Republicans & Conservatives Archives

C&J,
Why study after study states that Wind Energy is not a Comercial Viable Alternative, they in fact overlook the savings and potential income a Renewable Power Plant can have for a Citizen. For example, you say that gathering the died wood on your land is not worth the cost; however, factor in the cost of an underbush fire in the neighborhood or the sell of such material and the numbers look different.

No, I’m not calling the experts wrong, but the very fact that they begin and end their search and studies based on Middle Ages Technology. I do believe if they would perform a Study based on the idea that Corporations have alreagy entered into a Societal Contract with the Private Citizen to purchase any and all electricity needed by the Individual at a Fair Market Value. Most American Barons would not mind paying $.10/kw since by the Law of the Land it does not affect the Bottom Line.

Now, does that mean We the People let every American get a tax cut to purchase the equipment to produce and sell the nearly 2 giga watts of electricity America is going to need in the next 20-40 years? Well, that is a Political Question and as such I refuse to answer it. Nevertheless, Seeing that the Average American Consumer, Small Business Owner, and Taxpayer could easily afford to become economically viable and financially independent. I guess the Labor and Management of America is going to have to realize that the Children of the 70’s have made a difference.

Now, given the choice between paying other Kinds and Queens from other Lands for the privilege of stripping their Land of Natural Resources or outright striping America of Her Natural Resources. I do believe Americas’ Democratic and Republican Civil, Political, and Religious Leaders need to understand the Argument of the Children of the 70’s. Because why it may sound Silly to some if not most of that generation, having the ability and capability to build a Green Sustainable Government and Society “Just Because” the Children of the 21st Century can do it. Should keep the Elders and Powers-that-Be Lawyers busy for at least the next 20 years.

Note: Why Conservatives are right about it is not redistrubution of Wealth. So are the Liberals Right about every American having the opportunity to enjoy that Life, Libery, and the Pursuit of Happiness. However, We the Corporation needs a few Good Elders to stand up and tell the Party of No to set down. For under the Hat of Parenthood, isn’t every Parent and thus “We the People” shouldn’t the American Voter as an Informed Citizen be able to invest in the brand new landscape of a brand new century just as Our Forefathers and Ancestors?

Henry

The cost of gathering the wood is just not worth what you can sell it for. It makes sense for somebody to gather it for his own use … if it is local. That is the point. These things are not really scalable.

BTW - Good forest management includes fire. You have to regularly burn the debris. IF you could make money gathering it, that would be good. But you can’t. If you hired somebody to do it, you would lose money, i.e. not even break even. IF you used machines, you would add more carbon than you save and lose money.

Re selling back the wind power - I think you may have missed the point. The big cost comes from having to build and maintain the grid. Indeed, if the citizen can sell power at the same price he buys it, he will make money. But he will make money only because he is free riding on the large investments and work of others. Even with this immense boost, he still will have trouble breaking even.

The reason fossil fuels are so cheap is because so many of their costs have been externalized. The price of supporting a military that secures the oil for us is not included. The price of the damage wrought by global warming is not included.

Let’s put these fuels on an even playing ground with the alternatives by implementing a cap & trade or carbon tax policy.

I did an experiment.

I bought a 5000 watt generator, since I live in the Houston area and went without power for two weeks after Hurricane Ike. (I actually moved in with a friend rather than trying to rough it out)

I wired the generator to the house circuits and installed a box that allowed me to switch from generator power to the “grid”.

I can’t run everything on the generator. I can run a microwave,Refrigerator, lights, washer, and TV. No problem. I can’t run the water heater, Central Air or electric oven. I can run a window A/C unit. It’s a change in lifestyle, but not uncomfortable. I turn off lights to save capacity. I turn off the TV if I’m bored by the content, rather than let it run as background noise.

I had to shower and bath in cold water.(I also turned off the gas) That’s rather exciting, but not so horrid in the summer in Houston. Actually the water is warm for a short time. I’m thinking maybe trying to use a black tank to store solar heated water.

I used far less water. I used far less energy.

I feel stolen from ever time I pay my electric bill. Texas has been plundered by the energy oligarchs. There was an article in the Chronicle about Oscar Wyatt giving a million dollars to the Houston Grand Opera today. He is married to Lynn Sackowitz, a famous socialite, from a family that owned some now defunct high end retail stores. I go to the Opera, that’s great. I then googled Oscar Wyatt. He made his money through an energy company. In the seventies he sold off his gas holdings at a great profit, then reneged on contracts to Austin and most of south Texas. There were gas shortages that winter. People couldn’t heat there homes, UT couldn’t heat it’s buildings. Electric rates more than doubled.

