What does everybody know about biomass?

Doubt it Barney! I've seen lots of seasonal changes over the last 20 years I'm not at all happy about.

Apparently there's a new type of solar panel in California that works during part of the night (on moonshine perhaps ) and is only about 25% as visually obtrusive as the more conventional ones. The panel was described on a non-commercial (academic?) web site.

Have any of you heard about it? If you have, have you heard anything about when it might be introduced into the UK market?

The few UK solar panel suppliers I've tried didn't know anything about it.

Sorry you'll never convince me, when conventional central heating first started to be installed in the UK back in the late 60s / 70s the heating system generally lasted the customer 20 - 30 years including the boiler. In fact occasionally I still come across these and advice the customer to keep it. New modern condensing boilers roughly last around between 8 - 10 years, they will only condense at a certain temperature range and although they are more efficient than boilers old, the cost to replace them and the cost to the environment of manufacturing them makes it a bit of a mockery of both savings to the end user and to the environment. If the 2 largest countries on the planet are polluting the earth regardless of what we are doing then I fail to see how this is going to have any effect on the environment. The end product may well be seen as being green and dandy, but making it in the first place certainly isn't. I think as a customer I would rather pay for a product that will last me 20 - 30 years rather than having to replace the same thing 3 times over the same period of time at an over inflated price.
There is a lot of scaremongering about the imminent demise of the planet earth, makes you wonder whatever caused the last ice age, the planet is a living object floating around a universe that is forever changing, that's why the Uk was at one time joined to the rest of mainland Europe at one time, same reason animals come and go... Evolution and you cant really tax that but this government seems to be having a good old bash at it... The planet will still be here in a million years time, although I wont be...