…Cuba, China and Mexico are exploiting the Gulf for all it’s worth. This is another shameful case of, “Who’s side is Obama on?”

“While our energy developers struggle under…government restrictions, regulations and legal challenges, theirs draw upon huge national budgets… and function with environmental impunity in our coastal waters.”

– from an article titled “Disarmament In America’s Energy Security Battles” http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/18/energy-nuclear-climate-change-opinions-contributors-larry-bell_2.html

Not so bad for a small business or house with battery storage, but there is no way to store overproduction when the wind is blowing and hard to accommodate the lack of contribution when wind is down. The electric grid in the US (and the world) must run all of the time at even speed, so there are no surges that wreck the system or brown outs and black outs that do the same.

Decades ago one of my elderly Piney relatives lived in a shack in the Jersey pines that had a little windmill about 20 feet high and fed a couple car batteries. Off them, he ran ONE light bulb and black and white tv for the Fri. night fights. (He heated and otherwise illuminated by kerosene.)

Also, many decades ago a client of my father had a couple decent-sized windmills on his farm that ran his irrigation system and heating/cooling in his barn and chicken coops.

Regardless, we are NEVER going to run American energy on wind, biofuel, thermal, hydro, or solar, but we could employ nuclear for significant power contributions because France gets over 1/4 of its power from nuclear and you can tour the Black Forest in Germany and see three of four power plants within a few miles from the peaks of ruined castles. However, in 2000, the Green Party in GE helped pass a bill for GE to build no more nuclear plants, so GE has a power problem ahead of it in the not too distance future.

I’ve been preaching this for the last couple of years in NYC. If Republicans ever want to get more than a toe hold on anything in this state again the NY GOP needs to shatter they myth that Democrats protect the average person.

for the already, and soon to be fired Liberals. They can all line up behind the windmills and collectively blow at them. That should actually provide enough hot air to heat the whole of the eastern coastlines homes for the next year.

At some point.

and secretaries’ orders (Interior’s Gulf drilling ban) all need to be collated by Issa a vetted through the new Congress. No one knows all the damage these people are doing.

When George W/. became pres., he found Clinton had issued so many EOs that they filled 50,000 pages of the Fed. Register. Bush initially put a hold on the Clinton EO;s for 4 months until they were all reviewed and at the end of four months extended the period another four months.

He should have just issued his own to make Bubba’s null and void because they included the edict that anyone could ask for a translator in any public facility (police station, hospital, pub. school, yadda) and/or have all public forms provide in a language other than English, and he set aside millions of acres in the West and Southwest in the name of wilderness preservation and environmental political correctness. Some of those land grabs are still in litigation over a decade later.

start smaller and expand. You will find the correct direction and path as time goes on. Keep us informed of your progress. As I said, the more people out there willing to fight the March of the Progressives the better. Many will disagree on the methods and pathways, but, we all will eventually reach the same end goal, or touchdown, in Obama’s defeat.

Sound the alarm!

cap and trade and all of the green energy stuff falls is what I think Mark Levin calls Enviro-Statism. This is a serious failing in Mr. Chrisite. For anyone who hasn’t read Levin’s”Liberty and Tyranny,” I recommend that chapter in particular.

They’re an old, kind of crummy form of power generation, but just because they’re promoted by the same people as cap and trade doesn’t mean that they’re intrinsically related.

energy in general and let energy markets find their respective equilibriums?

Was this directed at me?

Sucks we will be watching instead of doing.

NT

.. in some cases – like to generate mechanical *potential*. (i.e. pump water uphill, raise a heavy weight, spin up a flywheel…)

The potential mechanical energy can then be used to generate electricity at the time and place it’s desired.

We could get the same effect charging up massive batteries, but .. last time I checked, we don’t have efficient enough battery technology to make this make sense.

Mew

and nothing matters.

In the short term, allowing for an efficient energy market benefits everyone, including attempts to garner investments in all sorts of energy-related technology.

