5.5 kWh/m²/day Colorado direct sunlight * 365 days/year  * 0.85 system efficiency (wet steam) = 1700 kWh/m²/year = 5.8 MMBTU/m²/year = one barrel of oil per square meter mirror per year (not counting barrel energy of oil production and oil burner efficiency).

A solar concentrator costs about $100/m² (mirror $25/m²).  (low Fe glass, Ag, Pd, paint)

Pumping "green" energy into the exponential growth economy is tantamount to administering intravenous injections of organic growth hormones to treat a malignant brain tumor in a terminally ill cancer victim.

Lest anyone doubts that, here's a shortlist of  other problems that solar energy cannot solve:

    * Irreversible loss of natural and agricultural land, forests and wildlife
    * Permanent loss of woodland, savannah and costal areas
    * Dying oceans, lakes, rivers and other water bodies
    * Critical loss of topsoil
    * Increased urban and built up areas, deserts and wasteland
    * Wholesale species extinction
    * Collapsing fisheries
    * Drying wells and aquifers
    * Loss of crop genetic diversity
    * Decline in the ability of atmosphere to cleanse itself
    * wars and increased military spending
    * Growing consumerism, tourism, industrialism, commodification, money fetishism, child labor, slavery, human (sex) trafficking
    * Accumulation of toxic pollution in the environment
    * Growing poverty
    * Collapse of natural pest regulation systems
    * Deforestation and desertification
    * Global collapse of pollinators
    * Habitat destruction
    * Food and water crisis
    * Failing ecosystems
 

Those tower plan CSP plants can also create and store hydrogen or methane with an input of water and biological carbon. That can be stored for those cloudy periods that everybody is so scared of. So I would call those second best.

Still, a hoe I can use for my organic gardening, I can use it to mix cob or compost or adobe brick. I can plant tree seedlings and shape the land to guide water to them. Can't beat a good hoe.

Put the Carbon Back

Lest anyone doubts that, here's a shortlist of  other problems that solar energy cannot solve...

At the root of almost all our problems is the quest for energy.   It is the bottom of every product, from plastics, to food to computers.

It's hard not to see how a clean, renewable and nearly free energy source could not help in any or all the areas you mention...

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

These projects permanently obliterate 3500 to 13,000 acres of wilderness EACH, in the "top" solar resource areas.  This is insurmountable, for an environmentalist - they do at least as much damage to habitats/ecosystems (CO2 aside) as COAL, and more than oil drilling.  Many of them use tens of MILLIONS of gallons of scarce desert groundwater each year as well.  Again, insurmountable.

Happily, putting local, point of use solar and wind generation on previously developed land will require NO water, NO destructive transmission, NO habitat losses, NO increased Big Energy chokeholds, NO eminent domain, NO lost viewsheds and natural playgrounds.  Sorry, it's the only thing that makes sense if you care about the planet, instead of care about lining the pockets of utilities.

All our resources need to be diverted to storage, comfortable conservation and local, decentralized GREEN energy instead of this lousy, wasteful, destructive GREENWASHED energy.

the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.

A good spot is on factory roofs and over factory parking lots, in the mirror/furnace configuration.   To produce factory process heat and cogenerate electric power from the waste heat.  

A lot of closed industrial sites could be revived with this technology, becoming competitive again with low cost solar energy replacing ever more expensive fossil power.  with tax breaks for job outsourcing plenty of derelict sites are available, why use pristine desert?  A small amount of the cash flow could go to cleaning up devestated polluted land around the factory sites.

Another bonus can be obtained by mounting PV around the furnace apureture.  The lower power incidental radiation would be turned into electricity at 38% efficiency.

But the most effective CSP, is distributed CSP on homes and other buildings.  That same 38% efficiency can happen with only 10 suns concentration, according to NREL.  Add heat cogeneration to this design and we already have solar power at the equivalent of 10 cents per kwh.  CSP can be designed to lie nearly flat on roofs, with a profile like that of flat plate collectors.

And that HVDC transmission?  here's a really great aspect of it.  Unlike AC, which leaks huge amounmts of power when it is transported in cables underground (it's the capacitive losses to ground), DC doesn't have those losses.  In fact the capacitance tends to stabilize the power by storing it in the cable, which acts as a very long capacitor.  You know, like Franklin's Leyden jar?

