But yeah, it will have an effect; the other question to ask is, how significant is this effect, and how does it compare to other forms of power production, e.g. fossil fuels?

The global warming caused by fossil fuels has a bigger effect on the oceans; with decreasing salinity due to the melting of ice caps / glaciers, the gulf stream is slowing down and will eventually stop, causing distribution of heat across the planet to stop, causing the northern seas to cool down and the southern ones to heat up.

Eventually the earth will be tidally locked to the moon (just like the moon is to the earth), and the moon will be in a higher orbit.

I guess the turbines will speed this up? As they’ll keep the bulge farther ahead of the moon.

EDIT: Wikipedia link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_acceleration

Weirdly, the resulting pool of energy is pretty much the same size - wikipedia quotes the rotational kinetic energy of the Earth as being 2.138E29J.

So we're still talking about an insane amount of energy.

If you use 17.7TW as the total power consumption of all of humanity, if we were to somehow derive ALL of our energy needs from tidal generation, it would take 358 million years to deplete the rotational energy of the earth.

How's that? Can we consume it? What would be the reaction? Moon altering its orbit?

The sooner we stop using these feeble fossil fuels the better

Solar and wind are needed today, but Starship could bring launch costs down enough that some highly optimized space solar panels with microwave power beaming could be viable within a decade.

Solar panels in space is the believable part; rays of concentrated energy being sent back to earth is what I'm skeptical about. Besides, solar panels have a limited lifetime; I don't believe space solar panels are a cost effective solution to solving the energy crisis.

We’ll need to move into space sooner or later if we want to continue exponential growth.

(100% agree that getting into space is important, and that if we want to continue exponential growth we'll need more than one planet. In fact, we'll need more than all the planets and we fairly rapidly (in cosmic terms) hit the point where the available volume of our light cone isn't enough. Maybe indefinite exponential growth isn't something we should feel entitled to...)

Yes. The frequencies that are not blocked are called "atmospheric windows". And there is indeed such a window for microwaves. These windows also exist for visible light and a range of IR, but those depend more on weather conditions.

https://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Atmospheric_window

Maybe illuminate existing solar arrays during nighttime? Any other energy receiver would be so far behind PV on the price / manufacturing learning curve

I never thought about this. Is there some orbit where this becomes feasible?

The only way to preserve the Earth is smart planning, reducing energy usage and moving industry to the space. IMO Earth should be sanctuary for people to enjoy their origins and for some rich people inevitably. Most people should move to other planets or space objects where pollution does not matter.