It's too bad this whole thing has become mired in politics. We should always be striving to have cleaner factories, cleaner cars, etc, leading to a better environment. Instead we waste a lot time casting blame for political gain, rather than just doing things to make the planet better.
I agree with you Terry. But Gore's assertion that we need to be off fossil fuels in 10 years boggles the mind of a reasonable person.
No doubt Bill, it's just not practical. The funny thing is there is a segment of the population that can afford to do that and it's not the poor or the minorities that the Democrats traditionally pander to on all matters. Just like the when Democrats and Clinton forbade drilling in Anwar back in '92(I think), wouldn't it be nice to have that oil flowing into the US now? Sure it wouldn't make us independent of foreign oil, but we'd be a little less dependent. Now they use the same argument, it'll take 10years...well stupid if you'd said yes 10 or more years ago it'd be flowing now. I'm all for developing new sources of energy, be it electric, biofuel, hydrogen or whatever and there should be a govt/private industry partnership that is win/win. I hope I live long enough to see those rats in the middleast cut off from milking us dry, and having billions of barrels of oil they can't sell or give away.
Terry, have you been seeing the T Boone Pickens advertisements? I think he has some good points about alternate fuel sources! Windmills, solar and Nuclear along with drilling could change our whole relationships with the Arab oil countries.
Solar... Applied Materials is heavily into Solar development. We expect that revenue from Solar will outperform that of Silicon in a very short time.
Florida Power and Light has three solar projects that will all be online by 2009 or 2010 that will add 35 MW of solar and an additional 75 MW of combined solar and natural gas. Wind can be added in bigger increments. One of those big windmills generates as much as 4 MW alone. They also have a couple of nuclear units scheduled.
I'm very excited about T. Boone Pickens taking an interest in ending our foreign oil dependency. If more people with his resources would take on this cause, we wouldn't need to wait around for the government to do something. In addition everyone needs to be receptive to these alternate fuel methods even if that means giving up the keys to gas-guzzling 10-15mpg SUVs and trucks unless you have a verifiable need for such vehicles such as farms or having 12 kids. I also think more people need to become willing to carpool or get a bus pass. We have the power to make things better but the will is not there yet for most people.
The pain is not great enough at the moment, people are coping. Somebody told me that the worst thing that could happen for developing alternate sources of power for transportation would be a return to low cost gasoline.
It's going to take a combination of technologies, I think wind will never be a major player but still will be valuable. I hope that Solar becomes more and more efficient so that all of our roofs can be converted into mini power generating plants that reduce our need to buy from the big companies at a reasonable cost of course.
Here's an article where Pickens testified before Congress. Pickens Before Congress I haven't seen yet where he pushes drilling, but I think any reasonable energy plan has to include more drilling, nuclear, solar and wind. In fact I think using the ocean needs to be a part of it also. Terry, the thing about the wind farms is that one windmill can produce 4 megawatts and a windmill farm can produce hundreds of megawatts. A solar farm has a magnitude of 10 megawatts or 25 megawatts unless it is combined somehow with natural gas or something. I think wind farms may have more potential.
All this talk about alternative sources is good. We need to advance nuclear, wind, geothermal, and solar. However none of these will make us independant of foreign oil. These a-holes in congress forget that airplanes, deisel trucks and locomotives need OIL. They cannot use alternative fuel. We need to drill where the oil is. In just one area of the gulf there is a field estimated to contain 70 billion barrels. Shale is expensive to mine, but obtainable with horizontal drilling techniques and profitable at today's prices. DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW, PAY LESS.