National Academy of Science: Solar Technologies Available Right Now Could Make A Difference!!!!!!

[NNadir]

And by NOW!!!!!! I mean IN THE NEXT TWO OR THREE DECADES!!!!!!!!!!!!

They are COMPETITIVE

The comprehensive term “solar energy” embraces a wide variety of processes for converting the sun’s energy into high- and low-temperature heat, electric power, and liquid and gaseous fuels, on scales that can vary from small household systems to large centralized power plants. Their common feature is that they use the sun’s radiation as a source of energy—either directly (as in the increasingly familiar rooftop solar heating systems) or indirectly (as in wind power, ocean thermal energy conversion, wood burning, or those prospective technologies designed to turn plant matter, or “biomass,” into liquid and gaseous fuels).

Obviously, these technologies are a disparate lot. Some are essentially fully developed technically and under certain circumstances are competitive with the replacement costs of other forms of energy. Some are very far from economic and technical practicality, With appropriate subsidies many of the former could become valuable conservation measures over the next two or three decades;

There you have it!!!!! Feel perfectly free to bet anything on it, even your planetary atmosphere!!!!!

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309033314&page=345">Energy in Transition, 1985-2010: Final Report of the Committee on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Systems (1980)

Um...

Wait a minute, um, um, um, 1985-2010?

Which period would that be?

Um...um...

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html

Whatever.

Someone should send out for a futurist...

[bananas]

1. That's from 1980, before Reagan came in with his pro-nuke anti-renewable policies

and that resulted in us burning lots of oil and coal.

[tinrobot]

3. Didn't Reagan also tear down Jimmy Carter's solar panels?

That pretty much told you his priorities.

[madokie]

5. Someone here was selling some of the evacuated tube collectors

back when I first came here. I don't remember who though as too much lack of sleep between then and now

[AlecBGreen]

6. i was just thinking of that today Madokie

IIRC it was WebsterGreen...

[madokie]

7. That rings a bell

I thought about buying some but I have too many trees shading our house to use them for hot water so I didn't, I sure was tempted to though if nothing else for show and tell and just to say I had them.

[bananas]

2. Statement 5-13 by John P. Holdren (Obama's science advisor)

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11771&page=635

5–13
JOHN P.HOLDREN

If there is no level of compensation and persuasion at which any state will host a repository voluntarily, then one is no longer speaking of a modest technical/economic burden to be tallied up on nuclear power’s ledger under “waste disposal,” but of a large political cost. I am wary of “solutions” that require the imposition of unwanted burdens, concrete or psychological, on large minorities in the name of the common good.

[madokie]

4. nnadir did you slip a cog or what

:shrug: I mean what the hay is this all about?