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At least once a week I hear the term "global warming" from the media. No one seem to have a definite clue on what may be causing it or if its a fact at all. Some people think it can be controlled by stopping the amount of carbon emissions...etc. Some think solar panels is one tool that can help solve the carbon emission problem. Questioning with an inexperienced non-scientific mind, if global warming really exist, can more solar panels be a contributor to it? Solar Panels are designed to collect/attract the sun rays and turn them into energy. Like a magnet drawing in not only rays but heat also. With enough solar panels scattered everywhere on the planet, that's a lot of heat being drawn to the planet that wasn't being drawn in before the creation of solar panels. The reason for this question, I think back as a kid with a magnifying glass in hand me an my friends used to set things on fire using the magnifying glass to collect the suns power/rays. With this in mind, I think of some solar panel farms in different locations and some that you can't get close to, because of the heat being generated. And I never heard of a "heat test" being done on the area around these solar panel farms, a test of the amount of heat being drawn in or a theory/test of the cumulative compounding affect of heat/rays being collected by so many solar panels.Anyone with a clue please chime in!
You're behind the times. The name global warming was replaced with climate change years ago. Climate change was replaced with climate disruption. What ever name you use people have come to see it as just the latest scam to fleece the taxpayer.
Australia has repealed their 'carbon taxes'. Several vested interests have been caught manipulating data to show warming where it was not.
Solar panels I would imagine a positive overall.
The same amount of solar energy hits a given spot on earth regardless of solar panels being there or not. Solar panels just capture a small amount of the energy and convert it to electricity. Otherwise, it is just converted all to heat.
Now, some types of solar systems take the energy and focus it from a wide area to a small one, in order to generate steam. In the local area (tower usually) where the energy is concentrated, it is much higher, but it is still not changing the total energy coming in to that area.
At least once a week I hear the term "global warming" from the media. No one seem to have a definite clue on what may be causing it or if its a fact at all.
Global Warming is a fact. Our planet has undergone many ice ages, and they could be called Global Cooling. The phenomenon which occurs between ice ages is Global Warming. The ongoing debate is
1) Is the present-day Global Warming caused by, or accelerated by, human activity.
2) If so, could changes in human activity cause a slowing of Global Warming.
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Solar Panels are designed to collect/attract the sun rays and turn them into energy.
Sunlight is one form of energy; electricity is another. Solar panels do collect sunlight energy but they don't attract it. It is coming at us every day, free of charge. Good thing, too, because most life forms depend on it.
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...I think back as a kid with a magnifying glass in hand me an my friends used to set things on fire using the magnifying glass to collect the suns power/rays.
The magnifier didn't collect the rays, it focused them into one intense spot.
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.... I think of some solar panel farms ... because of the heat being generated.
Solar panels don't generate heat. They generate electricity.
The Global Warming controversy (or call it Climate Change if you prefer) largely ignores the favorable consequences.
1) Large swaths of tundra in Canada and Russia will become arable land. That will help feed billions of undernourished people.
2) Ocean levels will rise; low-lying land will be submerged. That includes parts of Manhattan island, including Wall Street. Some people (me included) regard that as a Good Thing.
"It turns out Solar will be cheaper than coal for China very, very soon. SunTech estimates Solar will be cost competitive with coal power in China by 2016 and 2017 at the latest. This is in line with what people expect for Solar parity in the United States, given the cost of coal based power."
To answer the OPs primary question, solar panels work to reduce global warming, not increase it.
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Originally Posted by rmaster
Solar Panels are designed to collect/attract the sun rays and turn them into energy. Like a magnet drawing in not only rays but heat also. With enough solar panels scattered everywhere on the planet, that's a lot of heat being drawn to the planet that wasn't being drawn in before the creation of solar panels.
This is incorrect. Solar panels don't attract sunlight, they merely convert part of the sunlight that falls on them into another form of energy, electricity, that we can use.
Normally most of the sunlight that falls onto the earth is naturally converted into heat, which causes water to be vaporized, move around via winds, then fall as rain, etc. Then that heat radiates off into space. Sunlight is the primary energy source that makes our weather system work, with some assistance from the tidal forces caused by the moon's gravitational pull, and some heat energy from within the earth's core.
When the global atmospheric system is in balance, the amount of energy being radiated out into space balances the energy from the sun and the earth's core, and the global temperature remains constant, making for predictable weather patterns that we refer to as climate.
If the certain gasses build in the upper atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, methane, or fluorocarbons, they reflect more of the radiated heat back to earth, causing the overall temperature to rise. This is referred to as the "greenhouse effect."
The reason solar panels are considered good for the environment is that they generate electricity from the free sunlight, without generating any CO2 to go into the atmosphere to cause greenhouse warming. The sun's energy is converted into electricity, which we can use to do work, which changes it to heat energy, which radiates out to space.
That's somewhat simplified, but it is the reason so much attention is being given to increasing the amount of solar energy we use in place of fossil fuels, because it utilizes the sunlight naturally falling on the earth without any adverse impact on the climate.
Global whatever hysteria aside, solar panels only collect the sunlight that hits them, they don't pull it in, and even in collector arrays, they only use the sunlight hitting that specific spot.
Now, that said, the materials the panels are made from can be toxic. While most are made from silicon, those are usually only around 20% efficent based on the potential energy in the sunlight/energy conversion into usable electricity.
Using rare earth minerals or other toxic elements such as boron or germanium increase efficency to around 30%, but are so toxic that even cracking the cell could cause serious health problems or death to the people working around them.
Also, Battery technology which is vital to any alternative system where the power source (sun or wind) aren't constants also employs a lot of heavy metals such as lead, cyanide, arsenic, mercury, which are also very toxic and must be mined.
Battery life in these type systems is usually rated at about 5 years, and the toxics used must be contained and somehow disposed of when it can't be recycled and used again.
Alternative energy technology has a long way to go before it can be classified as "clean", but that said, with the exception of the smelting processes for the heavy metals, and the mining operations for raw materials which produce a lot of carbon emissions, the cells themselves don't really have any impact on the global temperature hysteria.
Although long term storage of wastes can have an impact on soil and water if there are leaks.
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