And who said solar thermal is dead?

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The first year of the Tesla car was fraught with learning trials as well. Now it is paying massive dividends.
I suggest a tad bit of patience.
Get back to us after a month of normal weather for the area and the bugs worked out of the system.
By the way, your KCET site is so obviously anti-green energy that it is embarrassing. Shilling for fossil fuels;always a profitable (though morally questionable) business.
 
I agree, but they have 8 mos of operation, not one. I'd still give then 2-3 years to work out the kinks.
 
kcet one of the few places I could find any mention of what are serious problems and on going updates as to what is going on. obviously green friendly sites would be objective on reporting such info? one of the few times I've ever heard that a former PBS member ( wiki says they left in 2010) is right handed?
 
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I agree, but they have 8 mos of operation, not one. I'd still give then 2-3 years to work out the kinks.
As you yourself pointed out, this is a massively complex system.
8 months is nothing in terms of the magnitude involved.
I am saying let's see the results after 1 month of normal weather and all 3 towers in full operation before making judgements.
 
kcet one of the few places I could find any mention of what are serious problems and on going updates as to what is going on. obviously green friendly sites would be objective on reporting such info? one of the few times I've ever heard that a former PBS member ( wiki says they left in 2010) is right handed?
Just pointing out the obvious. ]
What say you about my other point?
 
Just pointing out the obvious. ]
What say you about my other point?
if I remember the fox report correctly, they'll be coming after another 1/2 bil. tesla dumped gov't loans long before due as I guess the ceo doesn't like them. green electric sector lives off them.
 
if I remember the fox report correctly, they'll be coming after another 1/2 bil. tesla dumped gov't loans long before due as I guess the ceo doesn't like them. green electric sector lives off them.
Do you realize that the vast majority of the technology we enjoy and take for granted today was developed with government funding?
 
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Do you realize that the vast majority of the technology we enjoy and take for granted today was developed with government funding?

Actually the majority of technology out there was not developed with government funding. Most of the technology was developed to fix problems in industry or make money.
 
Actually, for decades almost all of the really innovative stuff (transistors, integrated circuits, polymers and nanotechnology) was developed at large industrial labs in the US (Bell Labs, IBM, Exxon) and taken as a tax write-off back when corporate tax rates were higher....in essence gov't subsidized. When the corp tax rates were slashed in the 80's (to improve US competitiveness) all those labs were gutted, and US innovation ground to a halt.

The EU, Japan and Korea still incentivize their corps to have those big labs (via grants, tariffs and tax breaks) and so most of the major innovations in the last 20 years have occurred overseas. Think hard-drives, flash memory, Li-ion batteries, flat-panel displays, blu-ray players, LED lightbulbs, EV batteries, poly-crystal PV panels, etc. All overseas, and each required a multi-billion investment in fundamental science and R&D from places like Panasonic, LG, Phillips, Sony, Siemens, etc.

In comparison, Silicon Valley is a design school funded with VC's fun money.
 
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Which is little proof of anything. Of course a government organization is going to make all sorts of claims to boost its budget. My point remains true, most of the technology innovations have been developed outside of government funding.
Yet I actually provided a proof whether you accept it or not.
 
Yet I actually provided a proof whether you accept it or not.

No Dune, you provided a government website with no data and no examination of technology advances between the private market and government funded research. That is not "proof" or even evidence.
 
My point remains true
Tmonter, your point is your unsupported opinion, yet you require others to provide far more information than you have provided to rebut your opinion.

Why not provide others here with some links to support your opinion so that the proper discussion can take place?
 
Tmonter, your point is your unsupported opinion, yet you require others to provide far more information than you have provided to rebut your opinion.

Why not provide others here with some links to support your opinion so that the proper discussion can take place?

Unsupported opinion? No, solid fact:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science

Look at the major technology innovations in the past 150 years, almost all were privately developed.

steel production
Oil production
The IC engine
Boilers
Steam turbines
Antibiotics
Vaccines (the initial design and development)
Transistors
Integrated circuits

Really the base technology for most of modern day life was developed privately. There seem to be a lot of people here who forget that government wasn't the primary driver of the advancements. More government funding of research isn't the answer to technology development.
 
