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  • Three Things Obama Will Do to Advance Alternative Energy
    Fred Banks

    Where do you get your pearls of wisdom? Wind power is cheap, quick to build and green. What's wrong with that.

    The dept of energy says we could have 20% wind power by 2030.
    Solar could be a bigger percentage by then.

    "I'd put my money on the sun & solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."
    Thomas Edison, 1931
    Now there's a wise man.

    genea

    The President can't dictate what companies benefit from an alternative energy revolution. What he can do is provide the right incentives so Americans can develop new companies and compete.
    Lack of govt support for alternative energy has put us in a catch up mode vis a vis the rest of the world. We had 50% of the wind power market until Republicans pulled the govt funding in the 80s. It's no accident that the largest PV makers are all overseas.
    What people don't understand is that it's the massive subsidies for oil, coal, gas and nuclear that make it so hard for alternatives to compete.

    thmime
    We can't drill our way to energy independence. Impossible! If we pumped every barrel of oil reserves off the California coast it would give us enough oil for 16 months at U.S. consumption rates.


    What will give us energy independence is energy that needs no fuel ever. No fuel ever to mine, prospect for, refine, transport, store, burn, clean up the pollution from, or fight wars over.
    The hidden costs of oil and gas and coal are in the hundreds of billions every year.
    They cost plenty over and above the energy prices you pay. Solar and wind will be as cheap before long, even without considering those hidden costs of fossil fuels. At which point they will actually be far cheaper in the big picture.

    Shotei
    I believe you are wrong. Obama will make energy a priority because it will solve 4 issues at once, economy, energy, environment, and national security.
    No more wars over oil.
    Are you talking about the war that Bush and co planned before 911? The war that they lied about to fool us into supporting. The one where they cherry picked intelligence that supported their agenda? The war that has nearly bankrupted our country? The one where we invaded a sovereign country that hadn't attacked us? The one where we invaded the one and only Muslim country that didn't have Al Queda operating?
    Oh, that war.

    This won't be like the Bush administration that did everything in it's power to block environmental progress. We won't have science being censored and hushed up to fit an agenda. We won't have an administratioin that works hand in hand with big oil to confuse the public debate about climate change and energy solutions.
    Read the books "The Heat is On"
    and "Censoring Science" What they did is criminal. The Bush administration even asked a conservative think tank to sue the administration, in order to prevent scientific facts from being brought up in a senate debate, so they would appear to not have a hand in this particular instance of censoring science. A memo was discovered later that proved this.
    Dec 16 13:52 pm |Rating: +6 -5 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Black Swans and Greenwashing Solar and Wind
    This is the most falacious thing I've read in a long time.

    Subsidies for fossil fuels are about 5 to 10 times as much as for renewable energy.

    As this link shows:
    on oil subsidies
    www.heatisonline.org/c...

    "subsidy programmes from 1918 are still in place"
    "I'm not aware of any oil and gas subsidy that has ever been phased out," said Koplow, the leading expert on U.S. energy subsidies"
    "in a time of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the George W. Bush administration in 2005 authorise an additional 32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies over a five-year period?"

    "Koplow's 2007 report to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development puts the annual U.S. subsidy at an average of 39 billion dollars a year."
    Another estimate puts oil and gas subsidies and tax credits at $84 billion a year.
    www.setamericafree.org...

    "Estimating U.S. oil and gas subsidies is very challenging. Subsidies rarely involve cash payments. Instead scores of U.S. government agencies and departments create hundreds of programmes to support the U.S. energy sector. And there is no requirement for the federal government to keep track of all this."

    "Energy subsidies are often simply hidden from public scrutiny. It's only recently been revealed that 40 companies granted leases between 1996 and 2000 for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico do not have to pay royalties for the publicly-owned resource. This is worth nearly a billion dollars a year in lost revenue to the federal government."

    "This massive government intervention distorts energy markets, making it very difficult for alternative energy sources to compete without similarly massive subsidies. "And it promotes America's addiction to oil," Larsen added."

    The average effective tax rate on integrated
    oil operations has fallen from 21.5 percent in
    the early 1980s to only 8.7 percent in the 1990s (both
    figures are significantly below the statutory rate of 35
    Coal and nuclear are also heavily subsidized.

    Anyone who makes statements about solar and wind needing to be subsidized shouldn't be listened to becuase it is sheer nonsense.
    Fledgling industries are what should be subsidized, not mature industries making the biggest profits in American business history.

    McCain wants to build 45 nuclear plants by 2020
    The American Wind Energy Association forecasts that installed capacity could grow from 11,603 MW today to around 100,000 MW by 2020. That's 100 gigawatts, or a nearly 90 gigawatt increase. 90 gigawatts is the same or more than you would get from 45 nuclear plants. The windfarms estimate is probably way too conservative. We can build them faster with a little political will to do so. Wind cost about a third of what nuclear does to build.

    and that's just wind. Solar can do much more.

    Denmark already has 20% wind power. Parts of Germany and Denmark have 40% wind power. We are told that wind and solar are too intermittent. Why isn't that a problem in Denmark. Could it be because they have no oil company lobby?

    Pickens' plan has two good ideas, wind power and HVDC transmission lines to distribute power from windfarms in Texas and the midwest, and from solar plants in the southwest.
    Trading wind for gas makes no sense because it is much more efficient to burn the gas in a power plant than in a car. And wind is too intermittant to operate as base load as gas can.

    Solar thermal plants with heat storage,in the southwest, can replace coal plants with the ability to put out base load power. These plants can be built in 2 to 3 years. They can put out steady power day and night. They will provide power at 5 to 8 cents a kilowatt within five years.
    Solar thermal power plants in the southwest, at rates competitive with coal and gas, could power the whole country, using less land than we now use for coal plants and mining. and the tax dollars spent over 35 years or so would be about what we now give oil companies in the form of tax credits and subsidies every 5 to 10 years.
    Joseph Romm in this great article says:
    "It would be straightforward to build CSP systems at whatever rate industry and governments needed, ultimately 50 to 100 gigawatts a year growth or more."
    www.salon.com/news/fea...

