A Marine’s New Mission

you know the solar power is a good source of power the only one problem is you can not dispose of batterys any more and they do burn quiker than they do normally i moved to the desert in el mirage calif.in 1990 i set up a double wide mobile home and edison said it would cost me 19000 dollars due to the lines could not be started from poles within the subdivision as of 19 73 i think it was it had to be under ground so i said no i set up solar panels 3 of them 35 watt panels and 2 big batterys and i used it for 4 years and then edison said they would drop price to 4000 dollars so i changed over but the solar worked perfect all that time the 35 watt panels really did not need a lot of sunshine to charge i wish i still had it

I appreciate Zakaria articles, because it uses a smart and brilliant analysis. I don't find this in this interview because here is no question asked about the obvious link between energy policy and global warming. On top, the energy policy to be crafted by F Smith is about drilling Alaska: a bit short minded, isn't it?

Fred Smith suggests opening the outer continental shelf as one solution to our dependence on foreigh oil Good as far as it goes. But the 10 billion barrels quoted by Secretary Kempthorne is just a bit over one year's consumption. A better idea may be to create a coal-to-liquid industry based on the 80+ year old Fischer-Tropsch process used by Germany during WW2 and currently producing 150,000 barrels per day in South Africa as a vestige of their apartheid era. This approach has capacity for many decades of U.S. consumption and can be produced for less than $60 per barrel. We need a standby subsidy to protect the needed investment of many billions of dollars against predatory pricing; (One billion dollars, it is estimated will build a facilty capable of 10,000 barrels per day.) And we need to overcome the environmentalists grip on our politicians on the issue of added CO2 emissions from this source. A realistic look at the environmental issue will require a short term "geoengineering" solution (e,g., emulating the cooling effect of a large volcanic eruption - among the ideas supported for possible implementation by many prominent scientists over the past 30 years) This will give us the century or more we need to change the world's energy base.

Fred Smith suggests opening the outer continental shelf as one solution to our dependence on foreigh oil Good as far as it goes. But the 10 billion barrels quoted by Secretary Kempthorne is just a bit over one year's consumption. A better idea may be to create a coal-to-liquid industry based on the 80+ year old Fischer-Tropsch process used by Germany during WW2 and currently producing 150,000 barrels per day in South Africa as a vestige of their apartheid era. This approach has capacity for many decades of U.S. consumption and can be produced for less than $60 per barrel. We need a standby subsidy to protect the needed investment of many billions of dollars against predatory pricing; (One billion dollars, it is estimated will build a facilty capable of 10,000 barrels per day.) And we need to overcome the environmentalists grip on our politicians on the issue of added CO2 emissions from this source. A realistic look at the environmental issue will require a short term "geoengineering" solution (e,g., emulating the cooling effect of a large volcanic eruption - among the ideas supported for possible implementation by many prominent scientists over the past 30 years) This will give us the century or more we need to change the world's energy base.