Impressive thinking and writing for a 13 year old, assuming that it's mostly his work (always a question with school science projects). However, see a detailed analysis of why claiming some kind of breakthrough is wrong: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JmlMNqVPKlsJ:uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-trees-really-are-inferior.html%20http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-trees-really-are-inferior.html

Very brief cliffs: 1) He measured open circuit voltage with no load, which tells you nothing about actual power that it can produce under load 2) Broken theory: sum of the outputs over time is simply the sum of the individual outputs, and will be maximized by having all individual outputs at the optimal angle

Exactly.

I've used desktop and server Linux for years, and likewise Windows 2000 and XP for years. I think my 2 sons and I both adjusted at least as easily to a Linux desktop as I did when I tried Vista. It seems likely that Win7 will also require a significant adjustment.

And our group at work moved a few months ago from Office 2003 to Office 2007. We're not power users of Office, but moderately frequent users, and are still figuring out how to do some things that were easy in Office 2003. I've found the learning curve easier in learning Open Office and other open source office suites than in moving from MS Office 2003 to 2007.

<quote>
I don't know about Basel but I'm certain these guys know they would face serious legal/criminal action if they didn't know for sure it was safe.</quote>

You mean like the wall street investment bankers were deterred from taking undue risks and even committing fraud by these same considerations?

I don't think we should underestimate the likelihood of corporate officials being willing to take big risks when they see the possibility of company profits translating to big salaries and bonuses for themselves. I'm not saying that such projects shouldn't be undertaken. And I don't want regulatory and lawsuit-driven strangulation of any projects with possible environmental impact.

Still, relying on sane decision making by corporations is no substitute for appropriate oversight.