He lost a refinery, in court later, for this. The TV show Dallas, based JR Ewing on Oscar Wyatt.

This is a small window into why alternative energy is important. The yoyo game of rising and falling energy prices has made men like Oscar Wyatt billionaires. It’s a game of manipulation. Oscar Wyatt was a small fish in a large pool of sharks. If you continue to calculate the cost of oil, gas, and coal without reference to pollution, loss of economic leverage, and the cost of an eventual war, you will find it cheap. When you include those costs, the reason alternative sources are important is obvious.

This is why this country cannot admit that the Iraq war was about oil and who controls it.

All forms of energy have been subsidized by the taxpayers.

Oil and gas companies have received tax incentives for research, development and exploration.

Over the last thirty years, the taxpayers have paid out $35 billion to provide medical treatments for coal miners with black lung disease.

Taxpayer subsidies to the poor enhance the corporate bottom line.

The time to invest, on a large scale, in alternative energy sources is now; not ten or twenty years from now.

IMO, the best solution is home based. A combination of wind and solar is needed. What do you do about storage? You can use batteries which are costly. You can stay hooked to the grid, sell excess to the company at a reduced rate and buy it back at a higher rate. You can invest in or build your own electrolysis equipment and convert your excess energy into hydrogen and oxygen. These elements can be converted back into electricity as needed or they could be used as fuel for your automobile. Transmission lines could be reduced rather than increased.

Government subsidy and mass production will reduce the price for such a system as well as making installation and maintenance easier. A decentralized system will provide more jobs in a country that is struggling to produce jobs.

Going all out for alternative sources of energy now will be more costly in the short run but, less costly than waiting for the corporations to decide when it is time.

By 2016, the cost of gasoline will be between $4.50 and $5.00 per gal. That is my prediction.

So, what are you arguing for? Inaction?

If the problem is distribution, why then that’s the perfect opportunity for government to fund a next generation grid. Hell, we’ve need that for a long time. Since it is a matter of interstate commerce, it’s a perfect place for government to intercede.

If the problem is constance, we work on delivering the new Battery and ultracapacitor technology that would allow this power source to work well.

If the problem is competition from fossil fuels, then we find some way to phase them out.

But simply saying that we have to wait for the market to put fossil fuels at a disadvantage? Well, hell, that’s asking for a disaster to happen, because when our back’s finally to that wall, we will be less able to cope with it economically, will have less margin for error, and will be feeling the effects from those rising prices on our economy much more harshly.

No, as Ben Franklin would say, let’s make the stitch in time that saves nine.

Warped

I support a straight carbon tax, but I don’t think we will get one.

Jlw

The war in Iraq was ABOUT oil but not FOR oil. The distinction is very important. Oil creates money and money creates power. W/o oil, nobody would care what happened in Iraq. Saddam would be somebody like Robert Mugabe – a very bad man, but a local menace. Oil gives despots the wherewithal to be world class menaces.

Re your prediction on the price of gas – the biggest stimulus to alternative energy is the high price of gas. In 2006, investments in alternative energy soared. Wind power can be viable at the prices you talk about. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if we just had significantly higher gas prices, the government would not have to do anything at all – beyond its usual support for some basic research – to make Alternatives viable.
When prices go up, consumption of gas goes down; sales of hybrids and efficient cars soar; people insulate their homes; everybody uses energy more efficiently and investors look for opportunities in alternative energy.

One thing government COULD do is to convert its own fleets to alternative energy or electricity. Think of all the demand we could create if all the Postal vehicles, government cars etc ran on alternatives.

Stephen

Please see above to jlw.

I am for a carbon tax and then let the best solutions win out. I think we will be using more wind power, but we cannot be naive about it. Wind energy takes a lot of investment and takes up a lot of space. We cannot just count the turbines.

BTW – Texas is doing very well with wind power. We should use wind – where it makes sense. But not artificially push it into niches where it doesn’t belong.

C&J,

Oil gives despots the wherewithal to be world class menaces.

Still floating that Cheney myth? It’s been disproven over, over and over again. Sadaam was a local bully, his only threat was to the other oil despots in the region. It was mostly Saudi’s that committed 9-11, yet in the in the Gulf War we took the side of that despotic regime.

It’s the colonialists that are world class menaces.

I say, if we combine all the hot air coming from Obama and the liberals and a 6” hose (it would take at least a 6” hose) shoved up the butt of Barney Frank, there ought to be enough gas and hot air to last quite a while. If we mix with that all the booze left in Teddy’s bar, we would be set.

