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"Far from moving away from solar, they are thoroughly enjoying it's benefits and building more."

You speak truer than you know.... http://cleantechnica.com/2013/09/25/france-tax-conventional-power-accelerate-shift-renewables/

In fact, it is the economics of France's new build that is changing their mind on nuclear energy. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/03/us-edf-nuclear-flamanville-idUSBRE8B214620121203

Do you get your talking points from a PR firm? Did you seriously just list the price of re-shnging your roof as a reason why solar could never be economical? Even if that were true, you need to think outside of the box, brah. http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/15/caution-wet-solar-power-new-affordable-solar-paint-research/

I find it pretty comic you're listing today's absorption rates as the reason solar "will never" (emphasis on the bolded word) be affordable. What website are you on right now? I wouldn't peg you for a technology enthusiast. Got news for you, bud: technology advances. Solar will become a dominant energy source. It's just a matter of when. You should stop watching cable TV; it's convinced you of silly things, sheltered you in petrol pipe dreams.

At cleantechnica site you can see a priced drop of $76/w to under $.74 a watt in only (sorta wish it was .76 a watt for neatness sake, dontcha?)

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/24/solar-powers-massive-price-drop-graph/

You can also see a similar exponential but reverse growth curve off a link from that page.

Elsewhere, I saw solar was projected to generate more energy than the U.S. currently generates by 2050-- and to quintuple from there by 2100.

---

Loved "Mystery Men". On my top 100 list.

"Oh, the solar power haters* are going to love this oneâ"a recent study by Germanyâ(TM)s Institute for Future Energy Systems (IZES), conducted on behalf of of the German Solar Industry Association (BSW-Solar), has found that, on average, solar power has reduced the price of electricity 10% in Germany (on the EPEX exchange). It reduces prices up to 40% in the early afternoon, when electricity demand is peaking and electricity typically costs the most. Thereâ(TM)s a visual of that (in German) here:" link

In Germany, peak production of electricity by solar has hit 50% at times.

As far as I can tell the record was total renewables of over 50%, not solar, which seems to have been around 40%

And it was on a Sunday (hence lower demand).

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/07/12/sunday-solar-sunday-germany-solar-power-record-in-depth/

Still pretty good though.

same goes for Georgia, we tried in southern Georgia to get solar panels but city ordinance, zoning commission inspection fees and licensing, state red tape and you have to notify the grid and since the city controls utilities here, we dont have a normal power company our power bill is issued by the city on the bill has power, water, cable, garbage all on one bill. They wont allow them to be fed back into their grid here.

You may want to read this ...

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/07/15/peru-solar-power-program-to-give-electricity-to-2-million-of-poorest-peruvians/

Meanwhile, in the United States, Americans for Prosperity - a political lobbying group founded by billionaire fossil fuel industrialists Charles and David Koch - is currently lobbying the Georgia state legislature to reject a plan requiring Georgia Power, one of the largest energy utilities in the American Southeast, to buy more solar energy.

Sorry, wrong link in my earlier post. Here's the correct one with the graphs: http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/19/fossil-fuel-really-beginning-to-hate-renewable-energy-graphs/

Within a century (easily) we will be able to live mostly off of renewables for the purpose of transportation and energy. Any given time you google "Solar breakthrough", there will be a couple advancements within the last month that enables greater efficiency--
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/11/new-class-of-solar-cell-reaches-new-efficiency-breakthrough/

Hell, it could even be a paint-- http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/15/caution-wet-solar-power-new-affordable-solar-paint-research/

Plastics without fossil fuels is also quite forseeable in the near future: http://www.themoldingblog.com/2013/06/12/ibm-is-close-to-breakthrough-use-of-bioplastics-in-computer-servers/
Also, "they would already be popular"? Really? Do you have any idea what goes into something being "popular"? Advertizing, buddy. Watch the docu Who Killed the Electric car for an example of how automakers can manipulate peoples' desires with advertizing, pressuring them towards vehicles that're more costly to maintain (internal combustion engines), and away from more economic choices that the government may force them to offer.

You also forgot to mention petroleum subsidies, which artificially lowers the market price of oil. All in all, your "theory" is very short-sighted.

Within a century (easily) we will be able to live mostly off of renewables for the purpose of transportation and energy. Any given time you google "Solar breakthrough", there will be a couple advancements within the last month that enables greater efficiency--
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/11/new-class-of-solar-cell-reaches-new-efficiency-breakthrough/

Hell, it could even be a paint-- http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/15/caution-wet-solar-power-new-affordable-solar-paint-research/

Plastics without fossil fuels is also quite forseeable in the near future: http://www.themoldingblog.com/2013/06/12/ibm-is-close-to-breakthrough-use-of-bioplastics-in-computer-servers/
Also, "they would already be popular"? Really? Do you have any idea what goes into something being "popular"? Advertizing, buddy. Watch the docu Who Killed the Electric car for an example of how automakers can manipulate peoples' desires with advertizing, pressuring them towards vehicles that're more costly to maintain (internal combustion engines), and away from more economic choices that the government may force them to offer.

