"Paltry efficiency" and "outrageous prices" probably mean different things to you and I.
My definitions:
efficiency:
Chevy Volt: 94 mpg
Scion iQ: 37 mpg
Not as much as you might think.
outrageous prices:
price of imported petroleum products: $322 billion (annually)
price of A123: $129 million (once)
You do realize there is a substantial difference between private and public capital, right?
It goes without saying that there was something wrong with the business plan after a company goes bankrupt. And I plan on not falling into that trap once I get my business going. I, live and learn.
Your arguements on this thread indicate otherwise. Just out of curiousity, exactly what is your business going to do?
I googled: "Malthusian energy plan"
Only the LaRouche troupe and parrots use the phrase.
The phrase, for me anyways, makes no sense.
So not once did it ever occur to you that I came up with that phrase on my own? I've never even heard of this LaRouche guy or his "troupe" until you brought it up as a red herring. The phrase makes no sense to you because you refuse to understand what Malthusian principles stand for.
There's that "massive" again...
See my above response to "outrageous".
I consider money leaving the country to be a much greater tax, than money staying put and recirculating here. Perhaps like some, you only see the word "tax" as something solely related to some form called a 1040. I like to think of it more broadly, as in "taxing". Kind of like; "You are taxing my patience".
And as far as how many energy production/storage/efficiency options there are is a very good question.
We have solar thermal, solar PV, wind, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, kinetic, thermodynamic, biological, etc. etc.
I would like to government invest in them all, just like I did.
Did you know that if everyone of my financial standing had invested as much as I did in A123, they'd have a market cap of 240 billion dollars right now. And I've only invested $100 per month!
Wow. That would give them the 5th largest market cap in the world.
Most of those in that list are on government life support. I'll take solar PV. If you put solar PV on your home, you'll get a 30% federal tax credit plus another tax credit provided by the state government. Using California as an example, that would be another 30%. So basically more than half the cost is paid for by tax dollars. Here's a good idea of what solar PV
REALLY costs without all that tax money. It will take a hundred years before that project even breaks even.
Looking more at the Volt and other electric vehicles, it turns out there is a $7,500 tax credit for that too. I've see nthe MSRP range from $32,000 to $38,000, so I'll pick a nice middle number, say $35,000. So basically we're looking at a 20% subsidy for that as well. I haven't looked too carefully into wind, but I'm betting I'll find similar percentages there too.
ps. Your rhetoric makes me laugh
"Massive ... government support ... truly collosal subsidies. ... paltry efficiency ... outrageous prices ... massive. ... flawed. ... not hard to see ... doomed to fail. ... at best a small niche ... inflated by tax dollars. ...Again, a small market. ... it's entire existence is politically engineered. ... government central planning ... large quantities of tax money ... fundamental inefficiencies. ... fact ...sustainability hype ... government support ... toe the line. ... ideology supporting the blatantly obvious political agenda ... hugely expensive ... massive amounts of tax dollars... a recipe for disaster. ... fanciful notions ... dangers of governments ... winners and losers. ... political reasons... the Malthusian theory is alive and well...eugenics conference ...The Malthusians ...expensive and inefficient ... a political agenda..."
Those dreaded Malthusians... Weren't they responsible for the deaths of all Trekkian red shirts?
If you actually bothered to learn the backgrounds of what you preach instead of being obnoxious you wouldn't lose nearly as much investment money.
Gads! How could I not know I was a Malthusian myself. Silly me.
Perhaps I should rephrase my question. What on Earth does the somewhat logical idea of putting a limit on the planets population have to do with the somewhat logical idea of an energy plan that looks beyond extracted hydrocarbons?
ps. and I'm not the first person to propose such an energy plan.
When it comes to generating electricity we've had the technology for more than 50 years to generate abundant amounts of it in a reliable fashion. But no, the Malthusians decided it was evil, it was the devil, and so it had to be shunned. We also have a real alternative to oil in our vehicles in the form of methanol or even ethanol created from methanol. If every car was flex fuel as the Open Standards Fuel Act would mandate, it would give tens of millions of cars the opportunity to run M85, E85, or even gasoline. We would be off of foreign oil in less than ten years. But no, the Malthusians have their Annointed Saviors here too in the form of low performance and very expensive hybrids and EV's. As you can see, alternatives to oil for cars, and coal & natural gas for power plants do exist, but they are unwelcome because they don't fit the agenda of artificially inflating the costs of energy. This has nothing to do with protecting the environment or even getting off of hydrocarbons, but it has everything to do with constricting growth and crushing ambition.
