The sun can be sabotaged - they're called clouds.

You can cover the entire negev with solar power cells and you wont generate 10% of what a modern coal powered plant can do. Start building coal powered plants. Coal is cheap, available and easily cleaned with the new scrubbers. Canada, the USA, China SA etc is full of coal. There is enough coal out there to last 500 years. It can be had for a song. Solar power is politicaly sexy, expensive and requires constant maintenance and besides it is environmentally horrific to look at.

Extremist Republicans and Christians are on record for not funding cities, states, and countries who turn away from the petrochemical industry.

Scientists note that the sun is entering a period of low solar activity over the next 50 years-- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/iop-mto070111.php Paqid Yirmeyahu Paqid 16, The Netzarim, Ra'anana, Israel Israeli Torah-observant Jew: Teimani, Baladi, Dor Dai Advocate for Discrete Logic as Hermeneutic Halakhic Authority Welcoming all who choose to keep Torah (When questions to me go unanswered, they have refused to post it. Find our reply in our Web Café at www.netzarim.co.il)

Solar panels can generate 100 Watts per square meter, the Negev, at 10,000 square kilometers would in theory produce enough power for 300 million homes if covered entirely with panels. Secondly, there is no such thing as a coal scrubber than can remove CO2 and mercury, sulfur etc. Thirdly, the global coal reserve life stands at 140 years, and shrinking rapidly since production is increasing. Peak coal is expected in 2025. Fourthly, solar power is not sexy, nor horrific, but as far as looks are concerned, it is no better or worse than roof-tiles, or coal power plants for that matter. (This point did not make you look very bright, dude.) Solar power is economically beneficial. The panels last on average 20 years. Storing the energy in batteries that last 10 years brings the price to the same order as coal or nuclear power.

If you add up all of the coal needed to manufacture all of these 10k sq. km, you're better off just burning the coal, and you'll have a lot less to throw away in the end, including co2! Solar is totally unfeasible. Anything that has to be subsidized is, by definition, non-viable.

It is only logical to desire the wide use of renewable sources of energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and abate pollution. The main problem is the diffusivity of renewable sources of energy, including solar. We don't know how to accumulate it, concentrate it, store it, and distribute it efficiently. Scientific and engineering research should be directed on a crash basis to obviate those fundamental shortcomings. I blog about this stuff. http://muenchhausen.blogspot.com

I can't imagine anyone would be able to honestly say they'd rather live next to a coal power plant than next to a field of solar panels.

True, but one bulldozer or similar vehicle can do a great deal of damage to your infrastructure. Ultra mini generation is the way to go.

El Khaida would just love to knock that field out in minutes.

answer. solar requires too much government subsidy. would not exist if it had to compete on a level playing field. junk science of man made impact on earth weather and guilt (unfounded in science and ethics) drives solar. even with subsidies it is most expensive source of electricity. so the poor and everybody subsidizes these rich people who act like priests of old extracting money form their citizens solely on the basis of guilt which has no rational basis. and our good and services become too expensive to compete in the world market. notice how solar and wind and all other such new age ideas are now being rejected by all other developed countries.