I have some bad news for you

[Gerbil Rebellion]

Solar panels are great at the moment on a small scale, but have you thought about the implications to the amount of reflection that will be caused when these things go into a large scale facility.
Fact; The suns energy is radiated through space and comes into contact with our little self sufficient planet. Most of this is reflected back into space, I don't
know the exact amount. What gets through goes through a process of refraction, reflection and absorbtion as it travels to the earth. When the light energy makes contact with the earth it goes through the same process but also heats the earth. If you have too many large scale solar panel installations the suns energy will never reach the earth, causing it to cool down, changing the ecosystem all the way down through the soil to the bedrock, furthermore it will also change the minerals that are percolated through the soil by rainwater. If I'm wrong about this please show me why?

[Centrillium]

Originally Posted by HydPhyll

If I'm wrong about this please show me why?

Any activity has environmental consequences, and if done on a large enough scale potentially serious environmental consequences. However, there is no need to be worried about the effects of solar energy.

First off, the resource of solar energy is incredibly large. The Earth receives a continuous 4 x 10^17 watts from the Sun - by comparison, human civilisation currently uses about 1.3 x 10^13 watts, so there are four orders of magnitude there even if we drew all of our power from the Sun. Our energy use is certainly going to grow in the future, but it will be a long time before it grows by four orders of magnitude! By that time we'll probably be putting solar panels in space.

I think you're right that covering an area with solar panels will cool the soil immediately beneath, since it will be in permanent shadow, but I don't think that's a serious problem. The total heat deposited in the Earth's ecosystem will be the same, all energy eventually ends up as heat anyway, as we know from thermodynamics.

[Gerbil Rebellion]

I am not worried about solar energy use, on a small scale I encourage it. I can see that you have an understanding of this subject and would like to ask you what the actual environmental manufacturing costs are for building these
solar panels, from the construction of the building they are manufactured in to the individual cost of a panel?

[Richard]

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...r+panels&meta=

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=

[datman]

I'm thinking of learning more about converting a home to solar. We have a metal roof (silver) if I put solar panals on it I don't think any more heat would be reflected than is already being reflected.

[Gerbil Rebellion]

The point isn't the individual, as I said I encourage small scale use. The same
pricnciple is prevelant if we have all the cars suddenly change that way, can you imaging the scale of all the cars changing to solar as well. It has to be a sensible mix of solar, wave and wind. Not specifically one large scale conversion.

Too many large scale wind farms 'could' cause an effect on the wind currents.

The same as the wave generators effecting tidal motion and current direction, we have evidence of shoreline shift from sea defences, the same 'could' be possible from too many large scale systems here.

So as I said its finding a balance.

We will never stop global warming and cooling or truly control it, the planet has its own natural cycles, we just have to find ways to minimise our effects. That way we may be able to concentrate on living for the future

Check out :
http://www.cnrs.fr/cw/en/pres/compress/mist030699.html

and

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Pre...ning/New_Data/

[Gerbil Rebellion]

Originally Posted by Centrillium

The total heat deposited in the Earth's ecosystem will be the same,

This is true but to refine my point its what will happen to the atmophere with all the extra heat it has reflected from the surface. That is a consideration for worry, just as they and we should worry about the long term effects of nuclear waste storage.

This is why its a balance and not mainly one, no matter how much more efficient it is for us or money making for business

[MarkuisMellvile]

Know much about convection, conduction and radiation HydPhyll? Think of the mixture of gases held around Earth by gravity as a kind of electric blanket. Does the bed only get warm becasue of the long wave infra red radiation being emitted from the pink furry fabric?

The global energy balance (as is clear from C's posts) is not affected to any significant degree by variations in human constructions.

Asking someone to agree that an infinite number of solar hot water collectors being installed will ultimately modify the surface temperature of the world we inhabit is pretty meaningless.

MM

[Gerbil Rebellion]

Thanks mm, if its irrelevant the effects of mass amounts of solar panels or to be more precise, photovoltaic cells, then again science is wrong, not just what is taught but the whole effects of other man made structures, lets call them hotspots. These hotspots effect everything in its local environment from the heat distribution locally on the planet to the natural cycles,weather, water, nutrients etc. When these are effected the 'local' areas ecosysytem (and I use the term loosely) goes through changes. Now as far as the conduction, convection and radiation properties around these areas and the thermal blanket we have in the atmosphere, does anyone know much about limnology? Basically its the study of water bodies, ie puddles, lakes, seas, oceans (mainly fresh water but principles are the same throughout). When any temperature change occurs in a small area it has the potential to effect the whole body of water. Now the atmospherwe is just another form of cyclical body that the patterns can be matched to those of a lake, sea or ocean. With this in mind you must now be able to see that anything causes an effect, even in a small area on the planet (like a solar farm, wind farm, city) if big enough locally can have a cascading effect to the environment as a whole. I am trrying to explain this as simply as I can, maybe too simply.

[MarkuisMellvile]

HydPhyll,

Your theory is similar in nature to Aubrey's in this thread.

You also neglected to acknowledge that the puddles and lakes you gave as examples are significantly smaller than the global atmosphere, if not completely finite.

The atmosphere exchanges heat with space, just as all bodies exchange heat with their surroundings, but there is very little correlation between the sun shining on a small puddle (we all know they evaporate quickly) and the sun's radiation impacting the atmosphere (we know it absorbs TeraWattHours of solar radiation annually and still surrounds us, warming and cooling slightly all the time).

As I said before, it is rather futile discussing the impacts of blanketing our planet in photovoltaics, wind turbines, solra thermal collectors or burying an infinite length of cooling loops to connect to heat pumps.

For starters, no-one could build that many solar collectors (photovoltaic or otherwise). The thousands of square metres that already exist are hardly altering our climate other than by the fossil-fuelled mining machinery to obtain silicone to make them. Simple enough?

MM