I agree with the gist of the statements, mainly that our politicians have let us down. However, there are a few HUGE problems I have with what he stated. Two primary things really.

1) Iraq.

While I agree Iraq really does owe us, they are not in a position to provide the needed oil to our country. It would probably take them 10 years to get up to speed to provide anywhere near the needed volumes for us. Asking for a discount is nice and all, but won't work. Oil is a fungible asset and cannot be manipulated as easily as you would like. A better solution would be to assist them in bringing up production to a point to drive down world oil costs. Additionally, I HIGHLY agree with increasing our domestic supply as much as possible. I would prefer to see this as we (the citizens) own the oil that is on public lands. If we were to develop these oil fields in a 'Manhattan Project' kind of way, along WITH the oil companies, it would also help drive down world oil prices. Additionally, our current suppliers would have a huge problem with this. The number one and two suppliers being Canada (Hi Dave!) and Mexico. Saudi Arabia is a close third.

If you would like to take a big chunk of the oil royalty payments and put towards subsidizing gasoline at the pumps or towards alternative energy research, fine, but is not ultimately necessary. This brings me to the other comment...



2) Hydrogen. The idea of using hydrogen as a replacement source of energy is idiotic on so many levels. If you think about it, hydrogen is merely a energy storage medium. While hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe, there is VERY little of it available on it's own here on planet Earth. It is almost all tied together with oxygen in the form of water (yea, I know, a pretty DUH?! statement.)

In order to create free hydrogen, you must take a hydrocarbon, or water and split the hydrogen off of whatever it is bonded too. The primary way this is done is to introduce a large amount of energy to split it off. Today, this is mostly done with electricity. There is the crux. Why would you take an already perfectly good energy source, electricity, and utilize it to make another form of energy storage? It makes no sense. Additionally, in order to distribute this huge amount of created hydrogen, we would need to build a massive infrastructure. This infrastructure would cost trillions of dollars to install. Without it being in place, large amounts of people will not switch over to an alternative energy source like hydrogen.

What we need to do is develop our electrical system and come up with better batteries and/or capacitors. This is the way to power our future. We already have a massive electrical infrastructure in place with a ton of extra night time capacity to utilize. Currently, most oil is used for our vehicles. If electricity is used, most people will charge there vehicles at night when there is not such a huge load on the system. This would allow an almost immediate boost the the electrical vehicle industry and no immediate main infrastructure would need to be added to get people to start to switch over. As the population does start to switch, new power plants (nuclear in my opinion) can be added along with additional power lines along existing corridors throughout the country. I am not resistant to a government subsidy for the purchase of electric vehicles to help get things rolling.

Also, by going the electric route, it allows for the additional introduction of solar, wind, tidal, natural gas, oil, clean coal, geothermal and whatever else we can come up with to EASILY integrate into the national power grid structure.

John McCains idea of an X-prize like reward for new battery technologies I believe will assist in getting something to market quicker. I also think the government should add additional 'prizes' to companies or individuals that can come up with true forms of alternative energy STORAGE devices.

I will not even address bio fuels as I think they are THE biggest mistake we can make as a country. There is ZERO chance of supplying enough to supply our needs without using vast amounts of our food generating lands to do so. There are better alternatives.

OK, enough of my rant.

Tim.