Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 9th, '06

[Mazer]

The sun could send enough energy to Earth in as little as an hour to provide for all the world's energy needs for one year.

We're wasting a lot of energy.

So to generate enough solar power for one day all we have to do is cover 22,481 square miles in solar panels. It's only .0114% of the earth's surface, so maybe it won't be a total ecological disaster when we cast an area the size of West Virginia into complete darkness. All those plants and animals that were puting that "wasted" energy to use would have to live somewhere else, I guess.

I'm being facetious, of course. Solar farms are distributed according to local power needs and weather patterns. I sometimes wonder if I put the unused space on my roof to better use by covering it with solar panels, if it would offset my energy bills enough to make them worth the cost. Colorado is sunny most of the time, but hail storms cause millions of dollars in roof damage every summer, and in the winter the snow sometimes takes days to melt away. I don't think I'd want the hassle of cleaning the panels every day and replacing them as they break.