Thinking Deeply about Concentrated Solar

I always have Polya's How to Solve It on my desk.

There is this one little part of it that I think everyone ignores, at first, in the "Devise a Plan" section:

"If you cannot solve the proposed problem ... Could you imagine ... A more general problem?"

Inside, when we read that, we think, "Are you friggin' kidding me? A bigger, more general problem? HaHa! Ged ouuuda here! I'm a-simplifyn'!" and quickly skip ahead.

I think Divide and Conquer is the first algorithm that comes to our minds. But it makes us think small - we miss data and cannot apply economies of scope.

It's not like we planned to do that.

I think many people initially plan to look at problems through the end of the process, trying to consider all players, evaluating their historical behaviour and setting up a migration path for them, coming to some solution that takes into account as much data as is useful. (Some people might call this "systemic thinking")

But we get myopic too quickly. We get tired. We find an interesting bit and get focused on the minutia, or start arguing whether a given solution to one part of the problem is feasible or not, and we can't give it up.

I was feeling this way about Global Warming. I got bogged down in studying how amazingly unsuccessful activists are at manipulating governments. Turns out, that wasn't one of the more interesting bits.

And now we return you to our previously scheduled feature on Concentrated Solar:

As Jamais Cascio puts it, the Earth will be just fine, it's humanity that is screwed.

Humanity won't make it without quickly shifting to new forms of power. However, I think we now have at least one reasonable roadmap. You can read all about how this technology is can solve our energy problem lots of places.
Who could implement this the most quickly?

Oil companies and our current power monopolies don't want to be replaced. Want to avoid a fight with them? Give them an advantage in concentrated solar. Just get them the hell out of the way and start them working on this problem. No time for a fight, here.

More specifically, the world has enough sunlit land and money to solve this problem 100 times over. The first set of goodies (We include one 100-year land lease and one suitable tech grant per set (but no batteries)) goes to our current oil and power conglomerats. That should be enough to please any stock holder, line any pocket, and guarantee implementation.

The next 99 sets go to entrepreneurs, which should also help.

You win, oil companies. No one has to die over this. Nice big carrot for you. Just get it done.

Of course, if they can't do it, well, first your land lease will get pulled if you can't get a few PetaWatts to market inside 10 years, but more importantly...if you thought all humanities carrot was big...even weilded in our death throes, that stick has got to be devastating. And, frankly, we never liked you anyway.

I'll write my congressman for you! Good luck!