Suggestion for this forum's postings

[Dover]

I love this forum and like to peruse all the stories posted here as often as possible. But I get frustrated that it moves so quickly that there's little opportunity to read it all or dig in for any discussion. Here today, gone in two hours or a day. I feel like I miss a lot of it, but then am overwhelmed by all the fresh new postings that I also would like to read, so generally just stay on the first page of the forum and don't search through the others pages. Maybe others have a similar experience.

So I'm wondering if it would help slow things down, without sacrificing the number of stories,
if those who post stories here in volume were to consolidate them into one or two threads each day with just a headline or an intro paragraph and link for each story? Kind of like what is done with the daily 'stock market watch' in LBN.

Then one could just open a post and scan all the headlines at once, and bookmark that list of stories to read later if necessary.

Or would that hamper discussion with so many stories in one thread?

What do ya think?

[GliderGuider]

1. That's how The Oil Drum does their "Drumbeat" threads

Those are are intended to be open-comment threads, while commentary in other threads is expected to stay on the topic of the keypost. It would work if there was someone designated to seed the original thread, and to police other threads by combining in "orphan" posts by those not following the trules.

Personally, I'm a bit of an anarchist at heart, and think the world needs less organization and efficiency, not more. I prefer the somewhat chaotic approach we have right now - it feels more creative and personal and leaves more room for serendipity and happenstance.

[The2ndWheel]

12. Funny, that was my first thought after reading that just now

The original post is pretty much the basic debate in these forums. Centralization vs. decentralization.

[IDemo]

14. Why not a few less news headlines, and more threads like this->

Open thread on the effects of climate change and peak oil on society...., which actually suggest a discussion topic and solicit responses?

Most of the regulars here are already well familiar with the Energy Bulletin, The Oil Drum, and other similar sources.

Back on the sub-folder idea, peakoil.com is pretty well structured, although you wouldn't want to go that far in breaking down E/E. The folders range from 'Depletion economics' to 'Planning for the future', so one wanting only to pick up a few gardening tips needn't wade through a lot of unrelated topics.

[Nihil]

2. It will get really chaotic when the replies come in

That approach will work for something that is mainly bite-sized "news"
with a link to detail but, although there is occasional duplication here,
most of the topics are too distinct to be easily or meaningfully combined
in such a fashion.

Many (most?) of the posts here get replies and there would be such a large
fan-out on such a summary topic that the commentary & discussion would
quickly become unreadable.

Maybe there should be an "environment watch" post of that sort in LBN that
crosslinks to the different articles here in E&E as that might catch more
people's attention without suffering the problem of the LBN mods brushing
any topic deemed "interesting" into this side forum.
:P

Just my opinion (of course) but I view the forum listing as "the summary topic"
whereby I can follow an interesting title link to get to the rest of the
content (and beyond to the source and/or related articles).
:hi:

[Dover]

4. Ooooo...like that 'environment watch' idea!.....n/t

[madokie]

3. maybe

Or would that hamper discussion with so many stories in one thread?

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. It's a tough call

We could attempt to lump several somewhat related stories together under artificial headings like, "New wind projects," my question is, if you can't keep up with them as individual stories, where you can easily pick and choose between them, how could you keep up with them buried in catch-all threads?

I think some of the traffic could be lessened by people doing a better job of checking to see if a particular topic has already been covered. We have a number of duplicates. (But I don't think that even removing all of the duplicates would really affect the traffic volume that much.)

[hatrack]

6. What? And limit my post count?!?

:evilgrin:

[XemaSab]

17. Hatrack's post count:

[IDemo]

7. Maybe there needs to be a few sub-folders created

The sheer volume of posts tends to result in many otherwise worthwhile topics getting washed off the bottom of the page in a day or two. Many of these might merit some actual discussion.

Just a few folder suggestions (yours may vary!):

- Energy depletion
- Climate change
- Conservation and environmental awareness
- Alternative energy technology

[Kolesar]

41. There is a peak oil forum on DU

I observe 36 hours for threads to be pushed onto the second page.

