You most likely have not.

I actually prefer it to American capitalism

(No…YOU move the Canada! I’m going to work to make this a free medicine country. )

“Private enterprise is the KEY to new energy technology – if Obama thinks that companies are not looking for new solutions and that Govt will solve this by throwing around money, he is even more stupid than what i thought.

Nobody doubts this. You say this like someone’s going to argue with you. I code too. The point is, private enterprise is all about making money. I seriously doubt that Obama thinks companies aren’t looking for new revenue sources through alternative fuels. Nobody thinks that.

“Then again, he is a liberal – so, how could Government not spend money ?”

Please. If DARPA wasn’t throwing around money we would have missed out on a great deal of life changing technology, not to mention the most massively awesome military on the planet. Of all the government agencies, they’ve got it right when it comes to inventing. Incentives, grants, and prizes for inventions that help the country is a fantastic idea that works amazingly well. If Obama wanted to throw more money into this type of endeavor for alternative fuels, I’d be all for it.

When Obama says that new cap and trade rules will make sure that new coal fired power plants dont have a chance to survive, he is pretty much aiming for the coal industry to die. and let’s not forget these rules will also apply to coal plants THAT ARE EXISTING. If you are going to slap them with fines, they are going to stop reducing their capacity or eventually shut down.

If Obama’s plans stop new coal fuelled power plants, restrict existing ones to the point that they will not continue to be in business, what do you call that ? “encouragement” ??

“That’s a step up from the hackishness that the GOPers have been desperately engaged in the last few days.”

Sorry ,but there is no hackery going on. People are genuinely concerned as to what will happen when career politicans start legislating nonsensencial laws that will kill the economy.

In this respect, there is no difference between Obama and McCain - they really should not messing around with things that they have very little knowledge about.

As Rick already pointed out, this global warming nonsense has been exaggerated greatly. Ultimately this has NOTHING to do with the environment or any such crap. This is aimed at bringing down economic growth and private enterprise.

These fricking Greenpeaceniks are nothing more than socialists.

As some one who works in the software industry, it is amusing to hear people say that government and academic “experts” had everything (in all caps !!) to do with what the Internet is today.

I dont want to pooh pooh the foundation that they laid, as you have rightly pointed out. it is nothing more than that - foundation, cable infrastructure etc But is a huuuuge stretch to say that they were the ones who moved it beyond the confines of military research.

Private innovators came up with the desgin of the integrated circuit - the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT invention of the 20th century in the field of technology - without the IC, your computer does not have its computing power. it would be nothing more than a physical machine.

Also, the phenomenal growth of programming languages/ OS software systems were due to the ingenuity of private inventors - this has very little if any to do with Government.

Sorry to go offtrack here -as the topic was coal. But every time, i see people come to the defense of Government, i also see how over the top they get. And how they try to squelch the importance of private enterprise.

It all looks so easy to say that industry “figured” out a way to do commerce - they rely on the work and genius of a few thousand innovators, spread across this country and the world. and no they are not connected by some great Govt bureaucracy or some Government plan.

Private enterprise is the KEY to new energy technology - if Obama thinks that companies are not looking for new solutions and that Govt will solve this by throwing around money, he is even more stupid than what i thought. Then again, he is a liberal - so, how could Government not spend money ?

When the hooey math Obama has cooked up to pay for his “plans” eventually comes crashing down, we will have to face the reckoning.

There isnt a bigger joke than cap and trade.

DARPA doesn’t do any research itself. What it does is provide funds to academics and the private sector to do basic research in areas DARPA thinks will have military value. Only basic research.

Of course not Rick. Your blanket statements about so called government bureaucrats not being able to “thunk it” was insulting and ignorant, especially to the people who actually did “thunk” it.

The government is filled with people. Despite the jokes, they aren’t some foreign race of incompetent idiots. It’s just people. Our friends and Neighbors. Many of them are incredibly brilliant and very good at what they do. You diminish the intelligence and hard work of the scientists at DARPA and other agencies who created the foundation of what the internet has become.

Private industry figured out a way to conduct commerce in new ways based on the robust foundation created by these so called bureaucrats. The government and academic experts have EVERYTHING to do with what it is today because they are the ones who took their invention beyond a defense industry niche when they moved beyond DARPA.

The government bureaucrats created it Rick. They planted the seed. Government bureaucrats took it beyond that too. They showed everyone what was possible. The fact that other entrepreneurs figured out how to make more money off of was inevitable, and not really all that amazing.

So, yes, the government had more than a tiny role in that. Way more. And it still wouldn’t work TODAY if it wasn’t for them safeguarding the incredibly robust system they created because it’s still the same foundation, built by government bureaucrats.

I think Rick is referring to the computer, not the Internet. Specifically he referred to the integrated circuit, a product of Fairchild and TI.

Pan_theFrog,

Coal is not as deadly as asbestos in and of itself, and it’s much easier to deal with for a variety of physical reasons than asbestos.

What is most assuredly deadly, though, is the variety of things that occur when our society, accustomed to ubiquitous electricity, is suddenly deprived. We don’t live in the most temperate part of the planet and it gets exceptionally cold at times and warm at others, either extreme can kill. What will really start filling graves is something like foodborne illness, which could come from inadequate refrigeration, or waterborne illness from improperly treated drinking water.

You are blithely ignoring real threats and cowering in front of imaginary ones, at least in the short-term. Nobody here wants to see coal plants still in operation 100 years from now, but just because the political will exists to see something done does not mean it immediately becomes physically or fiscally real. This is part of the problem with the political expediency of throwing money at difficulties, it breeds the expectation that throwing money always works. Seeing as it doesn’t even work in the social sciences, trying it on the physical end is even more doomed to failure.

There’s also the issue that nitrogen trifluoride, used in the production of photovoltaic solar panels as well as most semiconductor electronics, is a wicked greenhouse gas. More solar panels, more NF3, more greenhouse effect, if you believe in that sort of thing.

TANSTAFFL.