Solar panel prices are on long term downward trend, but in the short term they were very far from smooth over the last few years, having very rapid increases and decreases as demand and production capacity mismatched both ways.

This issue isn't specific to solar panels, all commodities from oil to metals to food to RAM chips had massive price swings over the last few years.

There's no long term problem since we can make solar panels from just about anything - materials like silicon are available in essentially infinite quantities (manufacturing capacity is the issue, not raw materials), and for thin film you need small amounts of materials.

Usual crap likely originating from pro-nuclear activists. The nuclear is the only green energy source which can run out of essential material (zirconium) for real and couldn't easily substitute anything for zirconium. edit: note. I do see nuclear power as in principle green, but I also seen a plenty of pro nuclear articles which diss all other green energy sources on bs grounds and promote misconceptions.

The solar panels use silicon and very very tiny amounts of anything else. The silicon is everywhere.

There's similar claim that the wind turbine construction would run out of neodymium (which is used in magnets), never mind that neodymium magnets are not essential and are only used because its relatively cheap, and increases efficiency by couple percent while cutting down on amount of necessary copper and iron. I.e. run out of neodymium, no big deal, the price of wind energy will rise a few percent.