What causes an ear to be prominent?
We have always used the energy of the sun as far back as humans have existed on this planet. As far back as 5,000 years ago, people "worshipped" the sun. Ra, the sun-god, who was considered the first king of Egypt. beautyIn Mesopotamia, the sun-god Shamash was a major deity and was equated with justice. In Greece there were two sun deities, Apollo and Helios. The influence of the sun also appears in other religions – Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, Roman religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Druids of England, the Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru, and many Native American tribes.
We know today, that the sun is simply our nearest star. Without it, life would not exist on our planet. We use the sun's energy every day in many different ways.
When we hang laundry outside to dry in the sun, we are using the sun's heat to do work – drying our clothes.beauty
Plants use the sun's light to make food. Animals eat plants for food. And as we learned in Chapter 5, decaying plants hundreds of millions of years ago produced the coal, oil and natural gas that we use today. So, fossil fuels is actually sunlight stored millions and millions of years ago.
Indirectly, the sun or other stars are responsible for ALL our energy.beauty Even nuclear energy comes from a star because the uranium atoms used in nuclear energy were created in the fury of a nova – a star exploding.
It appears that The Times intends to do for the solar energy business what it is doing for the electric auto business: trumpet the overblown promises of heavily subsidized, politically correct but, realistically, doomed industries. "A Fresh Jolt" (Heard on the Beat, May 28) parrots the ridiculous claim that 40 megawatts of solar power will light 1,000 homes. Well those 40 megawatts are available only a few minutes a day. The average is much less--none at night and very little on cloudy days.
Should the city of Los Angeles become a national leader in the generation of renewable solar energy, as a March 3 ballot measure proposes? Or would it be too costly to put 400 megawatts' worth of photovoltaic cells on roofs and parking lots across town? Times editors recently asked the 10 mayoral candidates about the solar energy charter amendment,beauty Measure B. Here are excerpts of their responses. Do you support Measure B, the city's proposed solar power initiative?