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Fox News: US Solar Energy Investment Less Than Germany Because US Has Less Sun
Andy Prough writes "Apparently those wise folks at Fox have figured out America's reluctance to invest as much money in solar energy as Germany — the Germans simply have more sun! Well, as Will Oremus from Slate points out, according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Solar Resource map comparison of the U.S. and Germany, nothing could be further from the truth — Germany receives as much sunlight as the least lit U.S. state — Alaska."
Fox News
Their followers, however...
It's the very first time Fox has said anything that's factually incorrect.
They mentioned briefly that the US tried to subsidize solar but the Chinese kept undercutting our manufacturers and we just couldn't beat their prices. What is Germany doing differently that allows them to beat Chinese prices? Tariffs? Import restrictions? Why does that kind of market manipulation work for Germany and why do we allow subsidies to happen in the states but not that sort of competition restriction?
... which still doesn't answer how their solar products compete with the Chinese. I like how they named dropped 'natgas' several times because the US has so much of it! No problems worth mentioning about natural gas!
Oh, right, they have more sun
My work here is dung.
So I know this is Fox News we're talking about here, but where exactly does one draw the line between a failure to check your sources, and becoming a tabloid?
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Slashdot
You so limit yourself if you let facts get in the way. What troubles me most is the number of sentient people I know who listen to, believe, and repeat verbatim what they hear on Murdoch's newscast.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It's the very first time Slashdot has said anything that isn't.
Please don't ridicule Fox News. These guys are just doing their job.
Propaganda for the poor anti-science, bible thumping, redneck Republitards.
Actually, if you look at Fox over the past few weeks, they've run a series of anti-solar articles. I guess somebody wants to sell more oil.
Bruce Perens.
The sun has a well-known liberal bias, therefore the US gets less sunlight than a socialist European welfare state.
I am envious of the deep suntans that most Germans flaunt in my face.
It's a morning show; they all suck. It doesn't have to be FOX News.
-SaNo
let's also mention the sheer SIZE of alaska, compared to germany... unless that flips the argument... ... no, just checked alaska is 1.5ish times the size of germany, so THERE! :)
The real reasons the US is slow on solar is due to the payback period. Due to high property taxes, permit fees, and relatively low electric rates, the payback period in most parts of the US is 15+years. With the job morket and soft realesate market, the chances of breaking even is slim for many. A map of the insolation index of much of the US shows much of the US will receive much less than most of the high population areas.
I did pick up a solar panel. I put it on my motorhome where the generation cost is very high due to high gas prices. Then I take my vacation trips to Arizona and Utah to visit the national parks. Being self contained instead of paying for sites with hookups, quickly pay the investment cost of the panels instead of the payback rate of installing them on my house in the Pacific Northwest.
Is this why we have such miserable weather over here in Ireland? Quit hogging the sunshine America, leave some for us. This is so typical of you, you make nothing of your own, you just take it from everyone else.
Conservative nutcases on Slashdot
That would be the first port of call (so to speak).
I was watching MSNBC a while ago and an 'expert' on community development was asked about the effects of trickle down economics. Their reply - It has obviously failed, after all just how many maids and gardeners can the rich employ? Sharpton rolled his eyes and immediately cut to commercial. When they came back the 'expert' was gone.
Sun comes up. Sun goes down. You can't explain that.
I am not a crackpot.
I would recommend that any residents of Arizona who want some more sunshine visit Bavaria!
Germany has advanced its clean energy capacity because it has maintained a clear and consistent policy of incentivizing it for over a decade. It is paying off. Last year they set a record by generating half of weekend electricity demand with solar. Denmark has managed something similar with wind power, getting 24% of its electricity that way.
Of course, Germany and Denmark have strong green constituencies who support those policies, but there are realpolitik concerns at work too. A few years back Russia shut down the natural gas pipeline that ran through the Ukraine to Germany and central Europe because they wanted to play politics with the Ukrainians. Natural gas prices spiked in Europe overnight and put a serious crimp in its economy. The Germans, Danes, and many others got the wake up call and have been driving toward energy independence hard.