    100 gigawatts equivalant in nuclear would mean building 50 or more nukes a year. That my friend will never happen.
    and
    "The key attribute of CSP is that it generates primary energy in the form of heat, which can be stored 20 to 100 times more cheaply than electricity -- and with far greater efficiency"

    Add photovoltaics all over the country to the solar plants in the southwest and you have solar energy on a vast scale.

    The remarks about hybrids are false. Plug in hybrids would give the average driver 100 miles to the gallon overall. The higher initial cost would pay for itself in 5 years if gasoline is $1.75 a gallon. Think you'll see gas that cheap in the future?

    Sensible plans are at.

    www.setamericafree.org...
    A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security

    www.repoweramerica.org

    climateprogress.org

    www.sciam.com/article....
    Solar thermal a better choice than the concentrating PV emphasized here, but shows what we can do and what it will cost.

    more info on solar thermal at:
    solarsouthwest.org/ Solar Soutwest Initiative

    All in all this article is complete rubbish
    Nov 21 13:20 pm |Rating: +3 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Solar Stocks Rebounding, Is It Time to Buy?
    "First Solar is the leader in thin-film production, which could supplant the bulk of current industry production within five years."

    I don't believe this. Thin film, being less efficient, is not the best choice where square footage is at a premium. If you are putting panels on your roof, you're going to want as many watts as you can get.

    "but I wonder if direct subsidies are not an option while other stimulus measures get the most of the Administration’s early attention."

    The tax credits included in the bank bailout already benefit solar.

    Investing in clean energy IS what will revive the economy.
    4 birds with one stone---energy, economy, environment, national security. It would be shortsighted not to use this tool.

    What you're going to see is something along the lines of the Google energy plan or Repower America plan. Anything less is suicide for humans.

    This will entail building 250 gigawatts of solar by 2030, in the US. alone. - PV and solar thermal. That's a pretty big market

    Wind too. The NREL estimated that we could build 660 gigawatts of windpower in the U.S. by 2030. The Google plan shoots for 380 gWt.
    We now have 313 gWt nameplate capacity from coal.
    Solar thermal can replace all of that with base load power.

    Yesterday it was reported at the AGU meeting, that the Arctic sea ice is disappearing 15 years ahead of what was predicted just a few years ago. It's time to end the disinformation campaign of the deniers ( who don't have a scientific leg to stand on) and solve the problem.
    I strongly advise reading the book -
    "The Heat Is On" by Ross Gelbspan. Then you will understand how one of the biggest and best funded disinformation campaigns in history has sought to confuse the American public about climate change. Parties to this crime have been recorded, saying that they knew the science was "closing in on them" and getting stronger, but that they should continue with the propaganda to confuse the public. They knew there was a small sliver of doubt about the conclusiveness of the science in the public's mind.
    And that's where they aimed their PR campaign to widen that gap.
    All paid for by the fossil fuel industry and the big 3 auto makers.

    We still have the VP of GM talking about the completely discredited and debunked Oregon Petition with it's phony list of 19,000 "leading scientists" who are supposed to be skeptics.
    It was a hoax perpetrated by a group on a farm in Oregon that doesn't include any climate scientists. They used forged National Academy of Science stationary to trick some scientists into signing it. Their leader believes pumping more and more CO2 into the atmosphere will create a garden of eden on earth.
    If you believe that, you are not smarter than a fifth grader.

    Same thing for Sen Inhofe's phony list of 413, (now he claims 650) "prominent scientist" skeptics. This has also been completely discredited and debunked as a padded list.
    Included in Inhofe's list are:
    20 economists
    44 television weathermen,
    84 scientists who have either accepted money from, or are otherwise connected to, the fossil fuel industry or likeminded think tanks
    70 scientists with no expertise in the subject,
    Ray Kurzweill inventor -- not a climate scientist
    Coleman -founder of Weather Channel- not a climate scientist

    Here's Exxon funded Heartland Institute's list of skeptic "experts" from Texas. They couldn't get one climate scientist on the list, despite the fact that there are dozens if not hundreds of climate scientists working in Texas.
    They named four "experts"
    and energy expert
    a policy analyst
    a petroleum engineer
    an emergency physician
    That's it.

    I'm pointing this out, because I know the deniers will jump all over my warning about the consequences of inaction.























    Dec 18 13:05 pm |Rating: +2 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Three Things Obama Will Do to Advance Alternative Energy

    The degree to which Americans are misinformed and disinformed and uninformed about alternative energy and it's potential is staggering.
    Just read the posts here. Most of the comments are by people who's information source is sound bites and simplistic claims that are simply not true.

    Coal is killing our ocean, and killing 24,000 Americans every year, more than homicides and AIDS combined. The CO2 is acidifying the ocean which is destroying coral reefs and shellfish. We have lost 19% of coral reefs in 20 years, largely from this effect.
    The mercury has made our fish stocks practically inedible.
    Coal plants also spew out radionuclides, and heavy metals as well as NO2 and other toxins. It has destroyed 450 mountain tops just in one state. 100,000 miners have died in the last 100 years mining coal. The pollution causes all kinds of respiratory diseases and acid rain. And coal is the biggest manmade cause of global warming. Coal gets $3 billion a year in subsidies. Clean coal is a myth. Perfecting (CCS)carbon capture and sequestration will take 10-20 years, if it is even feasable. To do it on a global scale would entail pumping CO2 into the earth on a scale like we now pump oil out of the earth. If we do manage this, coal will be much more expensive than solar and wind. Some estimates are that it would add 16 cents to a kWh price. That would make it about the most expensive energy of all. And that only takes care of the CO2, not the other pollutants.
    Over half of our coal plants were built before 1973. Older plants cannot be converted to CCS. Coal uses 24% of our rail freight cars and 44% of rail freight tonnage. Phasing out coal would free up freight capacity for other freight, which can be shipped long distance by rail much more fuel efficiently than by truck.

