Sorry to intrude on the echo chamber, but here is what I, an actual conservative and registered republican, think about the hackabee victory:

Whatever

Yup, that's it. First we had the tyrannical rudy v. constitutionally unaware romney. The press thought either of those was the main guy. The republican power brokers figured they had identified the guys most likely to play ball. Nope. Both repugnant to most republicans.

Huckabee actually has a base that will turn out and vote for him. They turned out. They voted. The rest were depending on republicans to turn out and vote for whatever the hell it is the party stands for these days. They kinda showed up and cast votes hither and yon.

To me, the only thing proven in Iowa is that no one had rigged the vote. At least it looks that way. maybe.

hillary did the "politically wise" thing in voting for the war. Now she's doing the "politically wise" things in trying to get nominated. It's the same old same old.

She isn't losing because of her campaign, her campaign is losing because of her. She has always placed politics over right and wrong. Interestingly, after the bush years, the populace seems interested in things like right, wrong, criminal, and legal.

Sadly, I don't believe that hillary can speak from an impassioned core, a sense of justice, or basic morality. The ghosts of almost 4,000 dead soldiers (amongst others) won't let her.

And thank goodness for that. If I had to choose between almost any republican and hillary, I wouldn't choose her. Gimme a choice. Obama, Edwards, Richardson. Yeah!

Well, the talking heads always point at something and claim that is the reason for the market's random fluctuation of the day. Jobs data, Romney, meteor shower, predicted fed action, housing bubble burst/not done bursting/stable/oops more bad news/slight uptick ...

Why should today be any different? I just flipped a coin. Tails. Must be because Edwards came in second.

Ball actually makes sense on two fronts.

Firstly, solar has not reached parity with fossil fuels. As such, it is being propped up by a few sources. One is government subsidies, another is the hopes and dreams of environmentalists. Economically, both sources are small when compared to the size of the market as a whole. Basically, only a certain amount of money is likely to be spent on solar generation before parity is reached. After parity is reached, then the market will gobble up everything that can be produced.

Regardless, the market for solar generation capacity is limited. It is not limited by the need for energy. It is limited by the lower price of coal, oil, and NG.

Secondly, are solar stocks a good investment? Right now, there are a lot of companies building capacity to meet a limited market for solar generation of electricity. There will be blood.

On the bright side, it means a supply glut for folks like me who want to tile their roof with solar cells.

Side note - Moore's law has nothing to do with solar. Some of the materials and tools are similar, but it ends there. It hardly makes sense to try to make a corollary. Efficiency per square meter favors the expensive multilayer stacks. Price per watt is tainted with market speculation.

Good points

You're right. Fossil fuels are massively subsidized. If costs were internalized, then they would be hugely expensive. How to do that? Good question.

As I left work a few hours ago, I also realized that ethanol is a good example. Corn based ethanol is damn stupid. Regardless, the government (according to my faulty memory) has mandated that ethanol be mixed into gasoline for autos. A similar mandate would increase the market for renewables overnight. That would change the investment picture.

Regardless, the issue my argument hangs on is price parity. Price parity has to do with the consumer's direct expense. What you bring up is cost parity, which is what it costs to bring something to market. With fossil fuels, many of those costs don't appear in the direct expense. As such, I still stand by my point that price parity is required before the market for solar can support huge volumes. That is true even if cost parity is on the side of solar.

So the real issue is how to more strongly correlate the price and cost of energy from different sources.

Going back to Ball's article, the claim is that the market for solar is limited because it is almost entirely based on government subsidies. The caps on the subsidies can be used to estimate the total market for solar. A supply-demand analysis then indicates that the supply of solar capacity is likely to outstrip demand.

Most of the posters here then point out all the external costs for fossil fuels that are essentially subsidies for those industries.

Good points. They do not, however, effect the supply-demand equation. Sorry. Ball's analysis has substance. For all the goodness of solar, that market might tank because of those unfeeling balance sheet entries. Note: external costs are called external because balance sheets have no place for them.

So the real question for the solar advocates is how to give solar a chance. Ball's analysis shouldn't be simply bitched about and dismissed as (for no better word) heretical. It points to a specific issue - market size as dictated by the demands of price parity.

What can be done (other than bitch)? I can think of only four things.

1) buy solar cells (not solar stocks)

2) avoid using fossil fuels (install those cells)

3) agitate for increases in government solar subsidies.

4) agitate against government fossil fuel "subsidies".

I really like #2. Installing solar can actually help FUTURE solar reach price parity.