There are longer term benefits for those economies who move their energy base off fossil fuels: predictable energy costs. In economic terms, when you increase the predictability and stability of key inputs businesses can better plan and grow, in the same way that low inflation means businesses can better know what their borrowing costs and real revenues will be.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Many households and some funds in Germany invest into solar energy because there is a guaranteed income for the power those cells produce. The solar industry in Germany currently fears the cheap cells coming from China. Some factories already died due to the hard competition
... at Fox reckon man never landed on the moon either.
Not to nitpick, but no one said "US getting less sun than US". I feel a bit queasy when people substitute the word "Germany" for "US".
It's pretty clear what Fox News wants us to do: Invade Germany, and liberate its sunlight.
Damnit you bastard. I used up all my modpoints.
And you beat me to that point.
+1 funny psudomod...
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Dammit, I'm going to have to re-calibrate my tard-o-meter.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Germany receives a bit more sunlight than Alaska, since slate.com was comparing apples and oranges.
Here is a really good explanation of US vs German solar energy:
http://www.joewein.net/blog/2011/09/09/solar-energy-usa-vs-germany/
Quote:
"Germany’s annual exposure to the sun is actually not too different from the US east of the Mississippi, except for the Southern sunbelt from Texas to Florida, which does get more sun."
According to a recent study by LBNL the soft cost associated with installing the panels are more than three times as high in the US compared to Germany.
http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/german-us-pv-price-ppt.pdf
Page 26: Costs that are not module costs. 4.46$/W in the US compared to 1.18$/W in Germany.
Higher cost results in lower volume.
I remember back in the day, my grandma would smack you upside the head if you even suggested pro wrestling wasn't real. We knew it wasn't real, and I'm sure she knew it wasn't real, but saying that breaks the magic of pro wrestling.
Fox News isn't real. We know it isn't real, but our grandma might smack us upside the head for saying that.
Maybe in the next decade or so, Fox News will admit it's actually entertainment, instead of the serious news show they promote.
Be seeing you...
...es ist die falsche Sorte Sonne.
I thought Sun has been bought by Oracle, a US company???
The sun rises and sets because GOD wants it to. End of discussion.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
A new study finds that on average the US receives no sun a staggering 50% of every day! I guess we're just not lucky like other countries.
In fairness, it probably seems like there is less sun in their mother's basement, which is apparently where they broadcast from.
Fox news gets much more palatable when you replace the talking head with this
But you've hit on the fundamental issue. If you just wait around for things to "get cheaper on their own" you wait a lot longer. One could argue that China has waited a bit too long for electric vehicles and over their densest cities they have "air you can chew." For the commuter vehicles for which they worked, electric cars in the US did not break even on the cost of electrics on the year the Volt was introduced. The $7,500 tax credit made them break even. Once they were justifiable to the consumer they sold like mad. This in turn causes the cost of manufacturing to drop and means that by the time the next generation of batteries hits, there will have been two generations of Volt working out all the bugs. If we get a 50 mile electric range out of the next gen (as opposed to 35 today), this will actually double the people for whom this technology is viable, if by then the cost of manufacturing the Volt had gone down 10% we might not need the subsidy to sell out of all the Volts GM can produce in a year.
Even with the subsidy, my commute didn't fall into the break even range. I bought one anyway because I thought it was the right thing to do.
So, I must disagree. We'll have better electrics on the road ~3 years sooner due to that "evil government subsidy." That was money well spent.
As for centralized solar, there are lots of viable-sounding technologies for making that work, the sooner we try 10 of them on a large scale, the sooner we find the clear winner. Paying for the 9 runners up, is part of that cost. If you can do this sort of science and have all your test results come out positive each time, you aren't actually doing science.
Shibani Joshi is not an engineer, a scientist, or even technically trained. She's a dumb-ass reporter that works for the Fox Business Network.
So, why should we care what she says? Just because Tweedle dee and Tweedle blond are hanging on her every word?
