I’m not so sure about T. Boone Pickens’ wind farms in the Texs panhandle, as has been noted the wind comes and goes.

But the sun’s out pretty much every day in some places. We have a pre-existing line drawn in this country, and it’s drawn pretty closely to where the sun is mostly visible.

A good step would be to require every building in the country along or south of route 40 to be fitted with solar panels. You start, obviously, with the government (at all levels) buildings: courthouses, city halls, jails, firehouses, schools, libraries, police stations, highway departments, airports, departments of health, etc. Thousands of buildings go off the grid right there.

Next step is give businesses some tax breaks to live up to the newly-imposed requirement that they do the same: every factory, every office building, every Wal-Mart, every shoe-store – off the grid.

Then tax breaks for individuals, and we retrofit every house, and mandate that every new one built be equipped with solar panels.

Building appropriate storage for all the power produced would be difficult, so you might not even bother with that. But: if you can get a third of the country off the grid for a twelve hour sunny day, every sunny day; then even if they all go back on the grid at sundown you’ve still saved an enormous amount of oil that didn’t get burned generating electricity, and didn’t pollute anything in the process of being burned.

You could start doing this this afternoon.

http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/atomic/

I believe that…I believe that the report was about individual home type windmills. They’re selling those now to put on your roof. In fact, I received some of those postcard advertising packages that offered a new version called an eggbeater or some such. Apparently the originals had something like 6 ft diameter blades, and the new ones about only about 3 ft.

We (my husband’s family) own some land in Colorado. It’s in the landbank at the moment, but we were approached by someone wanting to lease about one acre for a windmill to generate power. The terms were good, so apparently _someone_ thinks they’ll make a profit. It could be just the incentives the government will pay, but since they’re talking about each mill costing in the range of 1mil, I doubt it. It looks like actual construction is several years out – in fact, I think all we contracted for at this point is an option. I don’t know for sure…

The more I think about it, the more I believe that your responses in #12 and #13 are close to the truth.

Many (not all) of the people who voted for Obama did so because they were not willing to stop and consider facts and engage in serious reasoning. If I had a dime for every Obama voter who explained his or her support for him by saying “Well, we just need some change, I think” I’d be able to bail out the auto industry and spare the American taxpayer from that expense.

I have to say this: I have this tight feeling in my stomach. I don’t want the Obama presidency to be a disaster because it will mean America will suffer. I’m not hoping for him to be a failure.

But when reasoning and facts are considered optional or viewed as impediments to “progress” by (guess who?) the progressives, then how do we keep from sinking into darkness?

I don’t know. I would love to think that people could be inspired by reminding them of the joys and responsibilities of lost “freedoms” but I suspect that the term “responsibilities” is being co-opted by those progressives to mean something different from what most of us here think it means.

Deana

I read after to 9-11 that reactor facilities are built to sustain direct 600 mph hits by fully fueled 747s without being breached.

I’ll head off and see if I can provide a reliable link.

Even if that level of reactor sturdiness turns out to be true, I’m certain that raising the specter of 9-11 is one of those counter-arguments to nukes we’ll be running into routinely as the debate over power sources heats up.

Dilemma:

The nuclear net-energy study suggests that if there were enough nuclear fuel, perhaps, a massive nuclear energy construction program MIGHT result in a sufficient quantity of net energy to power the U.S. economy at the year 1997 level of economic output.

However, there has always been the risk of catastrophic accidents (internal system failure) associated with nuclear-power systems (Three-Mile-Island, and Chernobyl, as examples.) There are claims that new “Fail-Safe” technologies are around the corner (for example, pebble-bed reactors.) Such technology may minimize the risk of internal failure, but may not reduce the risk of externally-caused disruption.

September 11, 2001 changed all this and it would seem that it would be unwise to construct thousands of new nuclear plants that are likely to be vulnerable to terrorist intervention at some level.

Should large Wind systems be installed as a matter of national policy?

Certainly, it seems more rational to use some of the remaining fossil endowment to do this rather than spend it on high-risk military conquests whose goal is to dominate the distribution of the remaining petroleum endowment.

However, even if wind machines were constructed everywhere it is practical to erect wind machines in the United States they would only be able to provide a pitifully small amount of the net energy compared to that needed to power the industrial economy of the United States even at the 1997 level.</
http://www.mnforsustain.org/windpower_tyner_g_net_energy.htm

Here’s a website that lists the hidden costs of wind since there are currently large subsidies to wind production. It is obvious that wind will only be supplemental and that’s evident by Obama’s plan to provide 25% of electric production from renewables. That may be the maximum supplement possible given the intermittent nature.

http://www.mnforsustain.org/windpower_schleede_costs_of_electricity.htm

Break the global warmists into three groups.
Those that believe we’re causing global warming, but are pragmatists.
And those that are believers, but also believe that capitalism is dead or dying. These folks don’t care what the effect of green energy policy on the economy, in fact they hope it takes the economy down.
And the majority of folks that have their head in the sand, and hope everything turns out all right.

We need to appeal to the former, which means the argument must always include first the move toward renewables, and additional fossil fuel production as the bridge, since the 10 or 15 year transition figure cited by the green energy crowd isn’t realistic.

They are the perfect targets of propaganda, Danny. However, I believe that anyone with a sufficient skill level in the arts of propaganda can convince these people of anything: whether you use what they want to believe or what they fear to believe.

Just like when Europe discarded Christianity, their people started converting to Islam faster and faster. In a vacuum, anybody new that comes in will fill it. What this means is that you had better put up a contest.

These people are just tools; they will believe whatever they are told is true. However, we are operating at a propaganda disadvantage since the enemy’s propaganda got to them first. We will require a psychological shock of sufficient level that it will break through the mental defenses erected by the propaganda of our opponents.

OUr disadvantage is that honest people don’t tend to like using deception or propaganda. People want the moral high ground if they can get it. They prefer it and those that believe in God or religion will prefer it even more, even though the fake liberals are lying on this score.

Unless people come up with a sufficient counter-propaganda campaign (like a campaign in war), it will be hard to turn people to our cause and disaggregate them from their allies.

The Sunnis of Al Anbar, for example, needed the shock of seeing AQ operate before they started to change their minds or listen to us. This, however, was not planned by the US military. It was just something that happened because the US military could not secure Iraq. I believe that you can get a better solution out of things if you don’t wait until they implode.

With the election of Obama, however, we are forced into waiting for the Sunnis to change their minds. Bush may have been saved by Petraeus in Iraq, but nobody saved Bush in America.