"J. Clarke" wrote in
in.local:

In article ,
says...

J. Clarke wrote:

"So what?"

If you push the global warming people for what to do about it, most
say "well start building solar".

If you actually check their numbers you find that we have to clean
up 200 gigawatts worth of production every year for the next half
century.


Yep. The amount of solar radiation hitting the earth is about 3KW/sq
meter. At the equator. At noon. With no clouds.

Adjusting for latitude, clouds, pollution, twelve hours of darkness,
and 50% efficiency, California would need a solar collection farm the
size of the Los Angeles basin (1200 sq miles) for its daily needs of
about 50GW. Imagine the cost to build and maintain something 1200
square miles in extent!

The only way to improve on the above is to move the orbit of the
earth closer to the sun. Absent that, folks have to come to grips
with the idea that we can't run this country off of sunbeams.

It's not all bad, though. The citizens of Los Angeles would be living
in the shade.

The amount of sunlight striking the Earth is not the issue. The issue
is that there is no proven technology for utilizing it that has been
developed to a point where we can start construction on 1000 GW worth
of new plants this year.

If we're going to do what the global warming people calculate that we
need to do and solar is part of the package we need to put real effort
into developing the technology to that level. But we can't wait for
that to happen.

And another issue is that somebody has to figure out how to do
something about China. Even if the entire rest of the world stops
producing CO2 at all, the Chinese will still be producing nearly as
much as the rest of the world combined was when China signed Kyoto.

I fully agree. But should that absolve us of the responsibility to do
what we reasonably can do??

--
Best regards
Han
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