    Using less land than now used for coal plants and coal mining, solar thermal plants with heat storage would power the entire U.S.
    Read that again to make sure you get it.

    Electric prices from solar thermal will be below 10cents/kWh within 5 years, maybe less. With increased economy of scale the price will drop to 5-8cents/kWh.

    Compare that with prices from new nuclear plants which are projected to be 12-17cents/kWh with prices increasing as the low hanging fruit of rich uranium ore is depleted. We will have peak uranium about 10 years after peak oil.
    Wind farms can be built for $1400/kWt
    New nuclear plants will cost $5500 to $8000/kWt to build according to Florida Power and Light. That's why FPL is now in the solar thermal power plant business.
    So much for "electricity too cheap to meter" as the nuclear industry promised decades ago.

    Wind power is now about 4-5cents/kWh.

    Wind and solar are both quicker to build than either coal or nuclear.

    Solar thermal plants with heat storage are even better than coal for providing base load power. They rev up and peak in perfect sinc with the energy demand during the day. They then continue to put out steady non intermittent energy into the night. They can be designed to provide power all night. The cost of storing heat is about 1/20 or less of the cost of storing electricity.

    They can be built in 2-3 years.

    A report for the Western Governors Alliance said we could build 300 gigawatts of solar thermal near existing transmission lines.
    Total coal generating capacity is 313 gWt.
    Total U.S. generating capacity is 1,075 gWt

    One report from NREL said we could build 660 gigawatts of wind power by 2030. The Google plan calls for building 380 gWt.
    It calls for 250 gWt of solar including PV and CSP. this could be much higher. We could have that much CSP alone by then.

    The reason the depression didn't end until WW2 is because of how deep it was, not because Roosevelt's programs didn't work.
    These programs are the reason we even have a middle class.
    Programs like the CCC and WPA gave people self respect and a sense of dignity; and fed, clothed and housed them. They also vastly improved our infrastructure.

    "Second, wind and solar energy were fine in the 1500s but are of no use now"

    How do you answer such an ignorant statement? Here's what use they are now. They will never ever need any fuel to mine, to transport, to refine, to prospect for, to burn, to clean up the pollution from, to fight wars over, to cause wild price fluctuations, for someone to control, to add to our trade imbalance.

    "I'd put my money on the sun & solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."
    Thomas Edison, 1931

    Nuclear doesn't give us energy independence. We import 90% of our uranium and just signed a deal to import 20% of it from Russia.

    Photovotaics will be at grid parity in most of the country in 5 years or so and in 10 years everywhere in the country. And grid parity doesn't take into account the massive hidden costs of fossil fuels., which are in the hundreds of billions every year.
    The tax break package for renewable energy that passed with the bailout bill will provide $17 billiion/year.
    That's for all the renewable combined, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, cogeneration, efficient cars, wave tide, etc.
    By comparison, oil company's get at least $39 billion every year. One estimate for oil and gas is $84 billion a year.
    Not one subsidy for oil since 1918 has ever been phased out.

    According to a study- Koplow's 2007 report to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development:
    "Estimating U.S. oil and gas subsidies is very challenging. Subsidies rarely involve cash payments. Instead scores of U.S. government agencies and departments create hundreds of programmes to support the U.S. energy sector. And there is no requirement for the federal government to keep track of all this."

    "In a time of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the George W. Bush administration in 2005 authorise an additional 32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies over a five-year period?"
    (McCain wanted to give them another $4 billion)

    "This massive government intervention distorts energy markets, making it very difficult for alternative energy sources to compete without similarly massive subsidies. "And it promotes America's addiction to oil," Larsen added."
    www.heatisonline.org/c...

    There is nothing whatsoever that is Pie in the Sky about any of this.
    That is just tired old rhetoric that is not based in fact.

    We don't have to invent new technology to make a major head start at building a clean grid and energy system. Current technology will take us through the next 20 years. New developments will be deployed when they are ready.
    Solar and wind are ready now. There are many ways to balance out the intermittent nature of PV and wind. Yes, we need better energy storage to help with this, but we have a ways to go before we have enough wind and solar for that to be a problem.

    There will be a net economic benefit from all this.
    OK, One study projected a tiny net loss in GDP. The difference would be that the GDP would reach $23 trillion in April of some year in the 2020s, instead of in January of that year. Big deal.
    The other benefits would far outweigh this. Energy independence, health, environment, etc.

    A Dept of Energy study found that for less than 2 cents/day per household, we could have 300 gigawatts of wind power by 2030. That would be 20% of electric generating capacity in the U.S. The Google energy plan looks to have 380 gWt by 2030.
    From the Google energy plan summary:
    "An earlier study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory explored more rapid scale-ups of wind capacity, and found that up to about 600 GW by 2030 was feasible. Our target, 380 GW in 2030, is therefore not at all unrealistic."































































    Dec 17 14:19 pm |Rating: +2 -2 |Link to Comment |View article
  • The Green New Deal: Stocks That Stand to Benefit
    Robert Nabloid

    "I think if you take a closer look at the New Deal, you would see the only reason we came out of that recession was a world war. The New Deal didn't really help things... "

    That is revisionist history at it's worst. The reason is took WW2 to finally pull the country out of the depression was because of how deep the depression was, not because the New Deal wasn't working.
    It was the new deal policies that led to the growing middle class in the fifties and sixties. Some would like to go back to the robber barron days that brought about the depression to begin with. We have almost achieved that under Reaganomics, which has left behind 80% of Americans over the past 25 years.
    Dec 16 13:02 pm |Rating: +2 -2 |Link to Comment |View article
  • The Five Most Important Energy Forecasts of 2008
    The hand
    You mentioned line loss over long distances.
    That's why all the sensible energy plans call for new high voltage DC transmission lines or HVDC to bring power from solar and wind farms to other parts of the country. There is much less line loss with HVDC over long distances. Anything over 30 miles favors DC in fact. Don't confuse this with the use of superconductors that john s. gordon mentions in his comment.