You also forgot to mention petroleum subsidies, which artificially lowers the market price of oil. All in all, your "theory" is very short-sighted.

The true cost of Nuclear power is more than any other method.

Talk about easy mode! "Any other method" logically includes coal. And coal sucks. To put it in perspective, about twice as much electricity is produced each year from coal(44.9%) as from nuclear power(20.3%) in the USA.

What, you want healthcare costs included along with the fatalities? Okay, sure thing. How does $500B/year sound, for the USA ALONE?

I'd say I hate to break it to you, but that would be dishonest. I LOVE breaking this to you: The world could suffer a Chernobyl level event EVERY year and it would STILL come out cheaper than coal.

And while we are at it, lets add in all of the cost for nuclear power plant accidents both public and private funds and divide that by the the number of operating plants. Let's see, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, smaller costly but less publicized accidents.

Let's see: Chernobyl: $235B, TMI: $975M, Fukushima: too early to tell. Let's go with roughly between Chernobyl and TMI: $118B. It's probably quite high, but eh. Total: $354B, or about 3/5ths the damage coal does to the USA alone each year.

As I've said before, Chernobyl's design wouldn't have been allowed anywhere, the cost would have been far less if it had been built with a containment dome. 437 reactors, leaving the share per nuclear plant at $810M per your stupid standard.

Let's put it into better context: End of 2012 nuclear power had produced 69,760 billion kwh. Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima amount to .5 cents of cost per kwh. Yes, half a cent.

So would this be more or less energy dense as a storage medium than graphene ultracapacitors?

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/03/12/a-breakthrough-in-energy-storage-graphene-micro-supercapacitors/

What's the memory like? How many charge cycles are they good for?

Or should I just start working on building my portable micro thorium salt reactor?

energy storage wind

Thank you. A lot of Slashdot users have tended to stop at "just Google it", appearing too lazy to actually suggest keywords and belittling me for sharing the keywords that I had tried and found ineffective.

or directly in chemical reactions that store it as chemical energy

In other words a battery. Google energy storage wind, as you suggested, brought me to this article, which speaks of proprietary batteries incorporating tellurium. Not being familiar with this element, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia describes it as as rare as platinum, or about a thousand times more rare than the lanthanides, the elements commonly called "rare earths". This poses doubts in my mind as to whether it can scale. Even if flywheels and pumped storage fill in for it, with the whup-whup-whup and flashing sunlight creating the appearance of a health risk, I fully expect NIMBYs to erect barriers at every step.

Citation please? As far as I know there's no reason to believe that the US reduces its carbon emissions at all. The only reduction seems to be from the economic problems in 2008 - which should hardly count as successful energy policy.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/12/07/the-myth-of-u-s-carbon-dioxide-emissions-reductions/picture-41/

Yes, China and others are increasing their emissions a lot faster, but their excuse for not joining any climate treaties right now is that the US doesn't reduce its emissions either.

Puna Geothermal Ventures has been operating for decades. http://www.hawaiisenergyfuture.com/articles/Geothermal.html
Power from the geothermal plant is sold to Hawaii Electric at the same price as power from oil-fired sources.
Oil and naphtha generated electric capacity has been increased so that power from wind/geothermal is not needed (this was a few years ago though).
Geothermal power has been unreliable with many mechanical problems. There are environmental issues: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/04/28/hawaii-residents-raise-serious-concerns-about-pgv-geothermal-energys-clean-energy-credentials/

Hell, I just want a solar-powered cell phone, which they still can't figure out.

Which will never happen for the same reason you will never have a solar powered commercial airliner. The cell phone's solar cells must be exposed to sunlight to generate electricity. Unless you want it mounted on your head with a sun tracking mechanism, it isn't going to work. The surface area required to power the phone would be too large. You can charge a battery with the phone off, with a solar cell. You can't power the phone and charge the battery with the small surface area of the phone. I thought we geeks were supposed to be Engineers. There is not enough energy per square centimeter to power your cell phone or an airplane other than a tiny model. It's a 'law' and even Congress can't pass amendments to get around it.

Hell, I just want a solar-powered cell phone, which they still can't figure out.

I'm fairly certain the light output is basically the same per watt for LEDs compared to CFL. In fact here, I looked it up http://cleantechnica.com/2011/09/01/led-vs-cfl-which-light-bulb-is-more-efficient/ and the LED's actually produce MORE lumens per watt.

Now, lets expand and point out something this article got wrong. They say you would only have to replace a CFL three times over the course of an LED lifespan. In my experience, this is at least an order of a magnitude on the low side. I have dimmers in all my sockets and the dimmable CFL lights will fail sometimes within a year to a year and a half. In that case, I'd be replacing 15-20 CFL lights per LED light I put in. Nevermind that CFL has a serious issue with diminishing light quality over the lifespan. Yes, there are CFLs without these problems, and they are 50-100% more expensive then the normal ones.

and batteries cannot store at sane cost significant enough amount of energy.
There is a reason why massive battery arrays really don't exist ...

