

Surging solar in 2011 proof of Ray Kurzweil’s bold prediction? - geuis
http://singularityhub.com/2012/09/24/surging-solar-in-2011-proof-of-ray-kurzweils-bold-prediction/

======
corysama
I'm surprised to see Singularity Hub of all people spend so much time arguing
that even though the rate of growth is right on track, the absolute size is
still too small to care.

The tldr quotes seem to eventually come down to "The last 20 years have shown
exponential growth in solar power—and rising sustainable energy subsidies in
parallel." and "For example, last year’s solar capacity growth set records
because firms expected dramatic cuts in government incentives, thus pulling
future demand into the present."

------
ChuckMcM
geuis, I would suggest you limit submitting articles which base their argument
entirely on exponential extrapolation without regard to physics or other
factors. If you do believe what the author wrote, or it spoke to you in some
way, share with us as an additional comment after submission what you found
compelling about the article.

Edit: and this comment "That’s pretty positive news. As Kurzweil notes, _“We
are awash in sunlight.” Just 1/10,000 of the sunlight falling on the Earth’s
surface can satisfy humanity’s energy requirements. And that doesn’t imply a
landscape littered with panels—in fact, an area equal to just a few percent of
the Earth’s unused deserts would suffice."_

Has been thoroughly debunked several times by the fact that you can't actually
transmit all of the worlds power from an 'unused desert' to its consumers.
When we have super conductors tracing through the planet more densely than we
currently have networking cables, then we can start talking about putting all
the power generation in a 'couple' of places.

~~~
geuis
Thanks for the thoughts. I personally don't like adding comments about
submissions, as the point to submitting stories is that they should be
interesting and self-explanatory on their own merit. I believe the community,
if it finds something interesting enough, will upvote it. If its something
that is pointless but gets upvotes, then enough people will flag it for
removal.

In regards to the "1/10,000" comment, some people have conceived of designs
where energy production is centralized in desert areas. While if built, indeed
the amount of power would be sufficient, but this is more often simply meant
as an example of the amount of land area that would be needed world-wide. It
does not in itself imply that this is the strategy that should be pursued.

In the same way that we say, "faster than light" instead of "speed of
electromagnetic waves in a vacuum" and "half a dozen" instead of 6 (and I've
never understood where this phrase came from), it is simply a metaphor that
lets uninformed readers better grasp the concepts being imparted. In reality,
what is implied is that globally it would only take an equivalent amount of
land distributed world-wide to achieve the same effect.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Thanks, this is where we disagree I think _"I believe the community, if it
finds something interesting enough, will upvote it. If its something that is
pointless but gets upvotes, then enough people will flag it for removal."_

That statement is true, but carried to excess we submit the entire Internet of
stories to HN to be filtered by the flag it or die process. I try to read the
stories on the /new pages and vote up ones I find interesting, or comment but
my willingness to do that is harmed by having a lot of material that should
never be submitted in the first place. The auto-killer does its part, I've
seen /new with 90% auto-killed content sometimes, but it has to be careful as
well.

------
mrng
No. (As per Betteridge's Law of headlines,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines>)

~~~
givan
This will become the hacker news law. On any submission with a headline ending
with a question mark somebody will point out the stupid betteridge law.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I downvote any comment that does nothing other than cite the stupid thing. I
encourage others to do the same.

~~~
ralfd
Sadly, I don't know what else to discuss about this article.

