The Long & Short of Obama’s Energy Plan

1. There is a law, I think, called the First Law of Thermodynamics, or the Law of Energy Conservation.
Where do you think you get the electricity to power your hybrids? This country generates 80% of electricity by burning coals and natural gas. The empty headed phony wants you to convert the “energy” of one form, polluting your clean air, at 10% efficiency, to another form of energy, which is then used to power another form of energy at 30% efficiency.
Does he any any clue? Does his advisers have any clue? Daschle? He probably only knows how to grow corns.
2. 10% of energy, even achieved, provides no solution to your energy need, aside from his lack of substance in details.
It takes only 3 cycles to destroy your soil if you take all organic materials out of the field to produce ethanol. Then, you will rely on ammonia and phosphate fertilizers to grow corns.
Did not this country just spent 60 years to try to clean up the rivers and lakes?
3. Zero-bama needs to take the lead. Use no more than 1 SUV when he goes every where to air his pollutions.

Democrats along with Obama taking a vacation and ignoring pleas by the Republicans to come back to work to try to solve the Energy Crisis

Four years, 10 percent of energy from renewable sources.
That’s an ambitious goal. Not quite as sweeping as what the Germans are doing, but a more compressed schedule.
It will be interesting to see if analysts (those not associated with either campaign) think we can do it.

It’s pretty pathetic when Americans have to depend on the self financed ads of T. Boone Pickens for ideas about solving our dependence on foreign oil rather than our Democratic nominee.

Obama’s so-called Plan consists of
asking Americans to inflate their tires,
maybe some off-shore drilling, and a political gimmick, releasing some of the Strategic Energy Reserve, and of course Wind, Solar etc which will take
a couple of decades to develop!
In other words he has No Plan!
He continues to exclude nuclear power,
however if he continues to slip in the polls as I believe he will, expect Obama
to Flip his position on Nuclear Power!
He has Morphed into Bill Clinton!
He doesn’t flip-flop on issues he
“refines” his positions or “shifts”
his positions!
You know “it depends on what your
definition of the word is is”!
Just Say No to Obama! No You Can’t!

Another thing that could be done is for homeowners’ associations to foot the bill up front for solar panels, and then raise the HOA fees. The people in that association would pay higher fees, but also not pay electric bills again.
Obviously this type of plan would need a lot of details worked out. A home that doesn’t get as much sun wouldn’t want to pay the same increased fees.

Peter – I think Barr already has his running mate. The LP works differently, and the convention attendees pick the vice presidential candidate, I believe. I forget who it is, but I think I saw the name once.

As Obama is forced to articulate policy positions in-depth on major issue after major issue, on both domestic and foreign policies, the campaign- and media-driven image and narrative of Obama as the young, vibrant, visionary, messianic agent of social change increasingly suffers, replaced by the reality-driven image and narrative of an arrogant, ordinary, ambitious, inexperienced, silver-tongue politician.

Paul -
One more time. Putting solar panels, using solar energy, wind energy aqua power are fine. These are not problems, really, and I do not disagree with you one bit as far as adopting it if you can afford it.
However, it is not, repeat NOT, a long term solution to (1) oil independence, nor (2) energy policy.
You are talking about a presidential candidate, who just laid out his LONG term energy policy, after such a long wait and hype. What all he could come up with?! 150 miles hybrid cars, 10% renewable energy, and 15% reduction of your consumption!
It’s laughable, actually, painful, to hear it, for any pres. candidate from any party to come up something this pathetic.
Tell you what. Energy policy is to be the deciding factor for choosing the next president, as far as this voter is concerned.

fact check – I’d say the possibility of every home getting its energy from solar panels would be a big part of energy independence.
It doesn’t solve the transportation part of the mix, but it would be significant.

fact check – not a bad thing to base your vote on, I’d say.
As for your criticisms of Obama not having enough in the plan, again (at the risk of repeating myself now, lol) I’ll ask if any of the past four presidents laid out a substantive, metric-laden proposal you can remember?
I can’t. Most times presidential candidates talk in broad themes, either out of a realization there will be compromises along the way or out of a desire not to spell out specifics.
That’s begun changing, but I’ve never seen anything like this year. I remember when Gore and Bradley laid out their competing health care proposals. I thought that was a lot of detail. This year, I’m floored by how much we’ve got to look at.

