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Probably would not harm them as much as wind power does, depending upon who you ask.

What you are looking for is repairware. Also vote with your wallet, etc...

You would pick Vancouver of all places. Being born there, I'll weigh in.

Vancouver has the worst roads of any Canadian or American city I have ever lived in, or visited.

What makes Vancouver roads so bad? How about the slowest speeds, on average, of any city I've driven in. Try commuting daily at 50kph (30mph) on Marine drive, a major artery that connects Surrey, New Westminster & Burnaby to Vancouver. And yes this street has cops giving out speeding tickets!

Or how about the narrowest streets, with fewest lanes per road on average. The reason for this is that (1) 'Stumptown' is surrounded by water to the west, mountains to the north, the US border to the south, leaving only the east for the 'burbs and (2) it was established a hundred years before the car, so road widths are buggy-sized. You can get a similar taste of this in San Diego, but only if you drive right next to the water. Anywhere else in San Diego or any normal city and you get interstates and bypass roads doing their job. Well, imagine a lack of those type of streets throughout the city and voila, you have Vancouver.

Or picture this. A million commuters, literally, barrelling down the 2, count them 2, lanes of our "number one" highway into Vancouver. I kid you not. On a "highway" that dead ends into Cassiar, with a couple of intersections that ICBC (the Insurance Corporation of B.C.) studied because they were in the Top 10 deadliest in the province for some mysterious reason.

Vancouver is a shining example of how not to do things. When in doubt, throw up another traffic light. Whatever you do, do not create through roads that have favorable traffic lights (i.e. 2 minutes for main traffic, 15 or 20 seconds for side traffic). Instead, throw up traffic lights everywhere and then rave about how everyone walks. Small wonder they all walk or bike, they would road rage each other to death if they had to drive!

Vancouver is a parking lot that people love to walk and bike in. Fortunately I've not been there in 7 years. I imagine the traffic has only got worse.

No good dump on Vancouver traffic would be complete without ripping a good one at le piece de resistance that is the Lions Gate bridge. This 3-lane wonder is about a million years old and is one of only two ways to get _through_ Vancouver and on to the ferries that would take you up the coast, or to Vancouver Island. 16 hours a day this bridge has cars parked on it. The parking lot direction changes every few minutes via overhead red-green traffic lights. There are no lane dividers at all, of course, so head-on collisions are a viable way to off yourself. So after 75 or whatever years they are finally thinking they need to replace it. Can you guess what with? A 5-lane bridge that will switch back and forth like its predecessor. You can't make this stuff up.

I could also talk about the ethnic nature of Vancouver, and how the largest ethnic group has, easily, the worst drivers one could imagine. But then you might think I am just racist.

BTW, those random pictures you posted are truly hilarious. Here is a random one for New York and another for Tokyo to add to your file of green cities.

Oh, did I mention the Deas Island Tunnel? Gotcha! I could have lived almost for FREE, but on the wrong side of that tunnel. I bought a condo downtown instead.

I better stop before I turn this into a rant.

Current renewables like well-sited wind and solar PV have energy payback ranging from around three to six months for wind:
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/EnergyBalanceofWindTurbines.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/wind_turbine_lca.php

Solar estimates seem to range around one to four years:
http://www.pvresources.com/en/economics.php
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_payback_time#Sustainables

That last one is citing 2 to 4 years for PV, but it is out of date for thin film solar (if it was accurate back then).

Basically, the power to put in more renewables can come from other renewables in a bootstrapping way. Still, I'd agree that in practice a lot of the energy to make a lot of wind and PV systems quickly is coming from fossil fuels and nuclear. In many way, older nuclear power plants represent embodied fossil fuels used in their construction to pour concrete and mine fuel, too.

These pictures shows how little land or ocean surface is required to power the world entirely from wind or solar:
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequiredWindOnly.jpg
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg

Something like 1% of the USA's surface area is already devoted to things like power line rights of ways, or areas around fossil fuel mining, or roadways, etc..

Something like about 50% of the land in the USA is devoted to animal product production (meat, dairy, etc.) one way or another (mostly growing fodder for animals), and the animal products are actually mostly harming US Americans, so there is plenty of room for renewables from that angle, too: :-)
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html

Also, a lot of land can be dual use, like farming under windmills, or PV used on roofs.

So, the amount of land being talked about to be fully renewable is not disproportionate to other activities like the US interstate highway system or especially agriculture.

