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Solar Power On the White House
CartaNova writes "The Obama administration has announced plans to install solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the White House. The Carter administration had previously installed a 32-panel solar system at the White House — which was quietly removed during Reagan's tenure in office. Solar hot water and Photovoltaic firms had been campaigning on this issue for some time."
I don't think it's "Americans don't like solar power." Most Americans I know (liberals and conservatives) like solar power. It's cool technology, and getting free energy from the sun sounds like such a good deal.
If you hear about Americans objecting to solar power, it's probably objecting to the government subsidies for installing solar panels. Conservatives and Libertarians tend to support the idea that we should focus on making the technology cheaper, then people will install it on their own, rather than subsidizing it.
Qxe4
Yes there is a extremely good reason we could care less about solar and especially solar electrical power.
I could care more.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I suspect it's mostly a reference to the summary, which used coloring words such as "quietly" in regard to Reagan while simultaneously omitting any mention of Bush.
The solar heating panels were installed on the roof of the West Wing, but removed during Ronald Reagans presidency in 1986, after the energy crisis and worries about dependence on foreign oil had subsided.
So, basically Regan thought the best way to encourage Americans to go nuts with gasoline again was to take the solar panels down? Huh? Why do it "quietly" then? I'm assuming he thought consumers were too dumb to realize that solar panels were not really an alternative to oil.
Shortsighted for multiple reasons. I mean, surely he didn't think dependence on foreign oil had been solved forever? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, this was Regan after all.
More like, individuals pursuing their own goals will do a better job of allocating resources than a pack of bureaucrats trying to manage the economy. Your characterization of the free market as some kind of miracle betrays your own ignorance.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think liberals feel that we should do nothing, and that Government Jesus will come from the sky and solve all problems in one fell swoop. Free Market Jesus has a hell of a lot better track record than Government Jesus when it comes to solving problems, and without sacrificing liberty too.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Also, our President is getting solar power, if you hadn't heard.
Apparently the public often misses it when the President installs solar. G W Bush installed solar. From the fans of W at the Huffington Post:
"In 2003, solar photovoltaic panels were installed at the White House. Two smaller solar thermal systems were also installed to heat water: one for landscape maintenance personnel, the other for the presidential pool and spa. The Bush Administration itself never really announced the project."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/white-house-solar-panels_n_160575.html
I don't think of it as a miracle, but it appears that some conservatives and libertarians do. Note that I don't make the claim that socialism (or bureaucratism for that matter) is any better. I just don't think that the whole "free market solves all" method is going to work in every case.
It makes individual sense to do a lot of things that are detrimental to human society, or even local society as a whole. In some cases, it is better to regulate the cost of a particular resource to reflect the actual societal cost of its extraction or use. That's something the "free" market is horrible at.
Neither "Jesus" seems to have much of a track record individually - it's only when the two work together, complimenting their skills and covering up their weaknesses that things happen. Both extreme socialists (ie communists) and conservatives don't seem to get this.
What are the weaknesses of the free market where the government should step in?
Sub-prime mortgages? Derivatives-build-from-derivatives ad nauseum? Rings any bell?
The most effective solar and wind power device is drying clothing outside. It not only saves electricity, but actually cooling down an environment.
The problem is that it may look unaesthetic, unless a nice looking dryer is invented. Meanwhile drying clothing in the air is forbidden in many districts and even entire cities.
The effectiveness of drying is 100%. No energy is being lost. And the volume is enormous, - billions of people wash and dry clothing everyday.
Production of dryers does not involve any toxic material and is not expensive. But if clothing is dried in electrical driers then a lot, a lot of electrical energy is being used.
I would argue that the problem of global warming would be solved, if drying outdoors would be not forbidden, but promoted. Of course, after an invention of a aesthetic outdoor drier.
Reagan didn't just take the solar panels off the white house, that's symbolic. Reagan also slashed the budget of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory by 90%. This facility currently holds, and regularly held in the past decade or so, the records for the highest efficiency photovoltaics and other types of devices. So if you ask me why solar panels sucked in the past, it was because there was not very much research in solar power going on for the entire decade of the 80s.
