Their model: Put all of those solar panels in Northern Africa!!!
In this extreme scenario, yes, their are possible impacts. Since, such an extreme scenario is unlikely to happen, this is only an intellectual exercise.
Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01117-5
This is how you develop a model. Ask if there are effects in extremis. If not, easy answer. If there are, you figure out how to measure them and then deploy that metric on the hard stuff.
It's just as ridiculous and removed from reality as the claim that tidal energy isn't sustainable and would tidally lock Earth to the Moon in 1000 years that someone published [1].
Spherical cows for the publish-or-perish paper mill that's modern academia is what it is.
So in theory, solar power could affect the climate by itself, but it practice it won't.
But a model that shows that if you change something in this part of the world, it's going to affect rainfall in these other parts of the world, is still very interesting and potentially useful. It could help reduce desertification.
You’re using theoretical physics as your basis for criticising academia?
However, it seems like their model just shows a modest-ish heat island effect? It's not clear that the change in the albedo from even covering 50% of the Sahara in PV panels is much worse than the likely effects of climate change under the typical +2 degree C climate model?
Saharan sand has some not obvious from the outset effects on global climatic patterns (it's worth a look into).
More than 60 percent of the 1.5 billion tons of mineral-rich dust present in the earth's atmosphere comes from the Sahara. Individual dust clouds can reach a size of 500,000 square kilometers, an area equivalent to that of Spain. As these dust particles are only airborne for a short while, it's difficult to analyze the full extent of their impact.
How would a significant chunk of area under PV panelling ...
* survive abrasive desert conditions,
* alter local wind | sand movement patterns,
* affect other parts of the globe that until now had saharan sand as an input.
The first link when I did a search for “Sahara fertilizes Amazon”: https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2015/02/26/wat...
Where I work: https://www.bluedotchange.com/science
The Americas could generate 100% of energy needed from <0.25% of land in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Chihuahua, and Atacama.
And even that wouldn't make sense - because there's so many other places to generate solar, transmission is expensive, and you want your generation decentralized due to weather and many other reasons.
Why would China buy solar from Sahara when they have the solar radiation to get it domestically from Southwest Tibet?
Why would you want a majority of your power generation in one easy to attack location?
A big surface area of solar panel is much less dense in terms of power generation per square feet. So you would need a lot of ordinance to meaningfully decrease its output (except at transformer points, but that’s like in any grid).
That's very charitable. Made up crises for renewable energy are demonstrably astroturfed by fossil fuel companies.
Even if just theoretical ones. And the inevitable drones of people commenting on those stories how horrible EVs are.
(Even though ICEs are roughly 100x more likely to catch on fire in a crash).
It's hard to not see a certain % of that as pure astroturfing, indeed.
I'd loved to have been a fly on the wall of the meetings where how much money to spend on reducing ignition risk was dickered out.
Sure, it's a bit annoying for the fire fighters who turn up 20 minutes later... but I think even they would rather arrive to find a burning car if it means the people who were in that car are safely watching from a distance.
Pity about the apartment building that burns down around them, eh?