Either you're pulling my legs here, or Popular Science was incorrect. There are two possible ways to make solar panels. First is using silicon. The highest energy conversion efficiency using a single layer of silicon film is about 30%. The efficiency can be raised further by using multiple layers of films. But the cost goes up nonlinearly with the number of layers. Silicon panels are expensive to make to begin with - it must be as defect free as possible. Any defect would decrease the efficiency. An alternative way of making solar panels is by using conducting polymers. Polymers can be much cheaper than silicon. The most successful ones are using poly(p-phenylenevinylenes). The first research using this polymer was done in 1994, but the efficiency was well below 1% so it was not practical. Today the highest efficiency achieved is about 4% in the laboratory. The efficiency under industrial production conditions would probably be somewhere between 1% and 2%. It's not yet competitive against silicon solar cells. So I have no idea what the Popular Science was talking about. Like I said in an earlier post, biomethane production is not practical on an industrial scale. If you want to use that then we have to return to simple rural lives with a self-sufficient agriculture, a life style of 1800's.
Not what I said. That human production of carbon-dioxide causes global warming is dogma because carbon levels and global temperatures have changed in the past without human activity. There is no bona fide scientific reason to assume that human activity is altering the earthâs climate now because the earthâs climate can (and has) changed all by itself before.
Don't you see how illogic your argument is? Past climate changes without human cannot prove that current changes are not caused by human! You are using the fact that climate can change without human influence as an excuse to ignore the overwhelming evidence that human influence on the climate is growing exponentially large.
It doesnât prove that humans are causing current changes either. We know that the earthâs climate can and has changed before without human activity, but we have no irrefutable proof that climate changes can be caused by human activity.
You missed half of my sentence: You are using the fact that climate can change without human influence as an excuse to ignore the overwhelming evidence that human influence on the climate is growing exponentially large. The evidence is irrefutable. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist.
What makes you an expert on the production of photovoltaic cells? I may still have the PS issue, but Iâd have to get it out of storage.
I didn't say I was an expert. I'm an investor and I've been following this industry for years. One thing is for sure. If you make your investment decisions according to what's printed in Popular Science (or other such journals), you'd lose everything.
What evidence? My part of Florida had record low temperatures (low 60sF) in the early part of last June. Temperatures otherwise have been about normal so this summer may go into the record books as being cool. In 2003(?) the Eastern Seaboard had a summer so cool that beaches were not busy and my part of Florida didnât even see 90 degrees on the Fourth of July. How does global warming explain that?
You know what? If you had bought stocks of uranium mines in the past few years you'd probably made as much as you would with oil. But no, I did not invest in nuclear power plants. Not under this political environment. Most of my money has been in oil stocks.