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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (364360)	12/25/2007 3:11:12 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583505

Yes, I saw that! Eric had posted it on the Cisco thread. Very nice. So many good ideas in the US, if only we had a President and Congress that would pull it all together and implement it, we could guarantee Superpower status for the next 500 years. If not, then we can guarantee we'll be a second rate power within our lifetimes.

To: Road Walker who wrote (364360)	12/25/2007 3:27:17 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1583505

You can't cover many square miles of desert with solar panels. That will bother the spotted humpback bald darter lizard and PETA and others won't allow it once the spotted humpback bald darter lizard is put on the endangered species list. So now what ??

To: Road Walker who wrote (364360)	12/26/2007 2:01:18 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1583505

JF, > Good article in Scientific American, the type of bold thinking we need More like wishful thinking. Do the math. The article talks about covering 30,000 square miles of desert with solar panels, or 836 billion square feet. Is the price tag of that really as small as $420 billion, or 50 cents per square foot? No way. Maybe the study is talking about how much government subsidies are needed to help private equity finance such a huge undertaking. Or maybe the $420 billion will go into research that will improve the cost and efficiency of solar cells. The article doesn't say. But the cost of 30,000 square miles of solar cells is going to be far, far higher than a mere $420 billion. Is it worth it over 40 years? Maybe, but if solar power becomes cheap enough to be practical on a large scale, free market economics will carry it forward. Tenchusatsu