[phantom power]

8. I still favor one story per thread.

It allows me to fine-tune my sarcasm.

[wtmusic]

9. What would be cool

is to be able to customize forums of your choice to display posts in "Latest" fashion like the Latest page. That way you could page back to where you last left off.

Or split the forum in two.

[pscot]

10. "If it aint broke....?"

I would take issue with the idea that stuff disappears too quickly. Any post that generates 3 or 4 comments, tends to hang around for more than a day. Regular readers have some sense of how often we have to check in to keep abreast. I would favor any move that would spread our net a little wider, but I don't see how this qualifies. And then there's the issue of Hatrack's post count, which must be nearing a million.

[hunter]

11. I like it the way it is.

A simple solution: Comment or continue the discussion on those topics you think are most important. Return to these posts before the 48 hours of "My Posts" is up to see if there is anything further worthy of comment.

[NNadir]

13. Hatrack is one of the greatest collectors of environmental news there is.

He could write 50 threads and they would all be worthwhile.

The rest thread flooders are simply whistling in the dark over their failed fantasies. You have to live with it to get Hatrack's stuff. We get 800 "world's largest solar" threads regularly. I would prefer ONE thread that says "Solar electricity now amounts to one exajoule." Unfortunately, the last statement is not true.

[Shoelace]

22. indeed, I always look for, read Hatrack's posts

best reporting on this forum!

[mikita]

15. I love it the way it is

for many of the reasons posted upstream.

Mikita

[XemaSab]

16. Screw that

I don't think the forum moves too quickly, and I like being able to just read the threads of interest to me. Especially since it makes it a lot easier to comment on the topic at hand when the threads are broken down per article. :shrug:

And on edit: After reading everyone else's thoughts, I might be in favor of a forum split wherein all the endless announcements of renewable energy projects are dumped somewhere else. :P

[bananas]

18. I think the doomer porn should be dumped somewhere else

It attracts the wrong element.

[XemaSab]

19. Mmmm... doomer porn....

Sorry, could you repeat that? :shrug:

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. "Doomer porn"

Die! Die! Die! We're all going to Die! Die! Die!

[OKIsItJustMe]

39. What constitutes "doomer porn?"

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pornography

...

3 : the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction <the pornography of violence>

The dividing line to me is the intended response. If the intended response is despair or shock, then it's pornographic. If the intended response is positive action, then it is not.


If you're posting bad news in an effort to shock or to stun it's pornography, like the world's greatest "snuff film." If you're reading bad news because of a compulsion, then it's pornography.

---

If you're posting bad news to warn people of a growing problem, in a hope to avert a tragedy, then it's a public service. If you're reading bad news to better inform yourself about the challenges you face, then it's positive.

[GliderGuider]

21. You mean put the realistic posts somewhere else and leave this forum to the starry-eyed optimists?

To paraphrase the Great Donaldo, "You go into the future with the situation you have, not the situation you'd like to have or wish you had."

I sure wish "doomer porn" paid as well as the real thing.

[OKIsItJustMe]

25. Your perception is your reality

If your perception is basically positive, then people who consistently post negative stories are "doomers." If your perception is basically negative, then people who post positive stories are "starry-eyed optimists."

Reality is more complex.

I can easily fall into the "doomer" mentality. I've been watching all of this for a few decades now, and sometimes it can be frustrating for me to deal with people who've seen An Inconvenient Truth, and have overnight become experts on "Global Warming."

After reading the posts in this forum which reinforced my doomer mentality, I realized that for my own sake I needed to be looking for positive actions that are being taken. I then realized that I was probably not alone.

[GliderGuider]

28. Most people are at least somewhat optimistic on some level

I think the most doom-struck perceptions and posts are from people who are still coming to terms with a new understanding of reality that is a heck of a lot less rosy than anything they've ever considered before. Most people can't continue in that vein for long (except maybe Jim Kunstler), so eventually they suffer a crisis and integrate that understanding into a new world-view. With any luck their new world-view has enough positive elements to permit them to resume some semblance of normal functioning.