I guess it depends on your definition of "massive", but 36 Mega-watt hours is pretty big:

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/01/03/china-byd-launch-largest-battery-energy-storage-station/

Of course. But it might still be a good way to balance a grid with a lot of variability from renewable sources. Having to dump your electricity on the market at negative prices is a bad thing as it just increases the cost of electricity at the times when there isn't an excess.

This could fix that. much wind/solar? Turn on the petrol synthesizers to absorb the cheap excess power.

Then again, maybe the capital cost would be too high to justify anything else than running the synthesizers 24/7. I have no idea.

Efficiency is not an issue is it. No matter what they do, no solar tech will ever get better than 20% efficient

Fascinating, because just from a quick Google search I find a company selling~30% efficient solar cells today, and that Sharp is at 43.5% in lab cells. I swear I've seen cells in the 30%s being sold commercially (albeit at very high prices), but I forget which company it was.

From the mid 1990s by the Vice-provost of Caltech: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."

More like that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Also:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/26/peer-review-as-censorship/

All reasoning is also based on emotion, which relate to perceptions, assumptions, priorities and preferences which are, to some extent, outside of pure rationality (which why "technocracy" has many issues).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error

But the biggest issue is that our socio-economic-political system is not well-adapted to handle "externalities" including systemic risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Any reasonable projection over the next twenty years shows we will almost certainly have dirt-cheap PV given exponential growth of that industry and rapidly dropping costs. We may even have hot or cold fusion in that time (and other things). With alternatives on the way, there is not a very good case to be made for risking destroy our groundwater for just a bit more fossil fuels:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-in-16-years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Solar_power
http://pesn.com/2012/07/19/9602138_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_July19/
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/414559/a-new-approach-to-fusion/
And so on...

Accounting for externalities (including US defense spending for long oil supply lines), renewables (and energy efficiency) have been *cheaper* than fossil fuels since the 1970s... Two resources on that from around 1980:

I started Googling and what I found is that some scientists have been playing with graphite and compressing it. They found that, at room temperature and high pressures, graphite goes from black to colorless and becomes very hard. They lacked the ability to determine the precise structure of the super hard carbon. They just knew it wasn't diamond.

Around the same time, some theoretical mineral physicists came up with some math that says that carbon can have any number of forms with different properties and configurations. These configurations were labeled with letters, lacking any pattern I can discern. (Maybe they labeled an initial list and then began disqualifying configurations?)

The article in the summary essentially is saying that they have linked the 2 bits of data and have determined that the super hard carbon is in fact the M carbon. Nothing I have found gives us any information on the duration of the M carbon once the pressure is removed or any properties of M carbon, except that the hardness is greater than diamond's. I guess we'll have to read the paper.

0 of course. That's when they're buying power from France's nukes though.

And yet, Germany remains a net exporter of electric power. Including to France. http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/09/clean-energy-loving-germany-increasingly-exporting-electricity-to-nuclear-heavy-france/

Please stop with the FUD. Most people will charge their EV's overnight, when electricity demand is lowest (and so are the spot prices for electricity). That's hardly going to "stress" the grid. Also, as more people put solar panels on their roofs the load on the grid falls. See this article for the impact existing solar photovoltaic capacity has had on wholesale electricity prices in Germany to get an idea for what the solar panels mean to stress points (aka peak demand) on the grid.

There's another factor to consider as well, the growing efficiency of powered devices and of transmission technology. If you have been following the advances with graphene and carbon nanotubes at all you'd know we're on the threshold of a quantum leap on that score.

Will there be challenges with this conversion in our energy & transportation economies? Sure. But they pale next to the problems that fossil fuels are creating for us. So stop mindlessly (or purposely) spreading FUD about EV's.

This is exactly right. A few days ago this article came out that showed, quite dramatically, the effect existing Solar photovoltaics have had on wholesale electricity prices in Germany--it has essentially chopped off the top of the price curve.

Solar produces best at the peak of the day, which is exactly when spot prices for electricity peak, so your payback is even faster than average electricity prices would indicate. And the amazing thing is that even without taking that consideration into account a payback period of, say, 5 years is still pretty trivial when you're gonna own the house for 30 years.

Solar already has the highest return on investment of renewable energy sources. Panels are continually improving and payback periods are now under 10 years and projected to be in the neighborhood of 4 years soon.

Solar R.O.I.

