McCain's $300 Million Prize …and Other Matters from His Santa Barbara Energy Speech

Shale is tomorrow, kids.

And heck- didn't the Saudis drill their way out of dependency?

Why not us?

"Democrats are focusing on McCain's reversal last week on off shore drilling, pointing out the irony of McCain's presence in Santa Barbara given that flip flop"

What McCain does is entirely irrelevant. The Obamessiah is the one who is supposed to be different and new. Moral relativism doesn't cut it for the Messiah.

Thanks Ben. I'm just well-read with a bad streak of low boredom threshold syndrome and fast fingers. Stay at what you are after. You are on the right track.

Huntsville here. I was born a half mile from the Old Timers. They did incredible work but they and the rest of the team always said it was about people making the decision and throwing their best effort at it.

America has problems. We will solve them. And we will endure. We will. But we have to remember that being good made us great and as said, when we are not good we will no longer be great. (deTocqueville?)

Meanwhile, the entertainment value of the political seasons is wearing thin. We do need to get down to solutions that make sense to those who have to do the work.

Jake, I think a little lesson in geography is due ....

Freson State University is not in Santa Barbara, CA. It is in FRESNO, CA - close to 4hours away from Santa Barbara and a whole world away.

len - Right on. You are one of the most intelligent posters I have tangled with. I pray whoever wins the presidency, they do a good job for all our benefit. By the way I am from Houston. Hot and humid. I grew up right aound the corner from JSC. It is amazing what those engineers did when they put their minds to it.

@ben: We may be neighbors. ;-)

My point was that education can't be the handmaiden of corrupt politics. We have to gaze clear eyed at our mistakes and our successes knowledgeable of the strong and weak relationships. For that, we need all the facts not just the convenient ones.

We agree then, Ben. My candidate is out of the race so I'm trying to make the best of bad choices. Meanwhile, we have work to do.

Bellicose policy has a way of making a nation look weak. Teddy Roosevelt had it right, but I am tired of being the world's policeman. It drains our resources while our enemies gain strength. See Sun Tzu for strategy on making the adversary leave their camp. Isolationism is just as bad but only if the adversary is in the pass when we have the high ground.

len - Exactly, my dad was one of those germans directly involved in the Apollo program. I am not sure how that related to what I was saying, but hopefully it was in agreement.

Vero Possumus
Where do you get your information?
"You do realize that any oil obtained from off-shore drilling wont be commericially available until 2030?" Your FLAT WRONG. On any rig the oil will be available 2 years after we start drilling. Not 22 years. Did it take that long in AK? NO. Even if it took 5 years, then we are that much further ahead. We will need oil for the next 100 years so we need to start looking and drilling now for it.
And BTW. Why is it ok for the middle east to drill and not us? That impacts the world too. Also why is it that we cannot put up more wind mills, or wave generators or Nuck plants? What can we do?

Republican supporting Obama 08 - No argument here. I will either write Paul in or go with a 3rd party candidate. The greatest thing that could happen would be for both the republicans and democrats to sit on the sidelines for 4 years.

len - I don't dispute what you are saying. As a matter of fact, you and I would probably agree on most things related to this topic. I have believed for quite some time that we should have greater energy independence. I believe the market will take us there eventually, but if a politician presents an idea that makes sense then that is a positive thing. Energy independence will also help on the terrorism problem. I am also a strong believer in conservation. I believe our wastfulness is part of the problem. I must admit that Obama also creeps me out too with the overt welfarism. McCain on the other hand worries me with his reckless belligerence towards other nations that may have different approaches than our own. I am a Ron Paul supporter who believes if we combine a sensible foreign policy with personally responsibility, we will be getting somewhere.

@mr coffee: "to generate that electricity or hydrogen some real pollution generating power is needed to create the electricity or hydrogen."

Precisely. It isn't a Manhattan Project that is needed. Targeted innovation is necessary, yes, for example, storage systems. But we will have to look at all aspects of consumption balanced against cost and the environment. A better approach will be a national program that uses different sources of energy to bootstrap the energy ecosystem. For example, the use of local solar and wind to power hydrogen generation to power bio-conversion systems and so on.

The trick is systems engineering. We have to think in terms of safe chains of suppliers that amplify production at each stage of the chain.