OK, so is there ever going to be any details of McCains plan, or is he going to continue to get a free pass on everything. i hope you will be happy when grandpa is in office & answer to everything is “nown, verb, POW”

Senator McCain has been stating the last month or so that we should increase all energy sources including drilling off shore, wind, biofuels, etc. Sounds reasonable to me.
Senator Obama with his 300 expert advisors is sure messing up, flip-flopping. I thinks both candidates have flaws but will vote for McCain over Obama.

Mary – you do realize the whole drilling thing is a flip flop for McCain?
The cool think is that both parties seem to be coming toward the middle – as they have on Iraq, and Afghanistan, etc. Now the question is which do you trust to follow through.

Paul,
When Clinton was running for President, all economists in this country said china cannot keep grow at a rate of 8% per year for more than 5 years. They were wRight. China grew 12% for 10 years, and controlled it at 10% for the next 10 years. At that time, gas price was $1.10 per gallon, and China imported less than 0.1% of world oil.
When Bush ran for president, they, the economists, were still talking about the same thing, and China imported less than 1% of world oil production.
Then, all a sudden, China decided to import oil, for which they have the money, interest from your debt, to import as much as the producers pumps and subsidize their motorists. This country realize that there is NO policy to act, or should we say, react.
For this presidency election, Energy policy is a problem you cannot hide, even those economists realize but have no solution.
This is why you need a president who has the capacity of dealing with such problems, and that capacity is not attained by airing pollutant.
Hopefully, you agree with that your question has been answered.

republicans trying to solve the energy crisis?
LOL are you kidding me
you guys wouldnt even admit to a crisis less then a year ago
most of you wont agree that there is global warming
HOW STUPID do you think the american people are?
suddenly we just forget, you can just turn everything that you guys have done for the last 7 years and say… hey were the good guys, YOURE the bad guys!!
its like the stupid surge, something actually goes right in iraq, and you gusy are like. see this is our plan
meanwhile, were suppose to forget the last 7 years
how pathetic are you people
you dont want to solve teh energy crisis, in fact all you want is to make a stink and say we want to solve the energy crisis and congress should reconvene because you know it wont happen
even the white hosue is saying no
sooo then waht if it did happen
well then your not in it for environmental reasons, or even energy reasons, YOU ARE IN IT FOR CASH
you dont want things done right, or innovation such as obama bring to the table
you have to slam him so that you can try to further your own agendas which are
more of the same BS, more oil, more profits for oil companies, more suvs
what is mccains short term goals?
gas tax holiday… save you 40 bucks maybe
obamas
federal reserve opening up
1k bucks tax relief and stimulas tax
7k bucks to help you buy a new car that is more economically viable
higher fuel efficiencys
yea, guess what you morons, weve been awake for the last 7 years, and you cant just say, were the bad guys, obamas the republican
tahts BS, YOU GOT US IN THIS MESS!
thanks for voting for Bush
TWICE!
mccain is even against public transportation, and wants to shut down amtrack
LOL
amtrak
are you kidding me?????

fact check: “Sunlight in your life time that you can harvest will not provide more than 15-20% of the total energy consumption.”
I disagree. It is possible (not likely, but possible) to get all of our residential energy needs from sunlight, most of our commercial needs, and much of our manufacturing needs.
And we can do that with the technology we have, which only captures about 9 percent of solar energy (mostly because it isn’t full spectrum). However, there’s already people playing with other technologies that may be able to push that efficiency up over 20 percent – and for less cost up front. There’s some really interesting fiber technology being tested now – fibers that can be used in paint. Basically we’re talking about painted roofs acting as collectors.

fact check – again, Obama was talking about the possibility of expanded use of nuclear long before McCain, or Clinton.

Paul -
You know what, it took just about 1 billion years for Nature to develop a solar panel capable of what you wanted, and just a few hundreds of million years to generate the energy you are using.
By the time you think you can put every square inch of the planet in use to absorb every single photon, you and the rest of the planet do not need energy any more. Because there won’t be an earth no more.
Sounds sarcastic? Unfortunately, it is just another one of the inconvenient truths of Nature.

