A year ago, I was convinced solar energy was ruining the planet. Now I’m going to have to go back and rewrite basically everything, because I’ve been convinced that the case is otherwise and most of my opinions are no longer valid. This is turning out like the who anti-vaccination thing all over again. Vaccinations: the Root of All Evil might have been a bestseller if I’d ever got around the publishing, but mostly because people would read and laugh at it for how wrong I was. I also owe some apologies to companies in Melbourne, commercial solar protests may have gotten out of hand. On account of all the abusive emails and staged protests.
It’s not completely my fault. Was raised in a rural town and sent off to a pseudo-science academy at a very young age, where they taught us all kinds of things. I left not having joined the cult mentality, but all my scientific information has been repeatedly proven very wrong. You’d think I would’ve learned to fact check by now…well, that’s what I’m doing starting from now. For example, I recently learned that the ozone layer is not designed to protect us from harmful vitamin D, and that harnessing solar energy is not a wild and imprecise science that has killed thousands due to the instability of stored solar power. Basically, we were taught very early on that solar panels were ticking time bombs, ready to explode with all that stored energy, and that greedy corporations were just using it because it came freely from the sky instead of getting off their butts and mining it themselves.
So I have a lot of apologies to make, both in Melbourne and to the wider scientific community, who showed me that commercial solar solutions might just save the planet. I guess Solar Energy: The Greatest Assassin doesn’t really work as a title any more. Although Solar Energy: Golly I Nearly Screwed Up doesn’t work so well either.
-Baxter