Tag Archives: solar

Koch Brothers Seek Reversal Of Solar Policies

I find this extremely upsetting. According to The New York Times, the billionaire Koch brothers are not just indifferent to solar energy, but actively trying to reverse alternative energy policies in the United States wherever they are found, state by … Continue reading

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Fusion on a White Horse? Michio Kaku Thinks So

Great news! Fusion’s technological problems appear to be “licked”, and (predicts Michio Kaku) will, by 2030-2040, be a feasible alternative to fossil fuels. Kaku also predicts that solar will become price competitive with fossil fuels within the next 15 years. See Kaku talking about these … Continue reading

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Critical Thinking Watch: Ray Kurzweil Says Solar Cells Will Power the World in 16 Years. Should We Believe Him?

Futurist and inventor, Ray Kurzweil, predicts that advances in nanotechnology will result in solar energy powering the world in just 16 years. The Big Think website recently interviewed him, and here is part of the editors’ summary: [H]ow far away … Continue reading

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Solar Roofs over Parking Lots Are Going Viral in California and The Southwest

This is in the New York Times this week: Ersatz roofs made of solar panels have sprouted above dozens of school parking lots in the state [of California], altering vistas and promoting a philosophy of green thinking among the young. Yet … Continue reading

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Birds and Wind Turbines

Last year, a friend of mine who bird watches noticed that I had promoted wind farms on my blog. He subsequently informed me that wind farms are not an environmentally uncomplicated form of energy. Each year approximately 40,000 birds die … Continue reading

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T. Boone Pickens: Peak Oil is Here and Our Middle East Oil Dependency Needs to End

Texas oil man—and now octogenarian wind power activist—T. Boone Pickens, in an interview with Amanda Little posted at Mother Earth News, says that the world has already reached peak oil and that the U.S. better end its Middle East energy dependency pronto:   Pickens doesn’t believe that … Continue reading

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Climate Change: The View from Germany’s Window

In Spiegel today, Christian Schwägerl takes after President Obama and America in their tag team foot dragging on climate change (rightfully so, I think): For most Americans, the world beyond the US’s borders is nothing more than an irritating nuisance. Hence arguments based … Continue reading

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T. Boone Pickens Scraps Plans for the World’s Largest Wind Farm

The wind farm would have been in Texas, but transmission problems (getting the energy from the plains to where people live) seem to have been an insurmountable barrier to bringing Pickens’s ambitions to fruition. Apparently financing wasn’t going well either. Sad. … Continue reading

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Cap and Trade: The Big Picture

At Salon.com today, physicist Joseph Romm suggests how to frame the debate on “cap and trade”—and win it—as the bill passed in the House now heads for a vote in the Senate: The key to framing a win on this bill is to portray it — … Continue reading

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From “Up On the Roof” to “Through the Roof”: Kurzweil AI.net Says Solar Industry to Grow to 100 Billion Dollars by 2013

Money quote: Solar is poised for continued impressive growth, with new installations primed to increase nearly five-fold from 2008 to 2013. Starting in 2009, however, supply will exceed demand, leading to price decreases. According to the new report from Lux … Continue reading

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Let the Sun Shine?: Could a Major Solar Technology Discovery Give Us Energy Independence Within the Next 20 Years?

An article in MIT News suggests so. Here’s the link: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

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