If we invest billions in green energy and put up thousands of square miles of black panels that give off radiant heat couldn't that significantly cause more warming, not to mention the energy required to even make them?
As far as any albedo effects from solar panels, the entire USA only occupies a little over 2% of the worlds surface, if you painted the USA black, it would have a minimal effect on globally averaged temperatures. The mining of the resources alone required to cover the entire USA with solar panels would devastate the planets ecosystem. . .
I highly doubt it because they don't trap heat like carbon gas does in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels are literally destroying this planet and could eventually be it's demise it we don't accelerate it's elimination. If we could make the clock turn back to the early 20th century and focused on harnessing the sun and wind instead of burning fossil fuel as a means of transport and energy, we wouldn't even be talking about global warming or air pollutants that contribute to global health every year. The only thing the black panels to is create a darker surface but not much different than natural colors like dark dirt, dark green grass etc.
Essentially, solar panels are 'warming neutral'. They absorb energy that would otherwise have heated whatever was behind them, thus have a local cooling effect. This is balanced by the generation of heat when the electricity is used to power, say, a hoover, TV, computer etc, also from 'transmission losses' through the national grid network. Good answers from Claire and Linlyons, bizarre answer from Jim! Tomcat may have a point though...
apparently okorder / <== this is a more lighthearted link. so the problem is not, what color stuff is. the problem is, how much energy can the planet lose? as far as the solar panel, consider, if that same amount of energy fell on the roof, some would be reflected and some would be absorbed. if it falls on a solar panel, some of the energy will get converted to electricity. so there will be less that needs to be radiated and lost. therefore, when they're working, solar panels, even though they're black, produce cooling.
Claire's argument doesn't make much sense to me either. First; Claire is talking about the second law ('you can only lose or break even'), not the third law ('you can't get to absolute zero'). Easily confused, but not that important! Putting a solar panel down _can_ increase the heat absorbed by Earth. Everything has an 'albedo' (the proportion of incoming light it reflects), and Earth's average albedo is about 0.3 (ie 30% of incoming light is reflected, most of which leaves the atmosphere straight away). By putting a 0.05 albedo solar panel down on a 0.3 albedo surface, you increase the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by Earth and therefore contribute to warming. This heat is re-radiated at the Earth's temperature, in the right wavelength range to be absorbed by greenhouse gases too. If you put a panel down on equatorial ocean, or a black roof, however, there is pretty much no effect (since the albedo change is small). Also, the heating effect only lasts as long as the panel is there. Most panels are estimated to last 50 years, meanwhile CO2 has a mean lifetime of 00+ years. I did some maths and found that the 00 year averaged change in radiative forcing for solar panels was negative compared to the UK electric grid, because the reduction in CO2 emissions has a larger effect than the change in albedo. If I have spare time tomorrow I'll redo the calculations and share them. The albedo change has to be considered though!
