Lol. It's okay, I made a ridiculous error in a post I made here a couple of weeks ago. Besides the obvious fact that implies one bomb would take out a major city, I guess it didn't occur to you that you were claiming the MOAB weighs MILLIONS of pounds? Sure, you might guess that current HE is twice as powerful as tnt, but that's still eleven million pounds just for the explosive composition and the metal casing is going to weigh more than that. You're going to need an awfully big plane to carry a 22 million pound bomb.
Let me rephrase it for you. What I was pointing out is that she's doing the same job either way, involving a third party (the daycare center) means she has to do 25% more work to get the same benefit, due to the taxes. So let's look at a lightly different pair of scenarios:
My wife spent ten years working at day care centers. (This is actually true of my real wife). In May, we had a baby. (Also actually true).
Suppose she took our baby with her to work. What income does she have from taking care of our baby at work, and therefore what tax should she pay? That depends. We had two options (both real options we actually have looked at):
The day care simply allows her to bring her kid in to work., as she could have done at one daycare, She'd get paid $X less than if she were caring for another paying customer. A friend's home daycare offered that option. Being allowed to bring your kid to work is not income reportable to the IRS. We'd pay taxes on what her income would have been, minus the $X she's not paid because she's watching her own kid.
At another daycare, she'd need to register our kid as client of the daycare, and pay the monthly fee. At the same time, the daycare would be paying her full wages for being there. So the daycare gives her some money, and she gives the money back to the daycare. A chain daycare offered that option. In that case, the full wages are taxable, both for FICA and income tax - including the money she gave back to the daycare. Therefore, she brings home a smaller paycheck because she has to pay taxes she wouldn't have to pay in the other (very similar) scenario.
In those two options, there is no difference in what my wife DOES. She goes to work, and brings our kid along. The ONLY difference is that it's either taxable or not, depending on whether or not, on paper, the daycare pays the money and takes it back.
We see here that moving money from one person or company to another, then giving it back, can drastically affect the taxes due, even though the money ends up in the same place either way. Both options are legal, and I don't see any moral problems with either choice. Given the two perfectly acceptable choices, we'd be smart to choose option #1, in which no taxes are due.
That's what companies have done. Congress has written thousands of pages of complex laws saying that you DO have to pay taxes if you pay this person directly, but you don't have to pay taxes if you go through a third party. Companies look at the rules and choose the one that makes the most sense financially.
Yes, sometimes the effects are kind of "unfair", but that's because when you have thousands of pages of rules and regulations, things get complicated and people who can figure out the complicated rules are going to do better than people who can't figure out all of the new rules every year. If you want laws that benefit everyone equally, write laws that everyone can understand. Don't get mad at the people who do understand the law and make the most reasonable choice under that complex law.
GP didn't say there's no such thing as raping ones spouse. In fact, GP said "I'm sure it happens". Followed by "but it seems harder to prove".
Similarly, if I'm asleep and my wife wants to wake me up in a special way, that's fine (that's awesome, actually). If she did the same thing to sleeping stranger, that would be rape / sexual assault. The difference being that when I married her, I essentially consented generally, switching it from "default no-consent" to "default consent", meaning she's free to touch me until I indicate that I don't want her to.
If I walk up behind a random woman at Walmart and wrap my arms around her, with my hands on her breasts, that's called sexual assault. If I do the exact same motion with my wife, that's called "good morning". The difference being that my wife consented in a general way, announcing to me and to the rest of the world that she _wanted_ to do "what married people do" with me. Obviously if she tells me "I'm in a bad mood, please leave me alone for a bit", I should honor that.
Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore has written some things about that which you might find interesting.
In brief, an M80 and a candle release very roughly the same amount of energy. The M80 is dangerous because it releases all of that energy QUICKLY. Radiation from nuclear is similar in that way to radiation from burning. If the energy is released quickly, it can be dangerous. If it's released very slowly, it's not dangerous- you'd need to sit next to the source for a thousand years to get enough radiation to hurt you.
