Via Fox News:

“It’s time to take this tragedy and turn it into an opportunity,” Sen. Bill Neslon, D-Fla., said in a written statement. “I congratulate the president on saying we are now going to declare that this nation is getting on the road rapidly to breaking our dependence on oil. We are at a point now, through research and development, that we are going to wean ourselves from petroleum addiction.”

This really does not make sense. Contrary to popular opinion, we derive much more than gasoline for our cars from oil. In fact  the computer screen you are using to read this is manufactured from oil.

But, the push is still on for alternative & ‘clean’ energy. Of course, when you talk about alternative or renewable energy you are talking about generating electricity. The problem with trying to leverage the oil leak to advance the green energy issue is we use very little oil to generate electricity in the United States. We primarily generate our electricity using Coal, Nuclear, Natural Gas and  Hydro Power so I fail to see the connection between drilling for oil and the need for solar power to generate electricity- Unless we are all driving EVs’. And the mass adoption of EV’s that is not going to happen anytime soon.

Even if we switch to electric cars, we still need lots of oil for plastics, jet fuel, fertilizer, pesticide and myriad of other products. And, not to put too fine a point on the issue of the electric car, the hype has been building since 1911:

The designers of electric passenger carrying vehicles have made great advances in the past few years, and these machines have retained all their early popularity and are steadily growing in favor with both men and women. They are very handy for use in the cities, and numbers of the best known and most prominent makers of gasoline cars in this country use electric cars for driving between their homes and their offices.

The enthusiastic interest recently shown by the electric power companies all over the country in furthering the cause of the electric passenger vehicle assures a still greater use of these machines. In the past it was sometimes difficult to make arraignments to have electrics charged unless the vehicles wee stored in a garage where owners of electrics were catered to, but this state of affairs has been changed. Now it is possible for an owner of an electric to install his own charging plant in his stable and the electric power companies are anxious to connect their feed wires to these individual charging plants. (emphasis added)

And generating large scale power using solar power is not going to happen soon either.

Photovoltaic Cell from 1936

The problem with the idea that is that  now, today, we are going to throw all kinds of money on research and development for new alternative energy is no matter how much money is thrown at the problem you cant change physics (or the weather).

Photovoltaic effect was discovered by French physicist Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (1820-1891) in the year 1839. Photovoltaic cells are built out of two layers-positive and negative, and the difference of potentials between these two layers depends upon the intensity of the solar radiation. Solar energy is coming on Earth in the shape of photons. Photons once they fall on the solar cell’s, are transferring all of their energy to the panel, making it possible for negatively charged electrons to burst out of the atom. These electrons after picking up the energy from photons have enough energy to move around and are moving towards other (negative) side of the panel and this is how the difference in potentials happens and electrical energy generates.

What breakthrough is going to happen in the next 10 years that hasn’t happened in the last 171 years? It’s not like scientists and engineers haven’t been working on the problem.

wind power

Wind power has been around forever and we moved away from it as a means for generating electricity to using coal power:

Campbell Dunford, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), says that Germany – which has the largest number of wind turbines in Europe – “is building five new coal power stations, which it does not otherwise need, purely to provide covering power for the fluctuations from their wind farms. I am not sure [wind] has been a great success for them.” Mr Dunford claims that Germany’s CO2 emissions have actually risen since it increased its use of wind power. Though the wind itself might, in RUK’s words, be “free,” the cost of backup capacity is likely to be astronomical. (emphasis added)

Of course, the facts about the technology the Democrats and Greens are pushing need not get in the way of their agenda:

In his Oval Office address Tuesday night, Obama said the tragedy unfolding in the Gulf should spark Congress to embrace a “clean energy” future that eases dependence on oil and other fossil fuels.

Again, Obama’s call for new, clean energy is nothing new and it echos back to Jimmy Carter (April 18th, 1977):

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind’s previous history.

World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.

And more from Carter’s speech in 1977:

Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system.

These are the goals we set for 1985:

–Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.

–Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.

–Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day.

–Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months’ supply.

–Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year.

–Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.

–Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.

We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind.

I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy.

This plan is essential to protect our jobs, our environment, our standard of living, and our future.

Our entire economy and way of life is based on oil and we are not going to replace it by using solar panels and wind mills.