The Oil Drum: Europe

We should drill everywhere and build nukes, but that is not the answer. Nearly every organism on Earth lives within a solar budget. We can also.

We think of electricity has a high density power source, Edison did not. Here is a quote:

1910, Source: Interview in Elbert Hubbard's Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great:
"Some day some fellow will invent a way of concentrating and storing up sunshine to use instead of this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire. I'll do the trick myself if some one else doesn't get at it. Why, that is all there is about my work in electricity--you know, I never claimed to have invented electricity--that is a campaign lie--nail it!"

"Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the same, but we will take that up later. Now the trick was, you see, to concentrate the juice and liberate it as you needed it. The old-fashioned way inaugurated by Jove, of letting it off in a clap of thunder, is dangerous, disconcerting and wasteful. It doesn't fetch up anywhere. My task was to subdivide the current and use it in a great number of little lights, and to do this I had to store it. And we haven't really found out how to store it yet and let it off real easy-like and cheap. Why, we have just begun to commence to get ready to find out about electricity. This scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick to think of--it is so wasteful. It is just the old, foolish Prometheus idea, and the father of Prometheus was a baboon."

"When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes ourselves; until then we are tailless orangutans. You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy."

"Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property.

"There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen, for it can not be destroyed.

"Now, I am not sure but that my new storage-battery is the thing. I'd tell you about that, but I don't want to bore you..."

There actually is no energy crisis. Power generation is 69% inefficient and transportation is 80% inefficient (urban transport is 96% inefficient). Inefficiency in both infrastructures can be decreased below 30%.

If 423 miles per gallon is practical, why do we get 18 mpg moving a person in city? Masdar, the zero-carbon city being built in Abu Dhabi will power its transportation network with solar.

McCain's entire energy plan is nothing but Pork-Barrel and Gimmicks:

1) Providing Half-a-Trillion-Dollars (!) in Subsidies to the Nuclear power industry.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5785236/Nuclear-power-a-hedge-ag...
http://energyscience.org.au/FS01%20Economics.pdf
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/parenti
http://nirs.org/neconomics/utstatelegislativepresentation091907.pdf
http://www.nirs.org/alerts/05-12-2008/1

2) Create a $300 Million "award" for electric car batteries. Even though the batteries we have work just great. The problem is cost, which can only be solved by economies of scale for production, and purchase of those batteries. As such, offering an award, only after that has been achieved, would be entirely moot by the time the cost is brought down that far.
http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge3.png
http://greyfalcon.net/batterycost.png

3) He wants to save us about 8 pennies-a-gallon on oil, but 2 decades from now. A price difference that could just as easily be counteracted by global oil markets next week, much less decades from now. At the risk of putting coastal state economies into potential collapse.
(As much as he says Katrina/Rita was "no-problem", even though over 700,000 gallons of oil were leaked offshore. And 4 million gallons were leaked onshore)
And apparently the Supreme Court cut the 20 year old Exxon Valdez damages in to pieces. Probably considering they STILL haven't payed for it in full. Meanwhile 20% of those involved in the class action suit are now dead.
http://theoildrum.com/node/4174
http://climateprogress.org/2008/06/04/opening-anwr-cuts-gas-prices-two-c...
http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/06/19/mccain-katrina-spills/
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/04a00cc4-42e6-11dd-81d0-0000779fd2ac.html

4) Save us 8 pennies-a-gallon on oil, now for a few months. But at the expense of jeopardizing the 35,000 road maintanence jobs. And crippling the American roadway infrastructure. Which is rather moot because he wouldn't even be President this Summer to begin with.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/04/15/mccains-gas-tax-plan