That's what half- life is all about. The most dangerous stuff has a half- life of three and a half years, so disposal consists of waiting ten years. There is also long-lasting waste, which slowly trickles out radiation over a period of 1,300 years. Over the course of a year, it releases less radiation than an equalivent mass pf carrots.
What you just said pretty much summarizes what I've found in my research. None of the most environmentally friendly sources can provide the majority of the energy , but all combined together they can make a difference.
Solar heating and other solar other than solar-electric can also achieve just as much as solar- electric can, but for some reason when most people hear "energy" they think "electricity" . Only half of our energy usage is electricity, and some of that is using electricity for heating. Heating directly with solar often makes a lot more sense.
The "waste" of fusion is tritium, a commercially valuable substance used for glow-in-the-dark things like gun sights. I have a pair on my pistol, as do many cops. It's safe to carry close to your groin.
> nuclear is theoretically far better if a nuclear
Nuclear does provide 20% of US electricity (IEA 2012). No ifs, no theory, no "invest now, we're about to have a breakthrough" - it's very likely powering the computer you're currently using to hype your solar-electric hopes. US nuclear plants actually produced 8 quadrillion BTU of power in 2011 (IEA 2012). Maybe one day solar will get there, perhaps when people look at all of the _heat_ the sun generates instead of having tunnel vision on solar-ELECTRIC. People have been trying for over 50 years to build feasible solar-electric, maybe it'll happen some day. Nuclear IS providing the electricity to run the offices of solar-electric marketing firms. As is friggin coal, because some people are so insistent on remaining blind to basic physics (two and a half watts) that they'd rather keep burning coal while wishing the sun shone at night rather than switching to clean energy that actually works, today.
Convert your temperatures to kelvin and compare the morning temperature to the afternoon temperature to see how much energy delta there is. Or, just use your smartphone to measure the ambient light. In the morning, you'll measure hundreds of lux. At noon, around 100,000 lux. Step outside and try it, or just look it up.
Yes, I KNOW it doesn't look all that much brighter to your eyes, but your eyes measure brightness on a log scale. Have you ever noticed that a 1,000 watt stereo system sounds maybe twice as loud as a 100 watt system? that's the same principle at play.
Seriously dude, just step outside. If you have an Android phone, you can measure the light level yourself.
Germany IS the world leader in solar power, producing 19 million kilowatt hours of solar. That meets 1.9% of energy needs in Germany. The German experiment may suggest that it is at least possible, though pricey, to use solar for at least a small portion of a country’s energy needs. Eurostat’s Statistics Explained reports that German households pay three times as much for energy than the average cost in the US reported by EIA (Statistics Explained 2014). The same source reports that 44.9% of German electric bills is taxes and levies, including the levy to subsidize the 1.9% solar. Do you want to pay $340 per month for energy that's 2% solar, 98% fossil fuels? Does that really seems like a good idea to you? Given the significant impact on household budgets for even a very small amount of solar power, solar electric may be the least favorable of all possible energy sources. Wind is better, hydro is better, geothermal is better, and nuclear is far better.
> Uh. You do realize that you can use more than ONE panel? You know?
Yeah, you _could_ use a THOUSAND panels to run your hair dryer in the morning, at a cost of half a million dollars. That would be pretty silly, though. Two and half watts just isn't much per panel. In the afternoon, when each panel makes 400-500 watts, that's a usable amount of power.
This is something I'll never understand about solar electric advocates. You could make a good case for solar power, something that makes sense like this:
Using solar-electric panels in sunny areas can reduce utility power usage in the afternoon by 5%, reducing CO2 emissions by x. Preheating the water before running it through a black pipe before it enters your water heater can save you $X and reduce emissions by Y.
Those are reasonable, logical arguments. Instead, you guys suggest "duh, use even more panels in the morning. Use 1,000 large solar panels to run your hair dryer". It makes you, and solar-electric, sound crazy.