But let's look at the Big Project Game. Saturn Vs flew the first time and every time. Why?

1. Practiced team. The Germans had been together for over two decades and understood how to scale their designs.

2. Systems engineering of components by different teams with very high test requirements.

3. We put the money to the specific goals and stayed the course through three administrations. Consistency is everything.

To Ben's point: this where liberal educations fail Americans. The rewriting of history in the Discovery Channel program robbing the Germans of credit for the success of Apollo is precisely how we fail to learn the lessons of history by changing it for political convenience. It's criminal to do that.

YEA MCCAIN THROW THE BALL BACK IN THE COURT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO COME UP WITH A NEW ELECTRIC BATTERY,BETTER THAN THE ONE WE HAVE NOW, TURN IT IN A COMPETITION. I GUESS WE WILL SEE RESULTS ABOUT 2030 LIKE THE RESULTS OF DRILLING FOR OIL,ANY THING NOT TO EXPOSE THE REAL CROOKS LIKE YOU AND BUSH'S OIL BUDDIES.

The only vehicles with zero emissions are either hydrogen fueled or totally electric. I think it's putting the cart before the horse, or the car without access to fuel or recharging, to be advocating a tax break for users. This is a consumer and infrastructure issue that can't be practically implemented for quite some time.

Ben Straub - that's probably because I'd like to be supporting Dr. Paul as the GOP candidate. When the GOP made fun of him for suggesting conservative ideals, I realized the fallacy of supporting any Republican nominee. One of the "two" parties has to collapse, so that a real alternative can emerge.

@ben: keep in mind the $300 mil is a prize for creating a super-battery. It isn't to produce a car. It targets the weak spot in electric and hybrids which is storage. A super-battery would also work in other technologies. Targeting a specific problem and opening it to competitive solutions gets around one of the major conspiracy theorists issues with vested interests rigging markets. The idea is transparent, the goal is transparent and the conditions for winning are transparent. Does it favor research groups? Yes. Does it penalize the lone hacker? No. It's Darwinian in the sense that the best idea wins. Isn't that what the Silly Valley people keep telling us is the best way to innovate?

No Product. No Market. No Sale. No Pay.

The UofH prez said the advantage of parliamentary systems was reduced bureaucracy and multiple parties. Somehow the results in India don't confirm that on the surface. Someone with better chops can explain it to me.

As to American pop culture, yes it's true. On the other hand,a generation was told Elvis was the work of the devil and they still managed Apollo. As the engineers on that program said, the will to do is the critical requirement. If the pop culture robs them of the will to do, it is a problem. I'm not sure that is exactly where the bigger issues are. Consider that Obama IS largely a pop culture phenomenon as he has no accomplishments. Obamamania creeps me out just as Beatlemania creeped out my parents.

I think Americans have been floating on debt too long and that masks the problems. We are running an economic engine filled with high viscosity oil so fatigue isn't as noticeable.

The other proposal from McCain to begin incentivizing research parks OUTSIDE OF THE VALLEY is the right one. The focus on San Francisco and North Carolina has gone on too long. We do need to look at for example, Pittsburgh, and use procurements to accelerate that emergence.

I'm confused--How does this battery help? Will it lower gas consumption in my car? Or is this battery meant for a new type of car that will already use less gas? Wouldn't it be better for our planet to keep our car (vs. throwing it away & buying new) and retrofit it to use much less gas?

Do you think my grandchildren will be talking about this in 30 years like my faters are????? The Vega,Pinto,Yugo,etc
popular after gas lines and gas going from 17cents to 79cents and miles of long gas lines gas every other day and then only ten gallons.Fourty years and no answers not drilling on the leased land they have capping off all oil wells in the 1970's in this country and dismantleing 30 refineries who to believe. The 1%ers have lied since the begining of time nothing changes.

Without a price cap say $25k or $30k, the clean car challenge will benefit those few who can afford a $50,000 zero emission car. I assume tailpipe emissions is what he talking about but remember to generate that electricity or hydrogen some real pollution generating power is needed to create the electricity or hydrogen.

This tax break was tried 15 years ago in Arizona (wonder where McCain got the idea), and it failed.

People were licensing their golf carts to get the tax break. You'd see golf carts driving down the street, going to the local grocery store.