It Doesn't Take a Genius to Notice the Sun, Does It?

I don't know what Bloomberg's SAT scores were. I'm thinking they were somewhere above 700 verbal, maybe a little better on the math side. I'm thinking Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, did pretty well too (if I were a gambling man, I would bet Larry did better on his English scores 'cause his name sounds more English. That's how smart I am!)

Now, since high school, all three of these fellows have done pretty okay. Not only have they each made billions and billions of dollars for themselves, but lately they've also looked up and noticed that weird luminescent orb in the sky. What's more, they've each figured out what to do with it.

Google has now installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise their 1,600 kilowatt project, which they estimate will produce enough electricity for approximately 1,000 homes or 30% of Google's peak electric demand at their solar powered world headquarters ("solar-powered world headquarters" sounds like something straight out of "Iron Man.")

Meanwhile, Bloomberg has just stepped up and announced that he wants to more than double New York's current solar electric capacity, adding a couple of megawatts of renewable energy to the city's electrical grid by installing panels on city owned buildings.

Now, I may not be as smart as these guys are but I do have a few ideas in my head. And here's one of 'em: I suggest we come together as a nation and do what we all did in high school whenever we noticed the bright kids were doing well. We should cheat off of them. Copy all their stuff. Rip 'em off. Denver, Austin, Phoenix, and Charleston, you kids should crane your necks across the aisle and over the shoulders and write down all their answers. 'Cause these guys clearly did their homework and now it's time for us to reap the rewards.

Once we've aced that test (Thank you Sergey!) maybe someone will notice all the plug-in hybrid talk those Google boys have been doing of late and put two and two together ("solar electricity...electric cars...wait a minute...")

Or maybe we'll just wait for the smart kids to figure it out.

Comments

[wm1066]

Ah the sun...Amon Ra... the only god that man hasn't morphed into human form.
The sun.. the source of life on earth.. the one god we all can see....Amo­n Ra.
Renewable energy. ....I say Amen to using Amon Ra to power our lives.
( I imagine this will be too obscure for some people to understand)

[mbaty]

For years we've worshipped the sun; now, maybe some of those praise songs and macaroni pictures will pay off big! Give Give Give us energy, we sing to you oh sun!
It's about time. Solar panels on every new building built! Wind generators on every street corner! We don't need to bleed the Earth dry/ give Solar power a try!

[N8Ma]

Whoah it took me a full 60 seconds to realize "Denver, Austin, Phoenix, and Charleston" weren't meant to be the names of children but actual cities.

I guess I've just heard one too many parents naming their children Brooklyn or Boston these days...

[fairwitness]

Solar is probably the best way forward...­EXCEPT that our modern energy-glutonous lifestyles are impossible to sustain on solar (yet). But given that the entire terrestrial biosphere runs pretty well on solar (for millions of years!), I'd guess that, if we are looking for a sustainable source of radiant heat and usable, storable, transferable electrons, that's a pretty good place to begin. Sure, we have yet to figure out how to imitate a simple plant or crystal, but I'll bet we will pretty soon. Every gradiant of heat or motion or chemicals or radiation (or many other natural gradiants) can be exploited for energy harvest. Our best minds are hard at work on it even now. AND we will figure out how to make energy-efficient devices that reduce the need manyfold. It's the crisis like we now face that evoke the human genuis for invention and growth.

AND we will discover that we actually need about 1 tenth of the unnecessary plastic objects and "stuff" we imagine we need now. A so-called "spiritual revolution" is under way which will take the focus of our attention away from "stuff" to the more fundamental aspect of our existence, consciousness itself (which, after all, is where the "stuff" is really experienced). When the happiness we formerly sought in material is seen to be a function of consciousness and we look there for it, our material load on the planet will come into balance and a new age will commence.

[JonathanDS2U]

In this corrupt, convoluted world, waiting to take our cue from solar panels showing up in this way is more like a reflection of etiquette. There were solar panels in 1975 (I received a personal demonstration), but back then it would have shown bad etiquette towards oil giants to so callously take things in a direction that might leave them behind, or injur their ability to squeeze everyone. You will not often see super powerful people "crossing" each other without consideration of the implications. Hooray, now we have the official blessing of a few billionaires to go solar. It's like being at a dinner party where the food has been sitting there on our plates while we "all" wait for the host to begin. I'm rolling around in my mind how dangerous it is to continue this practice of only taking our cue from people of that financial stratosphere.

[TimmySlagle]

Smart?

These guys also have a private Boeing 767 to get them back and forth to work. They might know computers, but they're not really good at budgeting.

Solar electricity is economically unfeasible. That's why nobody is jumping on board.

[Toby Barlow - Huffpost Blogger]

Not good at budgeting? Bloomberg built a multi-billion dollar financial empire so I think these fellows have some financial acumen. Also, last time I checked, the cost of climate change was estimated to reach up to 20 trillion dollars globally. Those costs aren't currently added to the cost of coal powered electricity, but we'll wind up paying them down the road.

[TimmySlagle]

"last time I checked, the cost of climate change was estimated to reach up to 20 trillion dollars globally."

Those projections were based on a faulty model, assuming that AGW will cause more hurricanes, an assumption that scientific consensus now agrees, was wrong.

One of the biggest problems with Solar Energy is, that it takes a HUGE amount of energy to manufacture the cells. There is evidence that a Solar Cell will never return the energy it takes to manufacture one. They're great for bringing electricity to remote locations, but relatively useless a substitute for traditional energy sources.