In the show Futurama, they very succinctly depict people at "Box" network: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YJfxIeoQOg
So, fox news has turned into a joke over the years, and the worst of it is the morning show. The hosts are idiots, they do little research and make a lot of false claims. BUT... watched the video. The quote was taken completely out of context. She said "Germany has a lot more sun than us. You could do solar power in places like California and out west, but on the east cost here it's just not going to work well." That's a far cry from what Slates claiming. It's still probably wrong, but it's not nearly as idiotic as Slates claiming and it was clearly an off the cuff remark and not a statement of fact. The real direction the interview was taking was that China is undercutting our solar panel production, and the only way to compete is with subsidies. Which is true. Also, she went on to say our money would be better invested in developing cleaner methods of using Natural Gas, which is also true. My own opinion is that, we're going to use that natural gas, period, it's a fact. So lets make sure we at least use it in as clean a way as possible.
There are plenty of reasons to talk shit about Fox news. This single comment is not news worthy.
According to "Current Results", the total annual sunshine in Germany (hours):
Berlin 1625
Bremen 1483
Hamburg 1557
Hannover 1501
Kiel 1627
Magdeburg 1609
Potsdam 1692
Rostock 1687
Total annual sunshine in Alaska:
Anchorage 2061
No US city/state gets less sunshine than Anchorage AK, though Syracuse NY is close at 2120, Seattle WA at 2170, and Columbus OH at 2183.
Accountability? If the synopsis had cited Foe News as origin8or, I wouldn't have bothered clicking over to the Slate article.
There's no truth in truthiness, anymore...
FOX continuing to be wrong when they say things.
Actual news- new information based on fact- avoids the FOX network.
FOX does not have an actual NEWS reporting program- they have fictional entertainment shows, fictional "reality" shows and tabloid shows.
As an experiment, I just went to the Huffington Post to see if I could find any bad science on a site that leans towards the left. One headline reads "Scientists Say ETs May Be Much Closer To Us Than We Ever Before Thought". Going to the article shows that the only reference to life was added by the editors and half of it makes no sense (ET phoning home is closer than people think? Really? How close do people think it is? And I thought ET phoned a nearby ship, not his home planet, anyway) and even the article itself is woefully inaccurate; the comments themselves point out that "at a habitable distance and size" doesn't mean Earth-like, especially since planets orbiting close to red dwarfs would be tidally locked. (The astronomer used the phrase "potentially Earth-like", which is a nice way of saying "only a few of them are going to be Earth-like".)
This was the first scientifically-related article I found on the first left-wing site I picked. It may not be as dramatic an error as saying that the US has less sun than Germany, but I wonder how big a mistake I would have found had I tried for a month or two or however long it took to find the Fox News error.
The media and political commentators are horrible at science. Nothing to do with Fox News specifically, as the Slashdot headline and the absence of articles about other sites tend to imply.
The scary part is that 99% of their viewers will, as usual, swallow that bullshit without a second thought.
Responsibility? Regulation? Holding people accountable? That isn't how capitalism works! You throw money at things and the strong things stick around, and they are inevitably also the best things.
You sound like a dirty red commie.
The Slate has no value, it says Trolls for page clicks.
Is there a link to the original Fox statements?
MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
by George W. Bush
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This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
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Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!
Not to nipick but nobody substitued the word "Germany" for "US", the grandparent substituted "US" for "Germany". It was quite the opposite of what you say makes you feel queasy actually so I guess you are feeling really good right about now.
Thank goodness for Fox News, considering watching the video Slate got it wrong, but hey it's not the first time!
"Fox News` credibility rating has hit a four-year record-low, with the majority of Americans distrusting the conservative-leaning channel. New Public Policy Polling (PPP) results show that 46 percent of voters distrust the network, while only 41 percent of voters perceive its information as reliable." link
AccountKiller
I was shocked when I heard it live.. Someone must have handed her the subject 2 minutes before the cameras started rolling. Having worked there for 5 years, I can say that there is nothing particularly sunny about Germany... And of course, there is the whole size issue: Texas: 268600 sq Miles Germany: 137846 sq Miles Nevada: 110600 sq Miles - (statistics thanks to Wolfram Alpha) Somehow, I think Texas has a little more sun than Germany..... As a side note, the real reason they have a functioning Solar industry is due to the government subsidy programs and financial incentives...
