Plan B Forum

This is a chance to give your impressions of the most important stories of 2011. Were we hit by a Meteor? Mutant babies? Epidemics, Wars, Revolutions, which ones will turn out to have been the most important to history?

Obama kills Osama
Obama overthrows Ghaddafy.
Obama tightens sanctions on Iran (does Chucky Krauthammer even read the newspaper anymore? Or has he decided that his fans don't give a shirt about the truth any way?)

??

One of the top stories for me personally was the tragedy in Japan. Not only was there the human interest aspect of it, but since I work in the nuclear power industry it was particularly poignant for me and my company.

"We" are, in the wake of Fukishima (sp?), figuratively whistling past the graveyard. The combination of horribly-overblown construction costs, the location of what appears to be a couple hundred years worth of cheap natural gas, and the meltdowns in Japan, are going to kill the nuclear power industry - the only question is how long it will take.

A country or utility would have to be crazy to plan a new Nuke plant now. And I say this with the strong belief that the dangers of nuclear power in the U.S. are close to non-existent, especially compared to burning fossil fuels, which kills thousands every year.

And again...it's just a question of when my department will be eliminated and I'll be looking for another job. I support the purchasing function for new nuclear plants. If I can hang on here for another year or two, I'll just file for SS and look for something part time to keep me in toy money.

Photovoltaics reached grid parity in Japan, Australia, Europe and the southern US in 2011. Nine years ahead of prediction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity

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"...
Predications from the 2006 time-frame expected retail grid parity for solar in the 2016 to 2020 era,[4][5] but due to rapid downward pricing changes, more recent calculations have forced dramatic reductions in time scale, and the suggestion that solar has already reached grid parity in a wide variety of locations.[2] The European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) defines the moment at which the value of PV electricity equals the cost of traditional grid power as dynamic grid parity. EPIA expects that PV power achieves this target in many of the European countries by 2020, with costs declining to about half of those of 2010.[1] However, this report was based on the prediction that prices would fall 36 to 51% over 10 years, a decrease that actually took place during the year the report was authored. The line was claimed to have been crossed in Australia in September 2011,[6] and module prices have continued to fall since then. By late 2011, the fully loaded cost of solar PV was projected to likely fall below $0.15/kWh for most of the OECD and reach $0.10/kWh in sunnier regions like the southern United States or Spain.[7] This is below the retail rate for power in much of the OECD already.

The dramatic price reductions in the PV industry have been causing a number of other power sources to become less interesting. Nevertheless, there remains the widespread belief that concentrating solar power (CSP) will be even less expensive than PV, although this is suitable for industrial-scale projects only, and thus has to compete at wholesale pricing. One company stated in 2011 that CSP costs 12¢(US)/kWh to produce in Australia, and expects this to drop to 6¢(US)/kWh by 2015 due to improvements in technology and reductions in equipment manufacturing costs.[8] Greentech Media predicts that LCoE of CSP and PV power will lower to $0.07 - $0.12/kWh by 2020 in California.[9]
... "
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yrs,
rubato

Far and away the biggest story of 2011 was The Arab Spring...

How this ongoing drama will ultimately play out is still far from clear, but the fact that this represents the most monumental and historically significant upheaval in "the international order" since collapse of the Soviet Union is indisputable.

No way!

Casey Whatsherface acquittal - most important story.
Second most important: Charlie Sheen is WINNING!



Just weighing in for the regular folks.

I remember a news story about a cab driver in Canberra who had a lucky escape after being attacked by a lunatic on a motorbike...

Sean wrote:I remember a news story about a cab driver in Canberra who had a lucky escape after being attacked by a lunatic on a motorbike...

1.
Social networking became a widely-used tool for political organization.

2.
Solar panels achieved 'grid parity' in a number of parts of the world.

3.
Global warming has been worse than the worst-case estimates for 10 years.


1.
While I think social networking was used first in Iran during 2009-2010 to protest the fraudulent election results it was in 2011 that it spread globally and bore fruit in substantial political change. Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and possibly Yemen have all seen huge political changes and it is ongoing in Syria and even Russia.

The power of social networking is that it allows people who otherwise would imagine themselves to be alone and isolated to see and hear that their own desire for change is shared by a large number of people, it then allows them to organise public rallies and demand change even in a deeply repressive society.

2.
The huge drop in prices for solar panels, we saw in 1.5 years prices fall by more than they were predicted to fall in 10 years, brought both individual-scale and commercial-scale photovoltaic generation into the foreground as a way of providing for our energy needs. AT the same time the Fukushima disaster made nuclear less attractive (although it's very high price is not coming down at all either). The current global ability to manufacture solar panels is about (rough estimate) 6 Gigawatts worth of panels per year. This number could grow by more than 10 x in five years and help fuel a huge increase in US jobs making the materials to make panels (we have a positive balance of trade with China because we sell them the materials to make panels with), installing panels in residential solar and commercial solar installations.

3.
Global Climate Change has accelerated far faster than all of the worst-case predictions and even the most stupid are soon going to have to admit that it is long past time to act on a large scale. The most stupid will continue to deny it (those who deny evolution are already disconnected from physical reality) but the evidence of a disappearing polar ice cap and mass shifts in biological populations will convince the intelligent political leaders that the scientists have been right all along, Al Gore was right all along, and its time to do something (Calif. has already started by requiring 33% of electricity to be produced by renewable methods by 2020, This it was 17% due to an initiative started in 2002).


Yrs,
rubato

I stand corrected. Just the top ten panel manufacturers capacity was about 14.5 Gigawatts in 2011.

yrs,
rubato

Wow! Enough to send more than 10 DeLoreans back to the '50s...