I saw one of Jimmy Carter's White House solar panels last weekend

[jpak]

at the Common Ground Country Fair in Unity, Maine - the ones Ronald Reagan removed after he took office.

some background...

http://www.unity.edu/sustainability/carter.htm

Unity College had a campus sustainability exhibit at the fair that included a small student-built wind turbine and other items. In the rear of the exhibit there was a solar thermal panel with a small sign that read "Jimmy Carter Solar Panel".

For solar energy enthusiasts (like me) this was the historical equivalent of the Liberty Bell and I was quite fascinated with it. It was like new - right out of the box.

My niece and nephew came running over to see "what I got" and I explained the history to them and why it was important.

My adorable (and fearless) niece asked "Well, why did President Reagan take them off the roof?"

I said "He didn't like them" to which she indignantly replied "Well, how could anyone NOT like solar panels?"

Out of the mouths of babes...

:loveya:

[BOSSHOG]

1. 3 Cheers for your niece

ray-gun took them down because ray-gun is(was) an idiot. Lordy those conservatives are so proud of their ignorance.

[jpak]

6. The panel was pretty dusty

and I was tempted to write "FU Raygun" on it

but I wussed out...

:evilgrin:

[depakid]

7. He took them down because of his longtime association with GE

(though the fact that he was a bumbling idiot shouldn't be discounted). ;)

[thereismore]

2. Cool! nt

[polichick]

3. That's great!

It really should be so simple.

[rateyes]

4. Easy to answer that last question by your wonderful niece...

Ronald Reagan was a corporate whore.

[Benhurst]

5. It's not nice to be harsh when referring to a

brain-dead, drooling idiot.

:hi:

[rateyes]

8. LOL. My apologies to

the brain dead drooling idiot corporate whore.

[tridim]

9. But the irony is that he could have easily been a corporate whore for the solar panel industry..

He just didn't like them because solar panels don't run on oil.

[Raster]

10. "...well little adorable, fearless niece, Ronnie the Raygun was OWNED lock, stock and

oil barrel by the Texas Petroleum Mafia and their good friends the Saudi Royal Family and the American Military-Industrial Machine. The Texas Petroleum Mafia was afraid of President Carter's message about saving the environment and weaning the country off of fossil fuels."

"Why is that," asks adorable nephew?

Well, if the country had started to address these issues back in 1978 as President Carter wanted us to, the Texas Petroleum Mafia would not be making RECORD profits each and every quarter, and instead of filling the coffers of Exxon/Mobile, we would probably be fixing our country's crumbling infrastructure, curing poverty and eliminating hunger."

[NNadir]

11. This sort of thinking is appropriate for kids.

The reality is is somewhat less cute.

All of the kids now living are going to have to deal with the fact that absurdly focused adults - pixilated by pretty childish fantasies - failed to act on dangerous fossil fuel waste while making a big, big, big, big, big, big deal about so called nuclear waste.

For instance, the shit-for-brains Rio Tinto/Walmart executive also known as the "Oracle at Snowmass," wrote a long and abysmally stupid article in a 1980 edition of Foreign Affairs saying that nuclear power was going to die because it "wasn't economic." Then he did everything in his stupid and venal power to make his stupid prophecy self fulfilling, thus dooming my children to a world that will likely choke to death on dangerous fossil fuel waste.

We can all look for ourselves to see if nuclear power died because it "wasn't economic."

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls

The shit-for-brains Oracle is still offering this kind of dumb childish pablum, only now Royal Dutch Shell is paying him $20,000/day to run this tripe out so they can purchase, cheaply an "environmental" stamp of approval. I can tell you that when the limousine picks him up at the airport to drive him to "consultations" with Royal Dutch Shell, it isn't a hydrogen hypercar Hummer Limo. It's powered by dangerous fossil fuels, about which the oracle couldn't care less.