I guess Fox business analyst Shibani Joshi is a juggalo.
Proverbs 21:19
Modded you Troll because Absolute Fucking Moron wasn't available.
Who would want to shine on a country full of idiots who take Fox "News" seriously?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
They might as well claim the Germans are passing us in natural gas production due to their consumption of sausages. I remember when people questioned why Germany was focusing on solar due to how few sunny days they had. Compare that to Arizona or New Mexico or even Florida and it's just plain silly. So long as you are below the Mason Dixon Line there should be no debate about solar. The northern states are more hit and miss.
the sugestion that ve in Germoney have more than one sun! Not true!
I like my spaghetti with source.
This is not meant to nickpick
I know "US getting less sun than US" means "US getting less sunlight than US", but I still feel a little bit queasy when people substitute the word "Sun" for "Sunlight"
Maybe that's just me ...
So, when people use the phrase, "fun in the sun", do you correct them with, "fun in the warmth and light of the Sun"? Do you tell people, "No, you are not getting some sun. You are receiving some sunlight!"
If only you had been around to prevent the Beatles from making fools of themselves by singing, "Here Comes the Sun", instead of, "Here Comes More Direct Sunlight".
Or maybe you are just a little too caught up in misplaced pedantry to notice the usage of the word "sun" has a common and accepted usage to denote the light or warmth of the sun.
Merriam-Webster.com: sun"
...and I can confirm that everything we say is a lie...except this statement.
And that statement.
I have to agree: The problem really has nothing to do with Fox news. It has to do with the entire profession of journalism. With very few exceptions, journalists have zero grasp of issues relating to science, engineering or technology. Too often, their idea of research is to talk to their equally clueless colleagues in the lunchroom. Alternatively, they just make up "facts" that sound right to them.
The entire profession is spiraling towards the drain. With the rise of the Internet, fewer people are willing to pay for news of any sort. Less income, budgets are cut, fewer journalists have to churn out more material, quality goes in the crapper, so even fewer people are willing to pay for news...
Just look at the quality of coverage on scientific/technical issues like nuclear power, health care, climate change. Find some specific bit of information, any factoid that seems fairly unique, and start searching. Most likely you will find a lovely merry-go-round: journalists copying from journalists copying from journalists. If you manage to find the original source of the factoid, likely as not it has been taken totally out of context and/or has been completely misunderstood.
Alternatively the entire article may be basically a copy of a press release. Companies and governmental organizations know the journalists are under time pressure, so they provide pre-written "articles" that can be used directly, no thinking required.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Ummm... and this is left leaning because, ummm... all aliens are communists?
You are deliberately misreading a speculation fluff piece and comparing it to objective science of energy policy. I note you didn’t even bother to link this outrageous left leaning story, maybe you could get a good job at FOX News?
Well that's true - as I lived in Germany. There are several reasons why Germany gets more sun that the US of A. 1. That's because Germans pay more taxes than Americans as a result the government is able to get more Sun for their citizens. We don't want to pay these taxes because we don't need that much sun. I mean why do you need extra sun? 2. Germans also get extra sun because they unified East Germany, since rises in the East so they have East and West both covered as a result more sun. Since US doesn't have anything like East US, it was never divided...we miss all that sun :(
3. If you have ever played with a magnifying glass and try to focus sun it creates a tiny hot spot. That's the spot where you get most heat/sun. And since Germany is very very small than US they get that sun and US misses it all.
http://www.damnocrazy.com/23/fox-news-germans-get-more-sun-us
You bash Fox; then turn around and watch the likes of ABC/NBC/CNN/etc..
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Would you (americans) please explain to a non-american why on earth people in the USA do still watch Fox? I mean except for the Simpsons.
works for an energy company that deals in natural gas. Anyone shocked?
I just wonder why when idiots on MSNBC or CNN (or the 3 networks for that matter) say scientifically follish statements, we don't see that posted up on Slashdot? Is the hatred for Fox that much that they are held to a significantly higher standard?