That means HVDC can be buried, out of sight out of mind.  No stray voltage from DC either.  Here's another idea, high voltage DC generators for wind machines, that work with capacitance instead of magnetism.  

It's a great area of research, as is nano capacitor energy storage that could be added to the HVDC system.  A few thousand miles of nano capacitor/transmission cable would store a lot of power.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

E=mc2

It's hard not to see how a clean, renewable and nearly free energy source could not help in any or all the areas you mention ...

The exponential growth system is a technicality that most 'clean' energy advocates have a problem comprehending ...

Pumping "green" energy into the exponential growth economy is tantamount to administering intravenous injections of organic growth hormones to treat a malignant brain tumor in a terminally ill cancer victim.

Why does exponential growth matter so much? Here's an example:

The Old Riddle

The famous French riddle for children[1] describes the collapse: We have a pond on which water lilies grow doubling in number everyday. It takes 30 days for the lilies to cover the pond completely and suffocate the fish and other life forms in the water.

On what day do we forfeit our last chance to react? The answer, of course, is the 29th day. The following day, the 30th day, the lilies completely cover the pond.

Exponential systems do not allow much reaction time. The problem may not seem strikingly obvious for a long time. As late as the 24th day the lilies cover only 1/64th of the pond and on the 25th day 1/32nd, a seemingly insignificant portion of the pond. Even on the 29th day one-half of the pond looks deceptively safe. http://msrb.wordpress.com/omnicide/

The 2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 formula concerns placing a grain of wheat on the first square of a chessboard (the board has 64 squares) and doubling it up each time as you proceed to the 64th square.

The total number? An impossible harvest of 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains of wheat!

As far as I can tell birth control is only really effective where there is a strong social welfare system that transfers the burden of caring for the elderly and indigent onto the state.

In "free-market" cultures without safety nets having a small family is simple insanity. An individual needs all the help they can get and the easiest way there is to breed your own.

Put the Carbon Back

But your point about exponential growth remains quite safe.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

How do you come to acquire such knowledge?, I wonder.  And, what do you suppose the reason for it is?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Gender Differences in the Prediction of Condom Use Among Juvenile Offenders
The study, "Gender Differences in the Prediction of Condom Use Among Incarcerated Juvenile Offenders: Testing the Information-Motivation-Behavior Skills (IMB) Model," evaluated the predictive value of the Information-Motivation-Behavior Skills (IMB) model of HIV prevention for sexually active juvenile offenders to explore gender differences in IMB model constructs for condom use in vaginal intercourse. Male gender, peer influence, positive condom attitudes, and condom self-efficacy significantly predicted condom use in the combined model. In analyses by gender, condom use by males was predicted by peer influence (modestly) and by positive condom attitudes. Among females, condom use was predicted by peer influence, self-efficacy, and condom attitudes. Female participants reported significantly greater knowledge, less peer influence, higher perceived infection risk, more positive attitudes toward condoms, and more self-efficacy, but less condom use. (Robertson, A., et al. (2006). Gender Differences in the Prediction of Condom Use Among Incarcerated Juvenile Offenders: Testing the Information-Motivation-Behavior Skills (IMB) Model. Journal of Adolescent Health, 38(1), 18-25).
(emphhasis mine-pangolin)

The responsibility for ensuring safe sex also falls disproportionately on girls. About 50 percent of respondents say girls bring up STDs compared to about 10 percent who say boys do. About 40 percent of the respondents say girls bring up condom use compared to about 20 percent who say boys do, while over half say girls ensure that a condom is used and just over a third of girls and a quarter of boys say both do it equally
fromFact Sheet - Sex Education and Teenage Sexuality (PDF)

Meaning that despite having the knowledge that condom use is an option girls a fat percentage don't always address it. More responsibility could be encouraged in young men but that can be a longshot.

But to be fair I just Googled up some stuff to justify my anecdotal experience of being a man in my 20's who was at a very high risk (100%) of fatherhood by multiple partners. I always had birth control and it was parodoxically refused by several adult, educated, women. One was a nurse. Consulting with my (male) peers I discovered that this wasn't a unique experience.

Having recently attended a wedding where both the bride and one of the bridesmaids were 6 months along I can't say it was unique at all. Both ladies, coworkers of mine, could be described as well educated and of a feminist bent. The biological imperitive to reproduction is rather strong.

