No, I don't realize this at all, sorry. This is a ludicrous statement on it's face. I mean you realize if it wasn't for the cold war we probably wouldn't have micro-chips, computers, and the internet? Simply because at some point DARPA threw some money at LSI/VLSI, and DARPANET? I mean it would never have happened? I find it sad people today come out of school and lack simple critical thinking skills, and are unable to do a modicum of research simply spouting some BS they read on social media, ... but as a direct rebuttal to your statement:
In 1980 we were all going to freeze by 2000 as the next Ice Age plunged us into a famine. In 1980 "A Nation that runs on oil can't afford to run short". Somehow private industry had managed to drop the price/watt from over $100 down to about $20. I know this might be hard to understand/believe, but it was private industry that did that. At that price point, people starting using them for a narrow spectrum of low power applications and research continued. As the tech matured you started to see it used more and more, with some minor breakthru's in the early 1990's increasing densities to the point where their use for power generation became viable under many use cases. My ex has a citizen eco watch I bought her in around 1995, that still works just fine. Calculators started getting small solar cells, research continued as we thawed out from the Ice Age and started to melt from CO2.
Only a fool would say producing energy "for free" from the sun was a dumb idea. Around this time (before EV's and mandates, and slightly before the population explosion caused mass starvation, no wait, that never happened after all, silly science) more and more research was going into this tech. Much of it was for esoteric stuff, but we were dumping satellites up in orbit an an ever increasing rate, and solar panels in outer space are kind of a no-brainer. By 2000 the technology had gradually improved to get the costs down around $5/watt. There were several articles in science magazines and the like about the order of magnitude improvement in power densities, none of which was driven by "Climate Change"
Around 2008 a few more research breakthru's hit just before the "Climate Change" fanatacism started to really take hold. The cost/watt was already down to the point where companies and universities were doing solar farm research, this was more about trying to reach some parity with evil oil, and the subsidization began in earnest. And funny that, but the cost declination curve, umm, well, um, FLATTENED. Oops As the governement has actually gotten away from the subsidies the costs have started dropping again. Why make it cheaper if someone else is paying part of it?
What you've done here is made a statement based on some rhetoric you've heard spouted by some other person overheard by someone else, and it SOUNDS good, because after all the government is pushing EV's and solar for the last couple years so that must be what has dramatically lowered the cost of a solar panel. This is total bullsh*t. I will grant you that solar subsidies
may have had a mild effect on pushing costs down, but they were/are going down anyway because the technology has value. All the subsidization does is give money to select rich people that own the politicians and technology artificially stabilizing the cost until the tech catches up.
Your entitled to your opinion, but I think you need to broaden your news media, and research points. If you want to make outrageous statements with no basis in fact don't be surprised if someone calls you on it.
IEA, Evolution of solar PV module cost by data source, 1970-2020, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/data-and-statis...solar-pv-module-cost-by-data-source-1970-2020, IEA. Licence: CC BY 4.0
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