" Since no one was around back when oil formed speculating on efficiency is kind of risky."

Well, it's pretty straightforward. If all of our analysis on TOD is to trusted, we have a pretty good idea how much reoverable oil is in the ground. Just divide the energy in the sunshine that fell over millions of years into the energy in the oil, and you have your number. And, it's a pretty low number.

" until someone can figure out how to harness and store it better than plants with less embedded energy than solar panels we still have a problem."

Not really. Even the most energy-intensive silicon panels pay back their embedded energy in a year or two, and the CIGS panels like Nanosolar's pay back in a few months.

So it is now possible to make silicon panels with energy not derived from fossil fuel. That is something I was not aware of.

Man is it ever tiresome to continually have to refute this argument.

How do you make solar panels (or any other kind of equipment) without energy derived from fossil fuels?

Do it in Quebec or Iceland or Brasil or any of the other places that get a significant chunk of their electric power from renewable non-fossil sources.

This won't just STOP even if we run out of fossil fuel tomorrow.
Jay Hansen is WRONG.