Comments on: Obama convention speech on energy

By: utanma

utanma — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:18:00 +0000

ole speech was easily A+. I just heard two famous conservative speechwriters, Peggy Noonan and Pat Buchanan, rave about the speech (on Today show and Morning Joe). Buchanan said it was one of the greatest convention speeches of all time.

By: shop

shop — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:21:51 +0000

The whole speech was easily A+. I just heard two famous conservative speechwriters, Peggy Noonan and Pat Buchanan, rave about the speech (on Today show and Morning Joe). Buchanan said it was one of the greatest convention speeches of all time.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:14:41 +0000

Its all rubbish. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of the US ending its love affair with oil or, indeed, in cutting emissions at all. What is much more likley is that China and India will follow the US’s shining example and get their own per-capita emissions up to US level over the next 20 years or so.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/prc.html

How can any speech about energy and emissions ignore population growth? Surely there should be a call to stop having so many damned babies???!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Image:World_population_(UN).svg

Lastly, why does every speech end with “God bless America”. If you said that at a UK party conference you would be branded a religious nut and never be allowed to speak in public again.

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:04:04 +0000

In today’s TNYT there is a pic of a man in Oslo filling his tank for the local equivalent of $150.

The point of the article is that higher prices are doing little to exxtinguish demand. Economists call that ‘inelastic’.

For those so impressed by automobiles, what perceentage of cars in 2018 will be less than ten years old?

By: Dano

Dano — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:19:30 +0000

How likely are either #1 or #2 to happen in 10 years?

This is politics, Earl, not reality. But it was excellent political theater in which the idea was delivered.

At any rate, i’m with you in your concerns. I like the 10 year time frame, though, because it will likely take us ~4-6 years to stop bickering and decide on a general direction. We’ll have a couple of years of the Presidency left to try to get laws enacted, and by then it should be obvious that man-made climate change is going to need serious attention. So the decade time frame is, sociologically doable.

Best,

By: Kirk Sorensen

Kirk Sorensen — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:34:57 +0000

“(2) Reduce US consumption to near zero, so we just don’t care about the world market. Only 16% of US petroleum imports today are from the Persian Gulf, but what happens there sets the price of oil regardless of whether we import a drop or not, because it is a world market (I interpret that as dependence). Even if the US were an oil exporter, the price Americans pay at the pump would be set by the world market. That’s way #1 above has to add “and ban imports and exports”.”

Spot on, Earl. That’s the only way to end US oil dependence. Now the next question to ask is how to actually accomplish this lofty goal. Electric cars and massive amounts of new generation are the first things that come to my mind.

By: Bob Wallace

Bob Wallace — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:06:28 +0000

To paraphrase…

Change (generally) doesn’t come from Washington. Change (generally) is brought to Washington.

Obama’s climate statements, I think, represent where the American people are at this point in time. People aren’t necessarily aware of cutting edge developments in wind, solar, batteries, storage, etc. As knowledge speads (and as promising technologies prove out) people will most likely move in a more “green” direction.

Give us a couple affordable PHEV choices.

Give us an operating thermal solar farm with multiple hour storage that produces affordable power.

Give us a couple of viable storage solutions such as the compressed air facility just funded in New Jersey.

People need working solutions, not prototypes. When we can clearly demonstrate the ability to produce power from non-fossil fuel sources and do it for the same or less money then the greater population will abandon “clean coal” and “drill everywhere, drill now”.

Obama is smart, intellectually curious, and not tied to fixed ideas. As the way forward becomes clearer he’ll get to where he needs to be.

(He’s probably a lot further along than one would assume from the speech. But he needs to get elected first, then he will have the option to get way out front and lead.)

By: Earl Killian

Earl Killian — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:04:03 +0000

I am surprised that no one has analyzed the call to end our dependence on Middle East oil in 10 years. There are only two ways to do this that I see:
(1) Reduce US consumption below US production, and ban imports and exports so that we are isolated from the world market;
or
(2) Reduce US consumption to near zero, so we just don’t care about the world market. Only 16% of US petroleum imports today are from the Persian Gulf, but what happens there sets the price of oil regardless of whether we import a drop or not, because it is a world market (I interpret that as dependence). Even if the US were an oil exporter, the price Americans pay at the pump would be set by the world market. That’s way #1 above has to add “and ban imports and exports”.

How likely are either #1 or #2 to happen in 10 years? I am a big advocate of ending our addiction to fossils, and I can see us getting to near zero petroleum by 2050, but by 2020 it looks impossible. What we heard last night was simply campaign rhetoric.

By: Dano

Dano — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:42:39 +0000

What llewelly said.

Best,

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:14:27 +0000

I was a little disappointed in the commitment to drill and advance “clean” coal power. I wish he would have stuck to his guns on off-shore drilling and not fallen for the fraud of “clean” coal.