Gore’s Challenge To America

ok, I’m back from vacation and commenting again!

the way I see it is this. If we through all our means of getting energy into solar and wind power, this country will die. wind and solar cannot power everything. however, i do believe we could cut down on our energy by at least 30 percent, which is why it IS a good thing to do this.

The key here is to not throw all your money into one stock. we have to get our energy in multiple ways, nuclear, fossile fules, and green ways too.

so, when people say its unrealistic, they are right. how do you expect to get energy when there is no wind, or it isn’t sunny outside?

Oh yeah, I’m all about Al Gore and his ideas about telling me how to live - especially when he lives in a house that consumes twelve times what the average American’s does, flies around the country in private jets preaching at everyone, and then makes it all okay by buying ‘carbon offsets’. What a hypocrite.

Hang on to your wallets folks, if you like the way Social Security, the Post Office, and military procurment has worked out, you’ll love the new taxes, fees, surcharges, and pass through costs this pig’s gonna need. When are people gonna realize that taxes are the crack cocaine of politics?

No one needs your tax dollars to make this work. This country has enough greedy capitalists to find a way to make it work - if it’s really economically feasible. Do you see investors rushing in to build windmill farms? Nope, no McWindmills franchises out there yet. But you can bet when it makes sense to have one, they’ll be one. You see, that’s what capitilsim does - directs capital to the places that make the most sense.

And for some reason, I don’t hear Al Gore talking about the most effective form of energy there is (hint - it’s nuclear). Could that be because his carbon offset / carbon credit company won’t make out quite as well if we don’t all act like lemmings and start charging our cell phones with solar chargers and buying hybrid cars?

Nuclear energy is probably the only thing the French have done right in the last hundred years. But we have way too many tree huggers and environmentalist wackos to let new plants be built. I saw an article the other day about some scientists predicting huge increases in the incidence of kidney stones because of global warming. What asylum did these crackpots break out of?

Yeah, I’m all psyched about Al Gore and his plans for how I should live.

By the way, if you don’t like the price you pay at the pump, then don’t pay it. Ride a bike, work at home, don’t go on vacation - but that’s how capitalism also works. If there’s less demand, the price will eventually go down.

I’m for finding an energy source that is clean and cheap. But that is not what Al Gore is all about! He along with the UN intend to make Trillions off the population of the Earth with a false TAX using lies. If he is so smart, why doesn’t he team up with George Soros and develop this miracle new energy. Then he would get his Trillions in an honest manner, but Politicians can’t think like honest people.

Thanks for all of the comments and for sharing your thoughts. It is appreciated.

Welcome back George.

I just had a thought,

Al Gore preaching alternative energy is just like Hugh Hefner preaching chastity!

Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, (and Al Gore should be the drill bit).

Go to American Solutions.Com and sign the petition!

It’s a fact that over the years very many ideas for alternative sources of energy have been stifled, silenced, or outright killed by various vested interests, and especially by the Petromafia. It’s selfishness supreme of course, and blind stupidity. If Mr. Gore is able to insert the opening wedge into this dominance, then that is good. However, the first thing he will have to do is clean up his own act. In spite of all the optimizations and improvements he has made on his truly gross personal excess energy consumption, his own home still uses the energy equivalent of more than a hundred average homes. What is he doing with all those kilowatt hours, air conditioning the chicken coops? If he wants to coerce the people into tightening their belts, he should tighten his own belt first, otherwise he is in great peril of looking just exactly like an elitist.

Wow! It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one that just buys into the Al Gore gospel. I say “here, here” to Jim in Virginia and the other posts too. I couldn’t have said it better.

I’m really looking forward to hearing all the hype around T. Boone Pickens energy solutions. I just hope he turns out to be a person with genuine concern. I’m always skeptical of any rich, famous or political person claiming to want to help us all. Most of them only want to line their pockets under the guise of helping.

I have no problem with people making money from their entrepreneurship. That’s one of the things that makes our country great. Hopefully T. Boone Pickens is one of the genuine ones that is willing to put his money where his mouth is.

I have to correct my first post. I meant to say I DON’T buy into Al Gore’s new religion. Oops.