Even then they are left with a profound awareness of the disconnect between the "shared perceptual reality" of the rest of the world and the new awareness they have acquired. When you are convinced that most of the "solutions" the rest of the world is blithely embracing are probably not solutions at all, it's tough to resist telling them so. Displaying your new awareness by demonstrating that what other think are solutions are really just crusty precipitates doesn't make you many friends.

My set of "positive elements" includes Kerala, Terra Preta, "Gaia's antibodies", relocalization, Deep Ecology, conservation, Dunbar's number, educating and empowering women, and "I HELP", but doesn't include any technical solutions (biofuels of any sort, solar, wind, a "fission renaissance", electric cars, etc.) The reason for that is I am convinced that the problem we have is not a technical one with a technical solution. It's a problem that is inherent to our biological organisms, and will be solved only as other such problems are normally solved in the natural world.

As far as I can tell, the notion that there can be a technical solution to our dilemma is just a dualistic conceit. Does that make me a doomer? I guess it depends on your definitions and your understanding of man's relationship to the universe in which we find ourselves.

[OKIsItJustMe]

30. I'm wary of some sorts of technological fixes

The "build a giant vacuum cleaner to suck all of the CO₂ out of the atmosphere "fixes" bother me on a fundamental level. My greatest fear is that people with a newfound environmental consciousness will say, "Whew! That was close! Now we can go back to business as usual!"


Our problems are in fact at least partly technological ones, and so solutions will tend to be at least partly technological as well. Most obviously, our use of fossil fuels, but more fundamentally, our technology has tended to cause people not to perceive our interconnectedness with the rest of the ecosystem. If, tomorrow, Hydrogen-Boron fusion becomes a reality, and Friday, the government distributes fusion powered personal transporters to everyone, we would still have a problem with overfishing the oceans (for one example.)

We need to reintegrate ourselves with the rest of the ecosystem, but let's not discount the role technology will play in our brave new/old world. We may just need to build those giant CO₂ vacuum cleaners in addition to making several fundamental changes to our way of life.

Regardless of exactly how things shake out in the near future, alternate sources of energy will be necessary. Every step that we can take in that direction is a positive step (in my estimation.)

[GliderGuider]

32. My perceptions are very different

When most people look around the world today they see a set of problems. They see energy/technology problems. They see ecological/environmental problems. They see economic problems. If they are slightly deeper thinkers, they may see population problems. I believe they are all suffering from vision problems.

What most people see as "technological problems" are, in my estimation, more correctly seen as the set of symptoms of the real underlying problem, symptoms that are that are manifesting themselves in the technological arena.

In the same sense, what people are interpreting as "ecological problems" are the set of symptoms that are manifesting in the world's ecology.

And what people are interpreting as "economic problems" are merely the set of symptoms that are manifesting in the world's economy.

The underlying problem is the same in all three cases. Humanity is an overly successful species with no effective predators, the ability to manipulate its environment on a planetary scale, and the perception that it is apart from that environment.

I actually disagree with spreading perception that the core environmental problem is human population growth. I used to think it was, but I now think population growth is just another symptom of the above problem statement. You can prove this to yourself with a simple thought experiment. Imagine that we stabilized our population tomorrow, at our current 6.6 billion people. Would that fix the problems of resource depletion, ecological devastation and the economic instability caused by our insistence on continual material growth? I maintain it wouldn't, because those problems are still worsening where populations have already stabilized, or are even in outright decline.

Addressing any one of the problems areas - energy/technological, ecological, economic or population - would still leave us with problems in the other three. We can (and will) tinker around in each of these areas, because that's our Buddha-nature - human beings are innate tinkerers. We will do things to ease the situation in each of those symptom domains. But none of that tinkering addresses the fundamental problem, which I describe as follows:

Humanity appears to have evolved without a crucial internal self-restraint mechanism. That happened because, like every other species, those restraints were readily available within the environment - mainly resource scarcity, predation and disease. Because those external restraints were available, selection didn't endow us with internal restraints because they weren't needed. In fact, during our early time as a species, an internal self-restraint mechanism acting in addition to the external restraints would have been counter-productive, and would have been actively selected out of our makeup.

