I’m both for conservation and drilling off coast to get us off the need to by oil from the middle east. (which itself has benefited from technical advancements making negligible the hazard of drilling to the environment) As for many of the energy alternatives:

Solar energy is as yet still very expensive. The costs have come down, but not near enough to make it a viable alternative. The required storage battery technology is also not quite there yet. Solar cells don’t work as well at night.

Harnessing sea power can be even more destructive to the ocean environment than off-shore drilling, so I would rule that out.

Hydro-electric generation is expensive to set-up and requires the damming of tributaries. (Also environmentalists don’t like them.)

Clean coal is better than dirty coal, and is the major electrical generation means for most of the US. But it still has a negative impact on the environment. Then there is the danger factors and health risks for the miners.

Atomic power plant technology has come very far since 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl, and it is pretty darn safe now, (excepting what to do with the radioactive waste products of course,) but due to the afore named disasters nobody want’s it in their backyard.

Wind farms are great but the land has to be put aside for it and they need to be built, that’s the expensive part. Of course some people consider the generators an eyesore, and hurricane/tornado force winds can seriously damage them.

The only other really good method I can think of is geothermal, which is very promising. I honestly don’t understand why we haven’t explored and advanced this technology sooner. Geothermal systems have been used since 1904. It requires no fuel and the low amounts of waste heat can be used to drive heat-exchanger-air conditioners or for direct heating. They even have geothermal water heaters you can install for your home. The only problem is that after a few decades the heat zone begins to cool down, so you have to take a plant of-line to allow the Earth’s temperature to re-warm the area. Once that is done you can crank it back up again.

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blast… did I say “drill” and don’t do anything else???

I will repeat… ALL OF THE ABOVE! But *not* all at once. Period. Done. Said it all.

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Mata: The fall back will always be oil products and natural gas.

Do you think these products will get us into the 22nd Century? Even if we exploit every drop in our country Pikens has said would not drill our way out of the problem. Plus we are not speaking of an infinite supply, nor a production level that would significantly solve our daily needs anyway. What about future generations? Don’t they have some claim on the oil under the ground or is it just ours to use up completely?

There is no question, no at all we have to get out from under the oil economy. Yes, drill more now for short term, but honestly, that does not solve the problem and leaves those who follow here in the USA no resource once we dry up all of the wells. What a wonderful legacy to leave to future generations. Yep, we used up all of the oil here, fend for yourselves (oh, while you pay back that huge debt we left you too).

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blast, oil is not only used for fuels and energy. It is also a major component of our highest percentage of exports. We need to find our own mineral sources to use, and knock down what we need from foreign nations… absolutely. But we cannot ween overnight, and we will never *not* need oil. Unless capacitance makes leaps and bounds in advances, energy will be unstable when the wind doesn’t blow, the rain doesn’t fall, and the sun doesn’t shine. The fall back will always be oil products and natural gas.

Our oil wealth transfer was especially high when the prices per brl were skyrocketing from world demand, combined with a weak dollar. And what do you think this piling on to our national debt will do to the dollar? A weak dollar will make everything… including our own alternative energy more expensive (which will be more expensive anyway… even Obama admits that).

It is economic suicide to try to do it all at once. What should be done *at once* is exploiting energy fields in our own back yards, and not other nations’. And this will require pulling the stick from many an enviro’s rear end.

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Mata: If he succeeds, we not only pay thru the nose for the borrowed financing, we’ll be paying thru the nose on top of that with more expensive energy costs. It needs to be implemented piecemeal.

You maybe right, but we are already borrowing the $400-500 Billion (a year) to buy the oil resources as it is. Look at how highly leveraged the economy became, it was not just housing that messed us up, but trade imbalances that go on forever that have hollowed out our national wealth.

That is not even taking into account the what if’s, such as a blockage of the Persian Gulf or the dictates of Chavez, or Russia, or Nigeria. If the supply of oil is cut we are out of business and fast. We depend on foreign oil for nearly 70% of our needs. This is a vital national security emergency.

On the issue of energy we need to act and not piecemeal.

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No one suggests that we do *not* move in this direction, blast. All thru last year was a bill the GOP was trying to get thru that was an “all of the above” approach. There needs to be a feasible bridge, and it needs to be done slowly. Obama’s trying to have it all… and all at once. It’s a throw of the dice, and he’s playing with the taxpayers’ money at a time we when just do not have it.

If he succeeds, we not only pay thru the nose for the borrowed financing, we’ll be paying thru the nose on top of that with more expensive energy costs. It needs to be implemented piecemeal.

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Mata: That said, the “downside” is money. Alternative energy has been around for awhile. Have you been able to afford it? What makes you think it will be cheaper when Obama attempts to rebuild the US power grid with this?

The whole global warming stuff is not a subject I follow closely. In the end it is either going to be true or false, and maybe we might live long enough to know.

The bigger issue for me is dependence on foreign resources and our money going to cultures that were better left riding on camels, or south American or Russian Presidents (PM) for life, who despise America. I think T Boone Pickens has a point with wind energy etc. American needs a new widget to get this economy going again and to regain our independence. I tend to think we cannot afford not to move in this direction, and fast.

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Look, Mr. Progressive. I realize you have a degree in what constitutes a worthless talent of analyzing politics. “scientist”… LOL

You wander over and assume no one here has ever seen, nor read opinions of the IPCC, Nat’l Academy of Sciences, and other sundry science academies who have broken the cardinal rule of mixing their science with politics. Then again, they have become virtually a welfare child of government, so one can see why they bend over so easily.

But speaking of psycho, you try to justify what you don’t see as spending by babbling party statistics? I guess if the cap and trade and carbon credit math boggles your mind, or you can’t compute the actual repercussions of revamping an entire US power grid at one time with a more expensive (and less stable) energy source, then you have to fall back on what you know…. statistics of political parties.

I guess this is your less than clever way of saying that if the nation voted for it, it must be right. Well, if you’re banking on humans, or American voters, as the measure of what you see as wise spending, you might well want to remember that the majority of the world’s population once was adamant that the world was flat.

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Reading isn’t your strong suit, eh Wack-o?

“Americans identifying themselves as Democrats outnumber those who say they are Republicans by 10 percentage points, the largest gap in party identification in 24 years.

The gap has widened significantly since President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, when it was a mere 3 percentage points. But by the time Mr. Bush left office in January, less than a quarter of Americans approved of his performance.

These days, 38 percent of Americans say they are Democrats, 28 percent call themselves Republicans, and another 29 percent identify as independents, according to an average of national polls conducted last year by The New York Times and CBS News.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/weekinreview/01connelly.html?_r=1

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Math isn’t your strong suit, eh Pragpro?

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