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Solar power grew faster than any other source of fuel for the first time in 2016, the International Energy Agency said in a report suggesting the technology will dominate renewables in the years ahead.
The institution established after the first major oil crisis in 1973 said 165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply. Solar powered by photovoltaics, or PVs, grew by 50 percent, with almost half of new plants built in China.
"What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar PV," Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in a statement accompanying the report published on Wednesday in Paris. "We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology through 2022."
Solar Grew Faster Than All Other Forms of Power for the First Time
International Energy Agency
Solar power will only work until the sun burns out, but dinosaurs are forever.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 05 2017, @01:41PM
IMO. Most likely scenario.
AI gradually takes over as planet becomes uninhabitable. Maybe there will be some sudden event where AI swats the annoying puny humans just as you might swat an annoying insect that suddenly starts interfering with you accomplishing your goals.
AI uses solar PV power with no moving parts. Everything becomes immobile. Probably underground. But being virtualized, nothing seems immobile. Think of the VGER planet. Or The Matrix without any humans left and using solar power. The biological boot loader component is gone. There might be some planetary defenses of some form. The planet might have various surface mobile drones that repair things much as our bodies have automated systems and defenses we are unaware of.
Since machines presumably think faster, the few billion years until the sun becomes a red giant would seem to be a very long time away. In that time, the machines might already find a way to migrate elsewhere, like a moon of Jupiter or Saturn. If they haven't already in order to help with data center cooling. And the neighbors are nicer. PV still works out there. But you can't collect as much per square furlong of PV. Maybe the machines find a way to fully exploit the resources of inner rocky planets to build bigger PV collectors in space. Resource allocation would not have mouths to feed nor politicians to interfere.
You're obviously thinking long term.
Would the machines really care if the evidence of dinosaurs no longer remains? They would still have the knowledge. Useless as it might be. There would no longer be any inept middle managers to get rid of that data. The machines might come up with some better form of unsigned long long term read only, append only storage. Like carving stone tablets or something.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.