Questions on burning calories

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I have a punchbag and I've noticed that I can spend more time on it if I don't do anything exhausting beforehand, even if it doesn't involve the upper body. Makes sense, due to aerobic resistance and all that.

My other primarily aerobic exercise is the elliptical bike (no hands) with the occasional jogging.

My questions are:
Would I lower my calorie burn count if I did my two aerobic workouts 4+ hours apart instead of one immediately after the other?
Is it possible to compensate this efficiency loss with a small increase in time spent?
What is the minimum time one should spend on an aerobic exercise for it to do anything? I've heard 20 minutes.

I think it generally takes 20 minutes of aerobics to get your heart rate to its max - after that you want to keep it there for a while. I've heard 45 minutes in one stretch is effective.

I tend to think you'd burn more calories doing two halves of a workout back-to-back instead of 4+ hours apart, since you'd be starting the second half already with your heart rate up and would be reaping the benefits of the elevated heart rate for the entire time, instead of spending the first 20 minutes getting it back up to its max.

In any case you reap benefits from working out afterwards with an elevated metabolism and your heart rate coming down from its peak. I suspect you might get more overall benefit from splitting into two halves and not doing them back to back, but waiting less time than 4 hours in between.