Sure, they could have put their installation somewhere else, but they didn't. They could have installed it on the beach and we could look at what impact that had. They could have clear cut a forest and installed it there. Then we'd discuss that. They didn't build it on the face of a cliff, or underwater, they built it on nice flat farmland, and I wondered about what 50 acres of farmland normally produces.
As discussed, "a bit higher up" doesn't make any difference.
That's funny, I did. 200 times, not 2,000 of course. So your "500 watt" panel would be generating 2.5 watts. Hardly worth storing 2.5 when the output about to rise to 400, then 500 if it's a particularly bright, cloudless day. There's about four hours per day in which they make significant power, typically 11-3.
People have been hyping molten salt storage for over 60 years, and it's not feasible yet. Send the next guy your money though, I'm sure it'll be a good investment. Let me know when it actually works, without making the cost of the average home electric bill over $1,000 / month.
Let's say childcare for X kids in this city costs $1000. If mom works, perhaps in a childcare center, she pays FICA and income tax of $250 in order to bring home $1000. She spends the $1000 on childcare and is left with $0. Her net gain for month is that her kids were taken care of. To get that benefit, she did $1,250 worth of work.
Suppose mom stays home and does the $1,000 worth of childcare herself. She doesn't get a check or write a check, and pays no taxes. Her net benefit at the end of the month is that her kids were taken care of. To get that benefit, she did $1,000 worth of work.
Mom saves $250 in taxes by "working for her family " instead of doing the exact same work in a childcare center. There's a big tax difference based on which organizations are involved, even though the work done and the benefit received are identical.
> why would you charge at a station if you could just charge overnight at home.
Tesla is spending gobs of money to put "quick" charge stations everywhere they can. I'm guessing they understand the market better than you or I do, having spent millions researching it. If they think it's so important, they are probably right.
Your eyes are able to see in both candlelight and bright sun because you see brightness on a logarithmic scale. What appears twice as bright is actually around 100 times as much light.
At 9:00 AM, the sun is around 500 lux, depending on location, daylight savings time, etc. At midday it's over 100,000 lux. Which means the midday sun is 2,000 times more energy than morning sun. A solar panel that can generate 500 watts peak will produce 0.25 watts in the morning.
That's not politics, that's physics. And I don't dislike any major political faction, I just know each is wrong on some things, and I try to present accurate information when any proponent of any proposal gets their physics and arithmetic wrong. Last week I called myself on it when I got my arithmetic wrong on the cost of Obamacare.
The GROSS markup on gasoline is around 2%. Once the station pays for pumps, signage, credit card transaction feesn taxes, etc they make no money on gas. The markup on fountain soda is close to 200%. Gas station owners don't care whether you come for gas, for electric charge, or any other reason. They just want you there for four minutes, long enough to buy a coffee or soda.
Roughly speaking, if you don't capture the photons, you don't capture their energy. You can either capture the photon (with it's energy) or let it pass through and get no energy.
Yes, beef requires a lot more land than grains do. That's why I gave a range 20-250 people , depending on what you. That's no comment on what middle-class Americans SHOULD eat, it's just the productivity of the land based on what we DO eat. We do eat double bacon cheeseburgers.
Now that you mention it, it is funny to read the 1% (Americans) complaining about the stuff they do.
> The fact that some arrays were done in a way that's incompatible with farming doesn't mean that it can't be done.
The light either hits the corn leaves, or it hits the solar panel. The same photon won't hit both. You don't get to use that same bit of sunlight repeatedly. Each photon is either absorbed by the solar panel, or it's absorbed by the crop. You _could_ mix 25 acres of solar with 25 acres of farming, to have 50 acres of both mixed together. The productivity of mixing them together would be precisely the same as having 25 acres of farmland on one side of the street, and 25 acres of solar on the other side of the street. Mixing them, with ten feet of farm, ten feet of solar, ten feet of farm, ten feet of solar would be silly, though, because it's awfully hard to harvest the corn with solar panels in the way.
