[NEOPO]

conscientious objector

[No-Oil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TITAN', 'D')on't worry so much, this government is about to go bankrupt. They certainly can't afford to fund a draft.

[Jack]

Thread topic is not a current event. Thread moved to Open Discussion forum. Jack.

[PrairieMule]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')I support the right to keep and bear arms, but what does this advice have to do with horsetoaster's fears for her children's future?

[Magus]

What do we have here?

Russia Spies Operated in Iraq Through 2003

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')y MIKE ECKEL, Associated Press Writer
53 minutes ago



MOSCOW - Russia had a military intelligence unit operating in Iraq up through the 2003 U.S. invasion and fall of Baghdad, a Russian analyst said Friday as the Pentagon reported Moscow fed Saddam Hussein's government with intelligence on the American military.

Iraqi documents released as part of the Pentagon report asserted that the Russians relayed information to Saddam through their ambassador in Baghdad during the opening days of the war in late March and early April 2003, including a crucial time before the ground assault on Baghdad.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a respected independent Moscow-based military analyst, told The Associated Press the report was "quite plausible."

[eastbay]

Oh please now. Everyone has spies everywhere. Big deal. It's assumed and expected. It's all a vital part of the big chess game.

The big shocker and surprise would be if Russia had no spies running around everywhere... or if the USA had no spies running around everywhere.

[J-Rod]

I wonder if that is somehow tied to the Oil for Food ordeal.

[whereagles]

Iraq: US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan about to reach $811 bill. Good thing money is just paper then, eheh...

[jupiters_release]

Just imagine how much more money the Fed will make with Iran!

WWIII is really a no brainer for banks.

[cs1992]

As of today, the US has spent roughly $310 billion in Iraq.
Cost of a watt of solar energy ~$5.50


Being a fan of solar energy, I thought I would run some numbers:

$310,000,000,000 / $5.5 = ~56,500,000,000 watts

If my math is correct, with the money spent on Iraq we could have installed a capacity of roughly 56.5 gigawatts. I do not know how many power plants this equates to, but this figure is enough to install a 4kw system on about 14 million homes.

Cost Of Iraq War

hmmm

[Clouseau2]

Don't forget that the total cost of the war is projected to be about $1-$2 trillion dollars, a nice sum that should have been sufficient to totally rebuild our electrical infrastructure and replace a significant chunk of generating capacity with solar/wind renewables.

[bonjaski]

or think about solar thermal energy which only costs 1/3

or about biogas subventions ...

or huge wind energy projects ...

and the combination of all 3,

power for over 50mio Households,
sustainable power

[rwwff]

While these numbers are all fine and good, if you tried to dump that much money on orders for solar and wind turbines, you wouldn't get anywhere near the quantity you are hoping for.

Industries have to mature and ramp up to commercially viable demand, not react to a giant one-off government contract.

Now, maybe, if you want to use that money to subsidize construction of privately owned industrial sites to produce solar cells and wind turbines and blades; then perhaps you'd be getting somewhere. Betcha it'd have a lot of WTO/Nafta problems though...

[bonjaski]

over a period of 15-20 years we will see at the beginning inflationary pressure by not enough work force and resources, on long term we will build a competitive industry

work force and energy cost, cost of resources is not the main problem of renewable energy; thats solved since they use resource which are plenty available;

its the capital cost, cost of research, market developement and low volume that drives all above 2$ Watt


for example photovoltaics:
at the moment, volume is low, capital cost of new production lines high, silicium cost is high

in 5-10 years with new technology, new silicium capacity, silicium cost will got down to levels of 5 years ago; its not that we have a resource shortage or that silicium production is very complex, but it needs time to build up capacity and time and money to amortise investments ...

this is also valid for production lines of solarcells;

investing 300billion over 15-20 years in renewable energy will bring down the costs on long term, when capacity is build up and the competition begins

[aahala]

The present US solar cell manufacturing capacity is about 150-200M
annually. At that rate, it would take about 300 years to fill 56.5 gigawatt order.

[OZ_DOC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('aahala', 'T')he present US solar cell manufacturing capacity is about 150-200M
annually. At that rate, it would take about 300 years to fill 56.5 gigawatt order.

[cs1992]

Now I asK:

How many windmills would the cost of the Iraq war buy?

[gg3]

Wind and nuclear are each about $1 million per megawatt, or $1 billion per gigawatt.

Therefore, using cs1992's figure of $310 billion into Iraq, we would have been able to install 310 gigawatts of climate-clean wind & nuclear.

Using the usual ratios, that would be 248 nuclear reactors of 1 gigawatt each, and 31,000 wind turbines of 2 megawatts each.

And if that kind of money was seeking energy sources to buy, the demand would fuel photovoltaic R&D investments like nothing ever before. (That is, given that the nuclear capacity would take a couple of decades to build, smart investors would be betting that a PV price/performance breakthrough could come faster.) Sooner than later, PV would end up on the same economic footing as wind & nuclear. So something like 75 gigawatts of this overall mix could probably be switched from nuclear to solar along the way.

Based on cs1992's figure of 14 million homes per 56 gigawatts, that would translate to more like 18.5 million homes. And this in addition to the wind & nuclear capacity.

So yes, for the cost of doing Iraq, we could have gotten ourselves a good way down the road to complete energy independence using climate-clean power sources.

[eastbay]

darn double post....

[eastbay]

... or eliminated a sizeable piece of the budget deficit.

... while saving about 100,000 lives. And hundreds of thousands injured and maimed for life.

The war is a complete waste.

Sorry for deviating from the thread topic.....