I'm not saying nuclear does not have interesting applications following the Hyperion approach or similar designs like the Toshiba S4. But to flat out say renewables are not going to work is just not accurate.

Molten lead won't do it, if only because it won't flash into steam when the pressure is partially released, and blast out new channels, causing even more movement, more sudden pressure drops, and more steam, until the plate slips enough to release the pent-up strain.

This is pure BS. Current refrigerators are more efficient than the ones produced in the 1980s.

It's amazing how you managed to post so much information yet dodge my simple question. You should consider a career in politics. I'll ask again. Who is proposing stopping human progress as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? We didn't stop human progress by reducing our use of CFCs. Refrigerators today are actually cheaper, more efficient, and larger than the ones that used CFCs.

Obama's legacy. That or this empty-promise of a universal healthcare system, which is also coming along swimmingly, just as expected.

Here. They can make paper out of kangaroo poo, just take it the next step. Take the initiative and your name can be here in an article on Slashdot as the inventor of poop based accelerometers. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/12/roo_poo_is_stat.php

There's nothing wrong with the Adam Smith theory of free markets.. But that theory is so far divorced from reality as to be counter-productive to society.

What's counter productive is saying free markets brought us all the ills you list. You say the government should make the world's life/death decisions. Guess who has killed more people than any other thing... Government, that's what. Counting just Jews the NAZIs exterminated 600,000 people. While they were doing that Stalin massacred 20 million people, and south of the Soviet Union Mao killed an estimated 50 million.

Now how many people have businesses killed? There may be something that killed more people, I don't know, but Union Carbide's Bhupal disaster only killed an estimated 15,000.

I dare you to find a company that has killed more people than the governments listed above. Heck, to make is easier you can even include the USA, try to find a business that killed more than the US. However when doing so don't leave out the estimated 4000 Cherokee who died on the Trail of Tears, the 400 who died at Wounded Knee and all the other massacres of American Indians. But you don't need to consider the 200,000 East Timorese who were massacred after Indonesia invaded East Timor with President Ford's and Kissinger's support. Or all the other foreign adventures the US had.

Oh, one more thing. Who do you think is the world's biggest polluter? The US Military. Add in all the other agencies of the federal government and the US government beats everyone when it comes to pollution.

According to one report, Proposed 150 MW Solar Plant Would Store 7 Hours

This storage is similar to the Andasol 1 plant in Spain. It certainly would not be sufficient for 24/7 operation at nominal 150 MW output by a fair bit.

Yes, they will die from hunger, poor sanitation, wars (civil or otherwise) all of which are going to be made worse by climate change. The World Health Organization already attributes 150,000 deaths annually to the effects of climate change.

Climate change is widely expected to hit the poorest people hardest.

I think you need to consider the effect of making all those factors worse.

Gigacrete looks like a better material for building in my opinion. I'll just have bacteria in my yogurt for now.

-Several GigaCrete products can be made with recycled waste material such as bottom ash, fly ash, sludge, or dredged materials. And, these waste material fillers can comprise up to 80% (by volume) of GigaCrete products. Usage of such waste materials reduces the amount of these byproducts going to landfills or other waste storage sites.

- Less carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are produced from the manufacture of the GigaCrete cement binder than compared to the manufacture of Portland cement.

- Energy savings can be achieved with the GigaCrete PanelSystem due to the high thermal efficiency and insulating value of the panel material. According to the “Structural Insulated Panel Association in Partnership with Oakridge National Labs,” structural paneled homes can achieve energy savings of up to 70%.

- The GigaCrete cement binder is 100% nontoxic.

- GigaCrete products use approximately two-thirds less water than conventional Portland-based cement products.

- High resistance to mold, mildew, insects, and vermin facilitates cleaner living environments.

All those eco-friendly bullet points, and no mention of the four things that matter: Strength, weight, longevity, and cost.

Gigacrete looks like a better material for building in my opinion. I'll just have bacteria in my yogurt for now.

Nice GigaCrete advert but the bacteria isn't presented as a replacement for concrete or GigaCrete. It's presented as a mechanism to repair existing concrete.

Or are you advocating we raze all existing concrete buildings and tear up all sidewalks?