I am waiting for the day with Lockergnome goes back to technology and stays away from the political views (mainly left) that it spews out every day.

Hi all,
Again thanks for the comments.

Johnny,
I also post quite a bit on technology as well.

A Religion; that is exactly what it is, nothing more, nothing less.

I’m all for finding green energy alternatives, but as it currently stands, none of the ideas can solve all our energy needs 365 / 24 / 7.

Solar only helps during cloud free daylight hours, but from a carbon neutral stand point, requires large acreage of solar panels, that could be better spent growing food crops that at least temporarily remove CO2 from the environment.

Wind works great as long as the wind is blowing, but I have noticed that in the dead heat of summer, when the peak electrical demand is primarily air-conditioning, wind tends to be stagnant. Then you have the bird hugger’s that think birds aren’t smart enough to fly around the props. Those props do not go that fast, any bird stupid enough to get whacked deserves it. As for the NIMBY crowd, I would think, being green by allowing one in your back yard would earn you more community respect and property value than the supposed ugliness. I would put one up and sell my excess power to the power company, but I found out, the power companies and utility commissions only allow your excess generation to offset the power you use from the grid. They do not pay you, at least not in my state, until this changes, why would I want to if I cannot I offset the cost of building such a solution by selling excess capacity?

Nice to hear Geo-thermal mentioned, however, we cannot get permits to drill for oil, much less to drill deep enough to get enough heat to do any good for energy production. Only viable in regions where the thermal activity is close to the surface. Do a little reading on what is called “Carnot’s cycle”. Basically you can only obtain energy transfer efficiency proportional to the temperature difference between the heat source and work output. All remaining energy must be dissipated someplace or the efficiency drops to zero, (put that in your global warming pipe and smoke it).

The best all round solution is, as stated above, Nuclear. There is very little waste when a breeder design is used. I once read in an old DOE book (1950’s i believe, I’ll have to get the ISBN) about how a breeder reactor based on thorium could have an extremely low waste output, because thorium can be made to cycle in such a way that the decayed thorium is breed back into usable thorium. Only the atoms that are allowed to decay too far before being recycled have to become waste output.

The carbon credit / offset false tax idea, what a joke, if you want to neutralize your carbon foot print, why pay some company that is only able to invest a portion of what you pay to go towards planting trees and green technology investments. Do it your self! At least if you invest in a green company, and it make money, you will get a share of the profit. With Gore’s company a large portion of the money will be lost in bureaucracy and will not give you any ROI.

The whole idea of carbon credits is flawed:

1. Everything and everybody on this planet has an impact on how carbon is absorbed and released. Carbon is part of our life cycle, all we can do is make smart decisions on how carbon is absorbed and later released. I doubt that what is being proposed takes into account every little detail to account for the carbon. After all we do not know everything. For example: We call Oil and Gas fossil fuels because they were formed from the decaying remains of past animal and vegetation. Yes, burning fossil fuels releases carbon in the form of CO2, but that carbon was originally absorbed in the form of CO2 converted to sugars in vegetation, and then consumed by animals, on up the food chain until being converted to their current form by years of planetary changes and pressure. We burn the fuel; the CO2 is again consumed by vegetation, and so on. The best thing environmentalism can do is push that we keep larger areas of vegetation growing, as long as it is used in a way that traps the carbon in ways that it can continue the cycle. Simply allowing grass to grow and die, does not do as much good for the carbon cycle as say growing food or trees that can be eaten, or used to build houses or furniture.

I know CO2 is considered a green house gas because it absorbs IR energy and emitting IR energy is the primary way that an object in space has for dissipating excess heat (it is called black body radiation). However, take a look at our moon, without an atmosphere, the temperature ranges from extremely hot in the sunlight to extremely cold in the dark. Whose to say that CO2 isn’t partly why life is able to exist on this planet. But if global temperature could be attributed to CO2 alone, then explain why desert area’s cool so rapidly at night? Many of the man-made global-warming nay-sayer’s point to water vapor as being a much bigger green house gas that CO2. The daily temperature extremes in desert areas would seem to support that assertion. Winter nights under cloud cover remain warmer than the same conditions with a clear sky also suggests water vapor is a bigger player.

