Was Solar Thermal a Scam?

The meme here implies that solar thermal was ill-conceived from the start.

Here’s a fair assessment of what happened:

Near the close of the 20th Century, the world began to recognize an intense need to replace the fossil fuel sources of electricity generation: natural gas, but especially coal with its huge greenhouse gas emissions, its extremely toxic heavy metals (mercury, arsenic, selenium, and cadmium), and dozens of poisonous radioactive isotopes.

Public and private entities went to work in an effort to develop literally dozens of clean energy sources: wind, solar thermal, solar PV, hydrostatics, hydrokinetics, geothermal, biomass, and many subvariants.

As in every single set of experiments like these, some pan out and some don’t.

That’s the fair truth. Now it appears that solar PV and wind hold an insurmountable lead over all the others.

Now, those with a motive to discredit renewable energy as a tool of the radical left to waste resources are free to spread whatever propaganda they wish, but anyone with any training in science understands that there is nothing sinister in the way that solar thermal failed to keep up in terms of cost.