Here's an irony for you: The same ocean breezes that are pushing oil onto the beaches and wetlands of the Gulf of Mexico could be helping to power our country and reduce our dependence on those very fossil fuels.
But even in the face of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, many stubbornly claim that offshore drilling is still the answer to our energy problems. One of the objections I hear most often from skeptics of offshore wind power is, "Sure, it sounds good, but it's not a viable source of energy at this point."
Here's the truth: we have the technology in our back pocket. But in our front pocket -- like forgotten, crumpled dollar bills -- are policies that incentivize dirty energy. For decades, the U.S. government has provided billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies to the oil industry.
Under existing policies, the industry will receive at least $36.5 billion in taxpayer money over the next decade. Meanwhile, between 2006 and 2009 BP's profits totaled nearly $125 billion . In contrast, the total cost of the ongoing disaster so far is $3.5 billion. According to a market analyst, BP may survive the second quarter with no significant change in net debt. In essence, the company could get off scot-free financially while the gulf suffers, which is an astonishing thought.
So where is our government's support for alternative energy? Federal support for wind research and development is expected to be just $75 million this year, which is a paltry amount compared to the $469 million given to fossil fuels.
Believe it or not, the U.S. pioneered wind technologies, yet we have fallen behind Europe and China in using wind to power our country. When the Cape Wind project was proposed a decade ago, no federal agency even had the clear authority to lead its permitting process. At the same time, Europe had already been using offshore wind turbines for nearly a decade.
Ten years later, the future of offshore wind is still in question, in part because the agency running the show is the one formerly known as the Minerals Management Service, the agency also in charge of offshore drilling.
Though Cape Wind recently won a federal permit, it is still far from completion. To date, not a single offshore wind farm is operating in the U.S., and that should make every American ashamed and angry.
It's time for a change.
The Obama administration should ensure that promoting wind finally gets priority over permitting more dirty fossil fuels. Congress must increase funding for research and development of offshore wind, provide stable tax and investment incentives, and create a predictable, practical regulatory structure. We need to take the lead in the growing offshore wind market.
Yes, all offshore wind projects need adequate environmental review. But many of the concerns that have been raised about offshore wind's environmental impacts - including aesthetic and noise concerns -- seem downright laughable compared to the millions of gallons of oil staining the Gulf of Mexico's wildlife and economy and the impacts of fossil fuels in driving climate change and ocean acidification.
So send that message to Obama and Congress -- join the more than 130,000 people who have signed Oceana's petition to stop offshore drilling today.
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A vote for offshore wind is a vote against offshore oil!
I voted for SHPEGS.
Yea well so does most of the Fox News cast...down the stairs.
The wind industry has been subsidized in the US since the early 90s. In the past year the DOE has doled out billions in direct grants to wind developers, mostly foreign.
Iberdrola has received over $495 million, First Wind/UPC $235 million plus loans guarantees of $119 million.
Cape wind and others proposed projects will be eligible to receive, from the feds, 30% of inflated projected project costs upfront.
This is an Enron scam on stimulous. The feds are giving money we can ill afford to politically conected cronies to build inefficient, unreliable, environmentally destructive, projects that will become rusting monuments to stupidity, gullibility, and greed.
For those who think the European example is so great, ask yourselves why their economies are in such bad shape. Spain has ended unsustainable subsidies to wind projects and Italy has arrested developers for fraud in the permitting process and for collecting subsidies on wind plants that produced little or nothing.
If the output of industrial wind, that the taxpayers are subsidizing, were as good as Danson and others touting this scam believe, then why is this information always claimed by developers to be proprietary and kept from the public?
SCAM HOAX BOONDOGGLE
Use Less
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/earth/inside-the-earth/nuclear-waste.html
Compare safety of other power sources with facts instead of only opinion and projections.
Is this article your answer for everything?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Grid_management
What we can do with nuclear waste:
Depleted Uranium - A traveling wave nuclear reactor can burn through 30% of depleted uranium without reprocessing
Plutonium - can be mixed with uranium (MOX fuel) and used in licensed reactors
Fission Products (stable and radioactive) - many have economic value as blood and food irradiators, soil density meters, medical isotopes, rare earths...