    Andy 1234 -you may be an engineer, but you are under-informed. The numbers have been crunched and these ideas are mostly well thought out. Solar thermal power plants with heat storage can act as base load power, as they produce a steady output of power even at night.
    What's more, they can store heat 20-100 times cheaper than storing electricity.
    They will be able to provide power at 5-8 cents a kWh once they are up to scale in several years.
    They are fast to build and use ordinary building materials. So low tech we could have done it 100 years ago. They can be air or water cooled, and can even desalinize water at the same time, when water cooled. Molten salt is the best medium for storing heat. United Technology's Sunstrand/Rockedyne division has developed advanced systems for molten salt use. They have also created a new solar thermal company called Solar Reserve. There are about 10 companies I've heard of in solar thermal.

    See the article in Scientific American that proposes building solar plants in the southwest, achieving 69% solar grid by 2050 and spending less in tax dollars over 35-40 years than we spent on the internet in the last 35 years.
    One fourth or less than we now give oil companies in subsidies and tax credits.
    www.sciam.com/article....

    For more on solar thermal:

    www.salon.com/news/fea...

    climateprogress.org/20.../

    solarsouthwest.org/

    Combining centralized solar in the southwest with distributed power from solar panels all over the country will give us solar on a vast scale. Photovoltaics are within a few years of grid parity, not including the external or hidden costs of fossil fuels.

    Wind is also much cheaper to build than coal or nuclear plants and about a third the cost of building nuclear. A recent govt report says we could have 20% wind power by 2030. Solar could be bigger.

    Geothermal with advanced technology could be huge.

    The costs of not switching to renewable energy far exceeds the cost of doing it.

    In the U.S. with a tiny fraction of our power coming from wind and solar, we talk constantly about the "intermittency&qu... of solar and wind.
    Meanwhile Denmark already has 20% wind power. Parts of Denmark and Germany have 40% wind power.

    Yes we need more storage solutions, better battery technology etc. What people don't get is that we can make a big start toward renewables with current technology.

    I would argue that solar is already cheaper than fossil fuels when you consider the hidden costs of those. and wind is already cheaper without those considerations.

    While there are several energy plans I've seen they all have the same elements. Solar, Wind, HVDC, plug in hybrids, biomass, geothermal, energy conservation and efficiency, etc.

    I recommend reading the following articles.


    www.setamericafree.org...

    An Introductin to Core Climate Solutions
    analyses and updates the solutions outlined in the Science magazine article on stablilization wedges below.
    climateprogress.org/20.../

    Science magazine article on Stablilization Wedges to solve global warminghttp://carbonse...

    climateprogress.org/20.../

    www.americanprogressac...

    climateprogress.org/20.../


    What makes it hard for renewable to compete with fossil fuels is the massive subsidies fossil fuels and nuclear receive.

    See my comments on subsidies at yesterday's article on solar at Seeking Alpha
    seekingalpha.com/artic...
    Dec 10 14:23 pm |Rating: +2 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Defining a Depression
    cycling scholar
    I find it amazing that you have nothing to say except to bash Al Gore and Joe Biden, when the current mess is a result of Republican economic policies. Reaganomics doesn't work! Reaganomics doesn't work. Reaganomics doesn't work. PERIOD
    Someday, you may understand this simple truth.
    When Reagan was elected we had a $1 trillion federal deficit. Since then Republican administration have ratcheted up that figure to $10 trillion. When Reagan was elected, corporate executives were paid about 25 times what their workers earned. They now make 250 to 400 times as much. At the same time, workers wages have actually gone down. A middle age worker now makes 12% less than his father did in real buying power.
    Between 1983 and 2004, the top 1% got 33% of the growth in wealth. The next 4% got over 25%.
    The bottom 80% of us got 11% of the growth. The bottom 40% got negative growth.
    That my friend is not the American dream. Regressive tax schemes never have worked and never will work.
    Now those of you who love this giveaway to the rich, complain that giving a tax break to the working people is socialism. Wow.
    None of you seem to understand the simple truth that every successful economy in the world is a mixed economy. It's what works. But that isn't good enough for you because you are stuck on labels like socialism. You are stuck on ideology that has proven not to work. Reaganomics has had over 25 years to prove itself and it is a complete failure for 80% of Americans.
    The claim that Reaganomics created wealth is not true to begin with. What created wealth was the revolution in technology, computers, internet, robotics, telecommunications, biotechnology etc.


























    Nov 12 14:24 pm |Rating: +2 -5 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Environmentalism May Face Major Setback in 2009
    The following scientific organizations support the findings of the IPCC. The reason I list the National Academy of Sciences first, is because they are like the Supreme Court of science in America. They decide what is real science and what is junk science.

