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The Presidential Candidate With a Plan To Run the US On 100% Clean Energy
merbs writes: Thus far, no other candidate has said they're going to make climate change their top priority. Martin O'Malley has not only done that, but he has outlined a plan that would enact emissions reductions in line with what scientists say is necessary to slow global climate change—worldwide emissions reductions of 40-70 percent by 2050. He's the only candidate to do that, too. His plan would phase out fossil-fueled power plants altogether, by midcentury.
Then it's not a plan. It's just a bullshit pipe dream that he's selling you for your vote.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Many of us in Maryland know this character ALL too well already. Typical liberal "tax and spend" agenda is what you can expect from him. "We're the government and we know what's best for you."
Thanks, but no thanks.
Look, "climate change" may be the hot discussion topic right now - but it's crazy thinking we can put a serious dent in it and "turn it around" simply by shutting down a bunch of our nation's power generation plants! (Right now, we're finally coming around in energy self-sufficiency, largely because of the discovery of large natural gas and shale oil deposits. Folks like O'Malley would discard all of this as "bad fossil fuels", even though much of the rest of the world will keep on using fossil fuel energy sources anyway. That means we're at a big economic disadvantage. Will be far cheaper to get things done in the nations that have lower cost energy to get them done for us -- so leads to more outsourcing of manufacturing and jobs, not to mention job loss in our country for people in the business of gathering, processing and selling those forms of energy.)
Fossil fuel usage will decline as better alternatives become economically viable. (Who wouldn't rather get "free energy" from the wind, the natural flow of water, or the sun shining down on us?) Those options are being worked on by lots of people and we're putting them into use as fast as it makes economic sense to do so. But you can't just "legislate them into exclusive usage" and pretend that's a problem solver! Whenever you're legally FORCED to use a technology that doesn't make good economic sense, you just increase the cost of living, destroy job availability and drive people to find other places in the world where alternatives are still allowed.
Frankly, I think nuclear power is still the obvious best option for large scale centralized power generation -- but the type of reactors needed to do it safely are VERY costly to construct and still have to overcome a lot of negativity from "OMG, nuclear! It's gonna kill us all!" types who don't understand the technology very well. Again, it's something that will naturally come with time (and as given fossil fuels become scarce enough to run their price up enough to make these alternatives look better).
Thanks to Tesla among others we're getting closer. There are a number of strategies under active development including battery, flywheel, thermal, and hydro conversion storage. It's an engineering problem. We simply need sufficient economic motivation to solve it.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Followed the link, searched for nuclear, didn't find it in the story. Closed the page.
If you are espousing 0 emission energy in the next 35 years, and you don't mention nuclear as a necessary component, then you are lying.
I'm not sure what you mean here. "can process nuclear waste"? To the best of my knowledge nearly all of the waste of commercial power reactors is sitting on site in vast pools of water. It hasn't been processed, and I'm not aware of imminent plans to process it. So, really, it seems that there are some problems that are preventing the processing. Maybe in theory we can process it, but in reality it isn't happening. This is still a big barrier to widespread construction of new nuclear plants.
I heartily support the construction of all nuclear plants that have an competitive lifecycle cost. I'm sure they will a fill a niche in the market that the currently endless flood of solar, wind, and grid-storage bids at a quarter the cost cannot possibly fill.
Sarcasm aside, take a look at some of the recent studies showing how to decarbonize electricity production in the next 20 to 40 years with no new research, and coincidentally, very little new nuclear capacity. The ONLY barriers are social and political--even now the economics are so compelling that every call for projects solicits more than regulators and utilities want to accept. In another 2-5 years, battery tech will invalidate every last excuse they have been using to discourage wind and solar, and the fuel-free future will finally take off.
Because http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg
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Ooh, an economy alarmist bullshitter.
Before the Civil War they said freeing the slaves would ruin the economy. The US had to free them because it was a moral imperative. The war cost us 5% of the US population in casualties. The sum total of the monetary value of all slaves at the start of the civil war was roughly one trillion dollars in today's dollars. The slaves were freed and the US became the world's greatest economic power as a result.
Fast forward to today. The oligarchic elites (the Koch brothers and other greedy billionaires) control roughly fourteen trillion dollars in fossil fuels. In order to monetize their investment they need to suck it out of the earth and burn it. The resulting pollution would kill at least millions, if not render the entire planet uninhabitable. There is a moral imperative to not do that.
If one trillion dollars was sufficient to justify killing or wounding 5% of all Americans, I shudder to think how many people the Koch brothers and their friends are willing to kill or wound for fourteen trillion dollars.
Our economy was based on slave labor. We emancipated the slaves, and surprise! We prospered anyway. Now our economy is based on generating poison gas from fossil fuels. When we stop burning fossil fuels, I predict we'll prosper anyway. Maybe not the Koch brothers. Oh boo-hoo.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
Maybe it is "social problems", but that doesn't make it any less real. Fukishima, Three Mile Island, Chernoble, and Fermi accidents have all created a widespread mistrust of the nuclear industry's assurances that nuclear power is safe. Realistically, this "social issue" isn't going away just because some engineers wish it would. The nuclear overlords have screwed up big time in the risk management of these facilities, and there likely have been other screw-ups that didn't turn out so badly. It may be mostly a social issue, but it is a problem that isn't going away soon.
And yet Germany is making even better progress with true, natural energy. No nukes needed thank you. Sun, wind and tide can get the job done. But I do fear that assassins will be used to keep big oil and big coal going.
Before the Civil War they said freeing the slaves would ruin the economy. The US had to free them because it was a moral imperative. The war cost us 5% of the US population in casualties. The sum total of the monetary value of all slaves at the start of the civil war was roughly one trillion dollars in today's dollars. The slaves were freed and the US became the world's greatest economic power as a result.
Really? The US didn't become the number one economy until 1916 - about the time that most of the European powers (specifically, the UK - which was the biggest economy before the US stepped into that role) were deep into World War I. World War II pretty much cemented our position as the rest of the first world (and much of the 2nd) was bombed and broken. I don't think it was the slaves that made us the greatest economic power, but rather the fact we have two large bodies of water keeping us relatively safe from wars in Europe and Asia.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Amazing. Glossing over facts, ignoring the difference between disproven hypotheses and modern economic theory. Baldly dishonest claims about the effects of petroleum as a fuel.
Our economy was not based on slave labor. The North won the war largely because its non-slave economy was stronger. The South could have had an economy stronger than it was if it had just slowly transformed into a market economy (because free labor is more productive than slave.) (Historically not possible, due to culture and laws of slave states.)
That is just plain dishonest. Our economy is enhanced by, not based on, energy production from fossil fuels. The primary byproducts are carbon dioxide and water, neither of which is a poison at the concentrations at which they are currently generated. You are a liar, and you know it.
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Actually, until very recently, the Social Security budget was running in the black and contributing to the ability of the US government to spend. Unfortunately, all of the Social Security surplus was invested, in accordance with the law, in US Treasury bonds, and those debts were not counted as part of the federal budget deficits. So the problem is not in the Social Security budget, per se, but in Congress having already spent all of the Social Security surpluses of the past.
You are correct, except in your definition of a Ponzi scheme. Simply paying people out of current receipts is not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme involves creating the illusion of high returns on investment by paying out the capital from new investors and calling it profit on the old investments while claiming that all of the original investments are still there. The difference is that Social Security does not claim you have any capital invested nor that you are making any profit - it has always been portrayed as paying current retirees from a tax on current workers (albeit, with some money put aside to smooth out the highs and lows caused by the employment and retirement numbers). The numbers can deceive people about the federal budget deficit, but it is not a Ponzi scheme by Social Security.