"Cajun Hell described the world as it is currently functioning today,"

Only some parts of it. Are most parents paid? How much of our economy is based on volunteerism of some sort? What about slashdot itself -- do people have to be paid to write all this great content? Were you paid to write your post? Do you ever cook your own meals without being paid? Do you and friends ever talk together or contribute to some potluck party without billing each other? Alternatives are possible; see for example this book:
"The dictionary of alternatives: utopianism and organization"
http://books.google.com/books?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC

Maybe we can't yet torrent uranium (interesting metaphorical idea) outside of Minecraft worlds, but we can share ideas about how to create alternative energy, which might be even better:
"On the Hunt For The Catalyst: Open Catalyst Crowd Project Forms to Advance Cold Fusion"
http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/12/on-the-hunt-for-the-catalyst-open-catalyst-crowd-project-forms-to-advance-cold-fusion/

On that general issue, see also an essay I sent Andrea Rossi (supposed inventor of a LENR device):
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
"The key point here is that breakthrough clean energy technologies will change the very nature of our economic system. They will shift the balance between four different interwoven economies we have always had (subsistence, gift, planned, and exchange). Inventors who have struggled so hard in a system currently dominated by exchange may have to think about the socioecenomic implications of their invention in causing a permanent economic phase change. A clean energy breakthrough will probably create a different balance of those four economies like toward greater local subsistence and more gift giving (as James P. Hogan talks about in Voyage From Yesteryear). So, to focus on making money in the old socioeconomic paradigm (like by focusing on restrictive patents) may be very ironic, compared to freely sharing a great gift with the world that may change the overall dynamics of our economy to the point where money does not matter very much anymore."

In any case, by decades of dedicated work (most not well paid), we will soon have fairly cheap solar panels:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

What might we get soon with "Wikispeed" ideas applied to alternative energy?
http://www.wikispeed.com/the-process
"Team WIKISPEED uses methods developed by the fastest-moving software companies. In fact, in many ways we have more in common with Google or Twitter than with GM or Toyota. Manufacturing and old-thought software teams gather requirements, design the solution, build the solution, test the solution, then deliver the solution. In existing automotive companies, the design portion of that process alone takes three to twelve years, and then the vehicle design is built for five to fourteen years. This means it is possible to buy a brand new car from a dealer and that car represents the engineering team's understanding of what the customer might have wanted twenty-four years ago! Team WIKISPEED follows the model of Agile software teams, compressing the entire development cycle into one-week "sprints." We iterate the entire car every seven days, meaning that every seven days we reevaluate each part of the car and reinvent the highest-priority aspects, instead of waiting ten to twenty-four years to upgrade. This process enables a completely different pace of development."

"Practical cold fusion, or anything that delivers on the promises of cold fusion, would nail it."

On cold fusion, see:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2012/03/dr-george-miley-to-present-on-lenr-at-march-23-conference-will-awareness-of-new-energy-source-spread/
http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=522

The Widom-Larsen idea is that strange things happen at the surface of metals, where protons and electrons can become slow neutrons which then are absorbed which leads to conventional radioactive decay.

Or on solar panels, a commend by the director of GE's research lab:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

In theory, to have space habitats, all we really need to do is launch one robotic seed factory to the moon, and then have it make all the space craft and habitats there. No need for CO2. And rising CO2 is really the least of our problems as a species -- it may already have forestalled another ice age we are due for. Much of it may have come from topsoil depletion by bad farming practices, too. That is solveable with relatively small amounts of energy and materials like so by grinding up rock: http://remineralize.org/

A little idea sketch I made about three years ago of what it would take to evacuate all humans from the Earth into space habitats:
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004037.html
"Current launch costs are about US$10,000 a pound. People on starvation diets might weigh about 100 pounds. So, that's about US$1 million per person for launch costs using today's technology in small production runs. I feel it reasonable to assume that if we were going to launch billions of people into space, launch costs would come down by at least a factor of ten to US$100K per person, considering how people are already talking about such lower costs, and the actual energy to lift someone into space if you can do it really efficiently (space elevator) is maybe US$200 worth of electricity ... So, seven billion people soon, minus a few doomsters, times US$100K per person, is US$700 trillion. The world GDP is about US$60 trillion, so, in round numbers, this is about ten years of world economic output to put everyone into space. We can assume that with these self-replicating space habitat seeds that an entire space infrastructure is being prepared for free from sunlight and lunar ore and asteroidal ore (though it might take some time to produce it on an exponential growth curve). So, we only need to get people into low Earth orbit and shuttles can ferry people without luggage beyond low Earth orbit to a life of abundance produced with resources from space. Also, since we're evacuating the entire planet to leave it as a nature park, we don't need to do any upkeep on infrastructure as it is all abandoned. So, we can devote close to 100% of the industrial base to producing rockets. Also, people in space can still provide services to Earth like telemedicine or teleoperating mining equipment and launch control, so essential services can be kept going the whole time even as the last person goes on the last rocket (except the doomsters who want to stay :-)."

Of course, we could ask, how many times has this been done before over the last few billion years? :-)

Thanks for your other comment too (which this kind of addresses in part as well). Good luck with your robotics work. Robots could be a boon instead of a bane as long as we adjust our economy to a post-scarcity model. One example I put together:
"The Riches

Citation needed. If people believed as you did, there would never be any innovation...

Also, you raise a false dillemma. Vast amounts of financial capital in our society have tied themselves up into energy sources they can more easily control. It's a mindset that won't invest much in alternatives, and will invest in politics to keep their control in place (like preventing laws regulating coal pollution).

