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Two-Thirds of Americans Give Priority To Developing Alternative Energy Over Fossil Fuels (pewresearch.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Pew Research Center: A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 65% of Americans give priority to developing alternative energy sources, compared with 27% who would emphasize expanded production of fossil fuel sources. Support for concentrating on alternative energy is up slightly since December 2014. At that time, 60% said developing alternative energy sources was the more important priority. There continue to be wide political differences on energy priorities. While a 2016 Pew Research Center survey found large majorities of Democrats and Republicans supported expanding both wind and solar energy, the new survey shows that Democrats remain far more likely than Republicans to stress that developing alternative energy should take priority over developing fossil fuel sources. About eight-in-ten (81%) Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party favor developing alternative sources instead of expanding production from fossil fuel sources. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are closely divided: 45% say the more important priority should be developing alternative sources, while 44% say expanding production of oil, coal and natural gas should be given more priority. There also are differences in public priorities about energy by age. Americans under the age of 50 are especially likely to support alternative energy sources over expanding fossil fuels. About seven-in-ten (73%) of those ages 18 to 49 say developing alternative sources of energy should be the more important priority, while 22% say expanding production of fossil fuels should be the more important priority. Older adults are more divided in their views, though they also give more priority to alternatives. Among those 50 and older, 55% say alternative energy development is more important, while 34% say it's more important to expand production of fossil fuel energy sources.
Contrast this with the incoming administration which wants to favor fossil fuels above pretty much all else https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/us/politics/donald-trump-global-warming-energy-policy.html, http://www.nature.com/news/trump-s-next-move-scientists-struggle-with-foggy-future-1.21339.
The majority of Americans will support anything as long as someone else pays for it. If you ask them if they are willing to pay an extra 5 cents per gallon of gas to pay for alternative energy, of course they will say no.
How much business sense does it make to invest in cheaper and cleaner energy instead of expensive tax-subsidized pollution-heavy energy that can't exist without taxpayer subsidized mining leases on public lands and non-accounting of pollution costs?
I mean Big Government demands we do the worst possible most expensive fossil fuel version!
If we don't Fill The Swamp with massive tax subsidies for old Soviet-style fossil fuels, we might become independent of the Middle East!
And then what excuse will we have to start foreign wars to make billionaires richer at the cost of American blood and treasure?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Face it, we lost.
The conservative coalition in power (alt-right, "christian", etc.) believes they have been subject to abuse at the hands of the "elite". They are acting like a cornered animal, lashing out at whatever the perceived injustices done to them by the liberal AND conservative elite. We told them their life-long, deeply held beliefs were "out of the mainstream", wrong, and hurtful. They came back and won, but they are still wounded.
Free market conservatives, clean energy conservatives, and basically anyone who is conservative based on pragmatism and principle are sitting in the back of the bus with the rest of us. No matter how many "but the majority of people say"... articles you publish, if it flows contrary to the narrative of the Ruling Powers, will be marginalized, ridiculed, and probably create a backlash against the very thing
Listen to Sean Spicer (Press Sec.) today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef42kffeyr8
You will hear the cries of victimhood and ego that we will hear for the next 180-360 days as the President & team settle into their roles. They sincerely don't know why we don't love them (and, by extension, America). My advice (not that I think anyone is actually going to take it), is to stop trying to influence the administration with these types of "facts" and polls. Instead, find a way to embrace their actual policies but SHINE A LIGHT on their impacts.
Example (I'm not a headline writer, but you'll get the drift).
Instead of saying the "Carrier Deal Was A Failure". Tell the whole truth. "Carrier deal saves 700 jobs, cost tax payers 3M, and 800 people are still going to mexico."
Instead of saying "Trump's Crowds were Smaller than Obama", Estimate the size of Trump's crowd, compare the weather, tell me how technology has changed viewership, and compare to the past 20 years of inaugurations.
Stop trying to "Crystallize" the narrative. It's hurting you. Try to report contextual facts, don't just tell us what we should "believe", even if you want to make a statement. BTW - this is why most conservatives hate you. They don't want to be told what to do, think or believe -- even if it is "true".
I do believe the Media will figure this out. It's going to take a while before they learn to report in such a way that speaks to all America. But they will, we'll survive, and just like Trump is rolling back Obama's agenda we'll have a chance at some point to re-enact some parts of policy that, as the article say, most "Americans" agree with.
I have seen a few documentaries which make thorium look promising. But I don't really know enough about it.
