Letters to the Editor
DanielSh
Published Letters: 23 Editor's Choice: 2
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Last throes of American Imperialism (colonialism)
[Read the article: "America at a Crossroads" veers to the right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is it just me that thinks this is where we are headed? It started with the end of the cold war when most of the nonaligned world ceased to need us to protect them from China and Russia. Our demise as a major influence in the mideast was delayed because of the need of the people of Kuwait and Saudi arabia to protect us from Sadaam. Now that Sadaam is gone there is no need for the USA for security reasons. Osama is about to get his wish , the USA is finally being asked to leave by the Saudi's who see us as more of a nuisance in Iraq now than a help.
I'm guessing in about 5 years or so the Arab world is going to insist tha we set up a Palestinian state or they will stop shipping oil to the west - they may even insist on the right of return of the Palestinians. It will be an interesting problem for our next President.
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AIrline travel does not contribute much to greenhouse gases
[Read the article: You are now free to pollute about the country]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We use about 10% of our oil on jet fuel and it produces around 5% of the CO2 generated by fossil fuels. Want to reduce green house gases by more than 60% and thereby stabilize current atmospheric CO2 levels? 1. STOP burning coal to produce electricity. Ban it's use globally in the next 30 years (unless all of the CO2 produced is sequestered) and replace the coal plants with nuclear, solar thermal and wind powered plants 2. Develop plug in hybrid cars. Good plug in hybrids will reduce gasoline consumption by at least 60% (gasoline consumption accounts for 50% of oil consumption and around 25% of the green house gases) 3. Ban the use of natural gas for conventional space heating in the next 30 years. Ground based heat pumps are much more efficient (Bush even has them on his ranch!) and require much less natural gas or electricity.
The technology for reducing green house gases is all there (I think the best battery technology for plug in hybrids is just a few years away). We just have to stop sitting on our hands complaining about minor problems such as airline contributions to green house gases and start implementing real solutions
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captain - NY times is wrong as well
[Read the article: You are now free to pollute about the country]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]SOlar thermal CAN BE cost effective. It suffers from the same problem wind power did 20 years ago. As manufacturers produce more and more of an item they can produce it more cheaply (this has not happened with photovoltaic energy because PV requires the use of scrap silicon from the electronics industry which is in limited supply) . They also can improve the technology incrementally in a way that can't be done in the laboratory. 20 years ago wind energy was 25 c/kwh, now it is less than 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Has the technology improved ? yes. But more importantly manufacturing techniques have improved in a way to make it cheaper. In southern california there is 300 MW of solar thermal capacity that was manufactured for 20 years ago. It produces electricity for 12 cents a kilowatt hour. Scale that production up 20 to 30 fold and you can easily get the cost down to a level acceptable to most americans.
Is solar energy enough. No. Solar cannot provide what folks in the utility industry call "base" load. That is load that is available 24/7 come rain or shine. (Solar thermal is better than wind or photovoltaics in this regard because one can store energy in a heated working fluid which can be used for short periods of rain etc. - this is the reason California Edison has kept their plant running for over 20 years) We need a global campaign to replace coal with nuclear powered plants to provide a base load. We have 500 nuclear power plants in the world right now. Add another 1500 in the next 30 years at a cost of 2 to 3 trillion dollars ( the global economy over this period of time will total 1500 trillion dollars) and you can eliminate coal powered plants and cut greenhouse gases by 40% globally.
China can easily afford to buy this technology from the west and if they don't we and the Kyoto signers can always decide not to trade with them. We will have to subsidize India in order to make it happen in their country.
Finally concerning plug in hybrids. Yes it takes a lot of electric energy to keep them going. However even if all of your electric plants are fossil fuel based (particularly natural gas fired powered electric plants) the amount of fossil fuel energy required to run an electric car for a mile is less than half as much as that required to operate a gasoline powered car. Internal combustion engines are extremely inefficient when compared to electric engines and electric power plants.
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snarlingcoyote her views are par for the course for moderate democrats
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton: Coal isn't going away]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Unfortunately the only way to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% globally in the next 40 years is stop burning coal or to sequester the CO2 from all of the coal you burn. Alternatives can make a dent into coal usage and maybe, just maybe, CO2 sequestration technologies can be developed to make coal "clean" but I seriously doubt it. The world (not just the USA) has to drastically scale up the construction of nuclear power plants in the next 40 years if we are going to seriously reduce green house admissions. There is just no other way to get at the problem of greenhouse gases. It's a shame that Hilary does not have the guts to tell the coal industry or environmentalists that nuclear power is a key component of the solution but most democrats don't have the guts to say it either. As a matter of fact even most of the European advocates of the Kyoto accord don't have the guts to come out and admit it.