Obama calls dirty energy "clean" in state of the union address

"Democrats don't believe in alternative energy. ... status quo" I think you're making this too difficult. Whoever is on the top of the hill makes safe choices that don't threaten their safe position on the hill. Without having the brains to understand that taking that stance guarantees the buildup of hatred guaranteeing they lose the next elections.

Unless of course that's the continual Flip-Flopping of power they want Voters to always see happening [that makes the system appear to be viable & working properly, thereby squeezing the juice out of anyone starting a third party; and keeping it squez].

Democrats aren't smart enough to do all that but Republicans would. It only takes one of them to make the victrola keep playing the same record over and over.

Sorry, can't agree with him on that.

His beginning premise is wrong. All homes can be made energy-independent therefore no need for a Big Daddy control grid. I didn't realize the reactors had a temperature ceiling (heatwaves, from your below post). If homes were each made there own energy regulator from onsite power sources => it would make people energy-responsible. Big Daddy Power fosters childish energy squandering so ya never have enough electricity, always shortages, always problems, always people ""working real hard" as Bush wanted.

We scurry around like retarded ants. Our Make Work never ends. We live inside the damnation of the Charlie Chaplin movie he made about modern man, factories and such.

Everything is precisely geared to keep everyone in motion therefore all solutions that get backing have to be partial solutions with embedded problems.

Which knocks out every invention I have.

Please read his books, especially The Vanishing Face of Gaia (2009).
It was Lovelock's Gaia Theory and Daisy World model that first alerted scientists to the threat of global warming and he invented the machine that discovered the Ozone Hole.
I and others consider him to be the most important scientist in human history.

Oh, I appreciate his imput and do believe the Earth is a living organism. That's why I don't think we have the right to poke, prod, dig and suck her life out of her when there are alternatives we could use if we could only work to conserve and not be so gluttonous. I just don't think nuclear is the answer, and actually never will. And where there are reactors there are those looking for weapons, and in the world we currently live in that is a concern to me as well.

Promise me that you'll take my reading Revenge of Gaia challenge!
It is SUCH an important book -- especially for people like us.
I share your pristine ideal of Earth. She is alive and our lives depend on her.
But no one seems to grasp the urgency of this situation.
We are all really just wishful thinkers in denial at this point.

I'll take a look as I have read some of his papers. Can't promise anything regarding nuclear though ;-).

I won't be wasting money on those Gaia books because the answer is already here. It isn't in just Wind or just Solar or just one thing => the ANSWER is in COMBINING THE LESSER ENERGY SOURCES TOGETHER and kicking nuclear power into France and leaving it there. NOW.

Now and not some amorphous future because what happens is billions gets spent on the WRONG TECHNOLOGY (NUCLEAR) and then the transition never comes because ya keep thinking how much $$$$$$$ you've sunk into nuclear!

Same thing as these wars => once one life is lost you never get your feet unstuck from hardened blood.

Throw Gaia nuclear power to the dogs & let em lick vomit.

Pie in the sky.
Crunch the numbers.
"Clean" energy accounts for about 5% of our power usage.
We have to get more realistic about alternative energy if anyone is going to take us seriously.
Ask yourself: What about the 95% of people who depend on dirty energy?
Will Jehovah come to save the day?
Let's get real here people!
Ideaology aside, how are we going to fix this serious situation?
I'm rooting for Quetzalcoatl.

Yes, Jehovah is sending His son to save us. Glad you finally opened your eyes!

PLUS He provided a super powerful SUN that hits enough solar power on one single square yard in your front yard to power your home all your miserable lifetime and more.

There are ways to get it you don't know about because you laid your head inside some stupid book and slammed the covers together. Much like you did the Bible I guess.

I seem to see a pattern emerging yep, you've been stamped & sealed.

You aren't going to much like the delivery.

If Obama the One Man Puppet Show had one half of a WORKING BRAIN he would stop listening to Chu and people like you, Doubters all.

Jan was being nice to you. She knows. She knows when faced with a multi-faceted problem you have to charge it with a multi-faceted answer. Not some easy pat single answer as France did.

I could respond like IceKat and be a total a-hole.
But I respect your sincere opinions, Newton's Apple.
I am a huge fan of Jesus. Yet after 2,000 years I still don't see anyone putting his simple gospel into practice, except maybe Jimmy Carter and Bono.
A huge part of this global warming emergency is that most people seem to be relying on God or science to clean up this massive mess we've made.
And the athiests say we deserve it! I tend to agree.
I've read the Christian Bible cover to cover three times (King James, Revised Standard and the Lamsa Aramaic translation). It's a beautiful book.
My favorite passage is from the last chapter of the last book, Revelation of John;
"And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." (22:2)
Imagine that!