Grass and other plants grow by converting sunlight, water, and CO2 to sugar. 12H20 + 6CO2 --> C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H2O
CO2 is in plentiful supply, so given sufficient water, the amount of growth is limited by the amount of sunlight. If you have big spaces between panels where light is hitting the grass, you're just wasting that solar power - you'd get twice as much power by filling the space with panels. Beneath the panels, there's no light, so nothing will grow. Ever noticed that caves aren't full of weeds? Now you know why.
> Can't energy not being used be stored in batteries that can be used later?
In a word, no. I mean, you _could_ buy a million dollars worth of batteries every five years, a million dollars of solar panels, and a half million in auxiliary equipment like inverters, or you could buy the same amount of power for $200,000 from the power company.
There are a lot of ideas floated around for storing electricity produced by solar, the best of which need to be about ten times better in order to make any sense. That's the #1 huge problem with solar. If it's cloudy, or night time, or even 9AM, you're not going to be powering anything with solar. Other than that, if there were magic storage, solar would start to be feasible for rich people, just very expensive.
New Jersey farms (where the 50 acres of solar is) are very productive. Apples, blueberries, cranberries, peaches and strawberries grow very well there, and they grow over 100 different fruits and vegetables.
Yes, that quote talks about once a problem is noticed, the right solution will be clear if many people look at the problem.
It says nothing about positive or negative about how subtle bugs might be or when they'll be found. The answer to that question largely depends on the architecture of the code and the style, whether side-effects are common. Linus prefers kernel functions to be no more than a few lines long. If a function is three lines, you can pretty easily see if it's correct or not. A function that's 200 lines long probably has a bug that you wouldn't see easily. That's true regardless of the license the code is under.
Slashdot Mirror
Read the words on the page:
" Sure, you might guess that current HE is twice as powerful as tnt, but that's still eleven million pounds just for the explosive composition "
Don't you hate it when you act like a complete ass, then it turns out you're the dummy.
> MOAB yield is 11 kilotons.
Lol. It's okay, I made a ridiculous error in a post I made here a couple of weeks ago.
Besides the obvious fact that implies one bomb would take out a major city, I guess it didn't occur to you that you were claiming the MOAB weighs MILLIONS of pounds? Sure, you might guess that current HE is twice as powerful as tnt, but that's still eleven million pounds just for the explosive composition and the metal casing is going to weigh more than that. You're going to need an awfully big plane to carry a 22 million pound bomb.
Let me rephrase it for you. What I was pointing out is that she's doing the same job either way, involving a third party (the daycare center) means she has to do 25% more work to get the same benefit, due to the taxes. So let's look at a lightly different pair of scenarios:
My wife spent ten years working at day care centers. (This is actually true of my real wife).
In May, we had a baby. (Also actually true).
Suppose she took our baby with her to work. What income does she have from taking care of our baby at work, and therefore what tax should she pay?
That depends. We had two options (both real options we actually have looked at):
The day care simply allows her to bring her kid in to work., as she could have done at one daycare,
She'd get paid $X less than if she were caring for another paying customer.
A friend's home daycare offered that option.
Being allowed to bring your kid to work is not income reportable to the IRS. We'd pay taxes on what her income would have been, minus the $X she's not paid because she's watching her own kid.
At another daycare, she'd need to register our kid as client of the daycare, and pay the monthly fee.
At the same time, the daycare would be paying her full wages for being there.
So the daycare gives her some money, and she gives the money back to the daycare.
A chain daycare offered that option.
In that case, the full wages are taxable, both for FICA and income tax - including the money she gave back to the daycare.
Therefore, she brings home a smaller paycheck because she has to pay taxes she wouldn't have to pay in the other (very similar) scenario.
In those two options, there is no difference in what my wife DOES. She goes to work, and brings our kid along.