Anyone else just plain tired of hearing about Obama and his ridiculous promises and flip flops?
B O R I N G

What I am seeing here is that some of you have not followed McCain or Obama. Most of you don’t even know what you are talking about, you read a bit of the story and jump.
Obama has spoken about nuclear, along with everything else that can help us out. Long before Hillary or McCain.
Maybe it would be helpful to put your angry side away and go to each site and study their policies and plans. Who has flip-flop and on what and when. I can say McCain has 61 times as of June when I got tired of counting them. Not one of them are perfect, but what you have to figure out is which one will give you and your children a better future.

“When Barack Obama voted for the 2005 Bush-Cheney energy policy, he voted to give enormous tax breaks to the same big oil companies he attacked today,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said. “Barack Obama offered no new solutions for increasing domestic production of energy in his speech today, but promised energy independence within a decade. If Barack Obama thinks that can be achieved without new offshore drilling and more nuclear power, he isn’t being straight with the American people. And if Barack Obama really believes that some ‘progress’ has finally been made in Washington, then he doesn’t have the judgment to know that the American people expect more.”

The one thing that I’ve realized during this campaign is you reap what you sow. In other words, you get what you deserve.
America DESERVES John McCain!

Obama stop pointing your finger at us.

I love how all we hear about is Obama’s flip flops. But what about John Mcacin. Just this past June he also was aganist drilling for oil. It wasnt till the poll came out, that he chnaged his mind.
For all the talk we hear about the media’s love for Obama. He gets it both ways, he gets the good press, but they also hit him with a ton of negative press. U never hear about Mccains screw-ups or flip flops, and lord knows he has many.

C. Boone Pickens, himself, says we can’t drill our way out of this energy crisis…we need alternate sources and this must come with tax incentives, attractive incentives, which encourage people to invest in the future. Drilling for oil will keep us dependent on the stuff and will solve nothing. The oil companies will sell these new oil supplies to the highest bidder and the price will remain high, which it is going to to do anyway. We’ve got to cut the stranglehold. If only we had spent those billions in Iraq on achieving energy independence…if only!!!

Obama’s goal is to have 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015.
But there are 130 million gasoline-powered cars in America right now. That means that even if Obama’s plan is implemented, it will affect less than one percent of America’s vehicle fleet.
Any percentage reduction in gasoline consumption will be minimal, even if the total size of America’s vehicle fleet does not increase. But there will probably be more cars on the road by 2015 than there are now, due to a growing economy and population. Hence those 1 million plug-ins may simply be added on to the U.S. vehicle fleet, resulting in no net reduction in gasoline consumption.

young-voter: you have them mixed up. As of June McCain flip flopped 61 times on the issues. I know, I know, it is hard to keep up with them. The debates will be interesting. I can’t wait.

Steve L.
Your argument then is let’s do nothing.

So far, gas dropped when Bush rescinded the executive order not to drill off shore. Gas would indeed tumble if congress would get off their butts and do something for the citizens.
Instead, congress fiddles while Rome burns!

beck
me thinks that big oil pays off a little here and there—how many millions have they donated to mccains campaign

twocats
truer words were never spoken—–but then again check who will get iraq oil contracts—should be interesting

Interesting that Obama always responds AFTER HE SEES WHICH DIRECTION THE WIND IS BLOWING (offshore drilling) AND IN WHOSE FAVOR – MCCAINS. However, besides being very inexperienced, arrogant and unprepared, what scares me the most is that an Obama presidency will also result in San Francisco’s morals and life styles being forced down our throats. MORE DESTRUCTION OF FAMILY UNIT RESULTING IN MORE CRIME AND MORE INTITLEMENT RECIPIENTS… WHICH IN MANY CASES PRETTY MUCH AMOUNTS TO THE SAME THING. O AIR FORE ONE – WHAT THE HECK IS THAT ALL ABOUT?

Obama is quick to blame McCain for lack of results during his tenure, but Obama too is in the Senate and he has done nothing either. When is the media going to stop publishing Obama’s rhetoric when he has NOTHING to back his words up with. Who else would get away with this?
I am a democrat without a candidate. Who is going to speak for me?

Senator Obama is double talking about his energy policy and admits it. Senator MCcain has stated for a long time that all sources of energy needs to be promoted including off-shore drilling. Obama’s plans are certainly lacking in all areas on domestic policy. Over-tax the oil company and pay back the voters $1,000 for voting for Obama. Such nonesense.