Actually, I live in a fairly energy efficient house (partially passive solar), so I am practicing that I preach to some extent (not perfectly). The state of the art in home construction these days in cold climates is to have lots of efficiency and no furnace:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?_r=1
"DARMSTADT, Germany â" From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace."

I also eat pretty low on the food chain, that saves lots of energy and water and medical costs and pollution and animal suffering and so on.
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm

I provided lots of links to people putting time and money into alternatives, and they just continue to improve. The fact that GE is predicting solar will be cheaper that coal in five years despite how coal is subsidized so much (including by not having to pay for the health costs or environment destruction costs) just shows how good renewables are.
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Coal did not pay its true cost in 1993:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/12/the-true-cost-of-coal/4566/

Coal does not pay its true cost now (perhaps half a trillion dollars a year):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/true-cost-of-coal-power.html
http://www.desmogblog.com/true-cost-coal-half-trillion-dollars-year

And that is what makes it so hard "economically" to sell alternatives.

So, it is indeed hard to compete against such a tilted playing field, true. That is a missing issue in your comment about "so you do it", unpaid externalities.

In fact, if you reread my comment, you will see I said "No one said it was going to be easy"... That is why it is now a socio-economic issue more than a technical issue. We have plenty of technology if we wanted to use it. And it would overall be cheaper to use it overall across our society, and then alternatives would be adopted faster when gasoline was $20 a gallon with externalities priced in (we'd all drive electric cars pretty fast) or when coal electricity was $0.50 a kilowatt-hour (we'd all switch to wind and other renewables plus energy efficiency real fast). But that does not happen because we don't pay up front. Instead we pay on our health insurance bills, or in national debt to fund a war machine, or future environmental destruction that needs to be fixed, and so on...

wind power is utterly dependent on subsidies

That's not even true. Fossil fuels receive much more subsidies in the form of socialized health costs, military expenditures, and inter-generational debt transfer.

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/01/cost-of-wind-power-kicks-coals-butt-better-than-natural-gas-could-power-your-ev-for-0-70gallon/

I wonder about the long-term viability of (renewable energy)

psychtric diagnoses

Why not use the wind energy to make hydrogen, and store the hydrogen (as a gas, as a liquid, or in metal hydrides)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage

Or why not use the wind to make compressed air, and store the compressed air?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy

Or why not use the wind to charge batteries?
http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/GRIDS/ARobustandInexpensiveIronAirRechargeableBat.aspx

Or why not use the wind to heat up molten salts, and use a steam turbine to make power? Solar does it, but so could wind:
http://grist.org/solar-power/2011-07-05-groundbreaking-solar-plant-in-spain-generates-24-hours-of-power/

Or why not use the wind energy to produce liquid synthetic fuels from carbon from the air?
http://www.staxera.de/announcement.105+M5320325207d.0.html?&L=1

Or why not use the wind energy to run energy-intensive industrial processes that can run intermittently (like grinding up rocks for fertilizer or chilling nitrogen out of the air)? And so on.
http://www.remineralize.org/

There are solutions for the lack of buffers for renewable energy. Put them all together, and you have a way to use wind.

That said, LENR and cheap solar panels seem more likely to succeed, one because it is compact (if it really works) and the other because it has now moving parts and requires little maintenance.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/15/0226219/can-nasa-warm-cold-fusion
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

"A Road Not Taken: Solar Panels, Jimmy Carter, and Missed Opportunities for Change "
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/06/a-road-not-taken-solar-panels-jimmy-carter-and-missed-opportunities-for-change
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/09/obama-no-thanks-to-carter-solar-panels

The true cost of fossil fuels:
http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/true-cost-fossil-fuels.html
"For decades now, fossil fuel company executives and D.C. politicians have worked together to ensure that coal and oil prices stay low enough to keep the American people hooked. In his new book Greedy Bastards, Dylan Ratigan explains how "vampire industries" like oil and coal have forged "an unholy alliance with government based not just on the money that they contribute to political campaigns and spend on lobbying but on their ability to hypnotize us with false prices." Industry gets tax breaks, subsidies, military support in volatile regions, the right to use our air and water like a sewer, and assurance that the government will clean up its environmental messes. Politicians get campaign contributions, a steady flow of dirty energy, and a talking point to brandish about how they kept gas affordable. But the Ame

Thanks. Please also see my point on four interwoven economic alternatives (gift, exchange, subsistence, planned) in reply to someone who disagreed with you.

By the way, "disruptive" energy technology is just around the corner:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

And if that was not enough, maybe even "cold fusion" which is becoming understood as actually just a proton plus a metal-surface electron becoming a neutron and being absorbed by nearby matter, leading to standard radioactive decay:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/News.htm
http://pesn.com/2012/01/13/9602010_NASA_LENR_endorsement_spin_cycle_to_clear_past_suppression/

Thorium power (being pursued by the Chinese and Indians) is another energy alternative, too.

