BP Solar turns profit

[Dinner]

Microwaved Iraqi, anyone?

[Az]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Just wait until a plane flies into the microwave beam... it'd beam like microwaving aluminum foil, except a BAZILLION TIMES BIGGER.

...

I want to see that

Not really likely to happen with modern avionics.

[RGBVideo]

Re: op: I think this is a temporary condition, it'll turn back to red after oil prices will fall to decent levels once again. Oil will eventually run out, though...

what about places like Mali putting miles and miles of that stuff in the desert. sub saharan africa could power the entire continent, with their 364 sunny days a year.

Too much corruption, too many greedy bloodthirsty Africans who multiply like bunnies. There's the whole thing of transporting that energy across a dozen nations to cities which actually consume electricity, you know.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Az
Not really likely to happen with modern avionics.

[Dinner]

Since this is the unofficial Bush energy plan thread I thought I'd post this businessweek article. I do like Bush's plan to expand nuclear power but Businessweek has some extremely harsh words for Bush's plan calling it window dressing which won't deal with any fundimental issues.

BusinessWeek Online

Bush Is Blowing Smoke on Energy

By John Carey
2 hours, 22 minutes ago

n Apr. 27,



"Our dependence on foreign energy is like a foreign tax on the American people," he declared in a speech to a gathering of small-business owners and entrepreneurs in Washington. What the country needs is "a national strategy," Bush said. "And the most important component of our strategy is to recognize the transformational power of technology. By harnessing the power of technology, we're going to be able to grow our economy, protect our environment, and achieve greater energy independence."


Powerful sentiments, indeed. But the words are largely hollow. Sadly, the plan Bush proposed would do little to increase existing supplies of oil, gas, or electricity, or decrease domestic demand for energy --the two steps that would really make a difference. Charges Frank O'Donnell, head of Clean Air Watch, a Washington-based environmental group: "The new Presidential energy plan seems mainly to be a public-relations stunt aimed at trying to reverse some of the latest polls, which show a growing public discontent with high gas prices -- and the President."





LOW PRIORITY.

Of course, environmentalists such as O'Donnell can usually be counted on to bash GOP policies. But in this case the criticism is deserved. Plenty of evidence indicates that the White House's sudden interest in energy policy is driven far more by politics than substantive policymaking.

To understand why, recall the last Presidential election. Democratic candidate John Kerry struck a nerve when he called for reducing American dependence on Middle Eastern oil, saying that "we should rely in American ingenuity and not the Saudi Royal family."

Yet, Kerry failed to turn energy into a significant policy issue in the race. And the White House learned a lesson: You can score political points by talking about energy policy -- without ever needing to follow through. It has been widely reported that Vice-President Dick Cheney privately told top Washington energy-policy wonks after the 2004 election that the Administration would put the issue low on its priority list for 2005.


more......

http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20050428/bs_bw/nf200504289012db045

[Dinner]

No one is interested in the fact that Businessweek, a conservative business journal, has come out saying Bush's energy plan is worthless? Businessweek came right out and said it won't amount to anything and is just to give Bush the appearance of doing something as his poll numbers have sunk with the rise in gas prices. Last polls show low 40s to upper 30s for Bush.

[Dinner]

The Economist, another conservative business magazine, is also coming out against Bush's lack of an energy policy.

Can America ever kick the oil habit? Not if Congress and George Bush have their way, but the ground is shifting

FOR six decades, one of the few fixed stars in American foreign policy has been the special relationship with Saudi Arabia. Bluntly put, America has offered military protection to the Saudi royal family in return for the free flow of relatively cheap oil from the desert kingdom. Every president since Franklin Roosevelt has stuck by this deal, and the Saudis have mostly done so as well. Within the OPEC oil cartel, the Saudis are usually the voice of moderation.

Alas, things seem to have gone wrong on George Bush's watch. Despite his family's famous closeness to the Saudi rulers, oil prices have shot past $50 a barrel, up from barely $10 in 1998. The price of gasoline, which Americans still expect to cost just a buck a gallon, now touches $3 in some places.

