We now find ourselves engaged in four wars, wars which are slowing eroding our machinery and which are killing our soldiers. Wars which are slowly bleeding us dry of our treasure. The war in Afghanistan was launched with the overwhelming approval of the American people in retaliation for 9/11 and is now in its tenth year. We still are not in total control of that desolate, mountainous country. Possibly we should have heeded what happened to the Soviet Union when they tried to subjugate that nation. However, our aim there was to punish those who supported the 9/11 highjackers and kill Osama Bin Laden. Both of those aims have been achieved. The Iraq war was entered into, once again, with the approval of the American people and the Congress of the United States. People now make the argument that "Bush lied, people died" to try and make some forget that there was 90% approval at the time for the president's actions. Those who didn't like President Bush have conveniently forgotten the fact that Saddam Hussein had ignored 19 United Nations resolutions demanding that he open his country for inspection, he had used poison gas on his own people, and he had kicked out the weapons inspectors. Suppose President Bush hadn't authorized the use of force and it turned out that Saddam had, in fact, stockpiled Sarin or some other easily deliverable lethal weapon? Then Bush would have been guilty of ignoring his #1 priority as president, which is to protect the American people.
I am not here to argue the past, however. It happened, we are there, and that's that. Now we have entered into another potentially large conflict and one smaller one. President Obama has taken us into Libya, and has also launched drone attacks against targets in Yemen. This makes four hot spots where we are actively engaging hostile forces, and dozens more places around the globe where we maintain a military presence. The point is that our military commitments keep expanding, eating up our national treasure.
Forget all that, for a moment, however. There is another war we should be fighting, one which would make all the current wars unnecessary. As I've said before, we should be in the midst of a Manhattan Project-style effort to make solar energy vehicles feasible. If we can do this, oil becomes a commodity which our nation isn't so dependent on, and the countries of the Middle East go back to what they were 75 years ago--desert nations of nomadic herders. They would lose their strategic importance because oil wouldn't matter anymore! So let's fight THAT war--the war for making solar energy economically feasible, and let's send the OPEC nations back to economic oblivion where they belong. The problem with this, as I've said before, is that the oil companies aren't going to just stand by and let us change to solar power because that REALLY hurts them. After all, they can't sell sunlight!
You might also want to look into wind power. You also might want to become more informed about how the overall power grids in the US are laid out. And you may want to learn more about the enormous inefficiency problem that exists in power delivery.
ReplyDeleteOne more thing: there is a tangled mess of taxes, tax cuts, "green credits", etc., in all of the energy sectors, including oil and gas (both exploration, as well as production enhancement), biofuels, corn/ethanol and farm subsidies, both kinds of coal, solar, wind, and other alternates. It's not anywhere near as cut-and-dried as you present it, and there is an enourmous amount of misinformation out there.
You might consider reading John Hofmeister's "Why We Hate The Oil Companies", check out his website www.citizensforaffordableenergy.com, and also read Wally Lafferty's blog www.asustainabilityminute.com for some additional information on the topic of energy and alternative energy. His rebuttal to the news article "Four Myths" is an especially clear discourse on the misinformation that is out there.
I didn't say it would be easy, which is why I refer to a "Manhattan Project" style effort. However, we just had a solar powered plane achieve flight. Solar powered cars compete every year in challenges of speed and endurance. We're getting close. Wind power is great, but it tends to kill migrating birds and is a blight on the landscape.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I believe that hydrogen can be developed as a viable source of locomotion in cars. After my study of chemsitry, basically, if we had a hydrogen-powered car, all a person would have to do is fill up with water.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing is, people shrink from hydrogen because of things like the Columbia disaster and hydrogen weapons of mass destruction. But, as I've thought about it, sometimes the easiest solution is the simplest. Basically, in a hydrogen car, to make it safe, you install a safety mechanism similar to an airbag that opens up vents for the hydrogen gas in an accident. In that way, the hydrogen gas goes back out into the atmosphere, with no threat to emergency personnel or other people in the area. And with the advancements in electronics, building and creating a commercially-viable hydrogen engine for a car is not as much science fiction as it once was.
As a matter of fact, BMW already has such a car, and a filling station which dispenses liquid hydrogen already exists. However, the problem is twofold: first, the energy needed to separate the hydrogen from water is more than is produced by the hydrogen, making it inefficient. Second, if they do get past that problem and this becomes viable, our water source is not unlimited. We could either use up all the fresh water, which obviously isn't an option, or desalinate a LOT of water to use, thereby changing the chemical makeup of the oceans. Who knows what consequences that would lead to. I think solar is the way to go because that will be here longer than we will, and it is therefore an inexhaustible resource. Geothermal is an excellent source as well. I'm not big on hydroelectricity because you have to dam up rivers, and I've already mentioned that one unintended consequence of wind power is that the turbines tend to kill migrating birds.
ReplyDeleteI read the other day we're getting ready to launch a solar powered spacecraft. We're getting close. Solar cells are going down in price and up in efficiency.
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