Which would you prefer?

[Earth_First]

[Tx4obama]

1. The bottom photo looks similar to a 'crop circle' :)

[Deep13]

2. Anything that does not produce greenhouse gasses.

Solar seems promising, although producing solar panels and copper wiring is energy-intensive. Tar sands are beyond filthy. We may as well stick with coal.

[jberryhill]

3. What metals were used to coat the mirrors?

What does it look like in the vicinity of the plant that produced the mirrors, and what do they do with the various chemical solvents used to produce them?

[JimDandy]

8. Unlike oil, the mirrors aren't consumed.

Oil is going the way of the dinosaurs and rightly so.

[jberryhill]

11. That's not true of chemicals involved in the manufacturing process

[JoeyT]

13. Most of them can be recycled back into the process, though.

That's true of almost any manufacturing process. What makes coal/oil/gas different is that the end product is meant to be consumable. Fossil fuel processing has been made almost as clean as it can be made, and the truth is, that's still not very clean.

Edited to add: By "recycled back into the process" I mean can be reused in that process, or sent to a different plant to be used in another process for another product.

[jberryhill]

14. Yes... that's exactly what Chinese manufacturing is like

Since this thread conflates PV and solar thermal, it is worth mentioning that solar PV is a semiconductor manufacturing process which does not "recycle" jack shit back into the process. Where there is solar PV manufacturing, there is groundwater contamination by organic solvents. http://cleantechnica.com/2009/01/14/danger-solar-panels-can-be-hazardous-to-your-health/

My larger point, though, is that your two images are a false comparison. In the case of tar sands, you are showing the production end, and in the case of the solar plant, you are showing the consumption end. The "production" end of that solar thermal plant is the mirror production facility in China, India, or whatever shithole is dealing with the heavy metals used in making all of those mirrors.

[Zorra]

4. I'll take the shiny and clean pretty one. nt

[bluestate10]

5. Solar panels, because of their physics, have toxic metals in their composition.

As solar panels get wider use, the metals will get wider distribution. The matrices holding the metals are reasonably stable, so the risk of contamination is small. But the contamination risk exists and is real. Oil, gas and coal are energy sources that we must move away from, but , no energy source is risk free.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. Sun, definitely. nt

[Art_from_Ark]

7. Personally, instead of huge "solar farms"

which take up large tracts of land and whose environmental impacts are not well researched, I would rather see more solar panels/collectors installed on buildings and over parking lots.

[jtuck004]

9. ^This^. Less money to the corps, harder to attack,

getting cheaper all the time...

Not without its risks, need significant improvement in batteries, still presents pollution issues at manufacturing and disposal of batteries and panels, or roofs, or whatever form it is in, but as a substitute a large improvement over what we have.

And we haven't come near enough to exploring the possibilities of wind with hydraulic storage, such as here

[grahamhgreen]

10. Gosh that's a tough one! Er.... solar! Yeah!

[hunter]

12. Tar sands are the desperate sharing-dirty-needles-phase of oil addiction.

Next up, total system collapse.

[hack89]

15. Just don't put the solar cell factory next to my neighborhood. nt