Jimmy Carter's Solar Panels

[PoliticalChic]

Why is it that so many liberal ideas fail, and then the explanation is ‘not long enough’ or ‘not the right way’ or some variation (the same excuses for the failure of communism) of same?

In any case, an interesting piece of history...

1. “The glass, aluminum, and stainless steel panels reclined at low angles and basked in the sun as the men in suits and ties, flanked by reporters, took to the West Wing roof to look at what they thought was the future. That day, June 20, 1979,…”

2. For President Jimmy Carter, it had been nearly three years of tough fighting for clean energy. After a long rollout of green tax credits, the creation of a nascent Energy Department, and a pledge to conduct the “moral equivalent of war” (at the time, spoofed by critics as “MEOW”)… Solar panels, some 32 of them, were on the roof of the White House.

3. Carter: “A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.” America was to harness “the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”

4. They cost about $28,000 to install. According to the person who convinced Carter to put up the panels, George Szego, who died this year at 88, they were models of industry….The plan: 20 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2000. Part of his idea was to go far beyond simple hot water solar collectors and direct government research funds towards the development of photovoltaic cells, the kind that could put energy into the grid. That’s the kind of cell that we are still trying to perfect now, in 2008, some 30 years later, when we still get only 6 or 7 percent of our energy from renewables….The 1979 panels survived for a surprising seven years…

5. Seven years after the West Wing roof party, in 1986, the symbolic solar collectors met with “roof repairs,” and they were never re-installed. They were put in a warehouse in Virginia and forgotten. There must have been a little hue and cry at the time – enough to force a statement from the White House media shop.

6. Finally, an administrator at Unity College, a then down-at-heel Maine school looking for publicity, stripped out the seats from a tattered school bus, drove down I-95, and took the panels from the government warehouse back to Maine….More than a dozen Carter solar panels now remain over Unity’s cafeteria, all of them defunct. Others are also stowed in a garage, trapped in what must be the ninth concentric circle of green hell. In 2006, one panel made it down to the Carter Library in Atlanta, delivered there, fittingly, by two students in a vegetable oil-powered vehicle. " Jimmy Carter’s Solar Panels:A Lost History That Haunts Today | The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media

Now, be sure to hurry up and get your solar panels.
Jimmy wants you to.

 

[Old Rocks]

Well now, there are a lot of people that are using solar power.

Econ 101: Solar panels increase home values | Green Tech - CNET News

It stands to reason that adding an asset which cuts your electricity bills--solar panels--will bump up a home's value. Now an economic study attaches numbers to solar panels' real-estate value.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recently released an analysis that found solar panels add between 3 percent and 4 percent to the value of a home. That result is consistent with a study released in April by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which found that solar photovoltaic (PV) panels have a "sizeable effect" on home prices.

(Credit: SunRun) The NBER study looked at prices in San Diego and Sacramento, Calif., to measure the effect of solar panels. The homes studied have panels generate electricity (not hot water) and are connected to the grid so households draw from the regular electricity system when panels are not generating

And then there are mentally deficient 'Conservatives' that throw away money.

Your electrical bills are going nowhere but up. For those with basic tool skills, the cost of a system can be cut considerably by doing the installation themselves. And then the cost of the electrical bill will go down, or even disappear, depending on the size of the system that you install.

 

[uscitizen]

we still get only 6 or 7 percent of our energy from renewables.

that is a heck of a lot of energy. In that same time frame our demand for energy has grown tremendously.

 

[Old Rocks]

Record Cost Drops for US Solar Power Spurs Growth, in Green Jobs Too | CleanTechnica

The average cost of installing residential and commercial solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in the US dropped a record 17% in 2010 and it continues to drop in 2011, an additional 11% through June, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s “Tracking the Sun IV”report.

Slowly but surely, the US market for solar PV power is growing and developing. Actually not so slowly. The US solar power market continued to grow at a record-breaking 66% pace in 2011′s first half. Domestic solar manufacturing rose 31%, while 1.1 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale solar power is under construction, according to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) “US Solar Market Insight.”

Green jobs are growing as well. Some 93,500 Americans worked in the US solar industry in 2010, and more than half of the country’s solar companies are planning to expand hiring in 2011, according to
The Solar Foundation’s “The National Solar Jobs Census.”

