Ah, no. I grew up listening to arguments like, “Racism, sexism, and ableism. You know what I think of all that? Marxist bullshit, invented to turn people against each other. Divide and conquer.”
That was my father, a few weeks ago, expressing his belief that the world (and especially the US, but even more so Europe) is ruled by Marxist who invented racism and sexism. This is someone who went to first grade in southern Georgia, the US, the first year of racial desegregation in schools.
I have heard it argued, and not just by him, that all the things listed are retarded liberal fantasies: That evolution is a way of denying God and thereby justifying hedonism, a lot about how solar panels take more energy to manufacture than they’ll produce in their lifetime, and about how a society that tolerates homosexuality cannot survive (and that it can’t truly be a marriage if it’s between two people of the same sex).
Yes, it’s possible to tell parodies from people honestly stating their views if you study the context, but it’s not often possible to do so just from the context of what they’re saying. I thought the above person was just stating their views succinctly in a way they thought was clever.
It is false for all panels on the market today. There may in the past have been solar panels that cost a lot more energy to manufacture and produced a lot less energy, but no one would be a panel like that anymore.
Would you be willing to show a reference or back-of-the-envelope calculation for this?
The last time I checked, the manufacture of large photovoltaic panels was energy-intensive and low-yield (their current price suggests that these problem persist.) They were also rated for a useful life of around two decades.
I do not believe that these problems have been corrected in any panel currently on the market. There is no shortage of vaporware.
Manufacturers hold the details of their processes close to the chest, but you can use their sale price for a back-of-the-envelope upper bound. Searching Google for “photovoltaics”, the first price I found was $2.38/W (in one of the ads). Assuming the manufacturer only breaks even, and that entire price was spent on energy used for manufacturing the panels and the materials used to make the panels, then at 5 cents/kWh (which according to http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/115.htm is a good price), making the panel couldn’t have used more than 47kWh/W. If that much energy was used, and the solar panel operated at rated capacity for 8 hours/day, then it would take 16 years to produce the energy used to make it. By comparison, the warranty on the same panel guarantees at least 80% capacity for 25 years.
However, this is a very loose upper bound, in that I assumed that the entire purchase price was spent on electricity. This is probably off by an order of magnitude, since the cost of solar cells is dominated by labor, R&D, factory equipment, and profit, not by energy use.
I appreciated this calculation. Although as you show it’s unlikely that solar panels represent a net loss in energy, it’s still kind of off-putting that, given my local power rate of 5 cents/kWh, I’d have to wait 16 years to make back my money if I buy solar panels to reduce the power I take from the grid. Of course, this results mainly from the government subsidy of residential power, a bizarre policy completely at odds with the same government’s exhortations to be “power smart”.
I haven’t done the necessary investigation to tell whether or not it’s false, although I’m inclined to believe that recent technological advances support jimrandomh’s position, but that was aside from the point. I was merely saying that I have heard people argue that every one of the points is a fantasy, and solar energy was one of them. I’m not the one who connected it to gay marriage and evolution, so its inclusion among two things I believe I have enough knowledge to say are not fantasies is not meant to imply an endorsement of solar energy.
It’s easy to check: what costs more: a new solar panel, or the amount of electricity it’s able to produce? If the panel costs less, then the evergy used to make it costs less as well.
You do realize that is a parody, right?
Ah, no. I grew up listening to arguments like, “Racism, sexism, and ableism. You know what I think of all that? Marxist bullshit, invented to turn people against each other. Divide and conquer.”
That was my father, a few weeks ago, expressing his belief that the world (and especially the US, but even more so Europe) is ruled by Marxist who invented racism and sexism. This is someone who went to first grade in southern Georgia, the US, the first year of racial desegregation in schools.
I have heard it argued, and not just by him, that all the things listed are retarded liberal fantasies: That evolution is a way of denying God and thereby justifying hedonism, a lot about how solar panels take more energy to manufacture than they’ll produce in their lifetime, and about how a society that tolerates homosexuality cannot survive (and that it can’t truly be a marriage if it’s between two people of the same sex).
Yes, it’s possible to tell parodies from people honestly stating their views if you study the context, but it’s not often possible to do so just from the context of what they’re saying. I thought the above person was just stating their views succinctly in a way they thought was clever.
Do you mean to say that this is false?
It is false for all panels on the market today. There may in the past have been solar panels that cost a lot more energy to manufacture and produced a lot less energy, but no one would be a panel like that anymore.
Would you be willing to show a reference or back-of-the-envelope calculation for this?
The last time I checked, the manufacture of large photovoltaic panels was energy-intensive and low-yield (their current price suggests that these problem persist.) They were also rated for a useful life of around two decades.
I do not believe that these problems have been corrected in any panel currently on the market. There is no shortage of vaporware.
Manufacturers hold the details of their processes close to the chest, but you can use their sale price for a back-of-the-envelope upper bound. Searching Google for “photovoltaics”, the first price I found was $2.38/W (in one of the ads). Assuming the manufacturer only breaks even, and that entire price was spent on energy used for manufacturing the panels and the materials used to make the panels, then at 5 cents/kWh (which according to http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/115.htm is a good price), making the panel couldn’t have used more than 47kWh/W. If that much energy was used, and the solar panel operated at rated capacity for 8 hours/day, then it would take 16 years to produce the energy used to make it. By comparison, the warranty on the same panel guarantees at least 80% capacity for 25 years.
However, this is a very loose upper bound, in that I assumed that the entire purchase price was spent on electricity. This is probably off by an order of magnitude, since the cost of solar cells is dominated by labor, R&D, factory equipment, and profit, not by energy use.
I appreciated this calculation. Although as you show it’s unlikely that solar panels represent a net loss in energy, it’s still kind of off-putting that, given my local power rate of 5 cents/kWh, I’d have to wait 16 years to make back my money if I buy solar panels to reduce the power I take from the grid. Of course, this results mainly from the government subsidy of residential power, a bizarre policy completely at odds with the same government’s exhortations to be “power smart”.
I haven’t done the necessary investigation to tell whether or not it’s false, although I’m inclined to believe that recent technological advances support jimrandomh’s position, but that was aside from the point. I was merely saying that I have heard people argue that every one of the points is a fantasy, and solar energy was one of them. I’m not the one who connected it to gay marriage and evolution, so its inclusion among two things I believe I have enough knowledge to say are not fantasies is not meant to imply an endorsement of solar energy.
It’s easy to check: what costs more: a new solar panel, or the amount of electricity it’s able to produce? If the panel costs less, then the evergy used to make it costs less as well.