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Solar Power Eliminates Utility Bills in U.S. Home
skyhawker writes "Yahoo! News is running an article about a New Jersey home that uses solar power to provide 100% of its energy needs, including fuel for the owner's hydrogen fuel cell-powered automobile. From the article: 'Strizki runs the 3,000-square-foot house with electricity generated by a 1,000-square-foot roof full of photovoltaic cells on a nearby building, an electrolyzer that uses the solar power to generate hydrogen from water, and a number of hydrogen tanks that store the gas until it is needed by the fuel cell. In the summer, the solar panels generate 60 percent more electricity than the super-insulated house needs. The excess is stored in the form of hydrogen which is used in the winter -- when the solar panels can't meet all the domestic demand -- to make electricity in the fuel cell.'"
A more likely scenario is that Iran or Syria acquires nuclear weapons and your son will be called to protect the right for Israel to exist. When that happens you will probably be glad that 10 years prior to that somebody else's son fought to secure a stable military infrastructure in Iraq.
I'm pretty much certain if Oil was the real problem it would be a lot cheaper in the long run to just harvest shale.
The cost of the Iraq war so far has been about 1.4 billion barrels of oil per year. Pre-war Iraq only produced around 730 Million barrels a year (A little less than they do today). Even if 100% of the oil was consumed by the US for absolutely free it would take 2 years of oil production to recoup the costs for every year we have been in Iraq.
Considering that US oil consumption is about 7 billion barrels a year it's kind of hard to believe that Iraq is all about oil.
The only reason Iran and Syria don't overwhelm Israel is because they would surely be destroyed by Israel's nuclear weapons. The reason Iran and Syria would want nuclear weapons is not so they can immediately launch them at Israel, but so that they can create a situation of mutually assured destruction and then wage conventional warfare (which they have much better odds of winning).