Recent comments

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    I'm still waiting for you to show us in your own words how you are going to supply California with solar energy and counter the hard analysis I provided right in front of your face. Your failure to do so is tantamount to an admission that you have no idea how to achieve that, you don't even read the crap you post, or if you read it you don't understand it, since so far you haven't providing even a bare-bones basic plan for solar in one of the best locations on the planet.

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    And your Schlock Ecologist critique of thorium reactors is just using the NNL study as its source. Kirk Sorensen did a point by point response to the NNL study and showed it to be full of blatant errors, deliberate omissions, downright falsehoods and gross exaggerations, as usual for these disinformation specials:

    http://energyfromthorium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=3803&hilit=NNL&s...

    Kirk’s analysis has made the NNL study worth about as much as the paper I wiped my butt with this morning.

    For real sound information on Thorium energy:

    Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor - Thorium Nuclear Energy - Revolutionary Energy Source:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPW5DXcL3Bo

    ThorCon: A Thorium Molten Salt Reactor System that can be built Now -by Lars Jorgensen @ TEAC7

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfsOYzOpYRw

    http://thorconpower.com/

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    IREC Interstate Renewable Energy Council

    Reports available:

    12,000 MW of Renewable Distributed Generation by 2020

    Blueprint for the Development of Distributed Generation in California

    Easing the Transition to a More Distributed Electricity System

    Market Trends & Analysis

    IREC’s Annual Updates & Trends Report 2015

    This annual report provides information and independent, thought-leading insight from IREC’s national experts on the year’s renewable energy and energy efficiency progress and challenges in trend-leading states and across the U.S. Released at Solar Power International in Anaheim September 2015.

    U.S. Solar Market Trends 2014

    An annual in-depth review of solar photovoltaics, solar thermal and concentrated solar activities and progress in the U.S. Authored by IREC Vice President/COO Larry Sherwood.

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago
  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    So you are admitting you don't know how to supply California with solar energy. I thought so.

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago
  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    "...Use of solar photovoltaics has been growing at a phenomenal rate: Worldwide installed capacity has seen sustained growth averaging 43 percent per year since 2000...."

    No kidding, thanks to massive, unbelievable subsidies, i.e. Ontario 40-80 cents per kwh, Japan 53 cents per kwh. Growth will only occur as long as the vast subsidies continue and all these new countries, are jumping on the bandwagon. Once the cost can no longer be sustained by these countries, the solar installation rate rapidly declines, as it already has in Europe:

    i.e. Germany's Solar PV installation rate is now on a steep decline. 7.6 GW in 2012, 3.3 in 2013, 1.9 in 2014. And yet they are only up to 6.1% solar electricity in 2014. About 1.2% of total energy supply. And they are the most gung-ho Solar proponents on the planet. 30 yrs of all out effort and 1.2% - and you call that a success?!?

    You still haven't shown us how you can make solar work in sunny California or countered how I showed you that it can't work.

    http://energyskeptic.com/2015/tilting-at-windmills-spains-solar-pv/

    A Critique of Proposals for a World Renewable Energy Supply by Ted Trainer:

    http://www.greens.org/s-r/60/60-09.html

  • "The market has become tilted..."   9 years 37 weeks ago

    "Obama as Mastermind" are you kidding me? The problem is Obama is just another corporate stooge, mostly a Bankster stooge, and he is pushing the TPP like all the other corporate stooges, because it is part of the Bankster driven "New World Order" geopolitical, corporate dominated, globalist agenda.

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago
  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Renewable Electricity: Insights for the Coming Decade Camila Stark, Jacquelyn Pless, Jeffrey Logan, Ella Zhou, and Douglas J. Arent Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis

    World Economic Forum: What’s the Future of Solar Power

    In a broad new assessment of the status and prospects of solar photovoltaic technology, MIT researchers say that it is “one of the few renewable, low-carbon resources with both the scalability and the technological maturity to meet ever-growing global demand for electricity.”

