Bush economy strikes California

And I would not object to them drilling off the shore of WV.

But I do object to strip mining, especially mtr.

I object to MTR & strip mining too. I did when I lived in RI.

I also supported off-shore drilling when I lived in the Ocean State.

I would not support drilling in Block Island Sound, or in Narragansett Bay......but out in the open ocean, you bet.

I think Craig's point is that it should be up to Californians. A majority of them presently support offshore drilling.

I heard one report that the biggest objectors are primarily rich republicans who own the oceanfront property.

But that one was about Florida.

I dont know if that holds true in California or not.

(I have a son who lives right on the beach in SF and he definitely is not a republican.)

Republicans don't live on the beach - it's too far from work.

ohio county wrote:Republicans don't live on the beach - it's too far from work.

And Democrats don't usually own oceanfront property.

They rent it from rich republicans.

I had no idea rich Republicans were bankrolling Nancy Pelosi.

Stephanie wrote:I had no idea rich Republicans were bankrolling Nancy Pelosi.

Does she own oceanfront property?

If so I bet a dollar to a donut she is opposed to offshore drilling.

What Rich Republicans are renting out this spread?

Pelosi's Auberge du Soleil as night falls in the Napa Valley...

I read an interesting article in today's Gazette in which detractors are condemning T. Boone Pickens energy plan because they say the only reason he's so strongly in favor of replacing natural gas as a source for energy with wind and converting the natural gas to auto's is because he would benefit financially on both fronts, which happens to be true.

He's invested $2,000,000,000.00 (2 billion for those of you who can't count) in wind in Texas and about $100,000,000 (one hundred million) in nautral gas cars and trucks in California alone.

My point is, I think I trust a rich Republican that's willing to invest their own money, get their hands dirty and lead by example more then I trust a democrat that's telling us we can't drill or use American resources and that we HAVE to use conservation as our focal point while they themselves are living in mansions consuming more energy in a month the all of us on this forum do in a year.

Damn that capitalist!

He should be drawn and quartered!

If nothing else, he shut the "Do as I sayer's" up...

As daddy always said though, actons speak louder then words.

I do not have access to any of the quantitative sources at the moment and not much time to post.

There are a couple interesting anomalies in T. Boone’s proposal. One of them is that he proposes five wind turbines per square mile as opposed to the more common eight turbines per square mile. It is estimated, therefore (and this is per my memory and admittedly iffy), production rivaling a 1 MW coal-fired power plant would require something like 880 square miles of wind farm. T. Boone has declined the privilege of putting any of the wind turbines on his 68,000 acre West Texas spread as he finds the turbines “ugly”. That said, I still agree with his proposal.

But…Denmark, which is the leading power-from-wind purveyor in the world, stopped building wind farms last year. They found that twenty percent of total production is about the optimum from wind. This is due to the facts that winds are only about thirty percent reliable and since there is no storage, per se, of power that demand and production have to match within about five percent. Standard power plants have coped with this requirement by running “spinning” power during off-peak times that can be ramped up to meet unpredictable demands.

Let me say again that T. Boone’s proposal will require some 880 square miles of land and will produce at about 30% of rated capacity. Nuclear, on the other hand, will require maybe one hundred total acres and will produce at 92% of designed capacity. Coal-fired boilers run at a high capacity but require thousands of acres of coal mine and, as we’ve seen in other threads, often lead producers into questionable and destructive modes of operation like mountain top removal. Eighteen months of fuel rods will fit with room to spare on a single fifty-three foot box trailer. Fly ash is good for …what? Aggregate? Abandoned mine subsidence?

Finally, the energy netted from separating hydrogen from carbon molecules (the burning of coal) is but an infinitesimal fraction of the energy created by splitting an atom. The spent fuel from a nuclear power plant would fit in my single-car garage for many years.

I’m not saying that wind is not worth doing. I’m not saying that hydroelectric is not worth doing. I'm not saying that clean coal is not worth doing. But I will say that nuclear is by far the better value.

My point is, I think I trust a rich Republican that's willing to invest their own money, get their hands dirty and lead by example more then I trust a democrat that's telling us we can't drill or use American resources and that we HAVE to use conservation as our focal point while they themselves are living in mansions consuming more energy in a month the all of us on this forum do in a year.

Apples and oranges. For this comparison to make any sense, Pickens would nned to be a candidate for president..