That explains why the mood was not so cheerful when Mr Bush met Crown Prince Abdullah, who in effect rules Saudi Arabia, in Texas this week. As petrol prices have gone up, Mr Bush's popularity ratings have declined. Uncharacteristically, before he met the prince, Mr Bush publicly pointed a finger of blame at the Saudis for the high prices. Much less publicly, the Saudis are still smarting from the “demonisation” of their country since the attacks of September 11th.

The two leaders tried to patch things up in Crawford. The Saudis promised to raise oil output sharply, pledging to spend $50 billion over the next five years to that end. Mr Bush cooed about the special relationship, and the two issued a communiqué pledging “to continue their co-operation, so that the oil supply from Saudi Arabia will be available and secure.”

So all's well with the Axis of Oil? Not quite. This is because the symbiotic relationship between the world's largest oil consumer and its largest producer is under attack from a surprising corner. Complaints from greens about cheap oil, Bushphobic wailings from the Michael Moore brigade and neo-conservative worries about Saudi terrorism are all well established. But the axis is now being challenged by an increasing number of pragmatists from the centre-right of American politics.

Several independent groups have strongly urged America to move away from oil. The Rocky Mountain Institute, a think-tank concerned with energy efficiency, argues in a newish study partly funded by the Pentagon that America can end its oil imports with aggressive adoption of biofuels, radically more efficient cars and other related policies. The National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP), a bipartisan panel of energy heavyweights, recently made the case for boosting domestic energy sources, and also advocates a clever “cap and trade” approach to tackling greenhouse gases.

The most stinging attack came in a recent letter to Mr Bush signed by two dozen politically influential figures organised by the Energy Future Coalition, a lobbying group. These folk, an odd mix of national-security hawks and die-hard greens, argue that “dependence on imported petroleum poses a risk to our homeland security and economic well-being.” These worthies want to see “clean, domestic petroleum substitutes and increased efficiency in our transport system.”

One of the “geo-greens” (to use the moniker given them by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times) is Boyden Gray, an influential conservative who served as the White House counsel for Mr Bush's father. “I don't even like the word green!” he bristles. It is not greenery but post-September 11th fears that led men like him to join hands with the tree-huggers. In a thinly veiled reference to Saudi Arabia, he explains that he worries about “the corrupting influence of oil receipts that end up in terrorist hands”.

Robert McFarlane, who was Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, also signed the letter. He worries about the possibly devastating impact of terrorist attacks on oil infrastructure inside Saudi Arabia. He joined the greens because “we share a common interest in weaning ourselves off foreign oil.”

So is Congress rushing to embrace innovative ideas to kick the oil habit? Certainly not. In fact, the House of Representatives has just done the opposite by passing an energy bill stuffed full of subsidies for the oil-and-gas business. It includes giveaways for ethanol (a pretty ungreen petrol additive popular with corn farmers) and cheap catastrophic insurance for the nuclear industry. Meanwhile, it does nothing to close a loophole that allows sports-utility vehicles and Hummers to escape fuel-economy standards.

This bill is similar to last year's failed energy bill, which itself was based on the recommendations of the Cheney energy task force of 2001. But the House managed to add so much more pork—including a $2 billion giveaway to oil companies for deep-water research—to the bill that even the White House now criticises it as excessively costly. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, estimates that the full cost could be more than $90 billion (see chart). The bill now goes to the Senate.

Mr Bush's idea of reform may be a little more sophisticated than Congress's, but not much. His main priority is simply to get a bill through. He has asked Republican leaders for a final bill by August. On April 27th, he even offered the Senate some new sops to the oil-and-gas lobby in the name of “energy independence”. He wants to help buyers of cars with cleaner-burning diesel engines, utilities building nuclear plants and energy companies building refineries or “liquefied natural gas” facilities (all half-measures or worse).

Some geo-greens think the energy bill will fall apart. That would, in theory, allow the politicians to redraft a better bill—perhaps even one that included sensible provisions on auto-fuel efficiency, mandatory carbon curbs and so on. A few years ago, such reforms would have found scant support. Now they may find unexpected allies. For instance, the farm lobby is getting gradually more eager to plant windmills instead of profitless crops. The energy behemoth may still largely be committed to cheap oil; but there are a growing number of small technology companies looking for alternatives who resent the giveaways to Old Oil.