The ONLY difference is that it's either taxable or not, depending on whether or not, on paper, the daycare pays the money and takes it back.
We see here that moving money from one person or company to another, then giving it back, can drastically affect the taxes due, even though the money ends up in the same place either way. Both options are legal, and I don't see any moral problems with either choice. Given the two perfectly acceptable choices, we'd be smart to choose option #1, in which no taxes are due.
That's what companies have done. Congress has written thousands of pages of complex laws saying that you DO have to pay taxes if you pay this person directly, but you don't have to pay taxes if you go through a third party. Companies look at the rules and choose the one that makes the most sense financially.
Yes, sometimes the effects are kind of "unfair", but that's because when you have thousands of pages of rules and regulations, things get complicated and people who can figure out the complicated rules are going to do better than people who can't figure out all of the new rules every year. If you want laws that benefit everyone equally, write laws that everyone can understand. Don't get mad at the people who do understand the law and make the most reasonable choice under that complex law.
GP didn't say there's no such thing as raping ones spouse. In fact, GP said "I'm sure it happens". Followed by "but it seems harder to prove".
Similarly, if I'm asleep and my wife wants to wake me up in a special way, that's fine (that's awesome, actually). If she did the same thing to sleeping stranger, that would be rape / sexual assault. The difference being that when I married her, I essentially consented generally, switching it from "default no-consent" to "default consent", meaning she's free to touch me until I indicate that I don't want her to.
If I walk up behind a random woman at Walmart and wrap my arms around her, with my hands on her breasts, that's called sexual assault. If I do the exact same motion with my wife, that's called "good morning". The difference being that my wife consented in a general way, announcing to me and to the rest of the world that she _wanted_ to do "what married people do" with me. Obviously if she tells me "I'm in a bad mood, please leave me alone for a bit", I should honor that.
Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore has written some things about that which you might find interesting.
In brief, an M80 and a candle release very roughly the same amount of energy. The M80 is dangerous because it releases all of that energy QUICKLY. Radiation from nuclear is similar in that way to radiation from burning. If the energy is released quickly, it can be dangerous. If it's released very slowly, it's not dangerous- you'd need to sit next to the source for a thousand years to get enough radiation to hurt you.
That's what half- life is all about. The most dangerous stuff has a half- life of three and a half years, so disposal consists of waiting ten years. There is also long-lasting waste, which slowly trickles out radiation over a period of 1,300 years. Over the course of a year, it releases less radiation than an equalivent mass pf carrots.
What you just said pretty much summarizes what I've found in my research. None of the most environmentally friendly sources can provide the majority of the energy , but all combined together they can make a difference.
Solar heating and other solar other than solar-electric can also achieve just as much as solar- electric can, but for some reason when most people hear "energy" they think "electricity" . Only half of our energy usage is electricity, and some of that is using electricity for heating. Heating directly with solar often makes a lot more sense.
The "waste" of fusion is tritium, a commercially valuable substance used for glow-in-the-dark things like gun sights. I have a pair on my pistol, as do many cops. It's safe to carry close to your groin.
> nuclear is theoretically far better if a nuclear
Nuclear does provide 20% of US electricity (IEA 2012). No ifs, no theory, no "invest now, we're about to have a breakthrough" - it's very likely powering the computer you're currently using to hype your solar-electric hopes. US nuclear plants actually produced 8 quadrillion BTU of power in 2011 (IEA 2012). Maybe one day solar will get there, perhaps when people look at all of the _heat_ the sun generates instead of having tunnel vision on solar-ELECTRIC. People have been trying for over 50 years to build feasible solar-electric, maybe it'll happen some day. Nuclear IS providing the electricity to run the offices of solar-electric marketing firms. As is friggin coal, because some people are so insistent on remaining blind to basic physics (two and a half watts) that they'd rather keep burning coal while wishing the sun shone at night rather than switching to clean energy that actually works, today.
