Leo Linbeck III @ 56 said:

> Economic recovery rests on these five points:
>
> ….
> 3. Cheaper oil, around $35 a barrel in 2006 dollars. The key is natural
>gas, not oil. Aggressively drill in the Marcellus shale. Create thousands
>of jobs in Pennsylvania and New York and the midwest, good jobs, and built
>lots of new gas power plants. We have 100+ years of supply domestically,
>near the population centers. Don’t let the radical environmental movement
>screw up this opportunity just because of their pathological hatred of “Big
>Oil.”

I agree with Leo that natural gas is a good short term solution. Apparently methane based fuel cell technology is starting to come together and that has very exciting implications. The obvious problem with methane is it’s a gas and not a liquid so there are storage and transport issues. Also with natural gas there is the bother of having to constantly shout down idiots over the issue of Global Warming.

On the subject of “green” alternative energy schemes, I recently read the following article and found it very interesting:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html

I’ve always suspected that wind generated electric energy was a government subsidy based scam and the American Thinker article confirmed this suspicion. Over at http://www.theoildrum.com , they keep repeating this wind-energy/EROEI debate and the guys promoting wind energy always come across as very slick. Too slick IMHO, like the guys trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. These are people who have obviously repeated the same argument many times against sophisticated sceptics and polished their “story” to a gleaming finish.

I’ll close by reminding people that long term solutions are nuclear energy coupled with synthetic petroleum produced from coal.