Gigacrete looks like a better material for building in my opinion. I'll just have bacteria in my yogurt for now.
-Several GigaCrete products can be made with recycled waste material such as bottom ash, fly ash, sludge, or dredged materials. And, these waste material fillers can comprise up to 80% (by volume) of GigaCrete products. Usage of such waste materials reduces the amount of these byproducts going to landfills or other waste storage sites.
- Less carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are produced from the manufacture of the GigaCrete cement binder than compared to the manufacture of Portland cement.
- Energy savings can be achieved with the GigaCrete PanelSystem due to the high thermal efficiency and insulating value of the panel material. According to the “Structural Insulated Panel Association in Partnership with Oakridge National Labs,” structural paneled homes can achieve energy savings of up to 70%.
- The GigaCrete cement binder is 100% nontoxic.
- GigaCrete products use approximately two-thirds less water than conventional Portland-based cement products.
- High resistance to mold, mildew, insects, and vermin facilitates cleaner living environments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sams%C3%B8

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/08/wind-power-heart-of-samso-energy-independence.php

Video here explains FDM: First 3D-Printed Car Hits The Road : TreeHugger. It's additive where CNC and other milling processes are subtractive.

I like the idea of an "impossible" car body shape. This should be a hit with the Art Car crowd. Perhaps soon I'll own my very own motorized chicken.

All methods have some disadvantages. That doesn't mean however that they're all equivalent in their badness.

For instance, AFAIK, windmills killing birds isn't a particularly big deal. They don't kill that many, we kill lots by just making buildings, driving cars and owning cats (nobody seems to mention that when listing disadvantages like you just did), and progress has been made in making them kill as few as possible. Also the existing powerplants poison them instead.

Solar causes problems in the desert, sure. But that's not the only place where a solar panel can go. There's plenty room on top of buildings and those aren't exactly active ecosystems.

Good stuff! They seem to be doing a lot of this in Europe too... There's an entire hostel built into a retired 747 in Sweden:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/02/11/reclaimed-jumbo-jet-hotel-in-stockholm/

Older article with links to other related projects:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/creative-recycling-jumbo-hostel.php

"Ask your favourite well-driller if he'll let you airdrop him into a remote disaster zone to drill a water well today for $8k"

Considering lots of wells are dug by people living in these nations, I'd imagine that if you offered someone $8K ($3K more than the typical cost) for a weeks work (depending on the depth and nature of the well), they'd bite your hand off.

There'd be plenty of money left to transport enough water to last people until the well was ready to use. Alternatively you could just drop a few of these alongside a well worker : http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/water_transport_ross.php . Same principle, 1/20th the cost and they have the advantage of working in the dark and providing a way of transporting the water.

So... how do I move heavy stuff? How do I travel when it's raining? When it's fucking cold? When it's fucking hot? When it's more than a few kms?

I used to ride more than 15km each way to/from work. Solution: shower and carry a change of clothing. I was a fair weather rider, but others don rain gear and travel in the rain. Others even do so in snow when it's -20 C and the snow is up to their pedals -- this was a weather reporter I read about in either Edmonton or Calgary, I forget which, who rode her bike 365 days a year in temperatures anywhere from -40 C to +40 C. When it's hot, you wear less and use sunscreen. Unless it's so hot and your route so challenging that you're likely to suffer from heat stroke, it's definitely doable.

On the rare occasion you need to move heavy stuff (what, a few times a year?) you borrow a friend's vehicle or you rent one. It's extremely cheap. If it's only moderately heavy stuff, do a Google image search for "bicycle cargo trailer". It does the trick for everything except really heavy loads + really steep hills. Here's one result from that search which surprised me as well as this linked article on moving a refrigerator.

All that said, you're right that a bicycle will never replace a car. If you and friends want a relaxing night out for dinner and then perhaps go somewhere nice afterward, you'd need to be really super dedicated to cycle there, shower and change, haul your smelly gear to the restaurant while you wear your wrinkled clothes, etc. To some, it's a "who can be more extreme" contest but, excluding the zealots, the sensible approach is to use a bicycle when it makes sense and take your car when it makes sense.

If coal is so cheap then why does it get more subsidies than other energy sources?

Falcon

A bit unfair to make the bank liable for the NRC's and PUC's decisions.

What's unfair is forcing everyone to pay so nuclear energy will make a profit. It's also unfair to make others pay for pollution and other external costs.

Oh, and that's not just nuclear power but fossil fuels, and all the other sources that get subsidies. In absolute amounts coal gets the most in subsidies. It also gets to pass on external costs such as green house gas emissions. Fact is is through the 1990s and 2000s until Obama came to office coal, nuclear power, and oil all got billions of dollars a year in subsidies, as did corn based biofuels whereas all other alternative energy sources had to share maybe one billion dollars a year. Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies. Markey: "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" Oil Subsidies in the Dock.

