Arkansas Blog

Damn IT! Never underestimate the stupidity of an Arkansas politician.

"As you may be aware, south Arkansas has nine billion tons of unexplored, undeveloped lignite."

Yes, and that lignite will eventually run out, and there goes the jobs and economy.

South Arkansas would do better by developing solar plants, etc. It's perfect for the region, and THE SOURCE NEVER RUNS OUT.

DAMN, at what point will you Arkie politicians move this state forward instead of backward?

Anyone who seeks to profit from coal must really, really hate his grandchildren.

I have to laugh at the lignite issue. Back in the early 1970s, lignite was the rage during the oil embargo. At the time, we lived in Arkadelphia and my father owned some land outside Hollywood (Arkansas.) There is substantial lignite under the land.

For some reason, we didn't get property tax statements for two years. The county almost foreclosed on the land, until my father discovered the lack of tax statements and paid up. We weren't the only ones. A conspiracy theorist would suggest a county clerk was messing with the tax notices in order to purchase land under the table. The fact a couple of tax clerks were FIRED during this time helped lend credence to the rumors.

I still own the property. Even though it is in the Ouachita foothills, it still gets a lot of solar. (And grows VERY good potatoes and asparagus... just in case I decide to be a farmer...) Spunkrat is right, solar would be GREAT... picture 90 acres of reflectors and cells, powering the area. The only problem is the sheer cost... solar technology is not cheap. Most panels come from Japanese firms, and the dollar has fallen a LOT against the yen.

I looked at adding cells to my own house in Little Rock... it would take 22 years to just break even. And who today would be willing to pay the next 22 years of electric bills in one big shot? I simply can't.

It would be nice if solar prices would come down, but the majority of the research is NOT being done in the US... it's being done in Japan and Saudi Arabia. And they own the patents... which means they can charge us whatever we want to and we have to take it. The Saudis aren't stupid... they have us by the short hairs with our dependence on oil but they know the oil will run out. And when it runs out, then they will sell us their solar technology.

In the meantime, we (as a country) do nothing. Even with the current solar technology, we could install massive locations in the midwest desert. But we have no national power grid to carry the loads.

Where is President Obama's big push for renewables? Why do we not push money into research?

Sounds like a last gasp. Turk opponents are running out of legal rope so now it's time to amp up some new scaremongering angle.

If it's too crappy to haul very far then it's doubtful that it's economically viable to dig for it in ths part of the world. They haven't mined coal in the river valley area for decades. Out west there are areas with no inhabitants. In LA (lower Arkansas) there isn't an acre of land that doesn't have an inhabited trailer sitting on it. Buying them out or evicting them would be way too expensive to then mine really low grade coal. It's just not going to happen, but, it's a handy tale to tell.

Give us back our nuclear power. Obama said it was OK for Iran to pursue nuclear power, but it's obviously not OK for the US. Absurd.

To follow up on the solar, I did a quick Google and found the link. It's a couple of years old, but has an interesting set of numbers. The military is (was?) testing an 80 acre site in the midwest desert that would provide the power for 1,500 homes. This works out to about 0.0533 acres per house.

How many homes and business buildings are in the Little Rock area? Let's assume 200,000 (I know, the number is probably way off.) But based on the military's numbers, we're looking at over 10,000 acres of land just to power Little Rock. And according to solar companies, Little Rock only gets about 5 hours of "usable" sunlight on average during the year (based on latitude, rainfall, etc.)

Ouch. Building a solar array that size would require a LOT of money, assuming you can find the land.

One solution might be for each house to install cells on the roof. Maybe the government could come up wiht a finance prorgam... why not? They're throwing enough dollars at everything else! If solar could become affordable, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Maybe this is militaristic, but I see the energy issue as a threat to our national security. Right now our existence is controlled by OPEC. Like Britain during the early 19th century, we're sending massive amounts of money to a foreign country, and breaking ourselves in the process. We MUST develop our own energy systems again. Without them, we're held hostage by people who don't like us.

(Yeah, I'm on a soapbox... forgive me...)

Or we could tie the State Legislator Offices to the boiler at the powerhouse, when they are in session. There is a lot of hot air to be tapped into there.

I just received an e-mail from the White-House, let's all pack up our great ideas and join in at www.share.gov, seriously, just came in this morning.

Sorry Folks that was www.serve.gov not share.gov, but says they are very anxious to hear new ideas and they want us put our ideas on the table and solve these problems.

>>Right now our existence is controlled by OPEC.<<

Only if we allow politicians to convince us of this.

Presently our largest foreign oil supplier is?

Hint, starts with a "C."

If you're really serious Americonio, post the URL: Accroding to my browser the link you gave is broken, but it suggested share.com.

Oops! Never mind.

Good point, eLwood... we import the most from Canada... but it doesn't mean we should keep importing oil does it? While I'm sure we can depend upon Canada to support us, look at the others on that list... how many of them like us? Picture Venesuela, Russia and the Saudis teaming up to embargo us.