Once again, punts, oops, I meant pundits over at FAUX news have opened up their mounts and opined on something with which they had no clue. I've seen 12 year olds do this, but usually within a year or two, they realise the shortcomings of their knowledge, and shut up rather than making themselves look foolish or stupid.
Not so with FAUX. They seem hell bent on being the 'supermarket checkout stand tabloid' version of the news. So I will add just a bit to it to help them out.
Fox News: US Solar Energy Investment Less Than Germany Because US Has Less Sun, as a result Space Aliens get US women pregnant
Its not Jimmy Lee's baby after all, it were the space aliens who dun it
Indeed, he should now have a sunny disposition.
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
I find it is no more or less accurate, nor more or less biased than any other news source. They all suck.
I read the news for two reasons: (1) because I'm bored and it amuses me; and (2) to see what everyone is talking about today. The second point often happens to correlate loosely with what is actually happening in the world, though it often bears little correlation to the importance of the happening: Kim Kardashian's latest side-boob gets a lot more talk than a murder in my hometown. But then, I do have to live in a society of myopic nincompoops, so knowing what they are all hysterical about is a useful thing, because it's likely to affect my daily life as I interact with them. Arguably more useful than the murder of someone I never met.
My experience has been that Fox is more likely to post offbeat or sensationalist stories, which are great entertainment whether they are true or not. As far as what people are talking about, Fox is as good a source as anything else is, and has the bonus that everything is not couched in liberal lies and bias, so it's less irritating to read. On the other hand it is often cloaked in conservative bias and lies, which is irritating too... just less so, to my taste.
Because let's face it, we ALL prefer the news sites that print what we already believe, and say what we want to hear. It's human nature. A source that tells us what we want to hear and already agree with, we say is "reliable." A source that tells us what we don't want to hear and have already decided (i.e. prejudice, pre-judged) we dislike, we say is "unreliable" and "biased." You who prefer liberal sites to Fox news, you don't read Fox do you? Or if you do, you read it critically and reject it out of prejudice and mock it. So the self-selection you accuse Fox readers of, you do yourself, only you are too blind to admit it. Every time someone mocks Fox news, I inwardly laugh at their hypocrisy and self-delusion. I don't disagree with them, but I see them as unworthy of my attention due to their lack of discernment.
In the end, Fox is just trying to entertain me and doesn't seem to take itself too seriously. That is refreshing in its honesty. Most of the other liberal news sites really seem to believe what they are saying, which only shows that they are so detached from reality they cannot be trusted. Fox can't be trusted either, but at least they don't flaunt the fact.
And liking Fox doesn't mean I dislike other sources. I have my list of favorites. Typically those that don't throw a lot of ads in my face, just give me the damn article without a lot of fuss. I like to read the same article from about five different sources, to get a rounded perspective. And I like to read a few opinion pieces, to see what people are all up in arms about. I read the comments section sometimes, especially on controversial pieces, to remind myself that the world is full of idiots that I should be wary of.
This is not meant to nickpick
I know "US getting less sun than US" means "US getting less sunlight than US", but I still feel a little bit queasy when people substitute the word "Sun" for "Sunlight"
Maybe that's just me ...
So, when people use the phrase, "fun in the sun", do you correct them with, "fun in the warmth and light of the Sun"?
No, I think the the Fox commentator meant that Germans are brighter than the Americans when it comes to solar energy policy.
I love how this seems to work. One company failed (Solyndra). And it was allowed to fail, not propped up endlessly (which I think is how this stuff should work). The poster was all for using government subsidy to jump start a newish industry. But now that ONE company failed, it magically gets extended to all of them, and it's government fraud, and we should stop everything.
One company fails = "As for direct investment into "Green" companies the government shouldn't be trusted on that ever again."
A few points:
China is working to become the Solar Saudi Arabia by both hook and crook.
water pipelines, excess generation can be stored as Hydrogen.
nice attempt at a water-grab there, aztracker1.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
None of this is funny. You young men need to get a life.
Not to nitpick, but a comma should have been used after "nitpick". Also, you misspelled "substituted", and there is a run-on sentence in--
Okay, I have to stop now.