Minor Actinides - advanced fuels have been developed at Idaho National labs that can burn these, also Los Alamos National Labs is working on a hybrid fusion-fission reactor that uses the high energy fusion neutrons to reduce the minor actinides to shorter lived isotopes
But the amount of wind energy we are proposing to tap is far too low to affect the climate in any respect.
we also said the same thing about earth's fossil fuel reserves, now we are 200% sure it affects the climates.
Are we jumping from the pan to fire, without fully knnowing about windpower
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Kennedy: Why I oppose Cape Wind
Many of you have already read this letter from Ted Kennedy. In case you missed it, I am reprinting it here. This letter has been published across the Cape to inform local residents of our senior senator's position on Cape Wind.
By Sen. Edward M. Kennedy
Sunday, April 30, 2006
http://capecodliving.blogspot.com/2006/05/kennedy-why-i-oppose-cape-wind.html
The biggest obstacle is making public the real costs of installing offshore turbines. For Cape users, its burried in some private capital firm who "cronied" up to push rates as high as they could go.
Must be some major subsidies going on. First one 35 cents a kwh from the state of UTAH. Great deal for the Utah gas companies who can make a fortune load balancing the useless pieces of junk with cheap low efficiency gas plant.
"To date, not a single offshore wind farm is operating in the U.S., and that should make every American ashamed and angry." Oh contraire, Mr. Danson. It shows there is still some economic common sense in America.
A handful of people control the wind sector, internationally. They build wind projects that fail to produce energy, yet developers still collect public subsidies paraphrasing anti-Mob prosecutor Roberto Scarpinato.
"Who are these guys, Cape Wind, EMI, UPC, First Wind, IVPC?"
http://bjdurk.newsvine.com/_news/2010/02/23/3941508-who-are-these-guys-cape-wind-emi-upc-first-wind-ivpc
Carefully watch who is involved in the creation of policy intended to separate you and I from our resource and monetary wealth in exchange for empty promises, unreliable and cost prohibitive wind energy.
FYI: PetroCats and Windcats are one in the same simply diversifying their energy investment portfolios.
And even British Petroleum considers offshore wind "too risky".
Dow Jones & Company, Inc. - Jul 14
"BP is reviewing options to build two wind-power projects totaling 400 megawatts, either by expanding existing wind farms or by going to new locations, possibly in California, Colorado, Indiana or Wyoming.
"We are not going offshore," Graham said when asked whether the company was interested in developing wind power along the East Coast. "We have not seen anything that would attract us to go offshore. Too risky." Such risks include the cost of building solid undersea foundations for turbines, unpredictable weather and other issues."
Traditional energy firms don't fear competition from wind because they know that industrial wind is not going to ever produce anything but subsidies and tax breaks at the expense of taxpayers and ratepayers.
$29 billion for Energy Efficiency, including $5 billion to pay for energy efficiency retrofits in low-income homes;
$21 billion for Renewable Generation, such as the installation of wind turbines and solar panels;
$10 billion for Grid Modernization to develop the so-called “smart grid” that will involve sophisticated electric meters, high-tech electricity distribution and transmission grid censors, and energy storage;
$6 billion to support domestic manufacturing of advanced batteries and other components of Advanced Vehicles and Fuels Technologies;
$18 billion for Traditional Transit and High-Speed Rail;
$3 billion to fund crucial research, development, and demonstration of Carbon Capture and Sequestration technologies;
$3 billion for Green Innovation and Job Training to invest in the science, technology, and workforce needed for a clean energy economy;
about $2 billion in Clean Energy Equipment Manufacturing tax credits.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/cea_4th_arra_report.pdf
And that's not considering efforts to price carbon (just look to Lindsey Graham's solo ventures to strike a deal to understand how difficult it's going to be).
but this guys just after your money folks
every old huckster and used car salesman is out