Ramez Naam's Blog, page 5

“The only reason solar is so cheap is because China is dumping cells.” I hear this a lot. So let me correct it. Here is the price, as of February 2015, of solar modules, per watt sold in Europe. SE … Continue reading →

David Roberts has an amazing first post in his new job at Vox, on why a solar future is inevitable. Clearly I’m bullish on solar. My own reasons are that: 1. Solar is plunging in price far faster than any … Continue reading →

Amazing. I know nothing of his politics or skills as a leader. But this surprised me. Can we import this guy? Elect more engineers, scientists, and developers to office in the United States? Full transcript of this speech here. Hat … Continue reading →

tl;dr: Storage of electricity in large quantities is reaching an inflection point, poised to give a big boost to renewables, to disrupt business models across the electrical industry, and to tap into a market that will eventually top many of … Continue reading →

I’ve seen some pieces in the media lately questioning this, so allow me to point to some facts based on real-world data. tl;dr: We’ll probably never power the world entirely on solar, but if we did, it would take a … Continue reading →

A suggestion for a rules change for the Hugos for 2016 and beyond. The number of finalists in each category should substantially exceed the number of nominations possible on a single ballot. E.g., if the number of final nominees for … Continue reading →

Eric Garner. Michael Brown. The Sony hack and surrender to fear. 2014 seems to be ending on a crappy note. My twitter feed is full of people expressing good riddance to the year. 2014 was better than that. I want … Continue reading →

I argued in my 2013 book, The Infinite Resource, that the “seeds shouldn’t be patented” argument against GMOs and specifically against Monsanto was invalid for a very specific reason:  Patents end. As I wrote then, the patents for Monsanto’s first commercial … Continue reading →

Today I gave a talk at the Allen Institute for Brain Science - “Neuroscience in the Year 2100: The View from Science Fiction.”  Much of that, of course, comes from the research and decade-long interest that led to Nexus. It was an … Continue reading →

Asset management firm Lazard has a fascinating new analysis of renewable and other energy prices out. There are a huge number of insights in this, from an outside analyst whose primary interest is financial. (Those are, in my mind, the … Continue reading →