How minute of an energy expense are you going to go? The refining costs of the steel used in making the coffee cup the plant foreman drinks from? Some of those costs are not specific to the manufacture of the panels. Very many of the commodities used in the manufacture would probably have been used elsewhere if the PV panels hadn't been manufactured--in anything from oil derricks to green grocery bags. It's not as if these companies are creating whole supply chains and materials from scratch.

Your use of a tree as an example of energy purity is a red herring. Sure, a tree is a marvel of natural engineering and resource use. But a tree captures just enough energy to make a tree, and perhaps some fruit to spread its seeds. Indeed, chlorophyll does not even utilize the full spectrum of light energy available to it, because the photosynthetic pathways can only handle so many free electrons. Any human activity that rises above the baseline energy use of the primary ecosystem will be suspect in this case. For our current energy budget, we need more efficiency/throughput than a tree can offer. We can even use the part of the visible spectrum the tree doesn't.

> the only energy available will be the continued input from the sun.

According to Wikipedia, insolation at the Earth's surface is approximately 100 petawatts. That's a lot of energy. The biosphere uses a very small fraction of it. And the funny thing about solar panels is, if you make them once, you can reuse them for a long while.

But, you're conveniently forgetting about geothermal and nuclear, which are solar-independent.

> trees and all the other photosynthetic life on earth captures

> far more than "just enough energy to make a tree and perhaps

> some fruit to spread its seeds." They capture enough energy to

> produce a surplus that supports all other 'higher' life forms.

A tree doesn't care about other life forms. If a tree was designed to be a living generator for heterotrophs it would produce a whole lot more surplus (the energy's there) and not tie that surplus into distributing seeds. There would be a whole lot more animals if the sole purpose of plants was to convert solar energy for their needs.

Creating a solar panel is merely a way of capturing solar energy in a way that isn't glucose-based and tied into making organic infrastructure--and, therefore, more efficient.

> Eventually that savings will be gone and the 'budget' will

> require us to change our demand.

This has a whiff of post-apocalyptic thinking, and possibly arcadian thinking as well. What's the best way to meet this budget? Is subsistence agriculture okay? Pastoralism? Hunting and gathering? Should we just abandon this whole human experiment and go back to foraging like chimpanzees? I'm not giving up that easily.

Seriously, after reading it one day I figured it *had* to be parody.

It's another Internet truism that bacon is so yummy because it basically tastes like people would. It's not called "long pig" for nothing. So you can have your flesh and eat it, too!

"We begin bombing in five minutes."

"Batman Begins" was a turgid mess of bronzy pretentiousness topped off with killer steam. None of the previews made me want to see "The Dark Knight", and I found Heath Ledger's Joker to be flat and boring. Score two for Stephanie. I'm sure "Mamma Mia" will be cinematic Spam, and putting a stage director on a movie set is usually a recipe for disaster.

I guess the sheer number of annoyed letters here and in the Batman review are part of the selection bias: if you agreed with the review, you're not gonna post an angry screed, are you?

> When did snark become the primary lens for regarding the immediate past?

Uhhhh, 1992? Jeeze, where have *you* been?

"Wide World of Sports"

I cut my teeth on ABC's coverage of the games way back in Montreal, and ever since ABC lost the bidding war, the flag-waving and crappy editing has been par for the course.

Brazil can make ethanol cheap because sugar cane grows like a weed down there. It's also ten times more efficient to use cane than corn for ethanol production I'd say junk the corn subsidies and sugar tariffs that a previous poster mentioned and send our former petrodollars to Brazil.

Well, that was a trollerific post if I've ever seen one. C'mon, man, put some heart into it. Don't be so obvious. 1.5 out of 10. I gave you the extra half-point because you didn't spell any words wrong.

Once upon a time there were three billy goats, who were to go up to the hillside to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was "Gruff."

On the way up was a bridge over a cascading stream they had to cross; and under the bridge lived lolcait, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.

The header pic makes Annette look like her face got stretched over a barrel of Botox. I hope that's just an unflattering job in the makeup trailer. She was hot in American Beauty. I hope she didn't ruin what God gave her.

Are the ledges on the 14th floor starting to look full?

Keep repeating that the emperor has no clothes, Glenn.

Once upon a time there were three billy goats, who were to go up to the hillside to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was "Gruff."

On the way up was a bridge over a cascading stream they had to cross; and under the bridge lived Rich007, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.

I remember him from lo those many years ago. I'm impressed those books are still around.

I knew that Bill Kristol could not be trusted any father than you could spit a Buick way back when he was Dan Quayle's handler. A slimier snake-oil salesman is hard to find.