I'm guessing Reagan rationalized these actions as reducing the federal budget. The only problem with that logic is that the guy ran up a bigger deficit in defense projects than Carter (or just about any other president besides Bush, Jr.). But that's typical, when conservative politicians speak about reducing the deficit, that is usually code for cutting programs that they just don't like and has nothing to do with the actual deficit.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Jobs with a livable minimum wage, standardized work week, occupational health and safety rules.
The free market completely and utterly failed to provide those.
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Well, one example is the free market will never properly price externalities, such as pollution. Pollution is free - just let it spew out the smokestack, or dump it in the river. This caused widespread problems.
So the government added a price to pollution.
Now. That's how we bailed out the private lenders.
Fannie and Freddie were legally unable to do subprime mortgages until 2006. What made the mortgage "subprime" was that Fannie and Freddie wouldn't do them.
Mortgage originators were so "willy-nilly" with their money because they knew they would only hold the mortgage for a couple months. They'd get paid, some schmuck who bought a CDO would lose. The schmuck bought the CDO because the originator paid someplace like Moodys to claim shit was gold.
The White House submits a preliminary budget proposal, the House and Senate formulate legislation, the two separate versions get reconciled, and then the president signs (or doesn't). Reagan always claimed that the ballooning deficits on his watch were due to Congress, but most of his proposals were unbalanced to begin with and he always signed, claiming he had no choice. Clinton proved Reagan's claims of powerlessness to be hollow in 1995, vetoing the Republican-controlled Congress' proposed budget and thereby shutting down the government for almost a week until Newt Gingrich caved.
So Congress has sole power to pass the legislation but the White House can play a very significant role if they have the will to do so. It always has seemed ironic to me that Reagan and Reaganites claim the mantle of deficit reduction while the facts are that the ration of Debt / GDP (i.e., what we owe relative to our aggregate income) dropped pretty much continuously from WWII to Reagan and then skyrocketed under all subsequent administrations except Clinton's. Republicans try to claim credit for the Clinton years, ignoring the fact that Clinton stared them down.
Serious idea: Turn the Washington Monument into a solar thermal collector. The reflecting pool is replaced with a mirror array, the heat exchanger (focus point of the mirrors) goes on top of the monument (it could even look similar...replace the top with an identically-shaped heat exchanger, they could paint it dark gray or maybe even black, but when lit up it would be so bright it would look as white as the rest of the monument). Washington would be proud (his monument directly contributing to US prosperity and security, not like those other deadbeat monuments) and anti-environmentalists will absolutely lose their shit at the news. Win-win!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'd trust Reagan more on cost-effectiveness than Obama, whose answer to every question is "YES".
That's not quite true. Obama's answer on civil liberties has been "NO!" every single time. FISA, warrantless GPS tracking, an internet kill switch, RKBA, the 1st amendment, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I always knew I'd disagree with Obama on domestic policy but I actually had hopes for him on civil liberties. Won't make that mistake again.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Reagan likely took down the panel because it was crappy 1970s technology. You know, the kind that could barely power an LCD calculator when held directly under a 60W lamp. It is highly unlikely that the primitive 1970s amorphous silicon technology-- about 1% efficient-- provided any meaningful amount of power. It's possible they used another technology, but even the best produced at the time was perhaps 6% efficient. Jimmy Carter's sweater was far more sensible. If that's not enough for you, please note that Reagan commended the Coast Guard for converting their buoys to solar power.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
or without the BS spin from the anti-environmentalists:
Environmentalists want the FULL COSTS of fossil fuel use to be included when comparing the prices. What is the cost of releasing all the CO2 into the air? You tax the polluting stuff versus rebating the non-polluting stuff to encourage adoption until the actual costs of the pollution can be incorporated.
This does mean that renewable energy is never going to cost as cheap as current fossil fuel prices. That much is agreed. What the anti-environment won't tell you is that fossil fuel costs are only going up as supplies and pollutions effects are realized into higher costs.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people