You must have missed my comment to that. Research alone is not enough; you need deployment.

All from the 1980s until rather recently, fossil fuels have been ridiculously cheap again. Everybody just gave up on renewables -- and on nuclear, in fact.

Even those super-cheap Chinese panels don't seem to compete without subsidies.

Not quite yet... but some realities are not worth betting against...

Starvid:

If there existed a magic solar tech decades ago,

There was no magic anything. Choices were made as to what technology would get the R&D support.

Stop pretending there is really a free market in a level-playing-field world.

Touchy? About people whose lack of understanding regarding the nature and effect of externalities contributes to the poisoning of the biosphere?

Me not touchy, me on the warpath. There's a difference.

Giving you two books to read, both filled with examples, constitutes "refusing to bring up examples?" Please let me know when you've read them both, as well as searched the journalism written between the two oil embargoes, then we'll discuss the definition of refusing.

110% Amurka centric?  You mean, the place where i lived as a key renewables advocate and project developer? in a land which sets the world's energy policy tone and technology? Where we didn't have much understanding of Yurpeen advancement of solar technologies, since comparatively, there it was minimal?

You're calling a person who left his home, life, friends and colleagues, not in that order, to now live 12 years in Yurp, to fight at the center of the battle for renewables against people like you, who writes every day of Amurka, not America... me centric?  You laughable.

My well-earned arrow-sharp arrogance is built on a strong foundation, a real track record, of how i've invested my whole life to better this pathetic civilization. You've invested what... in some energy companies?

You should write about what you know, which is how safe nuclear tech is, especially in this Fukushima disaster diary.

After you've walked a few decades in my footprints, then you can try to step on my feet.

Guten Morgen, the sun is shining, the weather is sweet, time to move your dancing feet.
         --  Finley Quaye

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin