how does the collection of solar energy effect the environment?

Question

anonymous · Answer

Can you be more specific?

What is collecting the energy? How is the collected energy being used? What aspects of the environment are we talking about?

anonymous · Answer

The earth has a protective atmosphere. The sun releases photons ranges across a wide spectrum. Some of these are extremely harmful to life. Our atmosphere scatters much of this due to the geometry of air molecules. You may have heard of something called the albedo effect. I would point you towards this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo. It is a rather crude law that tells us how much of the suns light is reflected back. What solar energy that does make it through to our environment causes many things to happen. It provides energy for plant life, and kinetic energy for the motion of the winds. In short we require solar energy but only a specific amount (that which our atmosphere allows in). If you had a different question in mind please state it.