I don't doubt we could do more with solar power. I'm not defending Fox, cause some of the comments from them is so asinine that it can't possibly be fact based.
But how much of that land is actually something that can be used for solar collection.
I live in Alaska. The reason we don't have more cities is because well there are these things called mountains. And where there aren't mountains, is a lot of swamp, err wetlands.
And then on top of it, throw in a good portion of the state goes dark during winter.
I have no experience with Germany, so I really don't know if it is apples to apples comparison.
The Muppets do a better job than anyone here :-)
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=muppet+fox+news&oq=muppet+fox+news&gs_l=youtube.3..33i21.1646.2071.0.2120.5.5.0.0.0.0.182.454.3j1.4.0...0.0...1ac.1.AD6-ni6c5wk
-Matt
I'm so pleased to know that Pittsburgh, PA (2021 hours) is no longer a US city.
I would like to know what part of germany those clowns at faux news thinks gets more sun than where I live here in Las Vegas????
These are the subsidies "given" to the energy industry: Foreign tax credit ($15.3 billion) - This "subsidy" is given to all businesses that operate and pay taxes over seas. Credit for production of non-conventional fuels ($14.1 billion) - This sounds like bio diesel or synthetic fuels from coal (Government warping the market) Oil and Gas exploration and development expensing ($7.1 billion) - essentially allows them to expense it in 1 year instead of spreading over many year This is financial slight of hand not a real subsidy. They can eventually claim the whole expense anyway. The three largest renewable fuel subsidies were: Alcohol Credit for Fuel Excise Tax ($11.6 billion) - Take the tax off of alcohol burned instead of drank. Back handed farm subsidy. Renewable Electricity Production Credit ($5.2 billion) - Paying for windmills and solar panels to be used where they cannot compete. Corn-Based Ethanol ($5.0 billion) - Paying for production of environmentally unfriendly costly fuel. Back handed farm subsidy. I don't think the government should be doing any of these things. The market does a very effective job of allocating resources to the best benefit of humanity. Government not so much.
Not to nitpick, but it's nitpick and not nipick or nickpick.
Anyone who thinks that the people on Fox and Friends are just being stupid is fooling themselves. This is a deliberate campaign of deception and they get paid to say whatever Fox says they should say. The truly sad part is many of their listeners are sitting there quietly nodding their heads in agreement.
So, when people use the phrase, "fun in the sun", do you correct them with, "fun in the warmth and light of the Sun"?
Why yes, yes I do. Unfortunately I am rarely then invited to participate, despite my helpful and informative nature.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
the truth is "coal consumption has risen 4.9 percent since Merkel announced a plan to start shutting the country’s atomic reactors after last year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan."
The dual stupidities of "renewable energy" and abandoning nuclear power (the only viable solution to Germany's energy needs) are far more worthy of mocking than Fox News. Fox News does not set the agenda of any nation.
Perhaps Fox News was fooled by the local effect of thick black smoke from all those burning pants blotting out the sun.
...that, contrary to the moon and tides, Bill O'Reilly can actually explain this.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
OF COURSE America has received less sunlight!
God-fearing America has only been receiving sunlight for 6,000 years, while Atheist Germany has been been receiving sunlight practically since prehistory!
what you trolls would do if you didn't have fox new to kick around?
Really? Doesn't it make you feel equally queasy when somebody says "this is not meant to nitpick" as a prelude to nitpicking? If your comment is not meant to nitpick, then what, exactly, is it meant to do?
Note that I'm not saying that nitpicking is necessarily bad. But if you're going to do it, why blatantly lie about it first?
Solyndra made solar panels. A123 did good battery research. I had to look the others up. It sounds like Beacon Power made flywheels for power storage in the grid, Abound Solar manufactured solar panels and had a newer and cheaper construction method, and Ener1 made fancy batteries.
