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Do you think the prize winning Dr. from Berkeley in Wonderland has a dog in the fight?  He might want Americans to get serious about a problem that cannot be proven to exist (that human activity is a prime mover of global climate variation that has been occuring for billions of years before the first human), but my guess is most if not all of us have more pressing needs, such as staying in our homes, feeding our children and accepting the facts of having to work until we die.  That's before carbon tax, diverting money into the ditch digging and ditch filling activities our government feels befit us. It is time to lead the world in things like genetic research, sustainable, managed population and citizenship control, wellness and fitness and a remaking of the education system that starts with teaching children how their every decision to do or not do something effects their future and our world, and instill a work and philosophical ethic that avoids waste, pursues progress, resists alarmism and other societal addictions, and turns us away from abusing the prosperity the greatest generation helped bring us.  Yes we have scary problems.  Life and death problems on a global scale.  But they have nothing to do with man made climate change.

Nuclear power, not wind energy offers the cleanest and least expensive source of reliable electricity for our future.  Even lefty NOVA from the Boston PBS affiliate knows it and said so several times in their recent episode called "The Big Energy Gamble."  Expensive, unreliable energy and the green collar jobs that would create it will not encourage the entire manufacturing sector of our nation to grow.  On the contrary. Wasting money, steel and intellectual capitol making windmills and trying use compressed air to affordably and safely store power is nothing short of insanity. The idea could solve the energy crisis all right.  By changing the lifestyles of 90% of Americans for the worse, making electricity unaffordable and thereby reducing demand. 

"Here lies the greatest society the world has known to date. May she rest in peace after a long struggle that resulted in a consumption economy exxacerbated by high level low moral character, unaffordable labor and finally unaffordable electrical energy."

Bigger government blatantly printing money just to burn it in the name of inert gas control is a tough road to a domestic manufacturing rennesaince.  What domestic product have we then created?  You can't sell "low CO2 air, but you sure can pay for it and then export it for free.

 

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member photo Um...last time I looked at the DOE web page, Dr. Chu is pro nuclear and is warming up to clean coal technology. Me thinks that some folks out there put their shorts on backwards this morning.
# Posted By William Norquay | 2/5/09 5:14 PM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo I guess you are right. He does have a clue and is showing signs of coming around to nuclear. I apologize for the tone of the previous post, and to Dr. Chu.
# Posted By Thomas Stacy | 2/6/09 6:17 PM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo i think you are right , i believe that makes no sense to even think of any kind of clean energy plants if it does not match the production leve or capacity . if we need three to four hundred nuclear plants to simply stay in pace or meet our present needs it is stupid of any one to think that wind or solar can met our energy needs , if they really want these so called energy technologies to be fruitful and benifitial to the grid , they have to change the direction of the intent , solar and wind can be mass produced and then feed the grill , these technologies can and will only benifit us for an atonomous industry . we need to push the autonomous electrical needs and find ways to mass produce these that is the only use they have right now , anyone who thinks planting millions of ugly wind turbines all over america
is only fooling themselves . it is sad that so much interes is being paid to this foolishness . the turbines that we use in the nuclear plants are the most productive in the industry , so we need to feed this monster , this is where we get the most bang for our buck , not even so called clean coal is useful .
# Posted By JAMES EDWARDS | 2/11/09 1:41 PM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo Mr. Stacy should not apologize for what he said. The facts are these:

* Abandoning Yucca Mountain and throwing away $6 Billion + is an Obama campaign promise.
* Obama said repeatedly that John McCain's modest proposal to encourage the construction of 35 nuclear plants by 2030 is "crazy."
* Obama, who apparently considers himself an expert in everything because he is a lawyer, states repeatedly that there is no solution for the "nuclear waste problem". This is in spite of the several solutions excellent solutions developed over the past 50 years, and mostly developed by the United States Government or through government funding. Obama can certainly have someone find him massive stacks of reading material on the subject from the archives that he now controls. And this is in spite of the obvious success of the French nuclear program, which includes the entire fuel cycle with reprocessing.

It is a joke to believe anything positive about this administration and energy. The offshore drilling opened up by the Bush Administration is about to be rescinded. Right now, you are no one in Washington unless you are a true believer in yuppie designer energy fantasies.

Talk about amateur hour. Everything has its application, but to sink a trillion dollars into yuppie designer energy that is intermittent at the exclusion of what works is nuts.

Here is the deal from Obama: "It is Howdy Doody Time! Hey gang, let's build green energy today. Let's build alternative energy that has Greenpeace's stamp of approval. We have no idea how much it is going to cost, but close your eyes and believe really hard that the price will come down and come down enough so that we don't bankrupt the country! Let's also believe really hard that the people in China, India and Japan will do the same thing so that they also have expensive energy, because if they don't, your daddies and mommies are going to have a lot of trouble finding money for the fancy electronic gizmos that you spoiled brats demand!

We will do all of this with Tooth Fairy money, which we will use at the same time to give everything to everyone for free, whether you do anything to work for it or not!"
# Posted By Edward Dykes | 2/11/09 2:27 PM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo While I would agree with the general trend of the post towards caution and not going overboard investing in things that obviously won't work. There remains the fact that something has to be done, some countries like France have gone the nuclear reactor way, but they don't store their nuclear waste, they export it. So, while it might be more realistic to think in terms of nuclear reactors, I think following the same value system, that you advocate, that there is also room for optimism and hope. Look at the amazing technological advances that have been made in recent years. There is no way of explaining how a 0.05W laser pointer can throw a beam of light that is visible at a distance of 2.5 miles. There is just no way to explain it and who knows a thing like that may lead to captive photovoltaic power generation and so on. Lets not get stuck with the second best lets aim for the best.
# Posted By Dilip James | 2/13/09 1:32 PM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo We need every nuclear facility that we can build, and some nuclear waste repository other than Yucca to store the more concentrated waste produced by GENIII and GENIV reactors. The Yucca depository is one of the greatest white elepants ever concieved by the DOE; the whole region is not geostable, and the stratification near the depository is far too permiable by groundwater to be used for high level radioactive waste storage. The DOE has yet to clean up the Hanford resevation - we do not need to bequeath more radioactive groundwater messes to future generations.
# Posted By William Norquay | 2/17/09 5:47 PM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo Nuclear = "clean energy"? Maybe not...........

http://www.watersmart.com/documents/ConvertingNucl...
# Posted By Joe Steiner | 3/13/09 7:45 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
 
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