The "key" to Obama's speech was the word "TEAM". He doesn't want an Edison, a Bell or a Marconi-Tesla genius, HE WANTS TEAMS of faceless thinkers.

His offer was not to me it was to TEAMS, so even though I have a Master Solution thisis my time to back away from the table where I'm not wanted, and let the TEAMS DO IT, under the great command of Energy Czar Chu who will never discover nor know the Master Solution I know how to make.

Mock on that a while mocker.

I applaud your reading, and your choosing of Revelation 22 vs 2. Jehovah opened my eyes several years ago as to exactly what that verse means.

It isn't about pretty trees.

No, its all about the tree of life.
Interesting how every culture has a legend about a tree of life.
Could it be a real thing?
I vote for the ugly bristlecone pine which lives for 7,000 years.
Repent from your stupid religion, brother!
Amen.

No, you're phishing. You need a real God but, you've chosen poorly so stay where you are, and wait. Wait and ponder how a crummy lowlife cult member knows more than you know => after your having read three entire Bibles.

I know the end of Revelation while you remain ignorant.

Imagine that! Go read another book, and wait.

Okay.
Now you are sounding like a troll for Jehovah.
Please stop.
Such self-absorption is the root of the problem.
This is a discussion about science.
Sorry I contributed my spiritual comments.
This is far beyond religion.

And you are? A troll for Man to fix Earth? No wonder you're so sour & rotten inside after reading THREE WHOLE BIBLES and still came away your basket empty.

I'm sorry you contributed your spiritual slime also.

Lightning is easy to harness. Cosmic Energy has been harnessed already twice. Ocean weight has been shown how to harness.

I know a great deal more than you, yes me, the cult member, and also your great self's superior because God blessed me with the wisdom of Solomon and great scientific insight to prove what Jesus could have done had he aborted his mission.

Take your tripe attitude somewhere else. Nuclear power has not been needed since 1989 when I Copyrighted how to harness lightning bolt power.

Mankind is wallowing in power everywhere enough to drown nuclear power and Lovelock in a bath tub already.

Perhaps you need to read somebody new. Just a thought.

We are all impressed with your superior knowledge.
Now please just go away.

That's the 2nd time your demons have begged me to stop.

Demons don't like truth invading their temple.

The good news is that soon as Obama feels the demons on his neck ~as you do now~ he has the power to clamp down the Internet so perhaps you will get your desire then.

As for your charge intended to intimidate, anger or otherwise insult the cult member when you falsely applaud "my great knowledge" you are once again wrong. I think it should greatly concern you that simple, simple concepts are being kept on the shelf WHERE YOU CAN'T HAVE THEM.

While Australians and many others on this globe are running for their very lives.

Sometimes what I don't write about is bigger than lightning that I will mention. Tesla wrote that he knew how to make a personal size flying ship that didn't use fuel. I came across it his papers online in 2007. By looking at Tesla's other ideas and inventions I realized he had shown how to make it.

It uses an internal lightning drive. That's been held from you also. Whatever you think you're paying tax monies for you're getting vastly short sheeted. You guys, you're on here fighting about stuff just like they want you to do when they've had so many solutions, many of them for over HALF A CENTURY.

They can't give you their easy life. You're scum of the earth we all are, not just the polar bears.

Everything you wring your hands over has been solved.

James Lovelock is wrong.

It wouldn't be the first time he was wrong.
He didn't think CFCs could hurt the ozone layer until he invented the machine that discovered the ozone hole.
One thing I most respect about Lovelock is his scientific humility. He often says that he hopes he is wrong about runaway global warming being too late to do anything about. He does not believe that an ice age is possible at this point. I think he's wrong.
But before you dismiss his argument that nuclear energy is our only realistic alternative available immediately to reduce carbon emissions please take the time to read his wonderful, heartwrenching book, The Revenge of Gaia.

coolplanet----his conclusion contains inherent value judgments that I do not agree with.

He feels that the low carbon aspect of nuclear outweighs the danger of the radioactive wastes. He feels that we are in a race against time and is willing to sacrifice long term safety for the immediacy of action.