    National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)

    NASA

    Woods Hole Resesarch Center

    US Geological Survey (USGS)

    National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

    NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)

    American Association of State Climatologists

    Federal Climate Change Science Program, 2006 (the study authorized and then censored by Bush)

    American Chemical Society - (world's largest scientific organization with over 155,000 members)

    Geological Society of America

    American Geophysical Union (AGU)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

    American Association of State Climatologists

    Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

    American Astronomical Society

    American Institute of Physics

    American Meteorological Society (AMS)

    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

    Stratigraphy Commission - Geological Society of London - (The world's oldest and the United Kingdom's largest geoscience organization)

    Chinese Academy of Sciences

    Royal Society, United Kingdom

    Russian Academy of Sciences

    Royal Society of Canada

    Science Council of Japan

    Australian Academy of Sciences

    Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts

    Brazilian Academy of Sciences

    Caribbean Academy of Sciences

    French Academy of Sciences

    German Academy of Natural Scientists

    Indian National Science Academy

    Indonesian Academy of Sciences

    Royal Irish Academy

    Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy)

    Academy of Sciences Malaysia

    Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand

    Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

    Union of Concerned Scientists

    The Institution of Engineers Australia

    Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)

    National Research Council

    Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospherice Sciences

    World Meteorological Organization

    State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)

    International Council on Science

    Deniers would have you believe that somehow all these organizations and the thousands of scientists from 120 countries who have been doing the research for 20 years, and over 30 years for some, are all scamming you in some dark conspiracy. Wow, and they call the scientists alarmists!
    Jan 06 14:00 pm |Rating: +1 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Environmentalism May Face Major Setback in 2009

    As long as people are willing believe the politically motivated denier propaganda campaign rather than the entire world scientific community we will continue to hear idiotic statements and remarks like we see here.

    Listen up deniers.
    Not one of the lists of skeptic scientists that you have been duped by is valid. They are all phony lists with very little basis in reality.
    The actual number of climate scientists who disagree with the AGW theory is about 1/10 of 1%. And most of those have been thoroughly discredited in the scientific world.

    The consensus among scientists is overwhelming in support of the IPCC findings
    What can one say to someone more willing to listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh than practically the entire world scientific community.
    The national academy of science of every nation that has one is in support of the IPCC, as are the earth science faculty of every major universty in the world. Anyone who believes the denier anti science nonsense is a fool.
    At this point it is the same as believing the scientists who said cigarette smoke was harmless, because the tobacco firms paid them to say that. It is no different. It is not one bit different than that.
    Show me a climate scientist who disagrees, who isn't paid by oil money.

    Your opinions have been bought and sold by one of the biggest propaganda campaigns in history, paid for by the fossil fuel industry.

    Deniers are ready to listen to the guy who started the Oregon Petition with it's phony list of skeptical scientists, regardless of the fact that he has a theory that the industrial revolution has increased biodiversity on earth and that the more CO2 we pump into the atmosphere, the more wonderful and lush life on earth will be. I'm not making this up. This is who they listen to, rather than the actual climate scientists who have studied the issue for at leat 20 years independently, and over 30 years for some. By the way, the group who started the Oregon Petition does not contain a single climate scientist. The list was compiled by passing around what amounted to a forged National Academy of Science document to fool some scientists into signing it. It has been completely debunked.
    www.sourcewatch.org/in...

    But deniers cling to this list like it was the gospel truth.

    Want more examples? The deniers have not a single scientific leg to stand on, so they endlessly repeat arguments that have been disproven by science, some as long as 20 years ago. But that doesn't phase them. They know better than the tens of thousands of climate scientists. These arguments have become urban legends, with not a shred of truth. Yet deniers expound on them hundreds of times a day on the internet. They are BS. Abslolute BS, period. Ideology is no substitute for critical thinking. Deniers choose the former over the latter.

    How about right wing propaganda mill Heartland Institute, who Exxon funds, and which is one of the leading denier spin mills. They issued their list of experts in Texas who disagree with the IPCC. Here's the list of 4.

    emergency room physician
    petroleum engineer
    policy analyst
    energy expert

    NOT ONE CLIMATE SCIENTIST

    There are dozens if not hundreds of climate scientists in Texas but the Heartland Institute can't get a single one on their phony list.

    How about Senator Inhofe's phony list of 413 "prominent scientists" who disagree? This too has been thoroughly debunked. The list includes.
    20 economists:
    44 television weather men:
    70 scientists with no expertise in climate:
    84 scientists paid by the oil industry:
    3 dead people:
    scientists who agree with the IPCC
    And anthropologist and a historian who are outspoken in their support for IPCC:
    James Peden, who calls himself an atmospheric physicist even though he long ago left climate science, to be a web designer:



    Inhofe and Morano misinterpreted a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters.
    They claimed that it showed proof that the sun was responsible for the warming that's been observed in the last 100 years. The paper they quote says exactly the opposite from what they claim. This has been verified by the author of the paper.


    Think there isn't vast and overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming? See here.
    www.logicalscience.com.../

    "There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics."
    -Dr. James Baker - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

    The AGW theory as reported on by the IPCC in the fourth assessment of over 20 years of research has been called the most thoroughly peer reviewed scientific paper in the history of science. There were over 900 peer reviewed papers on climate change. Not one opposed the conclusions of the IPCC


    The same small list of well known climate change deniers is repeated endlessly. If you study the denier material you will see the same names over and over again.
    Like Fred Singer

    Fred Singer has not had a peer reviewed paper published in 20 years. He is linked to the fossil fuel industry and was once a hired gun for the tobacco industry to give "expert" testimony that cigarette smoke is not bad for you. He also believes that CFC don't deplete the ozone layer in the atmosphere. This is a well established scientific fact, but not to Singer.

    And Lindzen

    Linzen is paid $2,500/day to be a consultant for the fossil fuel industry. His trip to Washington to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuel co. Lindzen appeared in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" a documentary that was denounced by the Royal Society, the chief scientific advisory group to the British government, and the equivalant of our National Acadamy of Science. Some parties threatened to sue the director of the film for gross misrepresentation of science

    Roy Spencer and John Christy are both well known scientists among the climate change denier crowd . These two single handedly gave deniers amunition for a skeptic argument, about whether satellite data confirmed the global warming that the surface data showed. Deniers used this argument for a decade, encouraged by Spencer and Christy. It is well known that Spencer and Christy made serious and numerous errors in their data analysis. They were wrong. But this skeptic argument is still repeated all the time by deniers. Read more here: climateprogress.org/20.../

    Maybe you've been swayed by the movie "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

    Look at what you believe.

