[leftopolis]

Krases:

...The people I often argue against though think that global warming is an evil liberal conspiracy...

Interesting. I've never met anybody like that(with backwards beliefs ignoring decades of science)in my half-century of life. I have heard they exist, though! It sounds like your approach is the most workable, given the situation.

I don't have any other ideas to add, but I'm also a bit under the weather, so another post from me may be a little while. Thanks for the response.

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2009)

Cost Of Installed Solar Photovoltaic Systems Drops Significantly Over The Last Decade

A new study on the installed costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the U.S. shows that the average cost of these systems declined significantly from 1998 to 2007, but remained relatively flat during the last two years of this period.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) who conducted the study say that the overall decline in the installed cost of solar PV systems is mostly the result of decreases in nonmodule costs, such as the cost of labor, marketing, overhead, inverters, and the balance of systems.

“This suggests that state and local PV deployment programs — which likely have a greater impact on nonmodule costs than on module prices — have been at least somewhat successful in spurring cost reductions,” states the report, which was written by Ryan Wiser, Galen Barbose, and Carla Peterman of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division.

Installations of solar PV systems have grown at a rapid rate in the U.S., and governments have offered various incentives to expand the solar market.
“A goal of government incentive programs is to help drive the cost of PV systems lower. One purpose of this study is to provide reliable information about the costs of installed systems over time,” says Wiser.
The study examined 37,000 grid-connected PV systems installed between 1998 and 2007 in 12 states. It found that average installed costs, in terms of real 2007 dollars per installed watt, declined from $10.50 per watt in 1998 to $7.60 per watt in 2007, equivalent to an average annual reduction of 30 cents per watt or 3.5 percent per year in real dollars.
The researchers found that the reduction in nonmodule costs was responsible for most of the overall decline in costs. According to the report, this trend, along with a reduction in the number of higher-cost “outlier” installations, suggests that state and local PV-deployment policies have achieved some success in fostering competition within the industry and in spurring improvements in the cost structure and efficiency of the delivery infrastructure for solar power.

~cont'd @ link~