However, as we developed the intellectual ability to circumvent those external restraints - through extinguishing all large predators, and developing agriculture, mining and medicine - we outfoxed ourselves. Because in the absence of either internal or external restraints we are left with no effective way to reign in our genetic urge for expansion. All that remains is our intellectual capacity to foresee outcomes and to regulate our behaviour through reason. As far as I can tell, reason is not a strong enough counterbalance to our innate behavioural tendencies. The evidence of this is no further away than the $2500 Tata.

So I hold out no hope whatever that our tinkering will solve the "real" dilemma of humanity. We are behaving exactly as our evolution intended, and it's unlikely that we will stop. What we need to do is to figure out ways in which our feeble reason can create the conditions for the continued survival of our species and perhaps some of our civilization, despite both our unconstrained, innate urge to grow and our glorious but tragic ability to reason. These are the aspects of our nature that are at the root of all our troubles, and we will need to be enormously cunning to outmaneuver them.

[OKIsItJustMe]

35. Have hope!

Humanity may not be as stupid as you think.

According to this: http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/haines.demography

Birth rates in the US in 1800 were estimated to be 55 per 1,000.

By 2,000 birth rates among whites in the US were as low as 13.9 per 1,000, while the birth rate among blacks was estimated to be 17 per 1,000.


This appears to fly in the face of your premise that, "Humanity appears to have evolved without a crucial internal self-restraint mechanism. ..."

During the last two centuries (in your observation) we were circumventing our "external restraints." That being the case, why hasn't our birth rate increased?

Looked at from another angle, the rich have virtually no external constraints, so why aren't their families huge!?

[GliderGuider]

37. It's not a question of stupidity.

It's the way we're made.

I didn't say reason was a totally ineffective restraint, just weak. I don't think anybody really knows why a population stops having excessive children, except it only seems to happen reliably when they become rich. There are a lot of theories, but none that seem to cover all the bases. Besides, the rich simply grow in other ways - they grow their consumption beyond all reason, for instance. The poor have kids, the rich have stuff - it's growth either way.

[OKIsItJustMe]

40. One of the advantages of my job...

Over the years, I've met a number of researchers in a number of different fields.

One of the most fascinating bits of research I've encountered dealt with "mouse plagues." These researchers had investigated the population curve of mouse colonies. The classic Malthusian explanation of course is that (without sufficient predation) the population explodes until it outstrips its resources, and then it collapses.

These researchers provided a captive mouse colony with unlimited resources, and you know what? The population still followed the usual curve. They theorized that perhaps it had to do with the aging of the alphas, so they tried some artificial "predation" removing one (or both) of the alphas. The result was new alpha(s) and a temporary population growth, followed by a resumed decline.

The population swings appeared to be social. (FWIW: The researchers were advanced in age, and I don't know if their final research was published, however if you search you can find similar research.)

I think there may be a similar mechanism at work in human populations.


As for the rich consuming more than the poor; well, yes, in general they do. However, would you say that their increased consumption is in proportion to their increased resources?

Bill Gates has many times more money than a working stiff. He has a large house. Is the size of his house proportionately larger than the working stiff's?

Once again, it appears to me that there is some sort of internal constraint at work.

[GliderGuider]

44. Regarding Mr. Gates

You can't use an anecdote to support or deny a general observation. Individuals within a population vary enormously. The United States consumes 20% of the world's oil with 5% of its population. Mali has the highest TFR in the world.

Thanks for the info on mouse plagues. I'll hunt it up.

[OKIsItJustMe]

45. Fair enough - I was trying to use a well known example

We're all familiar with "conspicuous consumption." However, I would still suggest that consumption does not increase proportionally with wealth.

Consider... the poorest have no money (or debt) while the richest have fat bank accounts.

[GliderGuider]

46. Why would proportionality add anything to the argument?

Beyond satisfying our innate (genetic?) desire to perceive order in the universe?