    Use of solar photovoltaics has been growing at a phenomenal rate: Worldwide installed capacity has seen sustained growth averaging 43 percent per year since 2000. To evaluate the prospects for sustaining such growth, the MIT researchers look at possible constraints on materials availability, and propose a system for evaluating the many competing approaches to improved solar-cell performance.

  • The Pope Says Greed Is Not Good   9 years 37 weeks ago

    I'm appauled that Kim Davis scamed the visiting Pope. How dare she stoop so low.

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    That UCS critique on Thorium fueled reactor is a piece of Schlock garbage, obvious they don't have a clue about the various types of thorium or molten salt reactors.

    A typical nonsensical statement in the idiotic report "..uranium-based fuel
    and thorium-based fuel is seen basically as one of preference...".

    That DOE claim is based on a traditional LWR or PHWR reactor technology, where indeed it is a case of preference. So? CANDU's can burn natural thorium or uranium, uranium is commonly produced and dirt cheap as a fuel so why develop an alternative to it? The answer is if we want to power the entire world on nuclear we need a much more efficient fuel & nuclear tech. That is where thorium and molten salt reactor tech merge. Also a lower cost, more compact reactor that has greatly increased & inherent safety features, reduced proliferation risk, higher operating efficiency, low water requirements, < 1% of the waste production and that is valuable short-lived waste, no need for mining, very high EROI, very suitable to factory production, load balancing, ship propulsion and thermal heat source for industrial & building heat applications. Sounds like a whole lot of major advantages to me.

    A good synopsis on Thorium Molten Salt Reactors and how they will solve our energy & climate change dilemna:

    http://home.comcast.net/~robert.hargraves/public_html/AimHigh.pdf

    I would also point out that UCS is a rabidly anti-nuclear fanatic organization, that makes upwards of $40M per year, paid to oppose Nuclear Power. Notable giant salaries of their large executive and their refusal to show us the sources of their funding.

    Whereas the pro-nuclear crowd are almost entirely just unpaid volunteers, as I am, although I don't consider myself pro-nuclear, I really am pro-Rational Energy Policy - for which Nuclear is just one component - albeit are very essential component.

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Yes, yes I linked above dozens of documents that critique these renewable energy fairy tale schemes and show them to be nothing short of fantasies. Always ignore critical issues like material inputs, costs, EROI (Energy Return on Invested), transmission, curtailment, overbuild, storage costs, climate variation, weather, backup power & distribution.

    I gave you a very simple example of solar PV in sunny California, which you claimed would be practical and I showed you with real, published numbers how impractical and in fact impossible that is. So far you haven't shown us any way you can make that work. You are big on distributed energy, that means you should be able to make California work. Show us how.

  • "The market has become tilted..."   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Today's guest Zaharia asks why Obama would push the TPP when it is so devastating for many Americans, especially cancer patients. I have asked the same question and the best answer I have seen so far is a Huffingpost article about Obama as Mastermind and how he is playing a geopolitical game to increase US influence in the Asian Pacific region in order to counteract China's influence. Still no justification for harming Americans.

  • "The market has become tilted..."   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Since a lot of these mass murderers seem to be loners, how about we make it so hard to get a gun, that it actually becomes easier to get a girlfriend than a gun. I realize that would mean very restrictive gun laws, but we're trying to save lives here.

  • "The market has become tilted..."   9 years 37 weeks ago

    I'm sure the "Fahrenthold" is pronounced /fair-ent-hold/, not /fair-en-thold/. There's a congressman with a similar name, Blake Farenthold (R-TX).

    (While I'm at at, "leviathan" is /leh-vye-ǝ-thǝn/, not /leh-vye-ǝ-thann/, and the "Valeo" in Buckley v. Valeo has no h in it.)

  • Does having over a million donors legitimize Bernie’s campaign?   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Bernie 2016! I signed the 'write Bernie in if need be' petition.

  • Alabama Toughens Rules for Voting While Black   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Thinking folks in those counties are tired of being walked on they will make sure they have the I.D. Like someone already said, new eighteen year olds that want to vote will get to a DMV. I'm thinking a lot of the gop whack jobs will lose in coming elections and when we vote Bernie in he will adjust the so called supreme court. We will win in the end. I also hope we are smart enough to put rules in place that can not be changed so easily in the future. Failure, refusal, to answer any questions like Roberts will be enough to disqualify any nominee. Or fire afterwards for lying as Roberts did about precedent.