James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, envisions a geo-green coalition of “tree-huggers, do-gooders, sod busters and cheap hawks” pushing for energy independence. The oddest couple of all—Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute and Dan Becker of the deeply verdant Sierra Club—have just issued a joint call for a radically different energy policy: a market-based, “zero subsidy” energy bill. If such coalitions really spring forth, then American energy policy, and the Axis of Oil, would be turned on its ear.

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3914915

[Dinner]

The Economist, another conservative business magazine, is also coming out against Bush's lack of an energy policy.

Can America ever kick the oil habit? Not if Congress and George Bush have their way, but the ground is shifting

FOR six decades, one of the few fixed stars in American foreign policy has been the special relationship with Saudi Arabia. Bluntly put, America has offered military protection to the Saudi royal family in return for the free flow of relatively cheap oil from the desert kingdom. Every president since Franklin Roosevelt has stuck by this deal, and the Saudis have mostly done so as well. Within the OPEC oil cartel, the Saudis are usually the voice of moderation.

Alas, things seem to have gone wrong on George Bush's watch. Despite his family's famous closeness to the Saudi rulers, oil prices have shot past $50 a barrel, up from barely $10 in 1998. The price of gasoline, which Americans still expect to cost just a buck a gallon, now touches $3 in some places.

That explains why the mood was not so cheerful when Mr Bush met Crown Prince Abdullah, who in effect rules Saudi Arabia, in Texas this week. As petrol prices have gone up, Mr Bush's popularity ratings have declined. Uncharacteristically, before he met the prince, Mr Bush publicly pointed a finger of blame at the Saudis for the high prices. Much less publicly, the Saudis are still smarting from the “demonisation” of their country since the attacks of September 11th.

The two leaders tried to patch things up in Crawford. The Saudis promised to raise oil output sharply, pledging to spend $50 billion over the next five years to that end. Mr Bush cooed about the special relationship, and the two issued a communiqué pledging “to continue their co-operation, so that the oil supply from Saudi Arabia will be available and secure.”

So all's well with the Axis of Oil? Not quite. This is because the symbiotic relationship between the world's largest oil consumer and its largest producer is under attack from a surprising corner. Complaints from greens about cheap oil, Bushphobic wailings from the Michael Moore brigade and neo-conservative worries about Saudi terrorism are all well established. But the axis is now being challenged by an increasing number of pragmatists from the centre-right of American politics.

Several independent groups have strongly urged America to move away from oil. The Rocky Mountain Institute, a think-tank concerned with energy efficiency, argues in a newish study partly funded by the Pentagon that America can end its oil imports with aggressive adoption of biofuels, radically more efficient cars and other related policies. The National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP), a bipartisan panel of energy heavyweights, recently made the case for boosting domestic energy sources, and also advocates a clever “cap and trade” approach to tackling greenhouse gases.

The most stinging attack came in a recent letter to Mr Bush signed by two dozen politically influential figures organised by the Energy Future Coalition, a lobbying group. These folk, an odd mix of national-security hawks and die-hard greens, argue that “dependence on imported petroleum poses a risk to our homeland security and economic well-being.” These worthies want to see “clean, domestic petroleum substitutes and increased efficiency in our transport system.”

One of the “geo-greens” (to use the moniker given them by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times) is Boyden Gray, an influential conservative who served as the White House counsel for Mr Bush's father. “I don't even like the word green!” he bristles. It is not greenery but post-September 11th fears that led men like him to join hands with the tree-huggers. In a thinly veiled reference to Saudi Arabia, he explains that he worries about “the corrupting influence of oil receipts that end up in terrorist hands”.

Robert McFarlane, who was Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, also signed the letter. He worries about the possibly devastating impact of terrorist attacks on oil infrastructure inside Saudi Arabia. He joined the greens because “we share a common interest in weaning ourselves off foreign oil.”

So is Congress rushing to embrace innovative ideas to kick the oil habit? Certainly not. In fact, the House of Representatives has just done the opposite by passing an energy bill stuffed full of subsidies for the oil-and-gas business. It includes giveaways for ethanol (a pretty ungreen petrol additive popular with corn farmers) and cheap catastrophic insurance for the nuclear industry. Meanwhile, it does nothing to close a loophole that allows sports-utility vehicles and Hummers to escape fuel-economy standards.