Falcon

There have been some interesting efforts toward this, like the road train autopilot system.

"Jaguar has developed a hybrid car that runs on gas turbines."

How many miles-per-gas-turbine does it get and how many gas turbines are needed to fill the tank?

LOL

Except for the turbines, it reminds me of this hybrid mini, which was the first car I heard about that had an electric motor for each wheel. Also a British company... I wonder if there was some cross-pollination here, either by engineers moving to Jaguar, or by Jaguar realizing that 12MPG wasn't going to cut it anymore, no matter how elegant their classic design was.

For extra fun, compare the pic in the article to this actual population density map: http://i.treehugger.com/files/population-density-us.jpg

Someone is sure to object on those grounds...

But seriously, where does landfill stink come from, and why do they all small pretty much the same?
Land fills smell nothing like a dumpster full of garbage. So you can't blame it only on the garbage content.

Wouldn't it be better to find the the problem and fix that instead of covering it up?

  One wonders if the stink is a necessary outcome of the landfill process or just a byproduct that is not well understood. With sealed landfills, some states mandate gas extraction as part of the sealing process. There are something like 425 Land Fill Gas To Energy (yeah, I know, TreeHugger, cut me some slack ok?) projects in the US accounting for 1,180 megawatts of power.

Not a great deal, but it would seem a better solution than spraying it and hoping no one will notice the stink.

GMs executives just don't have the balls to shut down a factory when the UAW is making asinine demands. GM has long suffered from poor executive decisions. You want evidence? Look at what they put forth as the Chevy Volt concept. And then look at what the Chevy Volt is going to be after it went through the GM management homogenizer: http://blog.autoworld.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/volt1.jpg

Ha! My inductively coupled plasma has 6000 degrees celsius!

<worfVoice>Then your "inductively coupled plasma" is weak!</worfVoice> lol

This one claims a temperature of 25000 F (13871 C), and this one claims 15000 C.

15000 C puts the peak spectral wavelength at about 190 nm, which is solidly in the near UV spectrum. Guard against 'sun' burn while using it! I've been 'sun' burned a few too many times arc welding. I tend to forget to cover the vee at the top of my shirt.

What about a handcrank like they have on certain radios in Africa? ( http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/05/sonys_handcrank_1.php ) Sure it would take a day's worth of cranking to get enough charge for a mile of driving, but it still could be useful in an emergency.

Care to give an example, cause I'm struggling with this. What emergency would give you the leisure of 24 hours to hand crank up to a partly charged battery that will only take you a single mile. A single mile only takes ~20 minutes to walk at 3 mph. You could have gone and come back from your emergency site over 30 times at the speed of a leisurely stroll in that 24 hour period.

What about a handcrank like they have on certain radios in Africa? ( http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/05/sonys_handcrank_1.php ) Sure it would take a day's worth of cranking to get enough charge for a mile of driving, but it still could be useful in an emergency.

I don't think people quite appreciate how difficult it is to remove oil from the ecosystem when things like cleaning the birds is considered futile, the dispersant may be longer acting than the oil and the median time for complete recovery is looking to be in the decades. Any solution that does not prevent future blow outs from happening in the first place is far too expensive to justify, its sort of sad that it is cheaper just to ignore the gulf coast and fish and vacation somewhere else till the pollution dies down. It may make for good TV viewing but I for one would rather see them invest billions to prevent another disaster instead of making largely cosmetic changes to the gulf coast that may lull people into a false sense of security.

Apparently this fellow hasn't heard of the Sawfish?

The Sawfish is powered by electric motors, sports eight video camera eyes as well as sonar, and uses “biodegradable and vegetable oil-based hydraulic fluids.” Triton estimates that British Colombia alone has five billion board feet of salvageable lumber submerged underwater and that the number could exceed 100 billion board feet worldwide. The estimated value of these some odd 300 million submerged trees is $50 billion. (From Treehugger)

Also, commercial grade cannabis-the kind that doesn't get you high when you smoke it-can provide 42% of our current lumber needs by eliminating the need to use lumber for paper products. Not to mention the other commercial products you get from it, such as clothing, food and solvents for use in paints, thinners and other industrial processes. To top it all off, you get several crops per season, rather than one crop per every two decades.