  • Alabama Toughens Rules for Voting While Black   9 years 37 weeks ago

    RTOWNSLEY, most legal documents back then had way more misspellings. You should see some of them; they'd spell the same word two different ways in one sentence. And when the Constitution refers to conventions in the states for amendments (and for ratifying the Constitution itself), that is a popular referendum.

  • Alabama Toughens Rules for Voting While Black   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Here in California, local Democratic Clubs and Democratic County Central Committees are looking to spend their money within the restrictions of the FEC and FPPC. If clubs and central committees are the same in Alabama, etc., they should spend some of their money to rent busses and drive people to the nearest DMV so they can register.

    The club reps who are on-board the busses could, of course, then educate the newly registered voters on the evil ways of the Republican Party.

    It should be explained that the way to get rid of these evil deeds/politicians is to get out and vote and elect Democrats to Governor and the Legislators.

  • Where would Afghanistan be today if the US and Russia had just left it alone?   9 years 37 weeks ago

    America is in Afghanistan to protect the heroin poppies and make sure they are denominated in dollars--not euros or rubles.

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Union of Concerned Scientists Statement on Thorium-Fueled Reactors

    While there may be some applications of nuclear power that make sense, to provide the vast bulk of our needs, it just doesn't make sense to me. The case for solar, wind, geothermal, and renewables is scientifically and technically strong.

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Rocky Mountain Institute

    Reinventing Fire: ELECTRICITY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    Research Sources

  • We CAN make the switch to clean energy.   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Journal of Power Sources

    Volume 225, 1 March 2013, Pages 60–74

    Cost-minimized combinations of wind power, solar power and electrochemical storage, powering the grid up to 99.9% of the time

    Abstract

    We model many combinations of renewable electricity sources (inland wind, offshore wind, and photovoltaics) with electrochemical storage (batteries and fuel cells), incorporated into a large grid system (72 GW). The purpose is twofold: 1) although a single renewable generator at one site produces intermittent power, we seek combinations of diverse renewables at diverse sites, with storage, that are not intermittent and satisfy need a given fraction of hours. And 2) we seek minimal cost, calculating true cost of electricity without subsidies and with inclusion of external costs. Our model evaluated over 28 billion combinations of renewables and storage, each tested over 35,040 h (four years) of load and weather data. We find that the least cost solutions yield seemingly-excessive generation capacity—at times, almost three times the electricity needed to meet electrical load. This is because diverse renewable generation and the excess capacity together meet electric load with less storage, lowering total system cost. At 2030 technology costs and with excess electricity displacing natural gas, we find that the electric system can be powered 90%–99.9% of hours entirely on renewable electricity, at costs comparable to today's—but only if we optimize the mix of generation and storage technologies.

  • Alabama Toughens Rules for Voting While Black   9 years 37 weeks ago

    Fifty different sets of voting laws ? What could possibly make each state so different that it requires it's own unique set of voting regulations ? An obvious gift to the leaders of the close knit colonies to gain their support for more troubling regulations to be added later. After all, the framers of the Constitution exceeded the projected completion date by months arguing over the inclusion of certain religious doctrine in this founding document. This battle was waged by those who had relatives in England and they were aware of the authoritarian rule aggressively practiced by the Church of England of that period.

    The Constitution was hand written in the late eighteenth century and it has long been known to contain several misspellings that were never corrected. If we really have such high regard for this founding document, you would at least think that we could run a spell check !

    In addition, the founders were constructing this document based on existing European Law and the current configuration of the country, thirteen colonies that were in very close proximity to the nation's capital at that time, New York City. The founders were correct to include a method for amending the original document that would likely become irrelevant in the future. However the prescribed methods devised for adding amendments to the Constitution were left in the hands of elected officials rather than a public referendum ! Obviously the founders never anticipated the corruption that would eventually take control of the process they worked so hard to create !

ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World

Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.

Thom's Blog Is On the Move

Hello All

Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.

Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.