Question: What do you call a religious gathering with hell-fire preaching?
Answer: A thermal mass.

I’ll understand if you stop reading now. But wait!  I hear that solar energy could generate 2.5 percent of the world’s electricity by 2025.  (Yawn.)

Two billion people in the world have no access to electricity and for most of them, solar photovoltaics would be their cheapest electricity source.  (Mehh.)

Renewable energy-notfeasible-don’t care, forever 21 is having a sweet pleather belt sale, rosco wants to play flip cup tonight but he didn’t want to see kung fu panda with me- blah lol blah rofl blah, yes?

(Alright, complacent stereotypes end here.)

A few years ago, the Green Party’s own ray of sunshine, lil’ Ralphy, retorted that solar energy was kaput because the oil industry does not own the sun.

If they did, they would have a flourishing film career! In any case, over 7,100 drilling permits utilized for more than 44 million acres of coal development were approved by the Bush administration last year. That is the most in history.

The rub: while G-Dub was going bananas signing drilling permits in all their short-sighted glory, guess which alternative, renewable energy source suffered a massive legislative setback?

As of last month, a two-year moratorium has been placed on the construction of solar energy projects on public land despite the fact that bolstering its presence could be a fantastic way to catalyze the energy industry.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

No, people! I mean don’t you want this? And this?!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said: “This is the wrong signal to send to solar power developers, and to Nevadans and Westerners who need and want clean, affordable sun-powered electricity soon.”

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, photovoltaic solar projects grew by 48 percent last year in comparison to 2006. Currently, there are eleven functioning solar plants in the United States, and 20 are in various stages of planning or permit-seeking.

The majority of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land across the West coast is primed for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where bare flatlands are drenched in sunshine.

Solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management in the past three years. These proposals center on the companies’ desire to lease public land for construction of solar plants to ultimately sell the energy to utilities.

According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that could power more than 20 million homes.

In the early 1930s, Thomas Edison had a conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. Edison quipped, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Oops.  Solar-powered turbo sunglasses will have to wait.

On another note, did you hear the one about the nuclear physicist that had a sign on his door that said… “Gone Fission”?