From the mundane to the ridiculous…trollish…

C+J-
The problem with that argument, I would say, is that any new direction in power generation is going to necessarily mean new infrastructure build-up. Whether it’s biofuels, wind, solar, or hope of hopes’s, economical nuclear fusion, new plants will have to be built, new feedstock operations created, new powerlines and even mechanisms for storage made available.

The good news, from what I’m seeing, is that this isn’t a technological problem. It’s merely an issue of economic and political will. My point is that it’s better we exercise it now, while we’re not facing the pinch that would come with higher energy prices, rather than waiting until we’re doing this with last-minute desperation.

Just remember the pinch the pre-2008 energy price increase had on us, without viable alternatives ready yet to take up the slack. This, I think, will take a coordinated energy policy to work, and thankfully, that seems to be what we have with the Obama Administration.

I would make a second point:

We’re getting our fossil fuels, right now, about as cheap as we’re ever going to get them. Even if I’m wrong, and new supplies are found, there will inevitably be a downturn, because that kind of energy concentrated and convenient as it might be, will always be finite.

Inevitably, of course, as economic laws dictate, the price will go up.

Wind, though? Solar? They are as bad as they will ever be. From this point forward, their trend is towards cheaper set-up costs, cheaper technology. Once we have invested in a new grid, and the technologies to store the energy, sun and wind will never become more expensive, more inaccessible. We will never have to worry about our supply being cut off by a cartel like OPEC.

More to the point, wind generation and solar are much more distributable. Materials technology is advancing to the point where roads, the sides of building will be able to generate electricity. There’s already home roofing material available that can do this.

The real question about alternative energy sources is not merely their present, but their future, which is much brighter than supposedly viable fossil fuels.

C&J,
Why the men would probably shot me for saying that in the future Americans may see manicured Forest and Woods. The fact that today’s experts call for burning down the woods to regulate the underbush can be contributed to Mans’ lack of understanding of how Nature uses compost and dung to create warm moist air and nutrients for the soil.

And as far as a National Power Grid and Power Plants. Seeing that Americans can either elect to invest in a modern system or keep psying to repair the 50 year old system builr by the parents and grandparents of the Youth of the 60’s and Silver Spoons of the 70’s.

Yet, lost in the debate by the Learned and Unlearned of Society is the fact that Commerce and Industry can help Labor and Management supply Government and Society with long term cost effective energy and help raise the Standard of Living for Americas’ Consumers, Small Business Owners, and Taxpayers.

So, I guess the question to Americans is do you want to continue to pay monthly bills for electricity and gasoline or use the Funds needed to build a Bigger Badder Power Grid to evety American has the opportunity to have an income by providing Government and Society Institutions with their energy needs?

Henry

I am certified as a burn manager in the State of Virginia. We do indeed have to burn some forest types to mimic natural processes and maintain healthy forests. There is a long history of fire in the woods. It regulated forests before man and after. The “virgin” forests our ancestors found in 1607 were well “managed” by native Americans, using fire.

Please read about fire in the woods here, here & here.

C&J,
As a certified burn manager can you tell me why the State and Federal Government won’t allow me to harvest the trees in the area to be burned by Man?

And why it may be a practice of the Learned to ser fires just because they have seen Nature do it, I doubt if any Institution of the Human Race can tell me where Nature is going to set the next fire or why Nature Destorys millions of grassland and trees a year.

No, Man has figured out how to keep their City Parks and Community Natural Trails healthy and clear of underbush; nevertheless, seeing that it would put the Millions of Americans on Unemployment as well as the Urban Youth a chance to spend a few weeks getting close to Nature gathering up Renewable Energy Source which would add additional resources to the Lunber Industry and lower the cost of building a home. I guess knowing it took the Establishment and Society over 500 years to relent to the fact the Earth is round. I suppose the proper path forward is to come up with a Theroy that can be proven by the rest of the so-called learned of Mankinds’ Government and Society.

For in the State of Virginia can you as a Certified Burn Manager state for the Record how much free electiry can be made from harvesting the underbush on Private and Public Forests and Woods? Than ask yourself how many Wildfires would be better controled or the buildings and lives saved if we keep using the Antient Methods of Man instead of letting Americas’ Youth explore how Foest Management can be used to help Americas’ Barons convince Americas’ Elected Officials that there is a Better Way Forward?

Murdock Dow Jones Inc. has announced that they will be building the largest solar power plant (4 megawatts) in the U.S. They are doing it to save money and help the Earth.