The mystery of the human genome was sort of like a protective lock that prevented people from engineering terrible plagues. Now that mystery is going away, with lots of well-meant good intentions to cure genetic diseases and so on. With that protective "code" widely understood, we had better be sure to learn how to be nicer to each other, and use that knowledge to build a better society rather than tear everything down.

Or, in other words:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042546/quotes
"Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say "In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart... I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."

In general, our society needs to move to "A Newer Way Of Thinking" like Albert Einstein (and now Donald Pet) talk about, given we can either use abundance to build a better world for all, or we can use it to destroy that possibility for all:
http://www.anwot.org/
http://anwot.org/blog/2011/07/10/stren-70-why-do-we-have-destructive-aggression-and-war/

And a basic income for all is part of that transition to a newer way of thinking, even though it seems all these social trends are very slow processes. I've heard that is until the trends reach some tipping point like about 10% of the population understands them and values them, and then the trend races forward. It's amazing that it was considered as much as it was in Germany recently:
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_snd-basic-income.html

There really is no alternative to a newer way of thinking and related socioeconomic policy, given the power of WMDs at this point in the hands of disgruntled people at the edges of the society who may think the whole thing is grossly unfair. The miracle is that people are so peaceful anyway, and that things like blowback actually so rarely happen.

Likewise, if LENR (what was formerly called cold fusion) pans out, while it will open up many possibilities for good, it will lead to more destructive possibilities as well, and probably, after a brief spurt of new jobs, we will see massive formal-sector unemployment as energy can often substitute for labor. Related links (even if things are still up in the air, and solar panels are a proven technology also rapidly dropping in cost):
http://www.google.com/search?q=lenr
http://pesn.com/2012/01/12/9602009_NASA_Admits_LENR_Cold_Fusion_Game_Changer/
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/cold-fusion-being-studied-at-mit
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/newenergytimes-gets-three-nasa.html
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/billionaire-donates-money-for-cold-fusion-research-at-us-university
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

LOL. ROFL.
IER is a tax-exempt public foundation and is funded entirely by tax deductible contributions from individuals, foundations and corporations. No financial support is sought for or accepted from the government.[1] According to the liberal watchdog group, Media Matters,[2] since 1996, $110,000 of IER's funding has come from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, a trust set up by private energy company Koch Industries. IER also received over $300,000 in funding from ExxonMobil, [3], but Exxon has not given to IER since 2007.[4]

The Institute's CEO, Robert L. Bradley, Jr., was formerly a director of policy analysis at Enron, where he wrote speeches for Kenneth Lay. Bradley has written books indicting Enron's crony capitalism including "Capitalism at Work"[5] and "Edison to Enron."[6]
Here is a real report from the state of Texas's government.
Now, here is the break-down from about 5 years ago.
And if you want to use biased info, well, here you go. In this case, they include the direct money AND THE TAX breaks. Though to be honest, I find it is as worthless as your original link above. But, hey....

"PV is closer to 20% than 50%"

At least solar thermal is closer to 50%...

Crescent Dunes, under construction, is a solar thermal plant rated at 100MW, and expected to supply 480GWH annually, putting it at 480e9/(365*24)/110e6*100 =~ 49.8%. And it's being built for about the same dollars per watt as the nuclear plant. So nuclear is about half price of that in construction cost (in this case). But with the cost difference of deconstruct/cleanup/decontamination of a nuclear plant versus a tower and a bunch of mirrors, and I'd say that solar thermal costs about the same as nuclear.

From here:
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/10/worlds-largest-concentrating-solar-power-plant-hits-milestone/
http://www.solarreserve.com/what-we-do/csp-projects/crescent-dunes/

Germany exports electricity to France, which despite its 58 nuclear reactors cannot satisfy the needs of its citizens. Who need extra power because they mostly heat their home with electric heaters.

source:
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/09/clean-energy-loving-germany-increasingly-exporting-electricity-to-nuclear-heavy-france/

And here are some more reasons I sent to Rossi: http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
"The key point here is that breakthrough clean energy technologies will change the very nature of our economic system. They will shift the balance between four different interwoven economies we have always had (subsistence, gift, planned, and exchange). Inventors who have struggled so hard in a system currently dominated by exchange may have to think about the socioecenomic implications of their invention in causing a permanent economic phase change. A clean energy breakthrough will probably create a different balance of those four economies like toward greater local subsistence and more gift giving (as James P. Hogan talks about in Voyage From Yesteryear). So, to focus on making money in the old socioeconomic paradigm (like by focusing on restrictive patents) may be very ironic, compared to freely sharing a great gift with the world that may change the overall dynamics of our economy to the point where money does not matter very much anymore. ..."

