never heat up higher than 2000C. Picture the cold rod's Planck black body radiation curves systematically going through all the temperatures from 0C to 2000C and staying there because the two rods are in thermal equilibrium.

Zonk! The IPCC's CO2-driven global warming hoax is based on claiming that puny 15 micron -80C photons can heat the Earth's surface to any temperature even above +50C depending on their intensity. In reality if the surface is already hotter than -80C, even -79C, the 15 micron photons would just bounce off harmlessly and eventually disperse via entropy without heating anything. IPCC RIP.

What really keeps the Earth from runaway warming? Solar radiation bastes the globe of the Earth in space like a turkey in a rotisserie with a point source heating unit, with the long long nights giving the surface plenty of time to cool back down before the next sunrise. The slowness of convection and the eventual frigid precipitation dropped by clouds from up high where the lapse rate goes below 0C keep Earth surface temperature within livable limits.

To scare you into bowing to their demands, the IPCC pushes the additional hoax that all solar photons must be returned to space to keep the Earth from runaway warming. Zonk! Most solar photons don't even heat the Earth's surface, and the surface black body photons are returned to space at the speed of light, but only after losing a bunch of energy to entropy dispersion, which the IPCC won't mention. Add additional energy loss to contacct/convection and evaporation/precipitation, and the IPCC's greenhouse gases won't hunt. There are in fact no such things as greenhouse gases, and the Earth's atmosphere acts as a chimney and blanket not a greenhouse.

No surprise that the IPCC octopus that controls academia doesn't teach thermal physics in a way to expose their hoaxes, with courses for physics students glossing over the all-important role of entropy to keep the Sun-Earth energy balance hoax going knowing that their lifetime incomes and dreams of total wealth and power are on the line.

In the past 30+ years since its founding, the IPCC has hijacked Earth atmospheric physics for political gain while creating the illegitimate bastard field of "climate science" that is just environmentalism activism with a scientific veneer. Ironically, only their highly oppressed independent scientific critics are really advancing their own field sans funding or platforms other than miserable soapboxes in the corners of the Web like Quora.

I cover all this in more detail in my Quora answer: What is the fate of most solar energy when it enters the Earth's atmosphere?

Here's my most elegant version of my killer disproof of the IPCC's CO2 greenhouse warming hoax using thermal physics, made so simple that even a 5th grader can understand it. Run it by your favorite IPCC scientists and watch them block you without trying to scientifically refute it because it exposes their dirty laundry and threatens their income.

Why Are Greenhouse Gas Theories Dead Wrong?

Here's my best contribution. Take my cool free online course that refounds Earth climate science from step one and exposes the IPCC lies along the way.

TLW's Climate Science 101 Course