    The one and only "scientific advisor" for the movie is Martin Livermore, who has no scientific credentials other than being the director of an online right wing think tank called The Scientific Alliance, which was established by the anti-green lobbying and public relations company, British Aggregates Association.
    One credible climate scientist, Dr. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at MIT was quoted out of context and "duped" into appearing in the documentary. He says the movie was grossly distorted and as close to pure propaganda as anything since WW2.
    He is considering filing a complaint with the British broadcast regulator, Ofcom.
    There is Tim Ball, a retired professor of the department of geography at the University of Winnipeg. In the documentary, he is listed as Professor Tim Ball, University of Winnipeg, Department of Climatology. There is no Department of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg! He has not published a research paper in eleven years.

    And then there's Dr. Paul Reiter, who's connected with the Annapolis Centre for Science Based Public Policy, another right wing think tank, which received $763,500 from Exxon Mobile.

    and there's
    Dr. Paul Copper

    Listed as an "Allied Expert" for the Natural Resource Stewardship Project (NRSP), a lobby organization that refuses to disclose it's funding sources. The NRSP is led by executive director Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball. An Oct. 16, 2006 CanWest Global news article on who funds the NRSP, it states that "a confidentiality agreement doesn't allow him [Tom Harris] to say whether energy companies are funding his group." The NRSP also has ties to Canadian energy-sector lobbyists.

    www.desmogblog.com/sea...

    And I have only scratched the surface of this phony disinformation denier campaign and it's gullibe adherents.


    Jan 06 13:50 pm |Rating: +1 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • The Year in Solar: Strikes Mixed with Gutters
    Solar Guru said

    "personally think what we saw in last 24 months was a distorted picture of growth artificially propped by Govt incentives driving demand. What we are likely to see now is a real demand based on cost economics and without the expensive govt subsidy."

    I disagree with the idea that solar growth is artificially propped up by subsidies.

    What is artificially propped up, and has been for about 80 years, is fossil fuels, subsidies for which are conservatively estimated at $49 billion a year.
    Nuclear energy has received $100 billion over the years.

    As Koplow's 2007 report to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says:

    "This massive government intervention distorts energy markets, making it very difficult for alternative energy sources to compete without similarly massive subsidies. And it promotes America's addiction to oil"

    www.heatisonline.org/c...

    Dec 30 14:50 pm |Rating: +1 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Two Calculated Risks Possibly Worth Taking
    Longinvestor

    Your question about storing solar energy does not make any sense. Solar puts out the most energy when the demand is highest. It doesn't need storage. We won't have to worry much about energy storage with wind either, until renewables reach 15-20% of the grid. This is a bit of a red herring. Denmark is now starting to have storage issues with their 20% wind power. We are not even close to that, with solar accounting for something like 0.4% and wind a few percent of the energy grid.

    Furthermore, storage is not the only solution to balancing the grid. If HVDC transmission is added to the grid, which is very likely, then transmission and a smart grid can do much of the balancing. Electricity is shunted around to match time zones, energy prices and demand, which differ all over the country and by time of day. We need both storage and new transmission to do the job.
    Here's an excellent analysis of this storage/transmission mix.

    www.altenergystocks.co...

    Solar thermal comes with it's own energy storage at far less cost than storing electricity, and can generate even at night.

    There is not going to be a problem of renewable energies competing with each other. Think 300 gigawatts of wind and a similar amount of solar by 2030, or about 20% of the grid for each.
    And that's just the U.S. Think 2000 gigawatts of each globally.
    Those are the kind of numbers we are shooting for to end our addiction to fossil fuels and stave off the worst of climate change.
    Total coal generating capacity is 313 gWts supplying 50% of kilowatt hours. Total U.S. generating capacity is about 1025 gWts.
    Solar thermal alone could replace all the coal plants by 2030 with base load dispatchable power.

    Nanosolar says they can now build a solar system cheaper than building a coal plant. That means grid parity. And it needs no fuel or environmental cleanup of pollution and greenhouse gas. They are marketing their systems to small towns across America, where they suggest using land on the outskirts of town. 10 acres would power 1,000 homes, 20 acres 2,000 homes and so forth. You may not see this in heavily built up areas like the northeast, but it makes sense in the midwest and west where there is lots of space between towns.

    First Solar is also close to grid parity. The rest of the solar industry is not that far behind.

    Expect a national energy policy on a par with California. This will mean minimum targets for renewable energy as a percent of grid.

    Creative financing policies like that inititated by the city of Berkeley
    California will make it easier for homeowners and businesses to install solar. Berkeley will sell bonds to finance solar, which will be offered to every homeowner in the city with no upfront cost. Homeowners will pay off the solar on an annual basis, and be able to pass on any unpaid amount to the next owner if the house is sold.
    Similar financing plans are being used to encourage large businesses to install solar.
    With tax credits and rebates, payback time is 10-15 years. Within five years much of the country will have PV solar at grid parity.
    Within 10 years all of the country will be there.

    As far as new technologies, they will be welcome when they get here but are not necessary to make a big start in converting to clean energy.
    The goals I mentioned for solar and wind can be achieved with current technology.
    Dec 29 14:11 pm |Rating: +1 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • 10 Solid, Clean Companies Ready for Stimulus, And 5 That Aren't
    The comments about footing the bill are misleading.
    The Google plan shows an overall economic gain .

    Another study showed a slight loss in GDP. The equivalant of reaching $23 trillion GDP in April rather than in January, of some year in the 2020s.

    It's ok to give $40 billion a year to oil companies though, right?
    That's a conservative estimate. One estimate is $84 billion/year.
    Coal gets $3 billion a year.
    nuclear is subsidised at 4-8Cents /kWh







    Dec 18 13:37 pm |Rating: +1 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Nuclear and Coal: The Energy 'Dream Team' for Years to Come
    jhv
    "If anyone actually thinks that the Bush Administration is totally at fault for our current economy"

    No it's not all Bush's fault.
    Rather it's a complete failure of Republican economic policies that started with Reagan.
    Reaganomics has had over 25 years to prove itself and for 80% of Americans it's a total failure. And don't forget that we still had Reaganomics under Clinton, so the 25 years is accurate.