I feel this is wrong for several reasons.

1) Methane(natural gas)-----can be implemented far more quickly and at far less environmental and economic cost than nuclear. All we have to do is remove the coal burning furnaces and replace them with gas burners. Nothing else needs to change. Not buildings, boilers, turbines, generators, grid----all we are doing is boiling water.
If we did that with all coal fired plants----even using straight fossil methane, we'd reduce CO2 output 50% while still producing the same amount of energy. And no air pollution.

BUT----methane(natural gas) is also a biofuel as well as a fossil fuel. CH4, exactly the same stuff. Biomethane can be mixed with fossil methane in any proportion with no loss of performance in any application. The explanation is a bit lengthy, so I won't go into it right now---just suffice to say, a 6% mixture of biomethane will produce GHG neutral emissions. Any mixture greater than 6% biomethane will produce a negative atmospheric warming effect.

2) The greatest production of GHG CO2 is from transportation fuels. Methane can power our vehicles, we've been doing it for over 90 years. Nuclear can't do that---we'd need electric vehicles. The electric vehicles just coming onto the market are really not much more than short hop commuter vehicles----and will remain that way for a long time. No place to plug into. The electricity flowing through our current grid distribution system is already spoken for----and in most cases is already antiquated, and inadequate handle the extra load that much more than an insignificant number of EVs would place on it. EVs are ok for what they are----but they will not replace a truly significant portion of transportation needs for many years to come----they are too expensive, we don't have the manufacturing capability, or the service and maintainence, or the distribution network to deliver the fuel where it is needed in the quantities it is needed.

We already have an extensive distribution network for natural gas. And CNG fueling stations can be added very quickly by any NG utility. Not only that, with a few simple modifications---any ICE can use natural gas as well as liquid fuels, making fuel availability no problem, just use what is available.

So, on the balance, methane is clean, available, cheap(especially when compared to nuclear), quick, easy, renewable and sustainable----we can make it from anything, including sewage. We need to treat sewage anyway.

I think we should go with methane and not nuclear.

Perhaps we can all start using the methane coming out of our water taps from gas fracking to cook our food.
In legal settlements against the frackers courts have awarded thousands of people who'se wells were contaminated a lifetime of free bottled water from Wal-Mart.
Frack the frackin' frackers!

Senators & other career politicians must secretly LAUGH at presidents because they know they have a job beyond him losing his. It fosters a disrespectful haughtiness where they feel above the president => therefore the system encourages them to disagree.

Built-in winning => they win after his walking papers get typed.

In short, they view the President as a lesser man. Why should they do differently when all they see is a terminally ill patient oops, president? It's a "wall in the fog" they know they'll survive and the president doesn't (every 4 years).

GREAT post Jan. I can only Hope that if he gets his second term and no longer has to worry about getting re-elected that he will actually Do something politically toxic like actually caring about the environment the way you do, But I just don't see it happening.

I think politics slowly kills your soul.

My observations tend to support your theory.

Though I will add that Jimmy Carter seems to still have his in tact.

Yes, and a few others. ;-) A certain amount of time out of it I think is required in order to be debriefed.

And corn producers.

No it isn't. Solar and ocean technology are the wave of the future and can most definitely satisfy our needs. It is only naysayers and oil lobbyists who are negative on it and short on vision because it isn't lucrative enough for them. I doubt those who mined uranium and got cancer would agree that it's the best either. But sure, we can now destroy the Grand Canyon and other national monuments to get to the uranium and let that dust blow all over in our air and in our water as well and call it "clean." Let's just keep digging and digging and digging into the Earth until we suck her dry and then wonder how we will get our energy as the sun continues to shine above and the waves roll in. We need leaders with vision. All we get are leaders looking to not piss anyone off and to make money for those who will contribute to their reelection campaigns.

And on edit, I'm not "green" people. This is about moral choices that our children will have to live with.

I wholeheartedly agree that solar and ocean current technology are the greenest ways to go.
But right now we get about 2% of our energy from solar and ocean currents.
France gets about 70% of its electricity from nuclear right now. Having closely examined all the pros and cons I must conclude that nuclear power is the safest, cleanest source of energy available today.
I've been anti-everything-nuclear since my hippie days but it only took reading four pages from The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock to convince me otherwise.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/aug/13/france.internationalnews

http://www.psr.org/nuclear-bailout/resources/nuclear-power-in-france-setting.pdf

I don't think nuclear power in France is all it's cracked up to be. Costs have skyrocketed due to the type of reprocessing they use which has been passed on to the consumer, pollution and fishkills as well as leukemia can be found near sites. They have a huge unresolved waste problem and climate change puts their use in jeopardy since nuclear reactors need much water for the cooling process, so it does not seem viable in a drought stricken area. During the heatwave of 2003 that killed thousands, 17 reactors had to be shut down. I find it to be dangerous and cost prohibitive, two things we cannot afford with our current economy and security situation.