As further evidence I submit some quotes from an article the LA Times ran in 1989, not long after the Ponns & Fleischmann "breakthrough", regarding the possibility of cheap and abundant carbon free energy. Disclaimer for people who might not read carefully: The article was run before it was determined to be hoax, so this should be considered a thought experiment.
And even if it were, given society's dismal record in managing technology, the prospect of cheap, inexhaustible power from fusion is "like giving a machine gun to an idiot child," Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich says.
Laments Washington-based author-activist Jeremy Rifkin, "It's the worst thing that could happen to our planet."
Inexhaustible power, he argues, only gives man an infinite ability to exhaust the planet's resources, to destroy its fragile balance and create unimaginable human and industrial waste.
The Power to Pollute
That fusion itself may be a clean energy source, especially in comparison with fossil fuels, is beside the point.
Not all pollution is caused by burning fuel; there are many other pollutants that fast-growing industrial societies throw into the atmosphere--compounds from rubber tires, fumes from drying paint, and hundreds of other byproducts of industrial processes. And clean-burning, non-polluting, hydrogen-using bulldozers still could knock down trees or build housing developments on farmland.
A mere technological change in fuel sources also does nothing to change man's attitude toward nature--what UC Berkeley physicist John Holdren calls the "pave the planet and paint it green" mentality.
In addition, Holdren says, despite the claims made, there is no guarantee that fusion will necessarily be a clean process; in some circumstances it can produce deadly neutron radiation and poisonous tritium. Worst of all to some observers, its cheap inexhaustible energy would let the planet support many more people than its current population of 5.2 billion. And this, they say, would be a crowded Earth, without forests, wilderness, open space or the chance for solitude. What would the planet be like without "psychological space?" asks Richard Charter, a coastal lobbyist and environmentalist who notes that many of the aberrations and turmoil of inner cities can be blamed on "just plain crowding without hope."
Source
It's the worst thing that could happen to our planet? Does this sound like the words of someone who is really interested in getting off of hydrocarbons and onto something more abundant?
John Holdren, by the way, is Obama's science czar.
As I said before, this is just stupid. Not sure if anyone can do the math in their heads, but I believe 10.1 gigawatt hours would be valued in the range of a hundred million dollars. In just two days! And where have I heard that "in the range of a hundred million dollars" before? Oh that's right, the money we invested in A123. What a coincidence. Are threads started about the wind farms being shut down? Maybe I should have started one. Then I could have talked about the Antediluvian non-energy plans of my opponents.
These things are a total waste. Most of the time when they produce power it's when demand is low and hydro capacity is high. The only reason they appeared to produce more than the dam was because we had a big storm blow in, making is far more windy than it normally is. Typically they produce very little power and when they produce enough to be useful it's when there is no need for them. The only reason Bonneville uses it during those times is because they are
required to by federal laws forcing utilities to use wind.
The environmentalists by the way have been trying to get rid of the dams on the Columbia for decades. They provide abundant, reliable, and cheap energy. Can't have that now can we?
pps. I also own stock in solar and super-capacitor companies. Let's hope I don't get sucked into threads about those two.
Unlike wind, these are not totally useless. They actually do have some niche uses and as the technology advances those niches will get bigger but those markets are being hugely inflated by tax dollars and central planning, not just here but all over the world. It's only a matter of time before those subsidies disappear as governments try to rebalance their budgets. When that happens those industries will implode, leaving investors like yourself holding the bag. Bottom line is, if you're smart you'll pull out before the bubble bursts and come back when the dust settles.
Dams. There are 31 on the rivers, with a capacity of 22 gigawatts.(ref) And I doubt there is little chance of them collapsing.(knocks on skull) The flood of '96 was quite impressive.
As I said, the environmentalists have been trying to get rid of them for quite a while.
, a national grid of 2 terawatt hours of energy storage/generating capacity would in my opinion lessen this problem. This is 1/6th of our daily consumption of 12 terawatt hours per day.(ref)
