2014 was hotter than 1998. 2015 data in yet?

But the steamship was much cheaper - and still is. Nor are circumnavigation and orbiting "the same task". Your example is actually "doing something completely different with way more resources"."Doing more with less" is, in fact, nonsense. It's political mumbo-jumbo, nothing more.

That's exactly what "more with less" means. The fact that a steamship is physically bigger than a spacecraft is irrelevant. It isn't the destination that counts; it's the reason for the trip. Circumnavigation by ship allows you to make multiple stops for multiple reasons along the way. it could be said that circumnavigation by steamship is doing more than mere orbiting - and with less. That might be better but a steamship is still more flexible - i.e. it can do more. Of course not. Nobody in their right mind would measure resources by mass.

How would solar work in Manhattan?

Solar windows are nice. But for a century or so, New York City has had laws about how wide a tall building can be - because buildings tend to blot out the sun for buildings behind them. I'd be more impressed by the scalability of solar power if somebody actually did the math and showed how much solar power NYC could actually generate. Can solar windows, etc. provide enough power for the building plus the buildings in its shadow?

My issue is with people who just say, "It's scalable," without demonstrating that it is. I accept that solar could be a significant contributor to NYC's energy needs/usage but I can't help but think it's being oversold.

Which is why I asked about Manhattan. How do you scale up from six panels on one hippy-dippy house to x panels in a city of ten million? And how big would the battery be to prepare for a rainy day?

They had time. They could afford to go down a few blind alleys.We're being sold solar energy by companies that stand to make a lot of money whether it's a blind alley or not. They are certainly not motivated to tell the truth about scalability.

So answer the question: Can solar and wind power new York City?

The problem is: How many square miles of panels is that? Again... that's why I used Manhattan as an example. I have my doubts that the Empire State Building can produce all of its own power.

The problem of scaling solar power is similar to the problem of scaling Godzilla. The power output increases by area whereas the density of power usage increases by volume. That's exactly my point. What works in low-density suburbia will not necessarily work in high-density urbia.

The square-cube law applies in general to scaling. A building twice the length, width and height of a house will accommodate (approximately) eight times as many people as a house and will require (approximately) eight times as much energy while having only four times the area for solar collectors.

We're not talking about handling growth. We're talking about converting from one energy source to another. What I'm saying is that (self-contained) solar energy doesn't seem to scale well to large buildings. I'm only talking about the "some places" where the model does apply (which includes a large proportion of the earth's population). I'm asking if solar is a practical solution in those places. The answer seems to be "no".

Then why not just answer the question: HOW would solar energy work in Manhattan? How many square miles of collectors would be needed? Where would they go? How would the power be transmitted? Where would the power be accumulated for a rainy day? I haven't proposed any model. I'm asking how the miracle of solar energy is supposed to work. I haven't predicted anything.

I'm looking at it right now. You'd have to compete with the farmers for the sunlight:

quote:

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In the Richardson area, east of Regina, a quarter section of land can fetch $250,000 according to farmland real estate agents. link

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How many quarter sections (160 acres) in 100Km²?And you didn't answer the other two questions that you quoted: How would the power be transmitted? Where would the power be accumulated for a rainy day?It's 1600 miles from Regina to NYC as the crow flies - and those crows would be crossing four of the Great Lakes, so the transmission lines would be even longer. And I presume you want us to keep the batteries on our end?

Then where should we collect it? How much will it cost?Forget about pie (or solar panels) in the sky. Think existing technology.