Skeptic Project

(just reposting this to the right group)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep4L18zOEYI

Take a look.

This is actually doing something. A practical, real world idea with real people and engineers working on it, real investment, real potential and real prototypes.

Fresco? Pretty pictures and little toy models for over 50 years. Keep on dreamin Fresco while the real engineers try and do something.

Nice idea. With some luck, in six months Zeitgeisters will blog about it.

I actually know that guy, the dude with the beard. Pretty cool dude, I know him through another dude who made specialized designed the solar panels in his garage that go on NASA spaceships now among many other patented applicable real world designs. I have been attempting to find some interesting grant projects by the gov or trying to get grant money for a project I want to start up within RBOSE. I have been successful on one front (as far as receiving funds, but still going through processes and other things), but this is really interesting from what he said and what I heard already.

Checkout the YERT film as well.

http://www.yert.com/film.php

Solar Energy
Since solar power systems generate no air pollution during operation, the primary environmental, health, and safety issues involve how they are manufactured, installed, and ultimately disposed of. Energy is required to manufacture and install solar components, and any fossil fuels used for this purpose will generate emissions. Thus, an important question is how much fossil energy input is required for solar systems compared to the fossil energy consumed by comparable conventional energy systems. Although this varies depending upon the technology and climate, the energy balance is generally favorable to solar systems in applications where they are cost effective, and it is improving with each successive generation of technology. According to some studies, for example, solar water heaters increase the amount of hot water generated per unit of fossil energy invested by at least a factor of two compared to natural gas water heating and by at least a factor of eight compared to electric water heating.

Materials used in some solar systems can create health and safety hazards for workers and anyone else coming into contact with them. In particular, the manufacturing of photovoltaic cells often requires hazardous materials such as arsenic and cadmium. Even relatively inert silicon, a major material used in solar cells, can be hazardous to workers if it is breathed in as dust. Workers involved in manufacturing photovoltaic modules and components must consequently be protected from exposure to these materials. There is an additional-probably very small-danger that hazardous fumes released from photovoltaic modules attached to burning homes or buildings could injure fire fighters.

None of these potential hazards is much different in quality or magnitude from the innumerable hazards people face routinely in an industrial society. Through effective regulation, the dangers can very likely be kept at a very low level.

The large amount of land required for utility-scale solar power plants-approximately one square kilometer for every 20-60 megawatts (MW) generated-poses an additional problem, especially where wildlife protection is a concern. But this problem is not unique to solar power plants. Generating electricity from coal actually requires as much or more land per unit of energy delivered if the land used in strip mining is taken into account. Solar-thermal plants (like most conventional power plants) also require cooling water, which may be costly or scarce in desert areas.

Large central power plants are not the only option for generating energy from sunlight, however, and are probably among the least promising. Because sunlight is dispersed, small-scale, dispersed applications are a better match to the resource. They can take advantage of unused space on the roofs of homes and buildings and in urban and industrial lots. And, in solar building designs, the structure itself acts as the collector, so there is no need for any additional space at all

gathered from http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/technology_and_impacts/impacts/environmental-impacts-of.html</p>

I wanna know how they build these roads so that uphills and downhills are smooth and if theres a risk for cars to slide terribly when it rains or snows.

Just wait until someone claims that solar roads cause cancer or autism or something.