Convert your temperatures to kelvin and compare the morning temperature to the afternoon temperature to see how much energy delta there is. Or, just use your smartphone to measure the ambient light. In the morning, you'll measure hundreds of lux. At noon, around 100,000 lux. Step outside and try it, or just look it up.
Yes, I KNOW it doesn't look all that much brighter to your eyes, but your eyes measure brightness on a log scale. Have you ever noticed that a 1,000 watt stereo system sounds maybe twice as loud as a 100 watt system? that's the same principle at play.
Seriously dude, just step outside. If you have an Android phone, you can measure the light level yourself.
Germany IS the world leader in solar power, producing 19 million kilowatt hours of solar. That meets 1.9% of energy needs in Germany. The German experiment may suggest that it is at least possible, though pricey, to use solar for at least a small portion of a country’s energy needs. Eurostat’s Statistics Explained reports that German households pay three times as much for energy than the average cost in the US reported by EIA (Statistics Explained 2014). The same source reports that 44.9% of German electric bills is taxes and levies, including the levy to subsidize the 1.9% solar. Do you want to pay $340 per month for energy that's 2% solar, 98% fossil fuels? Does that really seems like a good idea to you? Given the significant impact on household budgets for even a very small amount of solar power, solar electric may be the least favorable of all possible energy sources. Wind is better, hydro is better, geothermal is better, and nuclear is far better.
> Uh. You do realize that you can use more than ONE panel? You know?
Yeah, you _could_ use a THOUSAND panels to run your hair dryer in the morning, at a cost of half a million dollars.
That would be pretty silly, though. Two and half watts just isn't much per panel. In the afternoon, when each panel makes 400-500 watts, that's a usable amount of power.
This is something I'll never understand about solar electric advocates. You could make a good case for solar power, something that makes sense like this:
Using solar-electric panels in sunny areas can reduce utility power usage in the afternoon by 5%, reducing CO2 emissions by x.
Preheating the water before running it through a black pipe before it enters your water heater can save you $X and reduce emissions by Y.
Those are reasonable, logical arguments. Instead, you guys suggest "duh, use even more panels in the morning. Use 1,000 large solar panels to run your hair dryer". It makes you, and solar-electric, sound crazy.
Sure, they could have put their installation somewhere else, but they didn't.
They could have installed it on the beach and we could look at what impact that had.
They could have clear cut a forest and installed it there. Then we'd discuss that.
They didn't build it on the face of a cliff, or underwater, they built it on nice flat farmland, and I wondered about what 50 acres of farmland normally produces.
As discussed, "a bit higher up" doesn't make any difference.
That's funny, I did. 200 times, not 2,000 of course. So your "500 watt" panel would be generating 2.5 watts. Hardly worth storing 2.5 when the output about to rise to 400, then 500 if it's a particularly bright, cloudless day.
There's about four hours per day in which they make significant power, typically 11-3.
People have been hyping molten salt storage for over 60 years, and it's not feasible yet. Send the next guy your money though, I'm sure it'll be a good investment.
Let me know when it actually works, without making the cost of the average home electric bill over $1,000 / month.
Let's say childcare for X kids in this city costs $1000.
If mom works, perhaps in a childcare center, she pays FICA and income tax of $250 in order to bring home $1000. She spends the $1000 on childcare and is left with $0. Her net gain for month is that her kids were taken care of. To get that benefit, she did $1,250 worth of work.
Suppose mom stays home and does the $1,000 worth of childcare herself. She doesn't get a check or write a check, and pays no taxes. Her net benefit at the end of the month is that her kids were taken care of. To get that benefit, she did $1,000 worth of work.
Mom saves $250 in taxes by "working for her family " instead of doing the exact same work in a childcare center. There's a big tax difference based on which organizations are involved, even though the work done and the benefit received are identical.
> why would you charge at a station if you could just charge overnight at home.
Tesla is spending gobs of money to put "quick" charge stations everywhere they can. I'm guessing they understand the market better than you or I do, having spent millions researching it. If they think it's so important, they are probably right.