So anyone saying "peak lumber" should just paste a cutout of Glenn Beck on their face and call it done.

If you look at the first link in TFA (not the Gizmodo one), you'll see it's by an architect who takes a very skeptical view of this story.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/nicotine-bees-population-restored-with-neonicotinoids-ban.php?campaign=th_rss_science

1) Why are they poring dispersants on the oil spill instead of coagulants?
2) Good on Shell for being proactive, to bad it took a major disaster to get a more comprehensive disaster plan.

I tried it for a few minutes, and the Prius never suddenly accelerated. Clearly the simulation is flawed.

Clearly the simulation doesn't account for cosmic rays. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/cosmic-rays-may-have-driven-toyota-vehicles-crazy.php

Um... no. No they would not.

Yes they would. Simple economics says that as the cost of something goes up people look for cheaper sources or reduces the amount needed. That has been proven throughout history, even if not by choice. And as today's conventional energy gets more expensive people will move to other sources.

Geothermal, while prevalent in some parts of the world, is not that big of a resource here. And most of the places where geothermal is available are national parks. Could you imagine the uproar if you tried to build a power plant at Yellowstone?

The only reason it is not big here, in the US, is because little has been done to develop it. And it is even used in New York City. I myself have proposed geothermal in Yellowstone, but you're right so called environmentalists even oppose offshore and onshore wind farms. "Not in my backyard!" Of course I'd want a Yellowstone geothermal power plant to be blended into the landscape and I'd love both solar panels and a wind turbine on my property.

Solar is nowhere near efficient enough to power the country. It can be a nice boost, hardly economic, and government subsidies are not enough to help. For starters, government subsidies exist

Wow! Solar power got $62 million for R&D. That's dwarfed by coal's $3.302 Billion in 2007 alone or Nuclear Power's $145 Billion over the years. "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" Wars are even started over oil.

There are also several tax breaks you can receive for "greening" your home, but it will never be enough to make it cost effective

Tell all those who build off the grid that it's not effective. Solar hot water has a payback period as short as 5 to 6 years, and the equipment lasts a lot longer. The payback for PV panels is much harder but estimates have been as low as 7 years and panels come with 20, 25, even 30 year warranties. Even pro-rated replacing equipment is cost competitive. Individually owned PVs aren't the only way to go solar either. The same publication you provide a link to your article, Science Daily, also has this article, Solar Power in Ontario Could Produce Almost as Much Power as All U.S. Nuclear Reactors, Studies Find. On large scales concentrated solar power may be more effective. Another article it has, Fossil-Fuel Subsidies Hurting Global Environment, Security, Study Finds.

Oh, and does he consider the subsidies conventional energy gets too in the study? Does he factor in the billions of dollars coal and nuclear power get? The only mention I see about them is where "he favors more state and federal funding for research and development." Personally I don't think government should be subsiding most of what it does, whether energy or farms or ...

Of course, as the Kennedys showed us, some people don't like the way they look. You remember Ted Kennedy, right? That big green liberal that BLOCKED wind power because it might disrupt the view from some of his mansions?

I don't know how many tymes I commented, but I didn't find any, I posted about how Kennedy or that NIMBY environmentalists opposed wind farm o

If someone actually comes up with a feasible, scalable alternative to fossil fuels, the switch to using that idea would just take care of itself due to market forces.

Only if that were true, but it's not. Those who use fossil fuels get to pass on the external costs to others. One way to make polluters pay is by taxing carbon. But of course some complain that that harms businesses or people. Are you one of them?

And that's only half of it. Fossil fuel supporters complain about how alternative energy sources get subsidies. Well, guess what? So do fossil fuels. Here's Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) bragging about how his bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'. He starts by saying the Nuclear Power industry has received $145 Billion in federal subsides over the years. But combined solar and wind have only gotten $5 billion. In another video the CEO of Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies. Those subsidies for nuclear power above? The Freemarket CATO institute reprinted a "Forbes" article printed on 26 November 2007 about how the Nulear Power Industry is Hooked on Subsidies. Among other things it says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors." In 2007 in the US all alternative energy sources including the $3.0 Billion corn based ethanol got, when corn is not a good feedstock for ethanol, got $4.875 Billion dollars. Subtract that $3 Billion and geothermal, solar, wind, and others only got $1.875 Billion. Coal got $3.760 Billion. Itself, oil has gotten the majority of federal energy incentives.