Senator Obama looked at the polls and changed his stance again hoping to right some of his wrongs and gain some voters. With all his advisers help, you would think his proposals would be outstanding instead they are almost foolish. Senator McCain has been saying for a long time, we should develop all sources of energy including off-shore drilling. His plan is certainly more comprehensive. Oil Exc said they could have new gas at the pump in three years if all permits to drill were given now.
Bottom line–the democrats like the energy crunch so they can blame the current Bush administration. Obama has a PhD in blame and whine.

All this post talks about is Obama this..Obama that..
Posted by: Jennifer | Aug 4, 2008 7:51:23 PM
====
Because this election is about 0bama. He stole the nomination from the dems primaries, and he is not to get away with it.
He is completely empty head. He aired his so hyped long term energy policy; All he could come up with is 1 million plug-in hybrid cards, 10% of corn energy, and 15% less your energy consumption.
It’s pathetic, phony, deceptive, and clueless.
1 million cars is less than 0.77% of present day vehicles on the road, and he does not tell you – let’s give him the benefit of doubt in that he does not know, has no clue – that 80% of electricity is generated by burning coals and natural gas. Do you know what burning coals and natural gas produce? Did 0bama tell you what he is planning on doing to global warming, green gas? Let’s again give him the benefit of doubt – he does not know, or shall we say, he is clueless. Unless you prefer to call him deceptive.

Obama also shifted positions – now calling for the tapping of some of the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, by swapping light oil for heavy oil in an attempt to lower costs in the short term.
Another, Obama flip-flop.

Today, the news has been on the energy problems and Obama was almost foolish in his response to very serious problems. This Harvard lawyer is sure not up to speed on the issues.
The ads by McCain show Obama as he really is. It is his words and images in the ads. Obama like the attention.
Posted by: Mary | Aug 4, 2008 11:43:58 PM
I totally agree!

Waggdogg: “Barack Obama’s solution to high gas prices. Blow your tires.”
I’m guessing you are referring to the McCain notion that Obama’s energy plan is checking tire pressure. Sophomoric (as in “childish”) gags aside, you do know that this was a McCain lie, don’t you? Or have you also been a lie victim?
Obama was asked at a campaign event by one person what things she could do to save gas. Obama ran down the usual litany – probably the same answer McCain or any other guy who knows a little about cars and driving would give to the question. Check your tires, keep the car tuned, stay within speed limits, avoid jackrabbit starts, etc.
But McCain, who promised us better, looked straight in the cameras and lied, saying this was Obama’s energy plan.
Low-road John; he was an American hero… now he’s just another lying politician.

The Republicans are trying to save face and ass. There was nothing of substance to vote on before congress left for vacation, so what do you have now–a chamber filled with empty heads!
trying to swiftboat Obama…no they are trying to swiftboard the entire democratic base who are poised to become a veto proof Congress in 2009. At the same time GOP lawmakers are making a fool of themseleves returning to Washington in a low budget theatrical production, GOP’er up for re-election have been told by party leaders to skip the RNC Convention to work on their stump speeches. yeah right, “Don’t be seen with McCain since he might lose and then the avalanche will begin in the loss of congressional seats.” Is more likely the belief.
Even Cheney has been asked not to attend. This is laughable.

Someone here said the nuclear power is the only clean, renewable source of energy? I wasn’t aware that there is an infitite supply of uranium and places to safely store nuclear waste. I also wasn’t aware the the sun will stop shining and the wind will stop blowing.
The whole idea of investing in alternative energy research is to develop ways of using the sun’s and the wind’s energy more efficiently. Sure, solar right now isn’t as efficient as coal in terms of cost, but over the years, solar has become more and more cost effective. It would be short-sighted to assume that where we are now as far as technical progress is as far as we can go.
If there is no possibility for the advance of renewable energy sources, then God help us. There is a finite amount of non-renewable energy sources on this earth. And as supply continues to dwindle and as demand surges, the price of non-renewables will continue to skyrocket and human civilization as we know it today, will cease to exist. It is a worthwhile gamble – the downside is wasting what we spend in 1 year in Iraq. The downside of doing nothing is a known outcome, the slow demise of modern society.