First we watched the bungling of the financial crisis. Then GM demands the AIG treatment. Now the energy industry is stomping at the bits to get its helping of taxpayer monies. We are witnessing the best engineered and most profitable scams in history in which the financial industry looted well over one trillion dollars of taxpayer money. The spectacle is awesome. The amounts of money we are talking about are incomprehensible for the poor souls who are called upon to pay for the mess. In the meantime, banks are laundering taxpayer monies. CEO's and investors are chuckling while comfortably looting the savings of the working stiffs. Who wants to run a decent business anymore? You just have to learn how to steal money, legally! The media have already decided that GM is going to get the money. But bets are still being taken on who gets the loot in the "Energy Race to Riches". "Solar Electricity" and "Wind Power" are the two favorites. "Nuclear Power" has the best record but has been hobbled with a high handicap. And then there are "Electric Cars", "CNG Cars", and cars holding one person and one shopping bag. There is "Ethanol", a former favorite, and a new offspring called "Cellulosic Ethanol". Even "Public Transportation" has been trucked in to stand at the starting line. And then there are several losers that are guaranteed to get a share of the prize money for just participating. Unfortunately, all present proposals for solving the energy crisis look more like a horse race with several highly touted favorites than a well conceived plan to prepare the USA and eventually the world for a new, long-lasting energy future. In the following we leave the world of high stakes gambling with other people's money, of special tax preferences, and with rules like "heads I win - tails you loose". Instead, we are going to look at some simple facts, try to learn from the past, and attempt to provide for the future. The most pressing problem facing the US is the steady and accelerating drain of US currency to foreign, petroleum exporting countries. Every year the US pays more than half a trillion of dollars for imported crude oil. Additionally, we are going to spend more than a trillion dollars for the failed effort of gaining control of Middle East petroleum reserves. Continuing crude oil imports are increasing our indebtedness to hostile countries and are providing the monies for terrorists, who keep us under a permanent threat. Our efforts to neutralize these threats do not come cheap. The conclusion is simple and has been drawn repeatedly; the USA must regain energy independence! A few billion dollars, spent wisely over the last two decades, could have done wonders for energy independence. However, all efforts were successfully defeated by well connected lobbyists at home. We can become genuinely energy independent by one single means only; we must produce energy on US lands! The energy lobby says: it cannot be done. However, their opinion is biased at the tune of several trillion dollars. US energy industry fears low oil prices. There are approximately 25 billion barrels of petroleum left in US oil deposits. The US petroleum industry is looking at the difference between $175 and $75 per barrel. The difference represents a cool $2.5 trillion. When talking about trillions of dollars we are talking real money. This money is there for the taking! The world and the US are going to run out of crude oil soon. It does not matter if it takes forty or seventy five years. Oil reserves will be depleted. End of discussion! Energy drives world economies. Lack of energy will lead to the immediate collapse of economies. World energy consumption is still predominantly based on fossil fuels. Combustion of fossil fuels discharges huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which creates global warming. Global warming causes sea levels to rise, brings on worldwide climate changes, and will lead to global overheating when not stopped in the near future. The world consumes energy in three forms; electric power, liquid fuels, and heating gases. We can generate electric power without harmful emissions with nuclear fuels, hydro power, wind power, and solar power. Wind power and solar power are still too expensive and must be further developed before they can and will take over most of electric power generation. Intermittent wind and solar power cannot be used effectively as long as we have not succeeded in developing storage facilities for storing electric power in huge quantities. This technology has received minimal attention despite its tremendous profit potential. Nature has made fossil fuels from biomass thousands and even millions of years ago. There is no reason that we cannot imitate nature. In fact, we have many more technical capabilities today than nature ever had. For mysterious reasons ($2.5 trillion?) there are no efforts to find out how nature converted biomass from fossil fuels. If we ever learn to mimic nature, we will have solved all our energy problems for the next several centuries. Most importantly, we will be capable to convert free solar energy into abundant, inexpensive electric energy and into plentiful, affordable transportation fuels. We will still be able to cross oceans in airplanes, our national defense will not be threatened by lack of motor fuels, terrorists will run out of money, and everybody can buy cars one favors and can afford.
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