What is happening is the government and not a free market is picking winners and losers. The government should end all subsidies, including allowing industries to pass external costs to others, and let the different players compeat.

Falcon

You have to remember even a pebble at the kinds of speeds you can get up there can be catastrophic. This is why we the people of this planet really need to be working on a strategy for cleaning all the crap leftover from dead and broken sats. As you can see here just the amount of useless dangerous shit DARPA is tracking is just unreal, and that don't count all the tiny fragments that can tear through you like a bullet.

So while blowing it up would be a spectacularly bad idea, we do need to have a way to deal with dead crap in space. As we get more and more sats, and have to deal with more solar flares and other unexpected problems, this problem is only gonna get worse. Perhaps we need to offer a couple of billion dollar bounty for the one that solves this problem?

The number of flying animals killed by wind farms PALES in comparison to the number killed by cars, trucks, buildings, and so on. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/common_misconce.php

Nuclear is actually cost competitive with coal,

So the Wall Street Journal is wrong? Even they say "The only way to handicap the field in nuclear power's favor is to put a big price tag on emissions of carbon dioxide." If however emissions of carbon dioxide had a price tag then geothermal, solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources would be more competitive as well not just nuclear power. And if nuclear is so great then why does the industry need subsidies and gets loan guaranties?

and is the only green energy source that is.

Nuclear power is not clean, it is dirty from cradle to grave, oops there is no grave for nuclear waste. Ask the Navajo how clean uranium mining is. Or some First Nations in Canada, the aboriginals in Australia, or any number of other indigenous peoples throughout the world.

It's also wrong that nuclear plants need to be these massive, expensive things. We've had portable nuclear generators since the '60s, and you can build out plants of various sizes from there all the way up to the mega installations.

Is that why Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant has costs overruns raising it's cost from 3 billion euros to more than 4.2 billion? Or seen it's operation delayed from 2009 to 2012 at the earliest? Since you didn't like the previous CATO article you probably won't like this one either but Nuclear Energy: Risky Business says "the industry in the early 1990s asked for-and got-exactly the sort of safety regulations, permit review process, and public comment regime now in place." Further, it says "Indeed, if government were the reason why investors were saying "no" to their loan applications, I would expect that industry officials would be the first to say so. But they do not."

Solar is currently 3x - 10x more expensive than coal.

Saying that's true now, I don't know, solar is constantly dropping in costs. And coal does not pay all of it's own costs. Like other energy sources coal is subsidized. Mountaintop removal probably the safest way to mine coal is very destructive and polluting.

The only reason it can be cost effective is because the government very very heavily subsidizes solar installations.

If ethanol subsidies, most of which go to corn and there are better feed stocks than corn, are removed from alternative energy subsidies coal comes in first place in the amount of subsidies it gets. The graph on the page linked to says alternative energy got $4.875 billion in 2007. Of that though $3 billion went to ethanol. Coal on the other hand is broken down into 2 categories. Refined coal, whatever that is, got $2.370 billion and coal got $932 million. Together coal got $3.302 billion whereas goethermal, solar, wind and other alternative sources got $1.9 billion excluding ethanol. I do see that it has nuclear as getting less than alternatives though, however I wonder how it breaks down for the different types? As that page asks, "which pig wears the most lipstick?"

Geothermal will never amount to more tha

THIS.

Everybody questioning about its battery life in here, listen, we have provided a mobile battery charger just keep shaking it will charge.

I see your point, but your argument is not analogous: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/rising-c02-levels-alter-plant-growth-world-wide-ecological-impacts-significant.php

maybe, but what came to mind is a belief that a solar cell has a lifespan of say 20 years. Googling a bit, it seems UV constantly degrades solar cells. Here is someone working on this. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/solar-cell-coating.php

I can image some greeny reading the headline and thinking he is going to power his house forever on these.

If you want green, this PC uses under 10 watts. I will never want Intel graphics, even if it means not having open source drivers.

As an Aussie, I'd never seen that kind of traffic light - and upon tracking down the linking page found that it hasn't been used here since the 1970s...

(see also information aesthetics and wikipedia for more information)

You're Australian and talk to US about bizaare? YOU guys drive on the wrong side of the road. YOU guys eat Vegemite. That alone ought to keep you out of the running for a civilized country. And you have really strange traffic signals.

Y'all have nothing on us.

Your first two links are the same, might have been meant to direct here instead.