This is blood money, that $20,000/day. Every child who dies in the next 40 years because the shit-for-brains Oracle couldn't have cared less about dangerous fossil fuel waste - and still couldn't care less - but was really, really, really, really, really worked up about so called "nuclear waste," even though the number of people killed by used nuclear fuel is zero -will be dying because the Oracle proved to be a cheap carny preacher, a snake oil salesman.

Solar electricity has never produced a single exajoule of energy in a calendar year, but if it did, someone might start noticing its waste profile. We'll see - should solar PV ever produce a single exajoule out of the 488 exajoules that were for instance consumed by humanity in 2005 - if "everybody loves solar cells."

This by the way, isn't an assertion that solar cells are as dangerous as dangerous fossil fuels - they're not - but only that they will have very little to do with limiting dangerous fossil fuels. There has been 50 years of cheering for them. I was a child when it started, and it all turned out to be optimistic shit-for-brains denial about the realities of dangerous fossil fuels.

The Chinese aren't particularly happy en mass about their country turning into an electronic waste dump because of <em>computers</em> and the chemistry of <em>computers</em> is pretty much identical to the chemistry of solar cells. Solar cells are presumed to be risk free mostly because the solar industry has failed to reach a <em>significant</em> profile - in other words solar electricity is a failure - despite 50 years of childish hawking and hype. Despite decades of "double digit growth" solar PV cell companies - including "Beyond Petroleum" BP - will not produce enough solar cells to be the equivalent of a <em>small</em> dangerous natural gas plant.

It's pretty funny how Carter era ideas are being hyped as if they are <em>new</em> ideas.

Jimmy Carter went around telling everyone that the United States could become energy independent with ethanol. Of course, he can be excused on the grounds that this was just an idea, and not a tested idea.

It's hardly surprising either that we are all of a sudden hearing all about "coal to oil" FT chemistry either. We couldn't care less who we kill, so long as we can believe that we can all keep our cars so we can drive around to colleges checking out solar history. It's pretty ironic that 27 years after Jimmy Carter left office, solar electricity still hasn't produced an exajoule <em>anywhere on earth</em>.

I <em>like</em> Jimmy Carter - especially his efforts for world peace since he <em>left</em> office. Nevertheless when he was in office, he couldn't kneel fast enough to make obeisances to the Shah of Iran. This did the President no honor for his legacy. Servicing the Shah - one of the most brutal men of the twentieth century - and that's saying a lot - was no act of peacemaking. Indeed it was making war, often on innocent children or at least people who were innocent children in 1978. We are still paying for that act, including people who were infants in 1978.

Now ethanol and other biofuels are being tested as industrial energy strategies - and they are still struggling to get to an exajoule - and all of a sudden there's all sorts of whining and crying about the environmental impact. All of a sudden everybody's complaining about the Gulf of Mexico nitrogen/phosphate dead zone, the palm plantations of Indonesia and Malayasia, the rototilled Amazon Rain Forest were ethanol sugar cane now grows, etc, etc...

Today, there are zero people over the mental age of ten who think that biofuels are going to support the world's car culture, although this was hardly the case in 1976, when the shit for brains Oracle wrote his famous article about the road not taken. The Oracle, by the way, never saw a road he didn't like - at least if we're talking about roads paved with asphalt.

I suspect that 30 years from now all of the people who are now kids are going to have hell to pay because their elders were so fucking dumb. I can hardly look my children in the eye. In fact, as much as possible, I try to level with them and tell them that everything will not be all right. Then again, I'm not <em>comfortable</em> being dishonest.

[jpak]

12. Your post was inappropriate for kids

My niece knows all about solar energy.

Her parents are putting in a solar hot water system and are seriously considering buying a Skystream 3.7 wind turbine (there was one on static display at the fair).

Her best friend's parents (and neighbors) are also putting in a solar thermal system (heat and hot water - 4 year payback), a wood pellet furnace and a Skystream 3.7 wind turbine...

....in Maine - where solar ignoramuses/haters claim that "solar don't work".

*reality*