To answer your question, yes, I am tired of having money taken from me and wasted on bad decisions. I think we differ on what constitutes a bad decision. I consider the Iraq war to be a very costly and bad decision. I don't know about some of these companies. Perhaps they are too. But lets examine the scale of the problem and the cost of the these decisions..... I'm done. Please spend my money on research and development of alternative power technologies. Please spend it on something that can help all of us. Please don't spend it on stupid wars.
You're complaining about government waste. Go after the TSA for being useless. Go after a bloated department of homeland security that does the same job that the FBI and the CIA do. (really, the FBI spies on us, the CIA spies on everyone else. Why do we need a department of homeland security?) Go after a bloated defense budget that doesn't make us any safer. I'm all for getting rid of government bloat. So lets make a pareto chart and tackle the top 2...
No, the Beatles song is actually about the end of the world, as Sol expands into a red giant and engulfs the earth.
"Here comes the sun Here comes the sun It's all right It's all right"
Jesus christ, last year it was all the crap about how awesome Obama is for his campaign team's electoral power (nevermind the privacy invasions in that case, whereas MS got slag for enabling privacy by default and Google got the Slashdot crowd greenlight for its privacy mining workshops...) now I'm seeing on Slashdot about how Fox mangles the news??
/Stop downgrading my posts.
First, stop treating my posts like trolling and start treating them like legitimate complaints as they are. THIS feed, THIS news does not belong here. THIS news is not informative on any intellectual level. THIS news only tells us that Fox got facts wrong. THIS news only tells us to distrust Fox reporting. What has that got to do with being a nerd? Nothing. Media makes mistakes all the time. Fox is the one highlighted here, though!
This reporting has nothing to do with real unbiased science -- the context is clear that the "facts" are juxtaposed against Fox "facts": Fox got them wrong, science got them right. Hence, Fox is not scientific. That is the focus of THIS news. But the important information -- why does the U.S. invest less in solar -- is left to the imagination. You could have achieved a better story without mentioning conservative media WTFs, and got all the good info out there. But no, you did not. THIS is political. It is not nerds, not geeks, and it is not news. It is politics plain and simple.
& averages 300 sunlight days a year. But Fox News [oxymoron? Well, somthing...] doesn't know that. My solar panels are making more electricity than I use. Surrounding states are close to the same. May not work in New York City, but it does here!
Ask a Business Reporter an off the cuff question about science and you deserve the answer you get. About like asking the posters here about a good financial investment.
Right you are. Sounds like a real pit. Hey...
If you watch the video, they tout natural gas at some point as the "energy alternative". My brows furrowed and I did some digging. Wikipedia is not particularly reliable, but I found this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibani_Joshi
With the following quote:
"She is married to Rahul Advani, a principal for energy investments at Energy Capital Partners in Short Hills, New Jersey"
A quick search on google for "Energy Capital Partners", and I find this news article:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/energy-capital-partners-agrees-to-acquire-three-natural-gas-fired-power-plants-in-new-england-from-bg-group-88904517.html
Wow, objective much? Fox and "Friends" indeed...
USA - home to the dim bulbs.
What they mean is American is not as bright.
The 'Science' Minster of the Bundestag has had her Ph.D. invalidated. http://www.genomeweb.com/blog/science-minister-loses-phd
Heir 'Science' is still the pinnacle and example of Deutschland Science and the Purveyor of All that She Domains, Earth and Heavens.
Sig Heil Sig Heil Sig Heil.
...why do all the Germans decamp to Spain in August and leave their towels on the sun loungers?
What subsidies to "big oil" are you talking about?>
The so-called subsidies to "big oil" are the tax breaks that lots of big corps get for things like R&D and capital investments and these tax breaks are in the form of the government taking less money away from them. Nobody is handing taxpayer money to "big oil".
The massive subsidies Obama has been giving to "green energy" on the other hand are actual tax dollars taken from productive people and businesses and given to the "green companies". Pure direct cash infusions; Actual money being pumped-in rather than the government just deciding to tax them less.
There's simply no comparison and people who get their info from sources other than late night comics or the frequently-caught-doctoring-tapes team at NBC understand that.
One of these days, I'm going to get a heatstroke from all the snow.
