Solar panels in the Sahara sounded like a really good idea
So, a giant solar farm could generate ample energy to meet global demand and simultaneously turn one of the most hostile environments on Earth into a habitable oasis. Sounds perfect, right?
Not quite. In a recent study, we used an advanced Earth system model to closely examine how Saharan solar farms interact with the climate. Our model takes into account the complex feedbacks between the interacting spheres of the world’s climate – the atmosphere, the ocean, and the land and its ecosystems. It showed there could be unintended effects in remote parts of the land and ocean that offset any regional benefits over the Sahara itself.
Turning a large chunk of the Earth’s surface from practically white to practically black would do that, yeah. There’s no virtue exception to the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
Don’t worry Bill Gates and John F. Kerry have it all figured out. Soylent is green too.
Yes, and besides, those panels need to be washed because their efficiency goes down when covered with dust.
Whether it is etching, buildup, Earth cycles, or progressive performance, photovoltaic panels are a niche solution normalized by sociopolitical myth.
So the data says when the solar panel farm reaches a certain size in area … it basically acts the same as a large area of concrete and becomes detrimental to the environment.
Am I reading this right?
“Our model takes into account the complex feedbacks between the interacting spheres of the world’s climate – the atmosphere, the ocean, and the land and its ecosystems,” and of course climate models have a historically stellar record of faithfully simulating whatever manages to happen in real earthly life, right?
Hello?
Asphalt not concrete, worse than concrete. At least concrete would reflect some of the incoming sunlight (albedo). White is good for something after all?
Exactly om. Just like asphalt. A nice charcoal dark gray.
Remember Steven Chu, Obama’s Sec. of Energy from 2009 – 2013. Also a Nobel prize winner in physics. He said that much of the AGW threat could be reduced by choosing lighter colors for roofs and parking lots and the like. While some conservatives gave him and Obama a lot of sh_t over that, I’m guessing that Steven Chu did the calculation properly.
Cynic that I am, I reckon Steve Chu’s extended family were all set to corner the Titanium Dioxide (predominant pigment used in white paints) market if the plan grew legs.
We could solve ‘global warming’ by painting more things white around weather stations these clowns have stuck in urban heat islands for sure.
I’ve noticed an interesting trend in super yachts. My local billionaire has just got a new one and it’s parked in the marina down the road. It’s painted battleship grey. I saw this thing and did a double take. Hied myself off to DuckDuckGo and apparently this is the new fashionable colour for these yachts. Now yachts are usually painted white to reduce cooling costs, so am guessing that someone has come up with a high tech paint which reflects UV rather more than it does visible spectrum.
Funny comment about weather stations. I was shocked to learn that many of them are only required to be 50m (?) from big expanses of black parking lots or huge roofs. I believe that there are now the old low grade weather stations and a group of newer high grade ones.
Having said that, there was a report put out by NOAA near the end of the Obama admin. on ocean water warming. (Some think it is a leading indicator of air warming.) The then recently retired NOAA chief scientist shredded the report.
Just like the weather stations, NOAA has older low grade seawater temp. measurements and a newer high grade buoy based temp. measurement system. What did the report authors do? They fudged the the high grade data to match the low grade data, instead of vice versa.
Seems if “color” is the only problem that should be an easy fix. Can’t they change the color of these panels? It has to be more than color.
So that article is saying that solar energy causes global warming?
^^;
I’m with MJR on this one. The climate models have been so unerringly wrong, that the impulse is to immediately discount any conclusions based on them. Wattsupwiththat just had an article on how bad the models are. Even short term models. Well worth a read;
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/19/junk-grade-models-even-short-term-climate-and-weather-modelers-get-it-all-wrong/
jack, My word “color” suggests a trivialization of the issue. Should have said darkness? Most of the major PV (photovoltaic) solar panels expose the raw silicon crystal or polycrystalline surface to the sun, and it is pretty much black and can’t be painted without screwing it up. Roofs and parking lots can be painted.
There are also non silicon solar panels. The company First Solar makes thin film, cadmium telluride, solar panels. These are close to black too. They have much lower solar conversion efficiency but are much cheaper, and maybe last longer.
_______
J.J. I forgot the name, but it was Wattsupwiththat that had a great deal of info. on weather stations years ago.
Tommy Jay: ” J.J. I forgot the name, but it was Wattsupwiththat that had a great deal of info. on weather stations years ago.”
Yep, Anthony Watts is a meteorologist who pointed out the problems with the urban heat island affect on automated weather stations and the historical temperature record. It’s still a problem with the so-called average Earth temperature as reported by NOAA. The satellite temperatures are much more reliable, but only go back to 1979. The debate continues except that the Warmers have long worked to censor those who question their work.
You can’t do anything that extracts a large amount of power from the world without it changing the world. Actually you can’t do anything with any real idea what the total downstream changes will be. Chaos theory i.e. the butterfly effect.
I’ve followed “climate change” for a long time. It’s junk science. What is interesting is that NASA has noticed that the Sahara has slowly been shrinking because it’s greening along its southern edge. More CO2, more plants.
Math is so oppressive!
Paul in Boston,
Let’s cede them their argument; man affects the climate. Sure. One can easily get there, philosophically. A beaver dam changes the environment; number and type of local species (insects, minnows, tadpoles…) which impacts oxygen and carbon dioxide levels… An ant hill… A butterfly flapping its wings… So, sure. Whether humans locate a huge parking lot here, or there, or make it half as big, or twice as big affects albedo, heat retention, local species of plants and animals… So, no argument that humans impact climate. I agree with the Greens. So take that off the table. Don’t let them use the term “climate denier.” Agree with them.
And by agreeing with them you get them to concede that all living things impact the environment. If humans don’t build a subdivision in this spot, the local deer population may breed out of control and eliminate the local grasses, making the land barren, and, and, and… Stasis is impossible. Stasis of temperature, environment, species…
As you point out, plants love CO2. Don’t Greens call themselves green because they like plants? If you could build a time machine and give scientists the chance to go back before the industrial revolution and give them this choice: “OK, here’s the deal. Humans are going to start industrializing/terraforming at a scale heretofore unknown on the planet. That activity will impact temperature. That is inescapable. But here is a magic wand. You can go back in time and choose what that impact is; a lowering of temperature, or a raising of temperature.”
Every single scientist would choose higher temperatures. Life loves warm. And wet. That’s why we are seeing changes like you highlight at the edges of our deserts. June is bustin’ out all over!
And, regarding higher temperatures, even if one does one’s best to eliminate human impact from the models, we’ve been trending out of an ice age for tens of thousands of years now. And, humans adapt. Even worst case scenarios don’t show sea levels rising ten feet a year. We have time to adjust to whatever the trends are, and humans are very adaptable.
It’s amazing (and scary for our future) how much the lockdown mentality regarding disease reflects the Greens’ prescription for dealing with man made climate change. Shelter in place.
No one has ever succeeded sheltering in place. That’s not the human spirit. Nothing significant has ever happened from sheltering in place. Columbus did not shelter in place. Einstein did not shelter in place. Madame Curie did not shelter in place.
Folks who see the damage done by lockdowns need to be made aware of this comparison. We can already see the light at the end of the tunnel regarding industrialization. My neighborhood in Chicago is much cleaner today than it was when I was a kid. The air, the water, the dirt… All much, much cleaner. Smokestack scrubbers, landfill engineering, water purification, improved sanitation. All innovations made by people who refused to shelter in place.
Over and through; not backward!