Others calling to open source the eCat:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/11/open-source-the-e-cat/

By the way, the catalyst may be some variant on Potasium Carbonate:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GernertNnascenthyd.pdf

Mentioned here by "Sojourner Soo", with the abstract from 1994:
http://ecatnews.com/?p=1144
"Anomalous heat was measured from a reaction of atomic hydrogen in contact with potassium carbonate on a nickel surface. The nickel surface consisted of 500 feet of 0.0625 inch diameter tubing wrapped in a coil. The coil was inserted into a pressure vessel containing a light water solution of potassium carbonate. The tubing and solution were heated to a steady state temperature of 249 C using an FR heater. Hydrogen at 1100 psig was applied to the inside of the tubing. After the application of hydrogen, a 32 C increase in temperature of the cell was measured which corresponds to 25 watts of heat. Heat production under these conditions is predicted by the theory of Mills where a new species of hydrogen is produced that has a lower energy state then normal hydrogen."

In the 1950s (or maybe 1930s) a Princeton physicist was talking about some similar things (forget his name offhand).

Rossi could have ended almost all dispute by just running two eCats side-by-side, one with the catalyst and one without. Or even just one with the hydrogen and one without, where people picked the one getting the hydrogen. That would rule out many things. (Maybe not all, but a lot.) The fact that he has not done that, which would be relatively easy, makes me more suspicious that it really works (although people have invented explanations for why he has not done that).

What has been said by Steven Krivit is the suggestion that LENR (cold fusion) does work, but not as well as Rossi suggests it does (and he has been still trying to get it to work well).

Still, it is so hard to be an innovator in our society, that I could cut Rossi a lot of slack. Just maybe not a check yet. :-)

But sooner or later we will get cheap energy, one way or another, so many people are working towards it. Even just from solar:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Or thorium, or hot fusion, or geothermal, or whatever...

But the eCat would be a great mobile power device.

Of course, if it does work, it is only one more reason we need to rethink our outlook on nature, technology, society, and economics:
htt

On solutions to any fossil fuel limits:
"GE: Solar Power Cheaper than Fossil Fuels in 5 years"
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

"Its a nice rosy thought but we really don't have the unlimited energy you speak of; or if we do we haven't the ability to transport it where we need it and concentrate it enough for many of the applications our society has come to depend on."

"GE: Solar Power Cheaper than Fossil Fuels in 5 years"
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Also, maybe:
"NASA seriously believes in Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)"
http://mnispel.net/neengineer/?p=320
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2832338/posts

And:
http://energyfromthorium.com/

And there are others. Energy is not a big issue if we want to solve that. Lack of imagination, will, and social consensus is more of the problem:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

As well as the diversion of most of our resources into guarding, competition, and war...

As to your quote, I answer it with another quote: "The woods would be pretty quiet if no bird sang there but the best." :-)

Also, who is to judge what "best" is?

Clearly, even third rate is soon going to be enough to create WMDs (like the biotech, nanotech, or microrobotic equivalent of what script kiddies do with computers). So, we still need to figure out a way to make a world that works better and better for more and more people (including by reducing violence through healthier nutrition); see for example:
"Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat: Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive behaviour"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime

Also, if the brains of the masses are dulled in the 21st century, it is in large part because the "best" put in place systems to make them that way through compulsory schooling; see John Taylor Gatto's writings:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?"

How much our resources do you think are currently consumed by guarding, competition, and warfare? I'd suggest over 90%... See for example:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. Ther

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/10/why-wind-intermittency-is-not-a-big-deal/

Denmark is currently 20% wind and is going for 50%.

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/03/05/how-denmark-will-integrate-50-wind-power-by-2025/

"The problem with Malthus is not the math, it's the model. Anyone can pick assumptions and make a model, and from there make predictions. Mathus erred in assuming that things would not change. An exponential curve is indistinguishable from a bell curve at the long tail beginning, so the evidence seemed to support his prediction."

I read that Malthus recanted his position in a later edition, but no one pays attention to that.
    http://conservapedia.com/Robert_Malthus
"There were other contemporaries who accepted the Malthusian theory but regarded the policy recommendations as both harsh and ineffective. In a later edition of his Essay, Malthus admitted the probability that "having found the bow bent too much one way, I was induced to bend it too much the other, in order to make it straight." "

See for the quote:
http://books.google.com/books?id=KRQAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA427&lpg=PA427

And also:
http://factoidz.com/criticism-of-malthusian-theory-of-population/
"(v) Malthusian theory of population gave no proof of his assertion that population increased exactly in geometric progression and food production increased exactly in arithmetic progression. It has been rightly pointed out that population and food supply does not change in accordance with these mathematical series. Growth of population and food supply cannot be expected to show the precision or accuracy of such series. However, Malthus in the later edition of his book did not insist on these mathematical terms and only held that there was inherent tendency in population to outrun the means of subsistence. We have seen above that even this is far from being true."

More: http://www.google.com/#q=malthus+"Later+edition"

A general issue is that while problems can grow exponentially, so can solutions. Example:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

As I suggest here, the solar system does not have enough people: :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html

As Julian Simon suggests, the more people, the more creative ideas:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

How else would we get the idea to grind up rock to fertilize soil?
http://www.remineralize.org/

Or to make solar power cheaper than coal?
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Or to invent the computer mouse?
http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/vision-highlights.html

Or to create terrific participatory democracies?
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010

Or to move beyond war by thinking better?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
http://www.anwot.org/

Or maybe even to have cold fusion?
http://pesn.com/2011/09/14/9501913_Rossis_One_Megawatt_Reactor_Gets_A_New_E-Cat_Model/

The human imagination (empowered by education and health and access to basic resources) is indeed the ultimate resource.