“The solar power industry is the fastest growing industry in America. We are delivering strong economic returns and good jobs at increasingly competitive prices, as this National Lab report shows. This report is further proof of what Americans from across the country already know: smart solar policy creates jobs and economic growth for communities hit hard by the recession,” said Rhone Resch, SEIA president and CEO.

Source: Clean Technica (Record Cost Drops for US Solar Power Spurs Growth, in Green Jobs Too | CleanTechnica)

Thank you, Jimmy. To bad Ron was such a fool.

 

[whitehall]

The dirty little secret is that liberals actually think that crazy liberal schemes fail because they don't get enough federal funding. Barry managed to pay off a big campaign contributor tith taxpayer money even if his pet greenie Solyndra factory went bankrupt.

 

[skookerasbil]

Even in 10 years, solar will still account for maybe 3% of our energy needs. Remember......these altermative energies cant exist in the market on their own and need government support..........which isnt coming in future years........thus, the anemic growth levels. Now........admittedly, this changes if the OWS people churn up enough support to make this country go pseudo-red......but I wouldnt bet the house on it.

 

[Old Rocks]

There will be other solar manufactures going bankrupt. And there will be some that make a mint. We are where computers were in the late '80s concerning solar. Many, many competators to be sorted out.

Now we can encourage our home grown companies, or we can just cede this technology to China.

 

[uscitizen]

There will be other solar manufactures going bankrupt. And there will be some that make a mint. We are where computers were in the late '80s concerning solar. Many, many competators to be sorted out.

Now we can encourage our home grown companies, or we can just cede this technology to China.

I think this expensive experiment did cede this to China.
However the people over there have been rampaging some over their solar cell plant killing all the fish or some other anti EPA bullshit thing.

 

[Truthmatters]

how much woudl we get if every home had pannels?

Every business had pannels?

Some just refuse to understand what unsustainable means

 

[Old Rocks]

There will be other solar manufactures going bankrupt. And there will be some that make a mint. We are where computers were in the late '80s concerning solar. Many, many competators to be sorted out.

Now we can encourage our home grown companies, or we can just cede this technology to China.

I think this expensive experiment did cede this to China.
However the people over there have been rampaging some over their solar cell plant killing all the fish or some other anti EPA bullshit thing.

Yep. They use that incident as something to oppose clean solar manufactureres in our nation, and don't even mention the incredible air pollution in China from coal fired generation plants. Wonder why

 

[skookerasbil]

how much woudl we get if every home had pannels?

Every business had pannels?

Some just refuse to understand what unsustainable means

But see s0n.....thats the difference between the liberal mind and the conservative one. Only the 21%ers refer to the term, "refuse to accept". In reality, its about the conservative mind recognizing that in life, there is something called "understanding necessary tradeoffs". This is difficult for the liberal mind to understand for some reason......thus, the brain freeze that leads to statements like, "unable to accept". Heres an perfect analogy to illustrate..........

Several years back, a very unfortunate incident took place on a New England highway.......a van carrying a family of 8 broke down on the shoulder of the highway and shortly thereafer, an 18 wheeler truck plowed into the back of them and killed the whole family. The instant response from liberal interest groups was for the government to widen the highway from 3 lanes to 4 lanes and widen the shoulder. The cost to do this of, course, was in the tens of millions. Accordingly........the majority........having the ability to understand necessary tradeoffs.........easily shot the idea down. The left was appalled thus indicting the thinking of those who oppossed this idea, which to them, was a no-brainer. Really what it is? An inabilty to understand the necessary tradeoffs...........which is exactly why conservative minded people immediately dismiss this idea of "unsustainable". HAs nothing to do with "refusing to accept". To the conservative mind.........its absurd to even spend a moment considering it.

As Ive said before in here..........the faulty liberal mind INVARIABLY does not have the abilty to consider the answers to two questions that always must be answered on any issue, but especially in terms of alternative energies..........

1) As compared to what?

2) At what cost?

As in the example I illustrated above............its beyond the thinking capacity of the liberal mind. Its not an intelligence thing.........alot of people who are liberal thinkers are alot more intelligent then I am. Its just a thought processeing thing. Being around psychiatrists every day of my life for the past 25 years kinda clues you into this stuff.

