Reality Can Be Counter-Intuitive

"What is better, planting trees or covering the same area of land with solar panels? A group of geoscientists from Israel just looked at this, and they say that solar panels come out way ahead. Let's have a look at what the paper says."

Click on the link below for the details:

Solar arrays better than trees for climate, study says

Update On The Search For Alien Life, And More

"In this month's Lightning Round video, I answer a couple of questions about life in the universe, both how close we are to finding traces of life outside of Earth, and the experiments regarding how life began on Earth, and possibly other places. Also questions about solar panels, water towers, and time travel."

Click on the link below for the details:

We Have Never Been Closer To Finding Alien Life

Solar Panels In Space?

"Solar power is a nice idea. Except for the issue with the clouds. And the nights. So, how about we instead put solar panels up in space and then beam the energy down? This futuristic idea is known as “Space Based Solar Power”. It’s been around since the 1960s, but in recent years several nations have launched projects to make it reality. I think they’re not kidding. Space-Based Solar Power is about to become a real thing. But how is it supposed to work? Is it a good idea to beam energy down from space? What are the pros and cons? That’s what we’ll talk about today."

Click on the link below for an in-depth, objective view of this energy option in the future:

How crazy is the idea to beam solar energy down from space?

Technology Advances And Planning Ahead

"- - - imagine if one political party claimed that astronomers were exaggerating the risk to secure funding, that those who believed the astronomers were being “impact hysterics,” that asteroid impacts aren’t necessarily a bad thing, and there is probably nothing we can do about it anyway. An asteroid impact is more sudden and dramatic, but the effects of AGW could be comparable to a medium-sized impact in terms of the cost to civilization."

Economics, Renewables, and Climate Change

Solar Energy: Promising, With Challenges

 "A provocative recent essay in Nature Energy by two solar analysts, Varun Sivaram and Shayle Kann, argues that solar still has some hard economic obstacles to overcome before it can become a major energy source and provide (let's say) one-third of our power. Overcoming these hurdles could mean the difference between solar leveling off as a niche technology and solar taking over the world."

How cheap does solar power need to get before it takes over the world?