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  • 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
    What is really sad is that because of the campaign to misinform the public in America, we are falling behind the rest of the world in developing renewable energy.

    I think this illustrates the point.

    Todd Woody at Green Wombat comments on Abu Dhabi solar project and Torresol ambitions in U.S. southwest.

    "Abu Dhabi is not content to just sell you the oil that fuels your SUV; now its going to sell you sunshine to keep your lights on and power your electric car when the internal combustion engine goes the way of the buggy whip. Masdar, the oil-rich emirate’s $15 billion renewable energy venture, and Spanish technology company Sener on Wednesday announced a joint venture called Torresol Energy to build large-scale solar power plants in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the United States."
    (They are targeting the same American southwest, where the authors of the Solar Grand Plan proposal published in Scientific American are encouraging America to invest.)

    "The irony is too rich to leave unsaid: A leading oil producer invests billions in carbon-free energy while a leading consumer of fossil fuels - the United States - continues to subsidize Big Oil, while offering only tepid support for green technology."
    "It is inevitable that climate change will foster the rise of renewable energy - the only question is which countries and companies will profit from the new energy economics. It is entirely possible that the U.S. will trade energy dependence of one kind - on Middle East oil - for another - on Middle East and European solar technology - in the era of global warming. It’s no coincidence that most of the solar energy companies with contracts to build utility-scale power plants in California and the Southwest have overseas roots - Ausra hails from Australia, BrightSource was founded by American-Israeli pioneer Arnold Goldman, Solel is based in Israel and Abengoa is headquartered in Spain."


    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 power in the U.S. see:
    www.salon.com/news/fea...
    and
    www1.eere.energy.gov/w...

    Photovoltaics will be cheaper than fossil fuels in just a few years, and that isn't even counting the hidden costs of fossil fuels form pollution etc.

    "Nanosolar’s founder and chief executive, Martin Roscheisen, claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. That is the price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal.With a $1-per-watt panel,” he said, “it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions."
    www.grinzo.com/energy/...

    The proposal at Scientific American mentioned above estimates that we could have a 69% solar powered grid by 2050.
    They would use subsidies of $400 billion over about 40 years.
    We now give oil companies that much every 10 years in subsidies
    and tax credits. and that is a conservative estimate of giveaways to oil and gas. Another at SetAmericaFree.org estimates more like $80 billion annully. And the hidden costs of oil and gas are in the hundreds of billions annually.
    Coal gets another $3 billion annually
    So when you hear someone say that solar and wind can't compete without subsidies, you'll know it's a crock of sh....

    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."

    "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, according to a 2008 study by Friends of the Earth (FOE), a U.S. environmental NGO, and may ultimately total 50 billion dollars."

    "Subsidy programms 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?"
    (McCain wanted to give them $4 billion more.)

    "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...















    Dec 15 14:56 pm |Rating: 0 -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).
    www.eoearth.org/articl...

    The transportation of radioactive waste from all over the country to Yucca Mt. is potentially dangerous, as well as expensive.
    "In the United States, current surcharges on nuclear power are too low to cover expected disposal costs. In addition, the US government foolishly absorbed all risk for an on-time opening of a repository for commercial nuclear waste -- despite longstanding technical and political challenges associated with making this happen." from eoearth.org

    www.cleanwisconsin.org...

    Large solar and wind farms can produce electricity long before they are complete, because they are modular. An 800 megawatt solar thermal plant can typically start producing electricity when 25 megawatt modules are completed.

    Yes the grid will have to have new technologies for energy storage and modulation and we need HVDC transmission lines to beef up the grid and distribute this new power from solar and wind.
    But this is not a big factor yet. And solar thermal has it's own storage built in. And it is far cheaper, like 20-100 times cheaper than storing electricity. There is absolutely nothing stopping us from developing this marvelous source of power right now.
    The only thing stopping us is the disinformation campaign and the lack of political will that results from it.

    Global warming skeptics? This is who they are.

    Maybe you heard about the Oregon petition supposedly signed by 19,000 skeptical scientists.
    It was a hoax perpetrated by a kook. Go to the link and read the whole story.

    "This group OISM is run off of a farm in Oregon and contains no climate scientists at all. ...The petition is from the 90s and was passed around with a fake article that fooled some scientists into thinking it was from the National Academy of Science."

    "Arthur Robinson's paper claimed to show that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually a good thing
    As a result, Robinson concluded, industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet:"

    and here's a quote from Robinson's paper.

    "As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.
    Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in CO2 level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as [sic] that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution."

    If you believe this claptrap you are not smarter than a fifth grader.

    This is the same thousands of skeptical scientists that the VP of GM keeps talking about.



    Dec 15 14:36 pm |Rating: +1 -4 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Global Warming Up to a Hydrogen Economy
    panseyed Your idea that global warming is just a natural phenomenon is a skeptic argument that has been debunked repeatedly. Your opinion is at odds with the tens of thousands of climate scientists from all over the world, and at odds with the third assessment by the IPCC, which has been called the most thoroughly peer reviewed scientific document in the history of science. If you don't think that is evidence enough, what do you think would be
    Apr 14 12:54 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article

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