[OKIsItJustMe]

48. Well your thesis states that we have no "internal self-restraint mechanism"

So... if that's the case, how do the rich manage to accumulate funds?
They should consume to the full extent they are able.
But they don't (apparently, due to some sort of self-restraint.)

Q.E.D.

[GliderGuider]

56. Isn't the accumulation of funds in itself consumption?

For some an expanding bank account can satisfy the internal need for growth just as well as buying that fourth Rolls Royce. And the accumulation of funds in itself is presumably driven by growth in other areas of their lives (expanding businesses, spreading their control over others' assets, capital gains from a rising stock market etc.)

[hunter]

38. Unchecked population growth destabilizes human communities.

Stable communitities have the ability to minimize their own environmental impacts.

The worst environmental destruction follows the destruction of human communities. This can be the explicit and deliberate destruction of a community, such as when a coal company buys up a town for strip mining, or it can be the sort of poverty and unchecked population growth that causes people to strip the land that once supported them down to bare dirt.

In the United States many stable communities of the U.S. Midwest were destroyed by delibrate economic policies that favored big corporate high input agriculture. These economic policies turned diverse farmlands into biological deserts, and this same sort of destruction is now spreading throughout Mexico.

Hmmmm... yeah, you are right. Even if the world's population stopped expanding today, we'd still be in trouble. And I do tend to avoid population discussions because they almost always have a stink of racism about them.

[The2ndWheel]

43. That's the greatest thing anyone has ever said about anything anywhere

[NNadir]

53. Positive actions?

If you consider opposing the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy an "action..."

...um...

How about we have a separate forum where people having hallucinations can post 500,000 "world's largest solar..." threads.

All of the sockpuppets could log in there and tell each other that they're not illiterates.

If you've been watching this shit "for decades" that's a really, really, really, really depressing thought. One of the most striking features of the "renewables will save us" mentality is a spectacular ignorance of scale.

[hunter]

26. Heh. Anything less than a gigawatt could go to the Pollyanna forum.

And by the way, it's not "we're all gonna die" doomsaying when so many people are dying today as a very direct consequence of environmental degradation.

Announcements that people wealthier than 99.99% of the people on this earth are putting solar panels on their roofs at taxpayer expense do not fuel my optimism.

We all die a little bit whenever a new coal plant is fired up, and more and more people are actually dying because we are burning more coal -- yet new coal fired power plants are being built every day all over the world.

That one simple and indisputable fact really does overshadow all the little bits of optimistic energy news posted here.

[OKIsItJustMe]

27. Solar for the poor

What about announcements that solar power is used for water purification, or to provide light for the poor?
http://www.nextbillion.net/newsroom/2004/08/31/solar-power-distributed-among-rural-poor-in-the-philippines
http://environment.about.com/b/2007/07/04/let-there-be-light-solar-powered-led-lamps-brighten-lives-of-poor-people-worldwide.htm
http://www.ergoweb.com/news/detail.cfm?id=2099
http://ezinearticles.com/?Solar-Unit-Solves-Water-Worries-For-Poor-People&id=911971
http://www.state.hi.us/dbedt/ert/symposium/george.html
http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=3587&language=1
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001100

Your preconceptions affect your perception of reality.

[hunter]

29. Yep, throw another quarter in the homeless guy's cup. Plink.

It is a question of scale. The numbers matter a lot.

"Technological Fixes" are ineffective whether they are nuclear power plants (fusion or fission) or micro-solar projects.

The core environmental problem is human population growth. If there is no plan for stabilizing human populations then the underlying technology supporting those populations simply doesn't matter.

I believe it is entirely a matter of Social Justice, Education and Economic Empowerment -- especially for women. When women are educated and have a stake in the community economy equal to or greater than that of men, and when woman are able to determine the size of their own families, and when daily life in a community is not an unrelenting struggle for survival punctuated by grim death, and when the social structures are generally regarded as just, that's when people start to think about limiting their own populations to a level their families and their communities can comfortably support.

It doesn't matter to me whether the lights in the schools and health care clinics serving women are lit by nuclear power plants twenty miles down the road or solar panels on the roof. In most places whatever works is better than what we've got now.