The map shows northeastern Ohio getting about the same amount of sun as western Michigan. I don't know what they based that on, but I've lived in both those places, and nothing could be further from the truth. Western Michigan gets more sunshine per week in its darkest month than northeastern Ohio gets cumulatively from September through May.
When my family moved from Canal Fulton to Hastings, we arrived at night, and the next morning I got my camera out and took pictures of the sky, because I didn't think anyone would believe me or understand that what I was saying was literal when I said that the sky was *blue*. It was a much, MUCH brighter blue than I had seen living in NEO. The second day, the sky was blue again, and I got out my camera again. It took me a while to become accustomed to regular blue skies. I'd grown up assuming that the sky being depicted as "blue" was a cultural thing (kind of like the sun being drawn with a couple dozen evenly spaced yellow lines going out from it in all directions). The sky in northeastern Ohio is actually gray perpetually -- medium gray in the winter, darker in the spring and fall, lighter in the summer, but pretty much always gray.
Now I live in north central Ohio, and we're somewhere in between. We have blue skies for most of the summer and occasionally on isolated days during the rest of the year. The map shows this area as getting *more* sun than western Michigan. The people who compiled the map are clearly missing something. Maybe they are ignoring cloud cover entirely? I don't know, but whatever it is, the map is wrong.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Clearly they need to be bombed so powerful and wealthy American interests can take the excess German sun and control it so as to become more powerful and wealthy! Begin training the Marines for operation "Steal My Sunshine" at once!
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
The best investment isn't dumping money into making finite fossil fuel production more efficient. It's in investing in AMERICAN companies and technologies, the way the Chinese are investing in Chinese companies and technologies...
Sure, we should use the finite sources of fossil fuels we have as efficiently and cleanly as is possible. But certainly not at the expense or exclusion of alternatives.
It is not an either/or proposition, and never has been. Presenting it as such is a fallacy that does nothing good for the long term.
China is undercutting American production of a lot of things, and harming American industries, American workers, and American security. And it's doing it with the help of unscrupulous and well connected American corporations.
THAT is the real story here obfuscated in the typical Fox News way. Now lets insist our useless Congress DO something about it, or kick the whole lot of them out of office until we get someone in there that will put American interests first over corporate interests.
when it is at the bottom of the abyss is when it will do what it takes
In the current American political landscape, truth is not merely misrepresented or falsified; it is overtly mocked.
Winning by sharing
This is not /. it is \. and esoteric news. Watch my comment be deleted as when you are correct some mod hates it and mods you as flame bait. As a contributor I might close my account as slashdot is becoming increasingly pathetic.
You are losing respect! but watch this comment never see the light of day or modded up... Weirdos!
Fux news for dumbfux! I havn't watched Fux news in years. This illustrates why. I also don't eat at McDonalds' because all their TV monitors are tuned to Fux news! This channel is for all those idiots who are on welfare, and drive a 20 year old beat up pick-up with a Romney for president bumper sticker on it. They just havn't a clue!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
To be fair, I don't see many televisions in offices, restaurants, and/or lounges that are default set to Comedy Central all day long.
Comedy Central is a cable channel. FOX is a broadcast channel. If you want "free" TV in an office, restaurant, or lounge, you don't do a cable channel, you set your digital antenna to receive what is there. If you only have basic cable in your office, restaurant, or lounge, you do a broadcast channel retransmitted through the basic cable service, and don't get the extra cable channels with that basic cable service.
This is the primary reason most places usually have a broadcast channel publicly shown in their place of business, instead of a cable channel like Comedy Central or CNN.
Plus it is impractical in terms of "offering news service" to set a TV to Comedy Central all the time, since Comedy Central has less news programming than most broadcast or cable news channels. And the fact that what passes for "comedy" these days is generally offensive to a lot of potential customers to your place of business, and certainly unsuitable for viewing during meals.
Why doesn't anybody nitpick any more?
--- Say something clever. Pretend it was me. Thanks.
They meant the us is less bright than germany.
I lucking fove the dot..
This is nothing more than the usual twisted bullshit Fox has produced since the beginning. Can't expect anything else...
Are you trying to say there Germans are better than our Germans?