This bill is similar to last year's failed energy bill, which itself was based on the recommendations of the Cheney energy task force of 2001. But the House managed to add so much more pork—including a $2 billion giveaway to oil companies for deep-water research—to the bill that even the White House now criticises it as excessively costly. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, estimates that the full cost could be more than $90 billion (see chart). The bill now goes to the Senate.

Mr Bush's idea of reform may be a little more sophisticated than Congress's, but not much. His main priority is simply to get a bill through. He has asked Republican leaders for a final bill by August. On April 27th, he even offered the Senate some new sops to the oil-and-gas lobby in the name of “energy independence”. He wants to help buyers of cars with cleaner-burning diesel engines, utilities building nuclear plants and energy companies building refineries or “liquefied natural gas” facilities (all half-measures or worse).

Some geo-greens think the energy bill will fall apart. That would, in theory, allow the politicians to redraft a better bill—perhaps even one that included sensible provisions on auto-fuel efficiency, mandatory carbon curbs and so on. A few years ago, such reforms would have found scant support. Now they may find unexpected allies. For instance, the farm lobby is getting gradually more eager to plant windmills instead of profitless crops. The energy behemoth may still largely be committed to cheap oil; but there are a growing number of small technology companies looking for alternatives who resent the giveaways to Old Oil.

James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, envisions a geo-green coalition of “tree-huggers, do-gooders, sod busters and cheap hawks” pushing for energy independence. The oddest couple of all—Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute and Dan Becker of the deeply verdant Sierra Club—have just issued a joint call for a radically different energy policy: a market-based, “zero subsidy” energy bill. If such coalitions really spring forth, then American energy policy, and the Axis of Oil, would be turned on its ear.

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3914915

[Provost Harrison]

And Chernobyl

But I think that nuclear power is becoming a must, especially if we want to be able to power electric forms of transportation without burning fossil fuels to generate the electricity in the first place.

Solar and wind energy would be good too...the Chinese seem to be making big strides in the use of eco-friendly electrical sources.

Now lets all hope for fusion in the near future

[Az]

the Chinese seem to be making big strides in the use of eco-friendly electrical sources.

Hydro, yes, but they burn evermore fossil fuels, as well.

[Urban Ranger]

The problem with Bush's plan is it igores efficiency - 5% of the world's population using 20%+ energy. Surely there's a lot of room for savings in there.

A lot of energy can be saved if you just increase efficiency, but a lot of US citizens don't seem to want that.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Az

the Chinese seem to be making big strides in the use of eco-friendly electrical sources.

Hydro, yes, but they burn evermore fossil fuels, as well.

Yes, that is true also

[Dinner]

It's true, Bush has effectively ignored efficency and mass transit. If Bush was honest he would admit that oil prices are rising because the world keeps consuming ever more oil. We can drill up the last bits of alaska and we can refine more oil so there is a bit more competition but that's not a long term solution.

CAFE hasn't been touched since 1988 mostly because oil and auto companies have lobbied the hell out of Congress. We need to raise CAFE standards and we need to make trucks part of that equation since currently SUVs, trucks, and vans aren't included in the equation. If we did that then we'd actually start using less gas. We also need to push disiel since we can get 20% better fuel economy that way and hybid vehicles are now hitting the market the production levels are still very low (about 0.05% of the market). We need big tax breaks for hybrids so that the timid automakers will feel confident about the hybrid market and will ramp up production.

Finally we need more mass transit then just the odd bus line. Mass transit only works in big cities but there are lots of big cities in America and most don't even have a light rail or subways line. Those that do don't have very extensive systems and that's a problem. We could be moving a whole lot of people around in a much more efficient manner and removing a whole lot of traffic from clogged freeways but the politicians don't feel like it.

[Provost Harrison]

It is absolutely essential that more mass transit and efficiency measures are used...not just for the sake of the environment in this case but because of the economic effect such oil price rises are having on us all...it's becoming very difficult...

[Provost Harrison]

Café standards? Yes, very important and all, but surely we need to stick to the subject of fuel efficiency and not threadjack?