The "REAL" price of gasoline,,,

Bush stupidity we can agree on, but I see no reason to lump Carter in the same sentence. It *was* Carter who put solar on the white house roof, only to be taken down by a later repub president.

I am not a proponent of subsidy, period. However, subsidy of solar is not the same as subsidy of fossil fuel. Carter did some of both, the latter by mistakenly buying into the "clean coal" BS. Contrast and compare to later repub presidents who set energy policy by subsidizing oil companies.

 

Here is one accounting of the cost ...

The True Cost of Oil: $65 Trillion a Year?

OK, what does a conservative feel ?

That $480 doesn't involve global warming or other forms of damage to the ecology.

Here is what Milton Copulus presented to the Congress.

EV WORLD: Averting Disaster of Our Own Design

And a conversation Bill Moore had with him

THE HIDDEN COST OF OUR OIL DEPENDENCE | America's Oil Addiction Is Killing It | The Economic Cost of Imported Oil | Cost of Defending Oil Flow From Persian Gulf

Here is another way to look at it. With the money we have been sending to middle east , they now have enough money in sovereign funds to buy 25% or more stake in each of the S&P 500 companies.

 

'TrueCost' sounds like something for the app thread. It's essential for all of us to understand what things really cost, both in economic and enviromental terms.

 

Actually, now they don't care at all. They know we are all hooked and can't get out.

Saudis just want oil to be priced such that
- It is high enough to fund their budget (>$65)
- Below the level Iran wants ($90 ?)

BTW, recently the King ordered not to look for any more fields so as to leave some of it for the future generations.

What Does King Abdullah Know? | Jeff Rubin

 

Except for the true cost of owning a sailboat. I don't want to know...

Tom

 

I don't want to turn this into a republican versus democratic thing.

Putting solar panels on the the white house really didn't save any electricity, compare that to if they had put windmills in west virginia. Carter started the corn ethanol subsidy that we are still paying for. Created large subsidies to mine and convert oil shale, which thankfully Regan got rid of. Proposed a $10B subsidy for coal which thankfully congress got rid of. There was a lot of anti-science claiming that with some subsidies the US could quickly get to 20% solar power. The shale and coal ideas came from the anti-science that by the mid 80s we would not be able to buy enough oil for the us economy at any price. Opec did much more to reduce US gas consumption than any of the Nixon or Carter policies.

 

Re Carter, to further Icarus' post, being wrong is not "anti-science." Carter was a Nuclear submarine captain with a degree in Engineering. He most clearly was not anti science. Compare to Bush, who ascribed to the notion that science results should match the will of the people (his people, of course.)

THAT is anti-science.
AGW denialism is anti-science
"Believing" that oil spills will not happen is anti-science

 

I can only read the sick sad history of carters misguided energy policies, it seems that some of you that heard them the first time don't really remember the history. Or are trying to rewrite it as if bad policy choices were good.


Green Energy Subsidies - WSJ.com

Members of the administration said that he silenced scientific information about solar only being able to provide a small percentage of the nations energy in the short term. How does an engineering degree shield you from picking up on junk science then basing policy on it. The PACs that were formed by Carter's initiatives are the ones that we are living with today. If you remember, Bush was the first president to acknowledge global warming. That did nothing to save him from junk science in this countries energy policies.

 

I remember clearly that Bush spent years denying GW, and to the last denied the significance of AGW. His last great political move was to try and mollify European leaders with a US hosted AGW conference to be lead by Senator Inhofe.

Facts AG, not spin.

Carter was spot on in his calcs regarding solar. All the country had to do was put solar thermal on every house. It is a testament to national ignorance that 25 years later, you still cannot do the arithmetic.

 

Skepticism is an integral part of scientific method.
I think your ignorant statement is anti-science.

 

Spot on? huh. In your mind do you think 1% solar power in 2010 makes 20% solar power by 2000? What kind of math are you using? Tell me this, to get to 20% solar by 2030 how much of the us would need to be covered with CSP and PV? Now tell me how the numbers worked in 1979 but can't work today? One of my professors had us calculate 10% in collage. No one in the carter whitehouse plugged in any numbers about cost or size that was listened to in that policy.

 

Austin, save your bandwidth... everything you say will be spin, everything they say will be fact. It plays out in every one of these discussions.

Although I find statements much more creditable when accompanied by links to creditable information.

 

I say, like Carter said, that it was *possible.*
It was also possible for americans to be idiots.

They chose the latter path.

As for your 'collage' experience, try figuring out how much domestic energy use is hot water and space heating. Or just use google if your collage did not teach arithmetic.

Ah heck, just in case google is a stumbler, courtesy of the US DOE in 2007:

 

I liked this DIY a lot:

The $1000 Solar Water Heating System

 

Do the math, it doesn't add up at all. You were expected to know arithmetic to get into my university. So no college credit for basic arithmetic. If you don't know the answer don't insult me. If you don't know how to start, it is not by figuring out how much hot water is used. That should be your first clue. I'm not going to do the math or post an article explaining the climate and physics. You'll just call it spin, or some other name since facts don't seem to matter to your precious rhetoric.

For those putting up diy made solar water heaters, more power to you. I was commenting on the high subsidies that did not work.

 

Well, if we just used PV, we'd need an area of 10404 sq mi (basically Delaware x 2) located in the SW to provide for 100% of US energy needs (obviously simplified because we need to store a lot of that to off peak, etc). That's using the technology of 2005. Nothing fancy. Now, if we used CSP, we'd probably need a lot less because the efficiency is higher. The storage would be cheaper too and more efficient than batteries.

Part of the problem with the original solar water heating subsidies was that there wasn't really an established installer community so you ended up with a bunch of fly-by-night shops doing bad installs and then going out of business. I wonder about the equipment they were installing too.

Today, these devices should just be code. You want to build a new house, you have to install solar thermal. I'd wager that the installed cost is far cheaper if the solar water heating is installed as the house is being built.

 

And calling it "anti-science."

The science was and is fine, but as Tripp says the implementation was unfortunately poor, worsened by consumer apathy in repairing and maintaining the systems when fossil fuel became cheap again.