Your eyes are able to see in both candlelight and bright sun because you see brightness on a logarithmic scale. What appears twice as bright is actually around 100 times as much light.
At 9:00 AM, the sun is around 500 lux, depending on location, daylight savings time, etc. At midday it's over 100,000 lux. Which means the midday sun is 2,000 times more energy than morning sun. A solar panel that can generate 500 watts peak will produce 0.25 watts in the morning.
That's not politics, that's physics. And I don't dislike any major political faction, I just know each is wrong on some things, and I try to present accurate information when any proponent of any proposal gets their physics and arithmetic wrong. Last week I called myself on it when I got my arithmetic wrong on the cost of Obamacare.
The GROSS markup on gasoline is around 2%. Once the station pays for pumps, signage, credit card transaction feesn taxes, etc they make no money on gas. The markup on fountain soda is close to 200%. Gas station owners don't care whether you come for gas, for electric charge, or any other reason. They just want you there for four minutes, long enough to buy a coffee or soda.
Roughly speaking, if you don't capture the photons, you don't capture their energy. You can either capture the photon (with it's energy) or let it pass through and get no energy.
Yes, beef requires a lot more land than grains do. That's why I gave a range 20-250 people , depending on what you. That's no comment on what middle-class Americans SHOULD eat, it's just the productivity of the land based on what we DO eat. We do eat double bacon cheeseburgers.
Now that you mention it, it is funny to read the 1% (Americans) complaining about the stuff they do.
> The fact that some arrays were done in a way that's incompatible with farming doesn't mean that it can't be done.
The light either hits the corn leaves, or it hits the solar panel. The same photon won't hit both. You don't get to use that same bit of sunlight repeatedly. Each photon is either absorbed by the solar panel, or it's absorbed by the crop. You _could_ mix 25 acres of solar with 25 acres of farming, to have 50 acres of both mixed together. The productivity of mixing them together would be precisely the same as having 25 acres of farmland on one side of the street, and 25 acres of solar on the other side of the street. Mixing them, with ten feet of farm, ten feet of solar, ten feet of farm, ten feet of solar would be silly, though, because it's awfully hard to harvest the corn with solar panels in the way.
Grass and other plants grow by converting sunlight, water, and CO2 to sugar. 12H20 + 6CO2 --> C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H2O
CO2 is in plentiful supply, so given sufficient water, the amount of growth is limited by the amount of sunlight. If you have big spaces between panels where light is hitting the grass, you're just wasting that solar power - you'd get twice as much power by filling the space with panels. Beneath the panels, there's no light, so nothing will grow. Ever noticed that caves aren't full of weeds? Now you know why.
> Can't energy not being used be stored in batteries that can be used later?
In a word, no. I mean, you _could_ buy a million dollars worth of batteries every five years, a million dollars of solar panels, and a half million in auxiliary equipment like inverters, or you could buy the same amount of power for $200,000 from the power company.
There are a lot of ideas floated around for storing electricity produced by solar, the best of which need to be about ten times better in order to make any sense. That's the #1 huge problem with solar. If it's cloudy, or night time, or even 9AM, you're not going to be powering anything with solar. Other than that, if there were magic storage, solar would start to be feasible for rich people, just very expensive.
New Jersey farms (where the 50 acres of solar is) are very productive. Apples, blueberries, cranberries, peaches and strawberries grow very well there, and they grow over 100 different fruits and vegetables.
Yes, that quote talks about once a problem is noticed, the right solution will be clear if many people look at the problem.
It says nothing about positive or negative about how subtle bugs might be or when they'll be found. The answer to that question largely depends on the architecture of the code and the style, whether side-effects are common. Linus prefers kernel functions to be no more than a few lines long. If a function is three lines, you can pretty easily see if it's correct or not. A function that's 200 lines long probably has a bug that you wouldn't see easily. That's true regardless of the license the code is under.