Every physical resource on the planet is “limited” but that doesn’t stop us from relying on it. Water is limited. Oxygen is limited. The “limited” supplies of oil and natural gas on the planet have been as habitually wrong as the forecasts for mass starvation (Malthus) and climate catastrophe (the actor who played Sam on Cheers).

Nobody said one solution has to solve the entire problem, or that the entire problem has to be solved now. What we do know is that more drilling is a boon to our domestic economy, and makes us less vulnerable to price shocks and foreign malfeasance.

More drilling and more wells is a great way to keep the economy growing and prosperous. A growing and prosperous economy will solve the energy problems in due time.

Yes, refineries are an issue, but why would anyone invest in refineries if the ability to drill is suspect. Until our domestic policy is one of “you can trust the federal government not to stomp on future drilling activities” nothing in the domestic energy industry is capable of making much sense.

Yes, some time or the other we will run out of fossil fuels. But I want you to just check on old books and magazines. We have had a crisis in the oil industry since 1901 ! and yet more and more reserves are always found.

furthermore, you can make petroleum products from coal, and the United states has hundreds of years worth of the stuff.

We have also just discovered large pockets of natural gas.

Don’t fall for that doom and gloom stuff. CHEAP FOSSIL FUELS WILL BOOST THE ECONOMY! and that will give us the increasing technology and resources to transition away from fossil fuels eventually.

However, being poor and broke because of environmentalist and socialist policies will mean that we might not be able to transition.

Yes, some time or the other we will run out of fossil fuels. But I want you to just check on old books and magazines. We have had a crisis in the oil industry since 1901 ! and yet more and more reserves are always found.

furthermore, you can make petroleum products from coal, and the United states has hundreds of years worth of the stuff.

We have also just discovered large pockets of natural gas.

Don’t fall for that doom and gloom stuff. CHEAP FOSSIL FUELS WILL BOOST THE ECONOMY! and that will give us the increasing technology and resources to transition away from fossil fuels eventually.

However, being poor and broke because of environmentalist and socialist policies will mean that we might not be able to transition.

Refinery capacity is not the issue. The mix of crude oil feeding the refineries is 75% foreign sourced, so the issue is whether that’s a good thing and how much more dependent do we need to be before we do something about it.

There are many years left of oil. As it gets rarer it will get more expensive. As it gets more expensive other solutions will become more economically viable.

Oil will be replaced as a result of market forces. This transition will happen most smoothly, with less disruption to our daily lives, the farther the government stays from touching or influencing the issue.

80 years ago wind power was building as a rural electrification force. Then came government with Rural Electrification and practically murdered the industry at birth. We might well have a vibrant and ECONOMICAL wind industry barring that interference. Today wind is NOT economical. I priced it for my house as I am in a good wind area on a ridgetop. $120,000 to replace a $400 per month bill. You can’t amortize that. Solar is worse.

Drill here, drill there, drill everywhere, drill baby drill.
When it begins to run dry watch the FREE market solve the issue without any effort and without any input from the central planners.

That sounded like a good idea. But it took a combination of politicians and your tax dollars to experiment. The deeper in the swamp this whole idea got the harder it was to stop and turn back. Now you take a President like Obama who is steaking a lot of his credibility on “green jobs” – and you have a receipe for a calamity that was once only a failure.

Look no further than Al Gore and Ethenol.

Al Gore Reverses View on Ethanol, Blames Politics for Previous Support

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/22/report-al-gore-reverses-view-ethanol-blames-politics-previous-support/

HEADLINE – ten years from now -

Obama Reverses View on Green Jobs, Blames Politics for Previous Support.

would be an economic powerhouse instead of being on the verge of bankruptcy with an unemployment rate of over 20%.

One of the cleanest and richest countries in the world is Norway. They didn’t get that way by promoting energy solutions that don’t work. They got that way from North Sea oil.

They actually do create more jobs, but they create them for China. Like most other things, wind turbines aren’t made in the USA.