[OKIsItJustMe]

31. Okay, please make up your mind

First, you're apparently upset because new technologies will only benefit the rich. When I point out that they're already benefiting the poor, you say that's not the problem. The problem is there are too many people.

I've heard it said that the best form of birth control is the belief of parents that their children will survive their own childhoods. As we improve people's lot in life, ironically, this will tend to slow population growth. (Or, if you prefer, we can take the Malthusian approach.)

[hunter]

34. It's not the same thing.

It's like saying the steel used for making automobiles can also be used to make bicycles. So what?

If we are indeed going to subsidize solar electricity with our taxes, I do not think installing photovoltaic panels on the roofs of wealthier people as a "green" status symbol is an appropriate way to go about it. A greater and much more visible public good might be achieved by installing a similar photovoltaic capacity alongside the tracks of electrically powered public transportation systems.

[OKIsItJustMe]

36. You mean like this?

http://www.contracostatimes.com/business/ci_7514243?nclick_check=1

Program discounts solar for the poor

Critics say getting details to low-income Californians will be tough

By Janis Mara

STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 11/20/2007 03:03:17 AM PST

The cost of going solar just dropped for some low-income California families.

Nearly 7,000 such households could get free or discounted solar roofs thanks to a $108 million subsidy program adopted Friday by the state Public Utilities Commission.

A solar roof for a two-bedroom California home generally runs from $20,000 to $24,000, putting the price out of reach for many homeowners. The program aims to help low-income families get the advantages of solar energy -- lower monthly bills and environmental benefits.

Under the program, about 50 percent to 75 percent of the cost of a new solar roof will be covered for about 5,000 low-income homeowners. In addition, about 1,800 households with incomes of as much as 50 percent of their area's median income will get free roofs subsidized by the Public Utilities Commission.

...

[hunter]

42. Again, it's a matter of scale.

These are baby steps. But we need to be running marathons when natural gas supplies peak out in North America, and it looks like that's going to happen sooner than expected.

[OKIsItJustMe]

47. The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single cliché

:rimshot: But seriously folks...

Get on your local agencies to do likewise.

(I'll be here all week!)

[hunter]

49. I'm tired.

I started watching the solar industry with great intensity more than thirty years ago. Not much has changed. Occasionally I've worked in the solar industry.

I've seen solar panels go up on houses I've worked on, and I've seen them come down.

I was invited along for a VIP tour of Solar One when it was a shiny new toy near Barstow full of promise. I've wandered fields of photovoltaic cells in California that are now removed.

I protested against new nuclear plants at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre.

Yet the plants at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre have generated a very significant portion of California's power, Diablo Canyon generates a quarter of the power I use, while solar still flickers like an unreliable flashlight.

When is this Solar Revolution going to happen?

[OKIsItJustMe]

50. It's happening

I've been watching from the outside for the same time (I'm jealous of your personal involvement.)

PV prices are continuing to come down. CSP prices are as well. More importantly (from the view of solar) fossil fuel prices are going up.

When the price curves cross, the solar revolution will heat up.

[hunter]

51. I've been infected by GliderGuider's pessimism.

When and if the price curves cross, the economy as we know it will be long cold and dead.

Whatever kind of economy takes its place doesn't have to be a Mad Max nightmare, but I am certain we can't predict what will arise from the chaos.

[OKIsItJustMe]

52. Solar electricity to reach cost parity with coal-based power by 2010

http://www.edn.com/article/CA6432171.html

Solar electricity to reach cost parity with coal-based power by 2010

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic Business, 4/9/2007

By 2010, leading solar electricity providers in Spain will be able to produce solar electricity for as low as 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) – equivalent to the delivered cost of electricity from a new coal power plant, according to Boston, Mass.-based photovoltaic consulting firm Photon Consulting.

These economics could quickly result in a very large market opportunity for solar energy, the firm believes, but the photovoltaic (PV) industry is not likely to pass on decreasing production costs to its customers, instead choosing to expand their earnings in the coming years.

