Cooling the Earth with Solar Power

It won't. You would have to cover most of the continents for solar collectors to change enough solar energy to electrical energy to have any affect. The electrical energy in turn would be for the most part converted back to heat so little total solar heat would be lost. It is a knee jerk prediction just like the assumption that global warming is bad. It isn't necessarily bad for the earth as a whole. While it may have detrimental effects for some, it will have major benefits for many. The net effect may well be a positive for the earth.

I'll bet Belius doesn't live on the beach!.

How can you just destroy energy ? Sooner or latter it all degrades into heat. So I doubt that converting solar energy to electrical energy is going to make any difference at all. All we can do is divert the incident solar power back into space with mirrors to avoid its effects on earth ! This can be done better by avoiding the build up of green house gasses. Unfortunately it is more difficult to reign in the greed of businesses than to build thousands of square kilometers of mirrors.

"...burning of fossil fuels introduces many harmful pollutants ... solar energy is completely non-polluting".

Aaargh! Not this old chestnut again! Don't get me wrong, solar power is an excellent source of energy, but manufacture of the devices to capture it is not "non-polluting", especially in the case of photovoltaics. And as for causing the Earth to cool, I am surprised to see such blatant disregard for the laws of thermodynamics aired under an .edu address...

Actually, the original author (Eric Brown) doesn't say the part about causing the earth to cool (in quite that way). The blogger does. The original article talks about potential environmental disruption from changing temperature and humidity patterns near large solar arrays. Disruption that could be as significant as another ice age (which has more to do with weather and ocean currents than conversion of solar energy). Somehow, the blogger twisted this statement into solar collectors "cooling the earth."

Congratulations for your Idea. Earth is a very big multi-mode cluster which receives and emittes continuous energy. When the emitted energy is smaller then received (during a long time), the Earth's temperature increases.

Obvious engineering solution is the energy consummation/absorbtion on the Earth's surface.

In my program "Global Science Engineering" (started in 2005 year), your Idea is a distinct sub-point concerning stopping of increasing of Earth's temperature (please see www.adslexpres.ro/soma ).

Iulian Somacescu

Creator of scince

Giant mirrors to cool the Earth

One obvious way to get rid of the excess solar energy would be to build giant mirrors in the deserts, for example to pave some 50 x 300 Km of Death Valley desert with a fused silica mirror to return the solar energy to space. Another option would be to fill the Death Valley with sea water conducted by tunnel ducts, because that valley is a depression. The same is the case in Israel, where a lot of territory is under the sea level.

But the best way of all is to increase the surfaces occupied by forests. The carbon period some hundreds million years ago was the response of Mother Nature for a severe increase in carbon dioxide in atmosphere, and planting billions of trees all over the world should be our response. But please do plant fruit trees, there is no reason not planting fruit trees everywhere, in cities and country, along the highways etc. All youngsters should enjoy the adventure of planting trees. We have been planting fruit trees in public forests for fun, its very easy.

Jaime Soto Figueroa

http://www.matharts.com

The ONLY long-term energy "stealing" solar system out there is photosynthesis which mearly stores it away as chemical bonds in plants. This same storage also packs away the C02 that everyone praddles on about all the time. (Seems to me that growing more plants is the solution to a lot of problems here!)

Perhaps a balance of sorts between chlorophyl and silicone based solar capture would be stable?

Please excuse me, my web page is http://www.matharts.cl, not " *.com ", I dindnt want to usurp otherts rights. Thank you

Jaime Soto Figueroa

http://www.matharts.cl

Consider all of the heat sinks on this earth; black asphalt roads, buildings in cities, and everything made darker in an unnatural way by man. I don't think you could create enough solar panels to offset these heat sinks worldwide. As a last resort, just for starters,why not create white roads and buildings just to try to decrease global warming.
Just try this with one city, and see if this makes a difference in that local environment. It seems that there are advantages and disadvantages to everything that man tries to accomplish or correct. I think it would be cool, if you could build enough solar panels to put our earth temperature in balance, however you must remember that the earth goes through it's own natural changes. Who among us has this knowledge to take on this massive undertaking?

"Energy can't be destroyed, just changes" :)

So to assume that change fotons for electrons will end up in a cooling sistem is an assumption that I do not think will happened.

When Electrons are used up in a closed circuit it changes his energy into movement and hot, or something else. This mechanical, optical or whatever energy will change to something else sonner or latter.

So we know the problem with fossil Energy. But what could happen if a "change" a foton energy for Electron energy?

