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>would also cook the planet in a toaster oven. That energy is normally converted to heat anyways so it's not like it's that much hotter. Solar panels are going
by MertsA 10y ago
>would also cook the planet in a toaster oven.
That energy is normally converted to heat anyways so it's not like it's that much hotter. Solar panels are going to absorb more light than vegetation would but either way, it's not a huge difference one way or another.
- SapphireSun 10y agoI think a lot of energy gets either bounced into space (desert) or turned into a weird thing like a protein or complex structure which takes away some of the heat by storing it in chemical bonds. Deserts are where you'd put solar panels and i'd gather that vegetation is pretty efficient with absorbed energy. There's a good chance it'd be net positive for heat.
- labster 10y agoIt's the former; most energy is returned to space. Not that much energy is stored in biological systems on the macro scale -- heat waves cause wildfire, not the reverse. Besides, to keep homeostasis or anything resembling it, energy in needs to roughly equal energy out. Also vegetation is pretty terrible with absorbed energy efficiency. I mean, for goodness sake's it's green, the color right in the peak of the Sun's spectrum. That means the best wavelengths are all reflected. This is a feature, as it really helps quite a bit with keeping albedo higher, even in dark forests, for the purposes of preventing runaway global warming.
- fpoling 10y agoThe leafs are green because it improves over all efficiency of photosynthesis across spectrum, http://m.pcp.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/4/684.full http://m.pcp.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/4/684.full