    Here are the numbers from a study by the Pew Foundation
    Between 1983 and 2004
    The top 1% in income got 33% of the growth in wealth.
    The next 4% in income got over 25% of the growth in wealth.
    The bottom 80% got 11% of the growth in wealth.

    "The increases in income and wealth are all taking place at the very top. In fact in 2005 the richest one percent increased their income by far more than the TOTAL income of the bottom 20 percent."
    www.pbs.org/moyers/jou...
    Bill Moyers interview with author David Cay Johnson.

    "In California, the poorest 20 percent of families saw their incomes rise 1.4 percent in the 2004-06 period compared with 1998-2000, after adjusting for inflation,
    By contrast, the top 20 percent gained 13 percent after inflation, while the income of the top 5 percent jumped 20.8 percent."
    "Across the country, average incomes fell 2.5 percent from 1998-2000 with 2004-06 for the bottom fifth of families, while edging up 1.3 percent for those in the middle. The top fifth registered a 9.1 percent gain."

    From the late 1990s to the mid 2000s, income gains for the wealthiest Californians significantly outpaced those for families in the middle and bottom of the income scale. These are the changes in income from 1998-2000 to 2004-06:
    Bottom 20% 1.4%

    Middle 20% 3.8%

    Top 20% 13%

    Top 5% 20.8%

    www.cbpp.org/

    Associated Press story
    In 1978 the average corporate CEO made 35 times the average worker's pay.
    In 2005 the average corporate CEO made 262 times the average worker's pay.

    "A generation ago, American men in their 30s had median annual incomes of about $40,000 compared with men of the same age who now make about $35,000 adjusted for inflation."
    "That is a 12.5% drop between 1974 and 2004"

    "The Pew report also found that many countries-including Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and France have more economic mobility than the United States does."


    www.faculty.fairfield....

    "These data suggest that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of families. The wealthiest 1 percent of families owns roughly 34.3% of the nation's net worth, the top 10% of families owns over 71%, and the bottom 40% of the population owns way less than 1%."

    "The distribution of wealth is much more unequal than the distribution of income, especially when focussing on the bottom 60% of all households. The bottom 60% of households possess only 4% of the nation's wealth while it earns 26.8% of all income."


    Department of Economics, New York University
    June 2007

    "Real wages rose very slowly from 2001 to 2004, with the BLS real mean hourly earnings
    up by only 1.6 percent and median family income dropped in real terms by 2.1 percent. On the
    other hand, housing prices rose steeply. The median sales price of existing one-family homes
    rose by 17.9 percent in real terms nationwide."

    The top 20% had 84.7% of net worth
    Same 20% owned 92.5% of non-home wealth

    The top 1% had 34.8% of net worth and owned 42.2% of non-home wealth

    In contrast, the bottom 40% had 0.2% of net worth and owned a minus 1.1% of non-home weatlth, meaning their debt exceeded their wealth."

    absolute changes in wealth and income between 1983 and 2004.

    In 2004, the top 1% owned 44.8% of stocks and mutual funds, the top 10% owned 85.4% of stocks and funds.

    www.tamethebeast.info/...
    "This bar chart shows the share of America's Wealth owned by each Income Group. It also shows the average Wealth of each Income Group. The sad fact is that the average household in the bottom 20 % is in debt $9,000. The second 20 % has only $11,000 in wealth, and the middle 20 % has $61,000. Even the fourth 20 %, at $161,000 wealth, has problems providing for housing, education and retirement."

    "While the vast majority of Americans struggle, the SuperRich in the Top 1% have almost twice the wealth as the bottom 80% combined."

    "Owership of common stocks (owned directly, in mutual funds or retirement plans) is particularly concentrated. The chart below shows who 'owns' the corporations and gets profits through dividends and capital gains. The bottom 80 % own only 4%!"

    estate tax
    "The truth is that only the wealthiest 2 % of estates pay the tax, while 98% of Americans pay nothing. The benefits of repealing this tax accrue solely to the rich."

    "As you can see, the SuperRich have quietly taken control of so much wealth and power in America that the distribution resembles that of a third world country or a feudal state. Bush's tax and benefit program policies clearly take good care of the SuperRich and let other Americans fight over the 'crumbs'. Can this be considered "prosperity"... Our trust has been betrayed."

    "The ratio of CEO pay to factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000, at the height of the stock market bubble, when CEOs were cashing in big stock options;. It was at 411:1 in 2005. By way of comparison, the same ratio is about 25:1 in Europe."
    from an artice by G wiliam Domhoff

    "It's even more revealing to compare the actual rates of increase of the salaries of CEOs and ordinary workers; from 1990 to 2005, CEOs' pay increased almost 300% (adjusted for inflation), while production workers gained a scant 4.3%. The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage actually declined by 9.3%, when inflation is taken into account."

    United States has the most highly concentrated wealth distribution of any Western democracy except Switzerland.

    " Table 6 shows, it is not as concentrated as the wealth distribution, but the top 1% of income earners did receive 20% of all income in the year 2000. That's up from 12.8% for the top 1% in 1982, which is quite a jump, and it parallels what is happening with the wealth distribution. This is further support for the inference that the power of the corporate community and the upper class have been increasing in recent decades."
    www.tomdispatch.com/?p....

    We should be able to have prosperity that works for all of us.

    Also, I wouldn't even credit Reaganomics with any increase in wealth. What created wealth was the revolution in technology, internet, computers, biotech, tellecommunications etc.




























    Dec 15 15:38 pm |Rating: +1 -4 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Nuclear and Coal: The Energy 'Dream Team' for Years to Come
    infp
    Yes! The amount of ignorance is staggering. That ignorance has been well funded however, so it's not surprise.

