President-elect Barack Obama proposes economic suicide for US

[m42]

If the holder of the most powerful office in the world proposed a policy guaranteed to inflict untold damage on his own country and many others, on the basis of claims so demonstrably fallacious that they amount to a string of self-deluding lies, we might well be concerned. The relevance of this is not to President Bush, as some might imagine, but to a recent policy statement by President-elect Obama.

The 10,000 turbines in the US generate less power than a single coal-fired plant
The 10,000 turbines in the US generate less power than a single coal-fired plant

Tomorrow, delegates from 190 countries will meet in Poznan, Poland, to pave the way for next year's UN conference in Copenhagen at which the world will agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. They will see a video of Mr Obama, in only his second major policy commitment, pledging that America is now about to play the leading role in the fight to "save the planet" from global warming....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/30/do3010.xml

[John A Roark]

The future--the ONLY future--is nuclear. The sooner people realize that, the better.
So far as the pre-scientific horseshit espoused by the government?
Here's where individualism comes in--we fight it as individuals. Make it a point to skirt, evade, or outright defy (intelligently, so as not to get caught) any stupidity emanating from Washington. If we can't teach the unwashed masses any better, the least we can do is not follow the example of those uncultured swine that currently hold office.

[m42]

The future--the ONLY future--is nuclear.

That seems a bit limiting. :)

[Anenome]

I don't think Obama is so stupid as to not recognize the political fallout of implementing the Kyoto protocols and the resulting economic depression sure to result from it. Environmentalism is less about the environment and far more about implementing socialism.

I'd say the destination of the future is hydrogen and I'll tell you why. Let us postulate infinite technological advance and ask where humanity ends up when it comes to energy (though this is hubris to propose such to be guessable). It could be nuclear, but nuclear has its dangers and is political - its capacity to be turned into a destructive bomb will probably sink it in the long run.

Hydrogen, however, is completely non-environmentally destructive, burning it turn it into water. In producing it Man could replicate the action of photosynthesis turning light and water into hydrogen. Plants do this also, but go on to create the complex sugars fueling their life. We are actually able to replicate this process today but the enzymes needed to make it work are expensive still. The storage problem will be solved by storing the gas in a solid instead of a canister form. MIT recently created a solid capable of storing 6.1% of its volume as hydrogen, and 6% is considered the point of economic viability.

In the short term nuclear does make sense by the numbers, but not politically. And, sadly, politics has proven the more important consideration in this question.

[kerrin]

...Man could replicate the action of photosynthesis turning light and water into hydrogen...
You might end up with some saying, "hey, you shouldn't play God." ;)

[John A Roark]

I am nearing the end of a crash course in contemporary physical science, and it's been a doozy, lemme tell ya.
I have clarified a few things for myself, however, so the skull sweat wasn't a total waste.
Keeping the curve of our progress constant will require more and more energy...and short of matter-antimatter reactions, nuclear power is the only realistically viable option. Burn hydrogen? I suppose...after they make the breakthrough that reduces the hideously wasteful expenditure of energy it takes to separate the water molecule. Hugely inefficient, for the forseeable future, but no-one can predict a breakthrough in genius. It might happen.
'Its capacity to be turned into a destructive bomb'--that's exactly what got us to where we are insofar as our capabilities now. But the last bombs to go off existed 64 years ago, so I think we've grown past the fear. You can make Molotov cocktails, too--but we still drive cars.
Politics has been the dominant force SO FAR, but someday intelligence will break out and fear will have to retreat. I shall be so bold as to assert that as an inevitability.
To retreat in the face of moron-level intelligence (usually possessed by the myriad 'experts' in nuclear energy that haven't a shred of nuclear physics education) is reductionist, and the tendency is rather toward emergence, toward a collective organization which compels us farther onward. Sure, history shows that we've retreated in the past (the Dark Ages), but Man always gets up to go forward, sooner or later, even under great repression. 'Ya can't keep a good man down,' and 'There's no stopping an idea whose time has come' didn't reach cliche status accidentally.