In 2006, the production of solar electricity from a typical 4 kilowatt (kW) rooftop system in Germany cost 30 cents per kWh, in Spain it was 19 cents, and in California it was 22 cents. By 2010, Photon Consulting estimates that solar electricity will be produced for 18 cents in Southern Germany, 12 cents per (kWh) in Spain, and 13 cents in California.

Typical production costs including system installation were approximately $3,600 per kW last year, with particularly efficient companies producing for costs of less than $3,000 per kW. By 2010, this price is expected to plummet to $2,500.

...

[OKIsItJustMe]

54. Solar cheaper than coal and falling

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/23/2919/8613

Gristmill

Solar cheaper than coal and falling

New developments in solar power make 'clean coal' look even dumber

Posted by David Roberts at 10:46 AM on 26 Dec 2007

Let me be the last in the greenosphere to note that Nanosolar has shipped its first panels, and it's no exaggeration to say that this moment will likely be seen as a historical turning point.

For a taste of the breathless anticipation around Nanosolar, read "innovation of the year" over on PopSci (or this recent piece in the NYT). Unlike so many other hyped green tech dreamers, the company is not just talking and researching prototypes. They're building factories. Once the factory they built in San Jose is up to full production capacity, it will be cranking out more solar panels than every other U.S. plant combined -- 430 megawatts worth.

Nanosolar's claim is that power from their panels will pencil out at about $0.99 a watt. The implications are pretty stunning:

"With a $1-per-watt panel," said, "it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems."

According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said.

...

[OKIsItJustMe]

55. HelioVolt on Nanosolar's Heels

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/heliovolt-on-nanosolars-heels-429.html

HelioVolt on Nanosolar's Heels

Less than a week after Nanosolar announced it had begun thin-film production, another copper-indium-gallium-selenide company selects a location for its first factory.

by: Jennifer Kho
Bullet Arrow December 20, 2007
Vinod Khosla

In another sign of growth for thin-film solar, HelioVolt Corp. on Thursday said it has pinned down a location for its first manufacturing facility.

The 20-megawatt factory, expected to begin production next year, is slated for the Expo Business Park in Austin, Texas. In October, HelioVolt -- also based in Austin -- closed a $101 million Series B round of venture-capital funding, which it will use to finance the construction (see HelioVolt Gets More Cash for Thin Solar).

"We are delighted to be entering the next stage of growth with our first factory," HelioVolt CEO B.J. Stanbery said in a written statement.

The details about HelioVolt's thin-film plant come on the heels of an announcement earlier this week that Nanosolar had begun production of its first commercial thin-film panels (see Nanosolar Begins Production).

...

[ConcernedCanuk]

23. How about simply making it two separate forums? - Environment and Energy

.
.
.

That would be the simplest change to "slow down" the passage of articles

Would need a wee bit of fine tuning as to what went where

But easily doable methinks?

And most of us know about Xposting

Right?

[OKIsItJustMe]

24. I believe they are intertwined

Our use of energy, and our sources for it, directly affect our environment.

[hatrack]

33. I agree - way too interwoven to break out as separate topics eom

.

[Dover]

57. So in summary...

It seems that the consensus is to leave things as they are.

While there were a few suggestions for an alternate arrangement they didn't seem to generate
any real interest. So in lieu of a consensus-building alternative format, I guess I will officially close
this matter and this thread.

[BeFree]

58. Yeah

It's terrible the amount of 0 replied to postings we have here.

As an example see the Election Reform way of doing things.

Over there they have a daily thread of articles, and this forum could use the same.

The pollution here is getting too thick.

Thanks for this thread.

[madokie]

59. I've read this same thing being advocated before and I didn't really like it then either

if they were all on the same subject yes but thats not the case. can't you just scroll down and check out this one or that one as you see fit and then go on to the next page and do the same otherwise so much would be lost burried under a headline that had nothing to do with that subject. I think what you're saying would be a bad idea, but thats just me. Just because I want to read about the red item doesn't mean I want to read about the green one too if you get my drift.
no big deal though ok.