"Obviously, in China, young people carry their old people like burdens while they're trying to manage their own families. That's not so great, either."

When people have six kids or so, it is not as much of a burden when the kids carry the elderly. Part of the problem is we are experiencing a "Peak Population" crisis.
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html

But Japan aims to solve that with robotics...

Thanks for being part of making the 1980s happen!

My wife and our little "labor of love" venture in the 1990s:
    http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/

Sorry about your loss.

Health tips by me, the most important of which for most technology people is curing vitamin D deficiency (and which I could only learn about by hypertext-supporting networks and Google):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478380&cid=37734208

There are plenty of resources to go around though, especially when you consider we could support quadrillions of people in space habitats in the solar system. But some causes for optimism:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.nist.gov/el/msid/dpg/slim.cfm

And maybe even:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/

If we had any real resource problems, why are so many people out of work? :-)

Real solutions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#

The human imagination is truly the "ultimate resource", so the more the merrier IMHO: :-)
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

You've of course read "True Names" no doubt about what an older woman is up to on the net: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names

Straightforward solutions to employment issues exist, like a "basic income"; see my website: http://www.pdfernhout.net/

Anyway, solutions exist if we really want them.
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm

"There could be a breakthrough that causes one of both to improve significantly, but there is no reason to expect either, only hope that it will happen."

Have you actually looked at the chart here?
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices

How do you explain the price of PV/watt dropping in half over the last couple of years?

Also, when you account for externalities like pollution, risk, health, and defense, renewables (plus energy efficiency like passive solar) have been cheaper since the 1970s, so the current mix is what is "insane" from a capitalist perspective, but is profitable for some who can privatize gains but socialize costs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.[1] In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current. [2]"

You are making broad sweeping generalizations, but not providing details. For example, you say solar takes a lot of land but you don't cite how much land coal mining takes,

Why can't we just make hydrogen from wind farms and burn it in turbines when the wind is not blowing to even the load? Or store it in metal hydrides and use it in fuel cells? How much more expensive is it really in current dollars? And how much cheaper is it given you don't have all the health costs of coal burning? Example:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/02/17/cost-of-coal-500-billion-year-in-u-s-harvard-study-finds/
"This study lays out in detail the costs the coal industry is NOT PAYING and what everyone else IS PAYING! The paper details all the factors that are not quantifiable, like lost work time when a mother has to take her child to the doctor for an asthma attack or the cost to a family for the loss of a loved one or wage earner. ... Each stage in the life cycle of coalâ"extraction, transport, processing, and combustionâ"generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and thus are often considered as âoeexternalities.â We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually. Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative. Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of non fossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive. We focus on Appalachia, though coal is mined in other regions of the United States and is burned throughout the world."

The amount of land needed to go all solar in the USA is less than 1% -- compare it to, say, animal product production which is what about half the land area in the USA is used for (mostly for animal fodder) where eating too many animal products is overall shortening US life expectancies.
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.ht

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/
"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem."

Too bad we have spend the last thirty years going down that wrong path, and in more ways than energy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

But it is not too late to go back... And it is even easier now:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4818

Is GE greenwashing too? http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/06/will-crystalline-solar-kill-thin-film-a-conversation-with-applied-materials-solar-head-charlie-gay.html

Anyway, that's why this article is silly. Solar will displace fossil fuels and nuclear through market forces alone at this point over the next decade. We are passing the tipping point, even though, if you account for externalities like pollution, risk management, and defense costs, renewables have been cheaper than fossil fuels since the 1970s or earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Compressed air, thermal storage in molten salts, and pumping water are all workable solutions for storing power, as are improving batteries and hydrogen production. There are solutions. The big issue is that we don't make coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear pay the true cost for pollution costs, health damage, defense costs, climate change, or meltdown risk.

So, for example, I can't eat fish caught locally in the North East US because of mercury pollution from coal burning power plants in the Midwest US. So, I've lost something valuable, for what in exchange? US Republicanism in practice is the worst sort of socialism -- privatizing gains but socializing costs (not to say US Democrats are often that much better). Thirty years of this worst sort of socialism has done a lot of damage to the USA (might as well have real "socialism" instead, IMHO, because it is hard to imagine everyone having medical care and free college and reliable infrastructure would make things worse at this point):
"Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'
Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline"
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy-2010-08-10

Not to say we were not warned, like by Jimmy Carter:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/
"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy. In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current."

Reading a lot about that, it seems that renewables have been cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear since the 1970s if externalities are accounted for (including pollution, disease, defense, corruption, other risk). The difference is that now, through decades of hard work by dedicated researchers, renewable are now becoming cheaper even when not accounting for externalities.
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
""Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co. (GE)," Bloomberg reports."