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Re:Scientists Design Solar Cell That Captures Nearly All Ene... by londons_explore on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @02:02PM (#14754894)
If humans really had "unlimited energy", we could air condition the entire world, and send the waste heat to space with large infrared (or even visible light) radiators.
Re:Scientists Design Solar Cell That Captures Nearly All Ene... by Zigurd on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @02:55PM (#14755421)
At some point potentially soon if you want really good economic growth you have to decouple economic growth from energy growth. That is a step more fundamental than decoupling energy growth from coal and oil.
Re:Scientists Design Solar Cell That Captures Nearly All Ene... by Thorncorona on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @02:22PM (#14755099)
Not really. Air conditioning is a heat displacement system, so you'd still have the same amount of heat. Using infrared radiators would just accelerate global warming since green house gases mainly absorb infrared light.

Visible light would probably be a hazard. Would be pretty great for "beam in the sky" special effects though.

Re:Scientists Design Solar Cell That Captures Nearly All Ene... by SubiculumCode on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @06:22PM (#14757190)
I think she was suggesting sending the exchanged heat into space..you know, up.
Re:Scientists Design Solar Cell That Captures Nearly All Ene... by pishpash on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:37AM (#14758753)
It's heat, you can't send it anywhere except by thermodynamic processes. You can't beam heat to space. A beam of infrared is not heat, it is high quality free energy.
Re:Scientists Design Solar Cell That Captures Nearly All Ene... by aquadrop on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:46AM (#14760196)
Let's say we point that beam at the moon. The Moon gets warmer. So in this thermodynamic system Earth-Moon if Moon gets warmer, the Earth gets colder.