Disregard anything coming from Weisberg or any Slate.com writer. I know they cheerleaded for you and made excuses for you every chance they got. But, the fact this guy thinks Al Gore is "brilliant" should tell you something about his judgement.

He's just absolutely not qualified to be in charge of the department of energy.

I think that a CEO of an energy provider that has clearly worked towards integrating more renewable energy into the grid should be what Obama should look for... Someone who wants to improve the renewable energy profile but understands the difficulties and drawbacks.

Al Gore understands the environment, and the problems revolving around the environment... That has been his focus for the last 8 years. That would make him qualified (since he really is incredibly inteligent) to lead the EPA... but he has not shown any grasp of the complex difficulties involved with increasing the penetration of renewable energy in America, and therefore his ideologue stance would drive him towards policy with consequences that he doesn't fully understand and therefore wouldn't fully consider.

He is brilliant though... He's just not qualified for that position.

Hell, Madonna has taken an IQ test and has registered 150... She's a genius. But that doesn't make her qualified to lead the department of energy... It's the same story with Al Gore... I doubt that Gore would take the EPA, but if he would be willing, it would be a great position for him.

*shrug*

Well said. To be in charge of transforming America's energy system, you need a business man who knows the energy inside and out and knows how to practically make changes that work with the natural incentives within industry rather than coming up with impractical schemes which fight the current of industry.

ProudInfidel:

Disregard anything coming from Weisberg or any Slate.com writer. I know they cheerleaded for you and made excuses for you every chance they got. But, the fact this guy thinks Al Gore is "brilliant" should tell you something about his judgement.

Absolutely! We need somebody like..like...Dick Cheney. Close the doors and deal the cards. Everyones business is nobody's business.

Unfortunately, if Obama uses the advice of a moron like Gore, we will be buying 90% of our energy from foreigners and our economy will get worse.

Pickens says use natural gas to run most cars and let me add continue using gasoline that is refined from OUR own oil. We need to drill now to get both natural gas and oil to keep us from being slaves to foreigners. Or we simply have to take over the suppliers and their countries.

Alternative energy is like motherhood. Everyone is for it, but we are not even pregnant yet. Maybe in 20 years we will have developed something other than wind and solar. Perhaps we will invent a bug to turn garbage into energy or better yet bullshit into energy. We have ample suppy of bullshit from the jounalists and politicians who tell us that they will deliver change.

CHANGE IS UNEMPLOYMENT IF YOU HAVE A JOB AND POVERTY IF YOU ARE RETIRED LIVING OFF OF YOUR INVESTMENTS.

My the Ditto-heads are out today! I have trouble taking advice from someone who says Gore is a moron, when they voted for George W. Twice!!!

gmajesko,
We can turn garbage into energy right now... ever hear of MSW or RDF boilers?
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As for your idea of using oil, but just our oil... how does that work? Oil is an internationally traded commodity. Are we going to institute some sort of extremely restrictive trade laws to make sure we don't import oil? How would that help (other than to raise prices for Americans).

As for your take on alternative energy, you make it sound like an all or nothing affair. If a large enough wind farm is placed in a location ideally suited for wind turbines, they are now economically competitive with coal plants. Solar still has a way to go, but that's just an issue of R&D to decrease costs and either subsidies for renewables or taxes for other forms of energy to account for externalities like greenhouse gasses and nuclear waste. Point is, we can start incrementally increasing our renewable portfolio. Outside of hydroelectric, it's quite tiny right now.

gmajesko obviously suffers from the common delusion that the US actually has enough domestic oil reserves to meet our current level of demand. It makes me almost wish McCain had won so that when he implemented the "drill everywhere, drill now" plan and gmajesko would learn what the DOE's experts already know: we still would have to import nearly half our oil consumption.

Almost.

Another "businessman" to run the department of energy? No. We need to invest for the long term and the start up costs will be more expensive than sticking with oil. The long term benefits are huge though and we should have began decades ago. It's well past time we get into alternatives in a big way.

al gore is the smartest man in the world. he said that if i got rid of my 15mpg jeep and started driving a 30mpg unit, the planet would start cooling. it's only been 1 year and we are going to have records lows for the next three nights.

he's a friggen genius i tell ya!!

I totally agree on the general concept here, but worry about this part:

"...but that's just an issue of R&D to decrease costs and either subsidies for renewables or taxes for other forms of energy to account for externalities like greenhouse gasses and nuclear waste."

I'm concerned that we would end up with a massively subsidized alternative energy industry which is responding to government-political pressure rather than consumer-market pressure. So the American tax payer end up basically propping up an industry which produces a mediocre product which does not stay competitive in the marketplace, and worse, allows R&D to stagnate. It becomes the energy equivalent of Detroit's Big Three.

I do want the government to "do" something really big to jumpstart the alt energy industry, in the manner in which JFK launched the moon project. But everything I come up with either ends up with a stagnate, tax-dependent industry or just becomes a boon doggle of giving tax breaks to companies to do R&D.

Let's just hope that the Arabs discover they have far, far fewer oil reserves than they expected, that drives up the cost of oil to extremely painful levels. That will create massive consumer pressure to produce the alternatives.

I prefer modes of penalizing for externalities myself... things like cap and trade, gas taxes, etc. But right now EVERY form of energy is subsidized to some extent. Roughly $2 billion each to coal, gas, solar, nuclear and wind from the feds alone. I'd agree that it would be easy to go overboard with subsidies. I don't want government to pick the winning technology, I want them to create incentives for investors to put their cash on the line for the best solutions... something similar to CAIR that spawned reactors to reduce SO2 and NOx and demand for low sulfur coal.

Pickens' plan calls for a rejiggering of energy resources to provide the United States with enough technological breathing space to develop alternatives to a $700-billion-a-year imported oil habit.

Conceptually, the plan is simple: Replace the natural gas that's used in the generation of electricity with wind power. Then, use the freed-up natural gas to supplant diesel fuel in the nation's fleet of 18-wheeled tractor-trailers.

Trust me, we don't need a bunch of civilians screwing around with trying run their cars on natural gas. They make me nervous when they pump their own gasoline!

And remember that it is still fiscally unfeasible to drill for anymore oil or gas in the deep water or far arctic regions when gas is still so cheap. That is why we aren't drilling now.

gmajesko:

Unfortunately, if Obama uses the advice of a moron like Gore, we will be buying 90% of our energy from foreigners and our economy will get worse.

Pickens says use natural gas to run most cars and let me add continue using gasoline that is refined from OUR own oil. We need to drill now to get both natural gas and oil to keep us from being slaves to foreigners. Or we simply have to take over the suppliers and their countries.

Alternative energy is like motherhood. Everyone is for it, but we are not even pregnant yet. Maybe in 20 years we will have developed something other than wind and solar. Perhaps we will invent a bug to turn garbage into energy or better yet bullshit into energy. We have ample suppy of bullshit from the jounalists and politicians who tell us that they will deliver change.

CHANGE IS UNEMPLOYMENT IF YOU HAVE A JOB AND POVERTY IF YOU ARE RETIRED LIVING OFF OF YOUR INVESTMENTS.

Go to www.nanosolar.com and browse around. Check out their panels output and payoff and how long they're backlogged. Then go over to www.teslamotors.com and attempt to think about applying the technology to compact cars. Think the Big Three Pigs could use some competition?