One major endeavour of humanity is to plant billions of trees all over the world. Imagine if instead of staying home watching TV, playing Playstation III or navigating long hours through Internet, some 500 Millions of people decided to plant just 5 trees every Sunday morning. One possibility would be to ask all churches and the Vatican to promote this obvious idea, that right after praying in Sunday morning all citizens go to all possible public open spaces to plant trees using the seeds customarily disposed as "thrash" in the kitchen, any seeds, just allow God to decide which of them will grow. Of course the wise way is to try seeds that are natural of each place, you may not plant bananas in Alaska, but if you plant what is already endemic of each zone you will succeed, for example instead of trying to plant elegant grass along the highways just fertilize and oxygenise the soil to stimulate natural grass, that is wise, to follow mother nature, not to oppose her.

Jaime Soto Figueroa

http://www.matharts.cl/

A nice idea, I support the sentiment. However, planting trees in public spaces could get you arrested in some places - I don't think my local park keepers would like it!

I read a story of a shepherd who spent his days collecting acorns (in between tending the sheep and an activity to be revealed) and his evenings sorting and soaking them. He set himself a target of planting 50 acorns every day, and met this. He knew not all of them would germinate and not all that did would survive.

Locals thought him mad, because he did this in an area of Spain that was, to all intents and purposes, a desert. The villages had been abandoned as the water supplied failed. He started doing this between the wars (if I remember rightly). He continued pretty much unaffected by WW2 (1939 - 45 for the US contingent!) as he lived in such an inhospitable area. By the mid 60s, the mountains were covered with groves of young oaks, other trees had also moved in, along with animals and plants. The streams returned and the area is now fertile and populated again.

I have some issues of a science magazine published in the late 60s/early 70s that showed how black "growbags" could be used to forest the deserts of Africa, to some the relentless expansion of the Sahara. What a shame it was never used.

In some areas of China, each citizen by law must plant a certain number of trees every year. You should see the forests which are being created!

….planting trees in public spaces could get you arrested in some places…..

Good, now we have a challenge for rebel youngsters, one excellent way to combat bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are a kind of retarded persons, it seems that fixed salary and institutional protection destroys their neurons, here in Chile we really hate government bureaucracy, and you have given me an idea: To stimulate young rebels to express their rebellion by a ferocious gardening activity in public spaces. Here we have a lot of public spaces with no plants nor grass, and the idea is the most revolutionary possible, to plant fruit trees everywhere. Good, good, thanks, and here we have a enormous web network that allows to reach all those rebels almost instantly.

Jaime Soto Figueroa, from Chile

http://www.matharts.cl/

Good luck - as I said, check out the guerrila gardeners' website (see previous post). You've got me inspired now, I'll have to find out if there's one locally, or if I'll have to start one.

Any volunteers in North Lincs?

Is it a difference of the impact on the environment between solar termal power and photovolltaic?

Can the use of photovoltaic in our cities bring to a rise af the temperature instead of cooling the envrinonment? The photovoltaic panels are dark: can they contribute to the effect of heat island?

Please, help me to anwer the question.

No not at all.It will not cool the earth because the energy neither be created and nor destroyed but changes the forms.So Solar changes to Electrical power again the power is used to run machines , equipment of some efficiency not 100% efficient hence the loss will be in the form of Heat , energy will balance the heat release rate in the environment and atmosphere remains balanced.

H.D.Govilkar

Mumbai,India

When I wrote the original article I was being somewhat facetious and trying to stimulate discussion. Mission accomplished!

But cooling the earth with a giant sunshade in space per one of the blog postings is an interesting idea that was recently reviewed in some detail in The Economist.

The conclusion was that we could stop global warming with sunshades or with other technologies, but we would be playing a dangerous game because interrupting the earth's natural warming and cooling cycles has never been attempted.

Here is the link to the article and a few quotes:

http://www.economist.com/search/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8765930

"If man is inadvertently capable of heating the entire planet, surely it is not beyond his wit to cool it down as well? Although most climate scientists do not like to talk about it, cutting greenhouse-gas emissions is not, strictly speaking, the only way to solve the problem of climate change. Just as technology caused the problem, it might also be able to help reverse it. The use of planetary-scale engineering to counteract climate change is known as "geo-engineering".

And then there is the danger of unintended consequences. Climate change is arguably an experiment which mankind has unwittingly found itself performing on the planet. To start a second experiment in the hopes of counteracting the first would be risky, to put it mildly. "