    This is the most misleading article I've seen in a long time.
    It's just more of the same disinformation that dominates the debate.

    To start with, the science of global warming is getting stronger, not weaker. The number of skeptic scientists is tiny, and getting smaller. Those are the facts. Period
    Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. Just go to the websites of actual climate scientists. If you want the truth, you won't get it from from right wing propaganda mills..
    www.logicalscience.com.../

    None of the lists of supposed skeptical scientists you have heard of are real. They have all been debunked as padded with everything but actual climate scientists.
    Only in America are people this misinformed. And oil companies have spent a lot of money to fool you.

    "But few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change. Few have been so coldly calculating and few have been so well documented. For example, Ross Gelbspan, in his books, The Heat is On and Boiling Point sets out the whole case, pointing fingers and naming names. PR Watch founder John Stauber has done similarly exemplary work, tracking the bogus campaigns and linking various pseudo scientists to their energy industry funders.
    This is a triumph of disinformation. It is a living proof of the success of one of the boldest and most extensive PR campaigns in history, primarily financed by the energy industry and executed by some of the best PR talent in the world."

    www.desmogblog.com/sla...

    Nuclear power is not sustainable. Peak uranium will be about 10 years after peak oil. Even with reprossessing and breeder reactors.
    www.theleaneconomyconn...

    climateprogress.org/20.../

    www.americanprogressac...

    Don't accept these pronouncements about nuclear being the energy of the future until you have read these. At best nuclear can contribute 10% as a climate solution.

    Clean coal is at least a decade away. And that is only removing the CO2 - not the mercury which is poisoning our fish food stocks nor the other pollutants that kill tens of thousands of Americans every year. Nor the radionuclides or other pollutants that effect the environment. And then there is the havoc from the mining of coal.
    It pollutes the water, air and land. Bush just ok's throwing more in the rivers.

    Clean coal will be much more expensive than solar or wind.
    16Cents/kWh at least for clean coal.
    Solar thermal can match or beat that right now and will be below 10cents/kWh in five years and will fall to 5-8 cents when further economy of scale is reached. Solar thermal power with heat storage is not an intermittent source of energy. It can produce power 24/7 and it can replace coal plants as base load power.
    It's even better than base load because it revs up during the day to perfectly match the energy demand cycle and continues to produce power at night.
    Wind power is even cheaper.
    Both solar and wind are quicker to build than coal or nuclear.
    Wind cost $1400/kw to build. Florida Power and Light estimates new plants will be $5500 to $8100/kw to build.
    Power from new nuclear plants will cost 12-17cents/kWh
    and it will get more expensive as the low hanging fruit of rich uranium ore is depleted.

    Look at the concern over Iran's nuclear program. If nuclear power proliferates all over the world, fissionable material will be everywhere. How many times will the Iran scenario be repeated, and how many dirty bombs will be made for nuclear waste?

    The DOE says we could have 20% wind power by 2030

    Concentrating solar with heat storage, or solar thermal, should be even bigger. Using less land than we now use for coal plants and coal mining, solar thermal would power the whole country.
    I'll repeat that.
    Using less land than we now use for coal plants and coal mining, solar thermal will power the whole country.
    No fuel ever/
    No fuel ever to prospect for, to mine, to refine, to store, to transport, to burn or react, to clean up the mess from, to fight wars over. No fuel price fluctuations. No one controlling the fuel source.

    If Americans aren't misinformed, then why is it that probably 95% haven't even heard of the type of solar with the most promise for out future energy needs. That's a good indication of how powerful the lobby for fossil fuel and nuclear is at shaping the public debate about energy policy. The technology is so simple we could have done it 100 years ago.

    Solar thermal info here.

    www.salon.com/news/fea...

    climateprogress.org/20.../


    We need energy solutions now. Solar and wind are ready.
    They are clean, cheap and need no fuel.
    Clean coal is not.
    Nuclear is not.

    "While he may prefer the environmentally friendly alternatives, most of those replacements are far from fully developed."
    Not true. Solar and wind can be deployed right now. Nuclear and clean coal cannot.
    Clean coal? Read these.
    climateprogress.org/20.../

    www.thisisreality.org/...

    www.greenpeace.org/sea...

    We could easily build 50 gigawatts of solar before a single nuke goes online with it's 1 or 2 gigawatts.

    Here's more reasons to not choose nuclear.

    One of nuclear's biggest problems is water. It takes billions of gallons to cool a single reactor. How reliable will the sources of cooling water be in a changing climate, and in a world with serioius water contraints?

    Every nuclear power plant will require about $500 million to dismantle it, when it has outlived it's useful life. This adds to the nuclear waste disposal problem. The actual cost will probably be higher, and this adds to the waste problem.

    Nuclear power doesn't give us energy independence. We import 65% of our oil and 90% of our uranium. And now Russia is being lined up as a future source of 20% of our uranium.

    "The United States and Russia signed a deal that will boost Russian uranium imports to supply the U.S. nuclear industry, the Commerce Department said Friday…."
    "The new agreement permits Russia to supply 20 percent of US reactor fuel until 2020 and to supply the fuel for new reactors quota-free."
    "So if, under a President McCain, we build a bunch of new nuclear reactors -- they could be fueled 100 percent by Russia."
    "I can almost hear Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin saying, "Excellent."
    gristmill.grist.org/st...

    Nuclear power is not safe. According to Argonne National Laboratory, an airliner crashing into a nuclear power plant could cause a complete meltdown, even if the containment building isn't compromised. Think the twin towers disaster was bad?

    There is no accountability with nuclear power. The Price-Anderson Act places most of the liability for nuclear accidents on the backs of taxpayers, not the nuclear power industry

    Nuclear power is heavily subsidized. According to Earthtrack, Federal subsidies to new nuclear power plants are likely between 4 and 8 cents per kWh (levelized).