The goal of government-funded/academic research is not (or I should better say: was not) to directly lead to technological innovations but to expand human knowledge. Technological advancements are built on the basic research performed predominantly by academic researchers. Any application using nuclear technology would not be possible without the studies undertaken by Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, and Ernest Rutherford to name just a few. Our understanding and use of electricity would not be possible without the likes of Faraday, Maxwell, and Hans Christian Ørsted. Laser-technology is based on the work of Planck, Einstein, and Alfred Kastler among others. Almost as an aside, antibiotics were actually discovered due to academic research by Fleming, lecturer at St. Mary's Hospital and Professor at the University of London. Similarly, the first modern day vaccines were developed by Enders and colleagues, and owe a great deal to the discoveries made by Pasteur, Ehrlich, Koch and, of course, Jenner.

Many of our current technologies would not be possible by the knowledge gained through academic research which lays the foundation on which innovative products are built upon. Government-funded research has the advantage that it works without a profit motive thereby enabling researchers to explore new paths without knowing where those will take them. I am sure when Henry Dale discovered histamine he would have never thought that antihistamines will become one of the most widely used drugs at least in the western world. In addition, government-funded research can actually enable more rapid innovation. Just assume a physicist would describe the theoretical design of an actually possible nuclear fusion reactor and publish it. Now dozens of companies can put their engineers to work to build the most efficient, safe, and cost-effective reactor and bring that to the market as fast as possible. We could choose which unit would best serve our needs for safe, reliable, and clean energy. Contrast that to the possibility that an industrial lab made that discovery, patents it and there would only be one choice for us.

Within the last 20 years, there has been an increasing push on academics to do more "applicable" research, to patent findings, and to "spin-off" their own companies, all in the name of efficiency and profitability. We need to be careful to not undermine our long-term benefit due to our quest for short-term gains. We may just stifle true innovative research that goes beyond our current knowledge.
 
The goal of government-funded/academic research is not (or I should better say: was not) to directly lead to technological innovations but to expand human knowledge. Technological advancements are built on the basic research performed predominantly by academic researchers. Any application using nuclear technology would not be possible without the studies undertaken by Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, and Ernest Rutherford to name just a few. Our understanding and use of electricity would not be possible without the likes of Faraday, Maxwell, and Hans Christian Ørsted. Laser-technology is based on the work of Planck, Einstein, and Alfred Kastler among others. Almost as an aside, antibiotics were actually discovered due to academic research by Fleming, lecturer at St. Mary's Hospital and Professor at the University of London. Similarly, the first modern day vaccines were developed by Enders and colleagues, and owe a great deal to the discoveries made by Pasteur, Ehrlich, Koch and, of course, Jenner.

Many of our current technologies would not be possible by the knowledge gained through academic research which lays the foundation on which innovative products are built upon. Government-funded research has the advantage that it works without a profit motive thereby enabling researchers to explore new paths without knowing where those will take them. I am sure when Henry Dale discovered histamine he would have never thought that antihistamines will become one of the most widely used drugs at least in the western world. In addition, government-funded research can actually enable more rapid innovation. Just assume a physicist would describe the theoretical design of an actually possible nuclear fusion reactor and publish it. Now dozens of companies can put their engineers to work to build the most efficient, safe, and cost-effective reactor and bring that to the market as fast as possible. We could choose which unit would best serve our needs for safe, reliable, and clean energy. Contrast that to the possibility that an industrial lab made that discovery, patents it and there would only be one choice for us.

Within the last 20 years, there has been an increasing push on academics to do more "applicable" research, to patent findings, and to "spin-off" their own companies, all in the name of efficiency and profitability. We need to be careful to not undermine our long-term benefit due to our quest for short-term gains. We may just stifle true innovative research that goes beyond our current knowledge.

Patents are a separate issue however. The way the current patent system works is inherently flawed and needs to be changed. It would be much better to change the way patents work than to just throw more money at government funded research.
 
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