Bush and his Big Oil/Saudi clients are getting desperate. The Iraq cakewalk they believed they could pull off is falling apart. The Saudis have made huge investments in "American" oil companies and in "American" defense industries expecting that to protect them as their oil runs out. Saudi Arabia will be Osama Arabia in five or so years as the Saudi family bails. Of course they expected to live off the profits from "American" Big Oil companies, especially with the huge profits they expected from the Iraq adventure. The Bush family has been heavily involved in facilitating the takeover of American politics by Big Oil and their Saudi investors. The next five years will be real interesting as their desperation increases. It costs a lot of money to support Saudi princes in their accustomed lifestyle of living the good life on the Med and screwing all those European women.

But Pareto's Law also probably applies to screwing up. 80% of us commit 20% of the screwups, and 20% of us commit 80% of the screwups. I'm sure the LW has screwed up something now and then, but she is probably one of the 80% that doesn't screw up much. However, she should be able to acknowledge her occasional and minor screwups. I can't believe she is incapable of screwups.

You watch too much PBS. To convert solar energy to electricity requires silicon. Silicon metal is made by reducing silicon dioxide (sand) in an electric furnace, which is about 10 stores tall and uses 25-50 megawatts of electricity. That is 25,000 to 50,000 kilowatt hours every hour. My house uses 1000 kWh per month. The oxygen in the silicon dioxide is transferred to carbon (coke) releasing carbon monoxide (CO) as a byproduct. The CO immediately reacts with the oxygen in the air to make lots of CO2, the greenhouse gas you hate so much. It is unlikely that the electricity produced by the silicon solar cells will ever equal the electricity used to make the silicon. But silicon solar cells allow the decentralization of electricity production, which might be a good thing.

Most liberals are totally bored by thermodynamics. It's not very touchy-feely. It permits them to believe in totally outrageous bullshit.

China has lots of electric furnaces, which produce things like chromium, ferro-silicon, and other stuff that our advanced civilization depends on. The US uses a lot of them, too, to produce a lot of the steel we use. Every one of them makes vast quantities of CO2, and uses vast quantities of kilowatt-hours. So it's a double whammy. The electricity is made by burning fossil fuels and then we use coke (modified coal) to make lots of the other things we need, like steel for buildings and bridges.

There is no way to make enough electricity to power things like electric furnaces, which cannot be made smaller without sacrificing efficiency (thereby making more CO2 per unit of output), without big central power stations. That is either by the burning of fossil fuels or nukes.

The only reason that nuclear power is "politically unacceptable" is the lobbying and economic power of Big Oil and Coal. Years ago I remember that the biggest contributor to the anti-nuke forces was the Association of Independent Oil Dealers. The waste "problem" is totally red herring. I live 40 miles downwind of over 50 shut-down nukes, plus the stored core of Three-Mile Island, and no one here worries about the "waste problem" except a few wealthy (and ignorant) fools in Jackson Hole.

As for carbon "sequestration", the Himalayas are doing a great job of it already. Their rapid erosion creates lots of finally ground rock, which reacts with the CO2 dissolved in water runoff to carry the carbonates into the ocean for sequestration as deep ocean sediments. We have temporarily overpowered that mechanism, but when the fossil fuels run out in the next couple of hundred years the CO2 levels will drop fast. We will lose our lovely greenhouse climate and settle into the (overdue) next ice age. Not to fear, however, modern humans evolved running around the edges of glaciers, so we are well adapted. No more obesity and diabetes to plague us, but a few other problems.

Our burning of fossil fuel is temporarily returning us to the conditions that existed on earth for many millenia, when the CO2 level was far higher than today, and the only ice on Earth was in Antarctica. Then India slammed into Asia raising the Himalayas, creating all that rock dust that absorbs our precious CO2, giving us the ice ages (over 50 in the last 3 million years).

Hillary is as simplistic as any typical politician, telling her constituency exactly what they want to hear.

Richardson and Kucinich seem to be the only ones not co-opted by Big Oil. Big Oil are the international oil companies that have recently revealed that they are not American Companies. I think if we could delve deep enough we would find that the Saudi Royal Family are the single largest investors in Exxon-Mobil and others. Since no one appears to be able to run a presidential campaign without lots of money, and Big Oil has lots of ways to launder money into political campaigns, the Saudi Royals probably effectively control who gets to run for president.

Those Americans who insist that the Pres be a person of faith are effectively turning over the country to the pseudo-Muslims of the Saudi Royal family.