There are plenty of reactor designs that look good on paper (or in documentaries) that don't work well in practice. 20 years ago, "pebble bed" reactors were a big fad, but that went nowhere. India and China are both working on thorium salt reactors (both have plenty of thorium), so we'll see where that goes. In theory, thorium salt reactors are inherently very safe, the fuel is plentiful, and they can burn waste from uranium reactors. So there is a lot of promise.
Lots of info here: Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor.
The main problem is that the "Nukes = BOMBZ!" crowd has so poisoned this country's regulatory structure with regards to nuclear power, that you have to have more money than Gates just to talk with them. Let alone starting up a project.
Then you have to set aside millions to defend against lawsuits.
Basically all these "dealing with fucking idiots" costs, NOT the budgeting for decommission and cleanup, is what skews the costs of nuclear so damn much.
Basically we need nuclear to get off fossil fuels in the near term.
If we can rebuild our grid system to accept distributed inputs better, and give battery storage tech another generation or two, it's ENTIRELY possible that renewables like wind and solar, augmented by Hydro and some minimal use of nuclear could supply this entire country.
Some other things that could help.
Adopting newer building codes that go beyond "Well, this worked in 1939!" But adopting codes that would specify mew buildings at least come CLOSE to NetZero standards. Doing so would increase construction price a few percent. But, ultimately, the homeowner would get all that money back when selling the home. Money burnt (literally) on monthly utility bills is cash you'll NEVER get back.
Hell, simply reinsulating and re-facing the exterior of an existing home can DRASTICALLY bump up the energy efficiency of the home.
Better education of builders on newer technologies like SIP panels and ICF (and moving away from pure "stick" construction).
Reducing energy use like this, better than any "green energy bling" is what will motivate people to look into things like rooftop solar and energy storage.
Right now, most homes consume a ridiculous amount of power. Even if nothing's going on.
Decimating power usage, and now people can get away with a modest battery array and an affordable solar setup that begins paying back IMMEDIATELY.
And then, if you have a whole bunch of cloudy days, because your house is running more efficiently, you can stretch your battery usage longer or charge up from the grid during cheap, off-peak times.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Solar power is showing a nice pattern of gradual gains and is becoming quite competitive with fossil fuel. As much as conservatives complained about the bungling of Solyndra, the govt's general investment in multiple solar companies sparked the industry and made solar cheaper.
China's gov't jumped into the field also, creating a kind of solar "space race", which cranked up the rate of R&D. It's a good "fight". (China was later caught under-pricing their solar products to drive out foreign competitors, but that's another story. I took a nasty stock hit due to that.)
Thus, even though Solyndra was a lost battle, it seems Obama won the solar war. Over-focusing on the failures has made many conservatives miss the bigger picture.
Solyndra was a really cool idea: paint the roof white and use regularly spaced solar-collecting tubes. It was especially useful for low sun angles, resulting in fairly even power throughout all seasons . It just didn't pan out because flat panels eventually got fairly cheap due to flat panel R&D such that flat panel INefficiency at low sun angles mattered less.
Table-ized A.I.
"65% of Americans give priority to developing alternative energy sources"
Too bad those 65% don't vote for what they want, apparently.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
but you apparently prefer "alternative facts", which, as Merriam-Webster corp. tweeted today, are not, you know, actually, facts.
Just as one easy counter-example, you can build a solar-panel-building factory in the sahara desert, converting local sand into silicon solar panels, using nothing but the energy from the sun to power the factory and the construction vehicles, after a short initial pre-sustainable bootstrapping period.
Also, the environmental cost of just shipping fossil fuels from producing country to consuming country currently dwarfs all of those environmental costs you mention, and that doesn't even count the environmental costs of burning said fossil fuels.
So one has to question the motivation behind your remarks. Are you a driver of an embarrassingly oversized "tru-u-oo-u-uck" used only for grocery hauling, or a paid fossil-fuel industry shill?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I wonder if fracking will bring enough money into the region to pay for the damages which will be caused by the major earthquake which is now foreseeably coming their way?
Not an expert, but as far as I understand, the problem with the molten-salt reactors is in the name: you have really hot, radioactive molten salt you need to deal with, and that's just a hard problem in many aspects.
Many of the presentations seem to come from people interested in the physics, and for that kind of people, it's just a set of engineering problems.
But the thing is that you don't just need to solve them, you also need to do that in a manner that is competitive with traditional nuclear plants and renewables like solar and wind. And renewables are getting cheaper every year.
So it's a really, really tough problem. Don't trust the hype.