... ok no. Plenty of past presidents have a sense of humor far better than Obama's
Unless you count picking Biden as VP.




A carbon tax.
tripledip recession caused by said tax
companies leaving the US from crooked deals with unions (eg. Boeing being persecuted for going to a right to work state)

There's plenty that could go wrong.
By far the worst is probably the carbon tax he keeps wanting.
Expensive energy is a fast track to economic collapse.
It's an idea so bad it didn't even pass TWICE when he submitted it to a Dem controlled congress.

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"The good warrior knows when to fight, and when to withdraw."
- Sun Tzu

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All of them are. Open your eyes.

Just follow the money. Who has it, where they put it, and who gets it.

And it will all make sense.

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Then perhaps companies would pursue renewable sources of energy instead? Obviously at the moment it's not viable to use them to power the entire USA, but a carbon tax would drive funding into research and implementation.

It's really not as bad as it sounds, it wouldn't have to be so high it cripples businesses, and it could be phased in to give people time to adapt. Furthermore, carbon based fuel won't last forever, damages the environment etc.

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"What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."- The last words of General John Sedgewick, killed by a sniper in the American civil war

The school of thought that "making energy super expensive will make research in renewables happen" doesn't really make sense.

And why? Because energy drives the economy, like I said. Like yes there would be research into new energy forms. Whenever an oil crysis comes up, research comes up with things like biofuels and alternative diesels like coal-diesel fuel. But here's the thing.

If you cut out an energy source, your net-energy, or the whole energy output of the nation, drops. So if you tax an energy source like coal 4=5x as much to be the same as solar and wind power. You cut the nation's net energy output by at least half.

You CAN NOT magically produce products without energy. And the primary consumer of energy isn't the common household. It's industry. Have one choice: produce half as many goods since they can't afford to make more... and charge twice as much for them in order to cover the cost of the insane energy rates.

And even assuming the outrageous energy prices encourage alternative energy sources.
No renewable source of fuel can compete with the consistency and scalability of coal/gas/nuclear. Wind doesn't work at the daytime and its expensive. Solar only works in the day, and it's 5x as expensive... and unless you can think of a river that can be destroyed hydro is out.

It's the same as if sugar prices skyrocket. A 12 pack of coke doubles. What do you do? Buy twice as much coke and starve? no... you buy less coke and have less fun. Companies also have to think about surviving, they can't just say they'll suddenly pay themselves slave wages for the greater good. Cost of energy doubles, the price of goods doubles.

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"The good warrior knows when to fight, and when to withdraw."
- Sun Tzu

I'll smith anything up to 93 smithing if you have the material for me to make it with
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Wind doesn't work during the day? lol... I don't know where you even come up with the audacity to make such a silly/outrageous claim.

Solar only works in the day, unless you get huge battery packs (IE: storage), which yes, will make the cost skyrocket. I'm not sure what the 5x expensive is referring to, install cost, production cost, ROI, all of the above? What are you talking about there?

http://www.stltoday.com/business/articl ... 60e83.html

Hydro. I've been saying they should do this for years. Granted I have no experience in working with hydro, so what it all entails I don't really know.

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"Civil disobedience is still disobience."

I get the feeling it was a badly worded way of saying Wind doesn't work consistently during the day. Not everywhere has enough consistent wind for it to be a viable option.

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Goten is dead!

Considering how much wide open space there is in the USA, it certainly would be viable to produce at least a huge chunk of the USA's energy without any interference with people's everyday lives.

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"What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."- The last words of General John Sedgewick, killed by a sniper in the American civil war

And then you get the eco-activists complaining that you'd ruin the fragile ecosystem of the desert. Aside from that, Most of the nation isn't wide open desert.

What's the problem with that?
Because even with a relatively distributed power system un the USA, the losses from energy transmission, eg. power lines, transformers, sub stations, etc.... The power losses purely from transmission are in the area of 8-10% of all power generated.

So say you generate solar in a bright and sunny centralized area, the losses won't simply increase, they'll go up probably 10 fold if not more. This is due to the further you will have to deliver power out and thus need bigger substations and longer lines from the source.

Thus even if you got permission to build a 150 mile wide solar farm (enough area to power the USA) the energy losses in trying to transmit energy from say... Arizona to New York would be obscene. And solar farms in the midwest and east coast are just barely even useful. In my area alone, you get a 30-40% efficiency loss just due to weather.


Hydro, you can say all you want.... but most dams in place were built before anyone gave a crap about river health. Many dams are just left to rot and the rivers they are on are left to suffer for it. Even with paths for fish and wildlife, the damage they do to a river ecosystem is immense. They're efficient, but there's no way to make a dam or even passive hydro power system like tidal power and non-obstructive current generators without risking the wildlife and ecosystem. Essentially to this point, all the dams that ever WILL be made, have been.


Lastly, if you're going to have the audacity and utter ridiculousness to try and call me out on something. AT THE LEAST do your research before doing so.
Sure there's wind in areas in the day, but you don't just need some wind for power generation.. you need large volumes of consistent wind.

https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/ ... 01-03.html

http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewc ... ocs_forest

High altitudes are typically the places you want wind farms as they produce the highest currents and most consistent power. You're not exactly going to just throw wind farms anywhere, which is also another big problem, because then again you get a geologically dependent power source. Which compared to nuclear, coal, gas, can be produced anywhere at any time and respond quickly to demand increases... and then of course don't have the problem of this bit

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/busin ... .html?_r=1

People praise them until it's in their back yard. It's the classic solution of "I'll vote for it as long as it's somebody else's problem"

To make things worse, the bigger the mill the bigger the noise. And in order to make wind power competitive, it has to be huge, because the larger it is the less power is lost from friction and the more upper winds can be captured and used. The drone is similar effect to living under an airport. It means that people in the area less often reach a deeper sleep and this can create a buildup of stress and lead to heart issues consistent with living near an airport.