2. Carbon dioxide is one of those gases that when released into the atmosphere mixes and spreads to cause a global percentage change. Carbon credits do nothing if they are not enforced equally and globally. As long as certain countries are exempt, what is to stop industry from simply moving operations to avoid the stupidity tax? You think that gas prices are causing turmoil now, wait until all employers decide it isn’t worth continuing to operate from this country.

If a particular business process involves using energy or other carbon inducing activities, where would you prefer that company to be located? The technology in an industrialized nation is more likely to have worked out ways to minimize the kinds and type of pollution generated, than the same operations done in places that have yet to embrace certain technologies. So why impose a tax that would make a company want to relocate to areas where they do not need to be as environmentally conscious? Wouldn’t tax credits encouraging the development and use of greener technologies make more sense? A tax only takes away money that could be better spent towards developing the greener technologies.

3. If carbon credits become a mandatory tax, then it would become illegal to pursue greener technologies, since doing so would then be tax evasion.

4. (…)

This whole business is sold under the banner that we must save the planet. The planet will still be here. We have and can invent technologies to continue living on this planet until we as a race manage to destroy our selves. But short of the magnetic poles becoming neutral and allowing the solar winds to strip away our atmosphere, or the sun going supernova, the planet will still be here and will likely resume supporting life long after we humans are gone. Is any of this going to make a hill of beans difference in how long we humans stay on this planet? How much misery are you willing to impose on your fellow humans for something we ultimately do not understand and cannot control? I’m all for doing what we can, when we can do it, but punishing those who are in a position to actually do something about the problem, does not make any sense at all.

Politicians: Grow a brain and use it for more than a hat holder for once. Keep it simple stupid (K.I.S.S.). It will be free enterprise that solves these problems not stupid governmental mandates. Mandates will only server to extend and exaggerate the problem.

Exo

Hello Exothermic Reaction,
Thank you for the in depth comment. It is appreciated.

Ron,
I ride my bike everywhere in town, have a small solar panel for hot water, and drive a Corolla (~40mpg) - and have tried to be green since the 60’s. Al Gore’s green is money, I’m sorry to say. And Jim is right about the government being inept at nearly everything they do (check out the recent Senate Restaurant debacle - they can’t even run a small business! No wonder Mr. Bush has a positive rating of 29 and the senate a rating of 11). Al’s plan for the government to have a moon-shot energy program is lunacy. While the ‘housing crisis’ was brewing, they were having heated debates on steroids in baseball. They fail Economics 101 by saying supply does not affect price when it comes to oil. Sigh.
China and other nations like gwr’s and GcFRs fourth generation pebble-bed reactors (wiki?) which have no possibility of melt-down and little transuranic waste. Yeah, nuclear could help us. From the time the Enviro-Nazis give permission to the time Westinghouse and others have electricity pumping into the grid is nearly a half-million seconds. Getting oil out of Baaken or ANWR or offshore would take as much as 130,000 seconds. The key is permission. So as the USA slouches out of first place, I expect us to keep ignoring these resources and our “leaders” to keep getting in the way or halting progress. That is what they seem to do best.
As the old joke goes, ‘ if the opposite of pro is con, what’s the opposite of progress?’
Ron, most folks work better with carrots than sticks. Maybe our leaders could actually DO themselves what they mandate us to do, and gain credibility? Then start creating real incentives for private enterprises to make LED lighting, carbon fiber safe cars, myt or cyclone-steam engines, and other energy efficient products; AND encourage rather than obstruct sources of energy such as algae-oil, startech’s plasma-trash, and a million-host of others. By coaching and creating incentives rather than acting like slavemasters, they could actually be seen as leaders.
I don’t trust big government, and I don’t trust “free-enterprise” without checks and balances. ‘If men were angels, we would need no government.’ I keep praying we will just survive them. Meanwhile, unlike Al Gore and all the powermasters, I will keep composting (carbon sequestration?) leaves, planting trees, using a fan rather than air conditioning, and generally being authentic — all the while feeling pity for our sorry lot of misleaders.