My wild-assed guess is that humans are a LOT closer to bonobos than we pretend to be and will make up for lost stimulation of grooming. Since laying around in half-naked piles is generally dissaproved of humans find the stimulation where they can. Where birth control and social stimulation are both available and affordable women make choices that reduce their birth rates.

I'm a big advocate of vasectomy as a preferred form of birth control. Condom's don't seem to have a proximity effect.

Put the Carbon Back

Your Robertson et al. article conclusion, considering your highlighted phrase, could be interpreted to mean that the men who do not (will not?) use condoms, a minority of sexually active men, are having sexual encounters with more women; the women, for their part, may most of them really want their sexual partners to wear condoms, but, being women, lack the power (or will) to demand that.

More pruriently, I was wondering if women find greater pleasure in a totally naked man, risks be damned, than in one who comes along with a degree of security.

As for your anecdotes -- which are not at all insignificant, dear Pangolin -- , we might further ask if there are indeed many women who consciously seek to become pregnant, regardless of the uncommittedness of their relationship with the male passerby.

I recall that shortly before the execution of the Oklahoma City bomber, Tim McVeigh (who looks-wise was neither wonderful nor horrible, a 5, maybe a 6), it was reported on CNN (in a general report on his conditions in prison) that he had received mail from at least one female admirer, requesting a semen sample, for the purpose of impregnation.

Which just made me wonder ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Your Robertson et al. article conclusion, considering your highlighted phrase, could be interpreted to mean that the men who do not (will not?) use condoms, a minority of sexually active men, are having sexual encounters with more women; the women, for their part, may most of them really want their sexual partners to wear condoms, but, being women, lack the power (or will) to demand that.

More pruriently, I was wondering if women find greater pleasure in a totally naked man, risks be damned, than in one who comes along with a degree of security.

 As for your anecdotes -- which are not at all insignificant, dear Pangolin -- , we might further ask if there are indeed many women who consciously seek to become pregnant, regardless of the uncommittedness of their relationship with the male passerby.

I have seen "baby lust" in a woman's eyes and it is fearful. When my first daughter was an infant she was an extraordinarily beautiful baby, (to women, I think they look like pink frogs) and when venturing out in our college town would catch the eye of the coeds who would make a big fuss. Then they would turn to the terrified young man hovering in the background and say "I want one." This scenario was repeated over and over with the phrase of doom pronounced without variation. You could almost see the eggs dropping in the young ladies in question.

If you doubt the viral effect of a successful pregnancy simply attend your local farmers market on the first spring day warm enough for tank tops and shorts. If human behavior holds true to my local model it should resemble a fertility festival with a significant display of both infants and pregnant bellies. Attached males in such situations are so much meat for the altar. They will be induced to provide the necessary and they will be made to like it. At least in the US women make these decisions and men go along.

Put the Carbon Back

The Cyclone WHE is a self-starting engine that operates in a low pressure, low temperature range. This feature allows the engine  to run on waste heat emanating from an external source, such as the exhaust from an internal (or external) combustion engine, or the direct burning of biomass (i.e., processing garbage into methane would not be required). The WHE is also designed to run efficiently on Solar Heat without the installation of costly photovoltaic panels.

Such commercial applications for the WHE include boosting the power and efficiency of large gasoline or diesel-powered generators. When installed to the exhaust system of such an engine - that can generate over 1000 degrees of heat, the WHE could materially increase overall horsepower and reduce fuel consumption. Additionally, once installed, the WHE could serve, as a stand-by generator should the primary system shut down.

Another major commercial application includes solar-power generators for homes or businesses. By attaching inexpensive panels to a roof, enough heat can be produced to run the WHE. The company believes that such a system could be installed at a price of approximately 20% of the cost of comparable photovoltaic panel systems, while also providing home owners with a back-up power supply that current solar options do not. Excess electricity could be directed back to the power grid for electrical power credits.

I want one to play with. Well that and the steam powered lawnmower; how sweet is that?

Put the Carbon Back

The total harvest size is a derivative of that statement. The total is actually 2^64 - 1 which is one short of the above, i.e., SUM T[64] or ∑i=0 and i=63, which is 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.

Ps. excel and similar spreadsheets have a 'round-off error' and approximate to 18,446,744,073,709,600,000 which is a fair approximation!