I do believe wind/solar have their uses thins like supplemental sources so we can run conventional power at lower rates at night, or in remote area , but NOT as a primary source of power. I don't believe they can or should become more than even 5% of the nation's power supply. They're just too expensive and unreliable to really depend on for any major portion of power generation.

__________________
"The good warrior knows when to fight, and when to withdraw."
- Sun Tzu

I'll smith anything up to 93 smithing if you have the material for me to make it with
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Must be why I just installed a 3.5MW 40ft. wind turbine today that requires 6MPH to 18MPH winds. Peak output of 3.7MW. Average wind speed around here is 9-10MPH.

According to the manufacturer's formula, this customers turbine should produce 3292KWh annually. It needs to be greased and looked at once every 18-24 months.

With her electric bills for all of last year, this turbine should put her past net-zero and the utilities will be writing her checks (SIP homes are efficient when it comes to heating/cooling).

It was in the customers back yard... by the way I'm an electrician.




http://en.openei.org/wiki/Crane_Creek_Wind_Farm

Must be why Iowa (hmm, pretty flat there) produces somewhere in the ballpark of 4400MW of electricity through turbines?



See the above. It's the 11th tower (2 more planned), 5 of which are in customers yards. We don't approach them as salesman, they come to us and ask.



There's only about 1000 wind turbines (farm turbines) in my area. There's about 4 privately owned 300' turbines. There's a minimum of 11 privately owned 90' down to 40' wind turbines that I've personally been part of the installation. Iowa produces somewhere right around 20% of its power from turbines, lol.

So yeah, 20 grand all said and done (bought/installed/operating) for two turbines (one 90', one 50') getting the customer almost net-zero energy consumption on a 2400 head hog confinement building, and you're claiming it's too expensive and unreliable for any major generation?.. I can tell you all the service work done in the past 3 years to those towers... Replacement of one CH250 breaker. Big whoop.

P.S.... Research is no substitute for hands on experience.

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"Civil disobedience is still disobience."

For the record, Germany produces more than 20% of its power from renewables, and they don't seem to be doing too bad, despite the European economy.

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Tahu 1000 - Former Member

Also for the record, Spain focused on renewable energy and got hammered and the unemployment rate is around 25%.

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Their unemployment rate was near, or was, 25% in the early-mid 90s. It was also close to 20% or so back in the mid 80's as well. They have had high unemployment rates for quite some time back and forth.

Germany also created something like 140-150K jobs due to renewable energy.

I hope you weren't going for the correlation of green energy = job loss. Spains economic woes are vast and many, and many of them are the same as ours.

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"Civil disobedience is still disobience."

Barrack Obama is backed by companies that support clean energy and believe it is a worthwhile investment and profitable.

I support clean energy.

Presidents somewhat have their hands tied by who pays for their campaign and pays for them to keep their job.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contr ... =N00000286
Romney is paid for by goldman sachs, JP Morgan and Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Bain capital, etc. All the people that have been taking our money for years and ruining our economy and just want to take more. If getting Mitt Romney elected isn't about money and making these companies a profit, I don't know what it is about. His largest contributor, Goldman Sachs, is a somewhat lucrative and conscpicous business. They were one of the largest recipients of the bailout money, they've paid themselves massive bonuses both before and afterwards, and have failed to provide congress quality and detailed information regarding the financial crisis and meltdown resulting in the bailout. Executives for this company also have worked in high ranking positions in the Federal Reserve. Henry Paulson was a CEO at Goldman Sachs for several years, and afterwards was the Chairman for the Federal Reserve under the Bush presidency. I find it conspicous that a man who has built a legacy making profits for himself and his company just so happened to be in charge of printing our money. I've watched several people from this company speaking to congress on CSPAN and avoiding answering direct questions and it is my opinion that they are essentially doing something very underhanded. Obama's largest contributor is microsoft.

I am registered to vote, and as much as I don't think Obama is a great president, the decision, as always, between two presidents has effectively boiled down to a choice between a turd, and a slightly different colored, less smelly but still poopy turd. And I'd rather vote for Obama, who's already saved me money in payroll taxes, than Romney, who's hand in hand with everyone who wants to take my money and take it as fast as possible and then lose it and pay themselves huge bonuses with it. Obama has definitely not had successful policies, and definitely lacks a certain "in-charge" capacity, and I do not agree with much of his opinions or his methods or his philosophy, but as much as I find him disagreeable I find Bank of America and Goldman Sachs much, much more disagreeable. And when I consider these major financial companies with immense amounts of wealth and power that they have hoarded all to themselves, the thought of them having a president in office which they can use as a tool to further their agendas makes me very afraid for our wellbeing.

If I could afford it I would run my whole house off solar panels and wind. It would be an expensive initial investment but over time for myself and my kids after im dead it would pay off a thousandfold. It's also better for the environment, which, while not a prime concern of mine, I do consider a bonus.

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So we've got a turd, a slightly different colored turd, and someone like Gary Johnson who likely won't win due to not being Democrat or Republican by label.

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Goten is dead!

Basically.

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Libertarianism at RuneVillage?! Oh the humanity...

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HENNER MONTH! AWESOME! HENNER IS AWESOME! HENNER RULES! I LUVS TEH HENNER!

As the userbase grows older, so do our misguided political tendencies...

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He's officially been re elected.

We're screwed.

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"What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."- The last words of General John Sedgewick, killed by a sniper in the American civil war