An Electric trial’s bike? Yamaha thinks so...

[Pat Conlon]

Hi Travis, what rare materials are you concerned with? Rare earth metals Gallium and Indium are now being replaced with zinc and copper. Here is a 3 year old report, see the last paragraph:
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/2016/04/06/effect-solar-power-growth-metals-demand

The point of the map was to illustrate the relative area needed for PV solar compared to the overall area in America.
This should put to bed the red herring idea that to be effective, or make a significant impact, PV solar farms would take up too much land area.

PV panels degrade over time, but not too bad. Today's panels are rated 10 years at 90% output and 20 years at 80% output. Those are the minimums, actually we are finding that they do better than that. We have PV panels here in Palm Desert that are 20 years old still at 90+% output. Not bad at all....

Cost....well, that's a whole different can of worms. It's not just the PV costs but also the battery storage.

[TexasDave]

The scientific improvements in solar panels in just the last year is amazing. But the wind quits and the sun sets. The problem has always been energy storage. It appears Dr Donald Sadoway of MIT just might have found the solution with his large battery for commercial electrical systems for storing power from wind turbines and solar panels. But that does not help batteries for vehicles.

I believe we will have all electric vehicles some time in the future but this depends on a small efficient battery. We have made small improvements in batteries. Tesla and other companies are coupling batteries to capacitors to improve the life and efficiency even more. But we are not there yet.

Dave

[JPaganel]

If you want to solve a real problem, work on curtailing the population boom.

Yes, I agree overpopulation is a problem....What's order of priority?
Think Biology 101:
1) When the nutrients in the Petri dish are corrupted, poisoned, the culture dies.
2) When all the nutrients in the Petri dish are consumed, the culture dies.

Both are killers, but for those who believe in science and not Fox News, #1 comes before #2

Malthus was wrong 200 years ago, and gets proven wrong on average about once a decade. Scientific progress changes the amount of resources and changes how they are distributed.

Overpopulation is a problem if you live on an island and have no way to get off of it. In the modern world it is not a problem at all.

[ZOA NOM]

You can tell it's winter...