Agreed.
Nuclear is far from perfect and should be phased out as soon as cleaner technologies can come on line. Right now they supply about 5% of our energy usage.
What we need to grasp here is that CO2 is a far greater threat to our short and long term survival than is nuclear radiation.
It's down to a choice between greater and lesser evils at this late state of the game.
I know you are an advocate for science. There is a lot of propaganda and pseudoscience regarding nuclear energy. Please research it further.
CO2 is a hell-of-a-lot worse than radiation.

Well I think both aren't too good in massive concentrations. And actually, nuclear isn't totally Co2 free when you take into account building the plants. Also, the NIMBY syndrome tends to rule as far as construction, and again it can wind up being costlier. I still prefer solar and see many strides taking place in that and actually hope to see it's use increasing this year as well as breakthroughs regarding having 24 hour power. Whatever happens there is no denying we sure have gotten ourselves into a quandary that does require our own pledge to conserve and cut back on fossil fuel use whenever possible and working to reforest our planet. Transitioning to whatever we transition to is now in my view going to take longer than the time we have to pass a tipping point if we allow oil and coal companies to continue spewing pollution without being made accountable for it. Thanks for the civil discussion. It's very refreshing here.

I think we scared away the trolls, Jan!
Amazing what civil debate can accomplish.....
The real tragedy here is that if Al Gore had been selected President we would be 10 years closer to solving global warming with technology like solar.
I always enjoy your posts!

I completely agree and couldn't have put it in better words; nuclear power should definitely be phased out, but it's either that or continue fucking up the planet at a faster rate. And Jan - solar is absolutely the future, but the technology isn't quite there yet... and these rich corporation scum aren't going to let that happen anytime soon. It's quite sad.

Sigh, yes, he would have said what needed to be said and his plan for 100% renewable energy in a decade may well have been a reality by now, though it would have been a hard fight, but a fight worth fighting, and it still is. He even went to Congress and they ignored it. So another point regarding solutions is that we need to allow the entrepreneurs and the brilliant minds out here with inventions to have a seat at the table instead of always having it be the BPS who are responsible for the destruction in the first place. On that I wholeheartdly agree with GravityMan. There are so many people with innovations who never get patents on their inventions or even have them see the light of day due to competition, intimidation and downright theft. This is a crisis where all who have ideas should be allowed to participate in the solution, and I didn't get the feeling that is what administration is looking for in talking about continuing the status quo.

Well I guess that makes it ok then... and yes that was sarcasm and believe me I don't mean to be rude or anything, but this was actually one of the more important parts of the speech and once again the environment got screwed because it appears he is too retiscent to stand up against the anti-environment tea party who for all the rhetoric is not going to sit with him singing Kumbaya on this regardless of that rhetoric. Frankly, I think that's sad. The climate is heading for a tipping point and not once did he even say the words, climate change. It boggles my mind. But I guess his words on investment in "research" and leaving the ways of the past behind were the code words for looking to geoengineer the climate instead of actually addressing it. Hell BP is doing it in the Gulf with GM bacteria and no one is saying a word about that either. The corporations that destroyed this environment will now be allowed to make huge profits off of it.

I didn't mention wind. And he mentioned coal, nuclear and natural gas which is what I referred to. And on that score Obama is not being realistic.

Also to add:

To say he wants us to get 80% of our energy from alternate sources by 2035 looks ok on the surface until you consider that it is 24 years away and in that time we will more than likely still be polluting the planet and spewing GHG s up into the atmosphere. We don't have 24 more years to continue going at this pace. The time we need to transition before a tipping point hits is getting smaller. Al Gore's plan of getting 100% of our energy from renewable sources and setting a goal of 10 years was much more viable. The longer you keep cheap coal and oil in the mix the harder that makes it for comfortable Americans who are used to it being easy and cheap to make a transition .And with estimates stating Peak Oil will be hitting us full on by 2014, well, I think we should be moving much faster.