His energy mouthpiece was on NPR tonight, lying through her teeth. These lies need to be confronted with the truth, head on and now. Here is a summary of her claims...and the facts she ignores:
1. Prices are dropping today because of McCain's and Bush's actions
No, prices are dropping today because of decreased demand.
(And, btw, if Bush's and McCain's talking dropped prices then why didn't he do it years ago, instead of waiting until prices skyrocketed...and just 3 months before the election?)
2. We need to drill and drill right away to increase supply for short, medium and long term.
Giving off-shore drilling licenses today will provide a small amount of oil...10+ years from now. Even if it produced crude tomorrow -- which it won't -- we don't have the refinery capacity to handle it. Building new refineries and drilling off shore will not increase supply for at least 10 years, and then by only a small amount. To use her analogy -- the equivalent of trying to fill a swimming pool with a thimble.
3. Alternative energy is 10, 20, 30 and 40 years away.
Wrong. Alternative energy is available TODAY and more will be within the next couple of years.
Real examples:
Nanosolar's thin film technology is cost effective and the first to market. They went into commercial production THIS YEAR.
http://www.nanosolar.com/Tesla all electric cars will be commercially available in 2010.
http://www.nanosolar.com/Just last week we saw announced a major breakthrough in electrolysis -- key to hydrogen fuel technology. The scientists involved believe that the new technology will be commercially available within 10 years.
(One or two posters bashed the announcement out of ignorance. I'll address their complaints right here: Yes, electrolysis on requires only salt water and electricity. However, it takes too much electricity and isn't efficient. That's why commercial electrolysis used in manufacturing rely on strong bases and the anodes and cathodes are made of very expensive materials. But these are too dangerous and too expensive for home/private use. The compound the researchers came up with inexpensively and safely replaces the materials normally used for the anodes, AND requires very little electrical input. These researchers (and others) also simultaneously been working on the cathode materials and already have several very promising, low cost and safe potential replacements for the platinum currently used on the cathodes. Once they have that 2nd material, they will be able to perform electrolysis safely, at relatively low cost AND with a low input of electricity, such as from a solar panel. The 3rd phase they are also working on is a new material to use photons to directly generate the electric charge. When they accomplish that, they will have artificially reproduced the initial, light-dependent phase of photosynthesis. As I explained in the thread last week, that phase consists of photons hitting chlorophyll molecules, causing their orbitals to stretch. When the orbitals snap back into place, the energy released breaks water molecules within the plant membrane into O, H+, H+ and 2 free electrons. The free electrons then trigger a series of redox reactions, moving electrons down the membrane in a low level current.
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