Simply asking “does it affect the environment” is not enough here.
Leaking, say, 1pJ of thermal energy to the surroundings in a slightly different manner in the two cases technically affects the surroundings quite significantly—thermal motion in a gas is chaotic after all—but in practice we would tend to call this minimal[1] effects on the environment.
Simply asking “does it affect the environment” is not enough here.
Leaking, say, 1pJ of thermal energy to the surroundings in a slightly different manner in the two cases technically affects the surroundings quite significantly—thermal motion in a gas is chaotic after all—but in practice we would tend to call this minimal[1] effects on the environment.
Assuming a human-livable environment at least. Obviously this might be different if e.g. your environment is all at 2 picoKelvin or somesuch.