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by dabluecaboose 1104 days ago
No, you're misunderstanding the scale. The amount of energy the sun already pours into Earth is orders of magnitude above anything we are doing. So while yes there is a technical increase when beaming power in from space, the effect would be negligible in comparison.

The number I quoted isn't the wattage that the sun produces. It's just the amount that hits the Earth.

The greenhouse effect isn't the kind of thermodynamics that people are used to in a straight "energy in versus energy out" scenario. The issue with "burning all the oil we want" isn't that we're adding energy to the system, it's that it reduces the energy that can escape. The Sun's energy is the absolute operative factor here, not whatever pittance we generate on the surface.