Indeed..........if liberals made all the decisions, by 2020 we would all be sitting in front of a candle at night, eating rice and telling scary stories to each other. Thankfully for the rest of us........there are only about 21% of them around in our country so as a political entitiy, they will always be fully marginalized.

Roasting mashmallows is alot of fun to do once or twice a year.............but shit if I want to do that on a nightly basis. Nor do most people.



>>FOOTNOTE EDIT.........To be clear........the environmentalists on here want 100% alternative energies. The UN recently estimate this cost to be 71 trillion dollars. Does not matter to the hyper-envrironentalists AT ALL <<FOOTNOTE EDIT

 

[PoliticalChic]

how much woudl we get if every home had pannels?

Every business had pannels?

Some just refuse to understand what unsustainable means

How are your solar panels working out so far?

 

[skookerasbil]

so much winning..............

 

[Truthmatters]

how much woudl we get if every home had pannels?

Every business had pannels?

Some just refuse to understand what unsustainable means

How are your solar panels working out so far?

How are they working out for China?

 

[whitehall]

If the freaking panels did more than light a flashlight everyone would be using them. Why did Obama need to finance Solyndra with American taxpayer dollars? It couldn't survive on it's own or he needed to reward campaign contributors.

 

[Truthmatters]

Big Oil has the market and alot of our reps bought

 

[PoliticalChic]

Big Oil has the market and alot of our reps bought

Actually, "Big Oil" is a construct of the Left, to focus the hate. "Big Oil" actually is the hero, it pays your taxes, gets you to work, provides jobs and innovation. Most of a barrel of oil goes into plastics and the like.

Read "1984" and check out 'Emmanuel Goldstein' to see how the hate thing works. But only on the simple minded.

The real power behind the Leftist policies of this administration is "Big Green," as in Sierra Club, etc.
Proof? Sure, the Obama decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline....who had the power to prevent 20,000 jobs in the industry...and untold other peripheral jobs?
Right...Big Green.

You might be interested in Delingpole's "Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors"

Green on the outside, but Red through and through.

I'm surprised, but it still has a lot of folks fooled.

 

[skookerasbil]

Big Oil has the market and alot of our reps bought

Actually, "Big Oil" is a construct of the Left, to focus the hate. "Big Oil" actually is the hero, it pays your taxes, gets you to work, provides jobs and innovation. Most of a barrel of oil goes into plastics and the like.

Read "1984" and check out 'Emmanuel Goldstein' to see how the hate thing works. But only on the simple minded.

The real power behind the Leftist policies of this administration is "Big Green," as in Sierra Club, etc.
Proof? Sure, the Obama decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline....who had the power to prevent 20,000 jobs in the industry...and untold other peripheral jobs?
Right...Big Green.

You might be interested in Delingpole's "Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors"

Green on the outside, but Red through and through.

I'm surprised, but it still has a lot of folks fooled.

Indeed PoliticalChic......but their impact grows weaker and weaker with each passing year. Havent done dick in terms of any significant legislation for several years now and zero on the horizon.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Big Oil has the market and alot of our reps bought

Actually, "Big Oil" is a construct of the Left, to focus the hate. "Big Oil" actually is the hero, it pays your taxes, gets you to work, provides jobs and innovation. Most of a barrel of oil goes into plastics and the like.

Read "1984" and check out 'Emmanuel Goldstein' to see how the hate thing works. But only on the simple minded.

The real power behind the Leftist policies of this administration is "Big Green," as in Sierra Club, etc.
Proof? Sure, the Obama decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline....who had the power to prevent 20,000 jobs in the industry...and untold other peripheral jobs?
Right...Big Green.

You might be interested in Delingpole's "Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors"

Green on the outside, but Red through and through.

I'm surprised, but it still has a lot of folks fooled.

Indeed PoliticalChic......but their impact grows weaker and weaker with each passing year. Havent done dick in terms of any significant legislation for several years now and zero on the horizon.

Ah, my optimistic friend!

If that were a fait accompli, the President wouldn't have shelved the Keystone XL...the pipeline would have provided jobs, ensured national security, and advanced the President's ever-diminishing re-election hopes.

He must believe that Big Green can provide lots of votes.
And, there are lots of Green's janissaries on the board, several right in this thread!


But, Skook....I'll click glasses with you on it!

 

[edthecynic]

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