I said it before and I will say it again (to the developers that listen):

Interfaces, not implementations. When will people learn?

It seems the girls are looking for something.... coming, leaving, coming again. What might it be? Girls are strange :P

Good explanations, but while I were waiting for an answer from you, I did some lookup of my own, and it seems there are figures all over the net giving me everything from effective 4 to 90 watts per mÂ, all quoting "average modern solar cell/panel". For instance, consider the following:

60 watts max for 76x67cm area commercially available panel:
http://eshop.sunriseenergy.co.uk/Photovoltaic-60-Watt-Monocrystalline-Solar-Panel

So, I am thinking that 4 watts and even 10 watts, are rather conservative figures. Then again, for the sake of my original argument, you are right indeed - if they'd go for cheap, really cheap and not necessarily very efficient arrays, they'd need to cover a lot of area with panels to cover our collective energy needs. Then again, I think Desertec Foundation are onto something with instead distributing the global array over several high-yield-sun places, and they also achieve 24-hour energy provision without storage, if they distribute along the timezones, which is what I think they plan to, more or less.

I also think that photovoltaics will outperform solar-thermal in years to come. And frankly, solar-thermal needs considerably more maintenance etc.

Hmm, it seems my math is completely wrong. I don't understand how can photovoltaics get you only 4W per square meter in Germany. It's around 150 watts of solar irradiation on average there, with 10% efficiency for modern photovoltaics (on average, again), it should yield about 15 watts, no?

Source please?

First of all, most photovoltaic cells DO absorb heat as well, and by way of energy conservation, that same wave energy won't be reflected back. Second, compared to the amount of heat and other processes that contribute to global warming, even the combined dissipation of heat from solar energy installations giving us all the energy we need - is negligible. We can make do with photovoltaics array covering 300000 square kilometers of unused, unpopulated Sahara desert to give us close to 20 terawatt output average, which is almost twice as much as we use today. The difference between heat dissipated by that entire installation and what we dissipate today extracting usable energy, is a negative.

If nanoantennae research becomes a viable business, we'll have a way of extracting the actual heat from the Sun, as opposed to energy from the visible spectrum, which will reduce heat dissipation substantially. Nanoantennate are said to cost cheaper to produce than even thin-film photovoltaic arrays, the problems currently lie elsewhere, but it's gaining traction. I am just saying, so that you won't get the idea that our solar energy worldwide will fry us alive. It won't, not near as much as coal, oil etc cook us slowly today.

Also, you don't have to abstain from painting roofs white. It's a good thing to do in warmer places. In any case, a so-called passivhaus home is a better solution, at least for the wealthier countries.

I am glad to see one of the more informative AND insightful posts here, above.

Here we go with nuclear again. It is not viable. It is very cheap until something goes wrong, which it does, at which point it becomes so expensive you wish you hadn't built the damn thing. I am not saying it cannot be improved upon, but unlike many other sciences, when nuclear goes wrong, you cannot always measure the losses in dollars or yen. Heavy contaminated water, diseases and such - it's often a permanent damage, beyond repair that can simply be bought and from which you can move on.

I love nuclear power as much as the next guy did before Fukisima happened, but someone, somewhere has to present a strategy that can verify that either the design is 99.9999999 safe and won't bring half the planet down with it, or that in case it violently explodes, the disaster ends with firetrucks extinguishing the fires. When that strategy is used, then we can continue, but if the japanese messed up, I think we ought to take a break from the whole nuclear power festival.

At least solar power has not shown to produce such horrible disasters as Chernobyl and Fukusima malfunctioning plants have. And unless you run a goods tanker across the Atlantic (which uses as much fuel during its voyage as one million road vehicles during same time), solar power will sover all your household needs, if not entirely, then at least, substantially. And the costs repay themselves within several years, depending, leaving you with practically free energy.

But yes, it does suck that PVs are made in China.

Also, with thin-film from First Solar under a dollar per watt, the system returns your investment within two years at the longest, for a typical American household. From then on, it's free energy. FREE. Not bound to anything, but the Sun orbiting our planet. Now please tell me, except initial investment, how is burning coal and gas cheaper than THAT? You have yourself largely independent household, energy-wise. The little they will lack during the night (when most people sleep) when Sun is not there, they will either buy from the conventional grid or from a system of batteries, if spare could be allocated during the day. In case a household is 100% independent of a third-party energy supplier, you have yourself a nightmare of oil and coal companies. Independence is the cancer of trade and business. Can you imagine a world where people don't need anything from each other? Granted, that'll never happen in its entirety, but solar energy is one component of this utopia that can happen. Now tell me you wouldn't lobby against it if everything from your capital to your daily bread, depended on it?

A flawed argument, and surprised it still floats. You fail to realize that as much as indeed oil and coal are today far more viable alternatives (if arguably dooming us) than solar, even the "evil" (by your wording) oil and coal companies wouldn't simply let solar develop itself. They know that even though outgunned today, if given space to breathe, solar WILL replace oil and coal, also because of public opinion shifting, which you completely forgot to mention. Killing people and taking over their property is also cheaper than trading with them, but it is outlawed. It is outlawed because the public doesn't appreciate it. Same way, given enough time, oil and coal will, although staying far cheaper than solar, will be frowned upon. You can't burn coal if you're in the oven. That's why I believe there is lobbyism today - even though as you put it perhaps not needed, they don't take the risk of NOT lobbying. Because they too, as any good investor, predict that the public opinion shifts away from their choice of horse.

You really think the people that have their hands deep in oil extraction would just stand aside and look at how the solar guys develop their thing? I don't think subsidies have much to do with it, my friend.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with subsidizing solar energy companies. There are incentives there, and I'm not even going to waste my time listing them - as you seem to know so much about the topic, you should know this yourself. As for U.S., the entire country is subsidized. I am talking about the national debt.

Slowly but surely make yourself familar with publications (websites) on Internet that you think you like. Find their RSS feeds and subscribe to them using your favorite RSS aggregattor application. That way you'll always have a list of what's going on, from (mostly) independent sources and without having to manually walk through a set of websites, although you can always do that too.

So, in short: websites of your liking / relevance + RSS = answer to your enquiry

Compared to the junk we constantly dump into our oceans, this space station that has done A LOT of useful research (and will do so until around 2020), most of its results not even analyzed yet, I would say, in this case, the benefit to have run ISS outweighs the unfortune of polluting the ocean with its debris.

In fact, even if we launch and deorbit a space station 10 times the size of ISS into the ocean every 20 years, it's not going to count as anything compared to the amount of junk we dump into the oceans annually.

I HATE warm laptops!