This makes geothermal a lot more promising for the US, unfortunately it’s not going to replace oil so much as coal and natural gas, as long as the environmental lobby doesn’t block geothermal development. I.e., geothermal can make our electrical power cleaner, but it doesn’t move us off of oil.

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFL). Wal-Mart is pushing them. Some people have issues with them (they see flickering, the color bothers them, etc), but I don’t have any problems. I’m converting over most of my lights as I replace bulbs.

Energy efficiency has been going up in the US for years, something that goes unrecognized by most people.

You’re thinking of Deuterium-Deuterium fusion,
I’m thinking of Aneutronic fusion, specifically the proton-(11)Boron reaction in a Polywell device.

Fusion does produce radioactive waste, however, far less of it and with a fraction of the half-life of fission waste.

IS;

If every American used those bulbs instead of the less efficient ones, we’d have a huge drop in home energy consumption.

Christmas lights use up a lot of energy. I can’t see why people need six light-up Santas on the front lawn. Now if folks can be convinced to light up the house the week before Christmas instead of the day after Thanksgiving, we might all be off to a good start…

“I don’t care if we use shale and American dug oil and solar and wind and nuclear and biofuels….IMHO, the first step should be for local cities/counties/states to examine what options would work for them”

This looks like a proposal to develop multiple parallel infrastructures, and simultaneously involve central planning from a galaxy of local constituencies.

What a tangled mess, all complicated by input from every axe-grinding special interest in town.

I’d expect that if the gummint-knows-best faction isn’t allowed to seize control of the course of energy development, the normal course of human ingenuity will employ technology and entrepreneurial energy to devise a solution that does provide energy ‘for the masses’ and a decent profit for the entrepreneur who does it. As long as the profit-haters cannot acquire sufficient power to queer the deal.

As an example, look how cellphones unexpectedly ate the lunches of the pole-and-wire companies.

The wind isn’t even predictably intermittent, at least with solar you know when night is. Load balancing is a serious issue with wind, wave, tidal, and solar power. Unless your solar collectors are in orbit.

“It is expensive!!!”

Let’s see… That was in reference to space based solar power (SBPS). Even the NSSO’s Space Based Solar Power Interim Assessment found that:

“SBPS cannot be constructed without safe, frequent (daily/weekly), cheap, and reliable access to space and ubiquitous in-space operations. …”

“The SBPS Study Group universally acknowledged that a necessary pre-requisite for the technical and economic viability of SBPS was inexpensive and reliable access to orbit.”

The startup costs for SBPS are huge, I doubt you’d ever get Congress to fund it (it wouldn’t buy enough votes). But if you ever got it up and running, it would be, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible.

But without “inexpensive and reliable access to orbit“, it’s not viable.

277,316,000 barrels @ 55 per = 15,252,380,000 gallons (does that sound about right?)

Flax Seed, which can produce about 51 gallons per acre, per harvest would require about 300,000,000 acres. That sounds pretty bad. However, let’s not forget that diesel (which biofuel is in line with), and diesel engines utilize fuel differently than gasoline, a rough average comparing cars in the 80’s and 90’s indicates that most gas powered cars get anywhere between 20 and 30 miles to the gallon (obviously some newer cars are much better than that) Diesel for passenger vehicles are often rated at 40 to 50 miles to the gallon. So, if were were dealing only with petrol based diesel, we’d need 138,658,000 gallons rather than the 277… number above we need only 2,718,784 acres. That’s a lot, no doubt… but according to http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/US.htm it appears that we have several million acres still usable… and that sheet doesn’t include some of the arable land that’s been abandoned since the Depression. Lots of farmland in places like Iowa are home to meth labs, pot farms and other illegal activity, because the entire area has been abandoned. (Consider that Flax is also about Middle of the Road in Biofuel production, pumpkin seed is slightly higher, sunflowers are about double the productivity, Castor beans are triple the productivity (151 Gal per acre). If we were to determine a useful way of growing alge, we could pull in about 820 gal per acre… theoretically up to 5000 gal per acre. All of this assumes that whoever did the measurements weren’t on crack at the time)

Further, as I stated several times, none of this is a panacea. Biofuels are useful, but not by themselves. It would require yet further refinements to fuel economy in vehicles, more public transportation for urban access, and other fuels… a hybrid that was battery powered/biofueled would be much better than one that was simply biofueled or battery/petrol.

Yes, it is not a simple task. It will require work, it will require innovation, it will require rethinking a lot of stuff we take for granted (like One Solution for energy for the whole continent)… but it is not impossible to wean ourselves from foreign oil.

Please note that I am not arguing for energy independence for Global Warming reasons (though if their theories are right, it would be beneficial to get off of carbon), nor for economy (I doubt energy will ever be ‘free’ no matter what the idealists like to think, but a more stable energy cost would be better than a wildly fluctuating one). I don’t care if we use shale and American dug oil and solar and wind and nuclear and biofuels…. as long as we’re no longer the gimp for a bunch of people that hate our guts.

IMHO, the first step should be for local cities/counties/states to examine what options would work for them. Some areas could feasibly run their entire grid off of wind, because of the conditions of their climate and weather. Others may be better off with nuclear power or a combination of power options. The second step should be a change in the individual consumption of energy, I just put in light bulbs that give me the equiv. of 60 and 75 watts of light, but use only 14 and 18 watts of actual electricity. If every American used those bulbs instead of the less efficient ones, we’d have a huge drop in home energy consumption.

Another key step is in working with producers… companies that build electronics can build more energy efficient electronics, they could get rid of “standby mode” on many home electronics systems which would further reduce home energy requirements (Who actually needs a little digital clock running on their VCR when they are asleep in bed?).

Energy independence will require a HUGE investment from everyone. It will mean reducing the energy requirements of the stuff we use, as well as finding sources for energy that’s feasible. Anyone who says differently is probably selling something.

For September 2007, US Gasoline consumption was 277,316 thousand barrels. 1% of that is 2,773 thousand barrels. How much acreage of {pick any biofuel crop} would it take to replace that much fuel?

Now, how much of US total arable land is that?

I’ve discussed this with M. Simon.

Optimistically, we might be able to start deploying fusion power plants about a decade after the technology is developed, and that is starting with a slow rate of deployment, ramping up over time.

The reason I’m hopeful is that the technology may be very close to being developed. The advantages are: the technology doesn’t require heating steam to power turbines (which are time consuming to build); the fuel is far from rare, and non-toxic; no radioactive waste;

I think that was Lem’s point… just because people didn’t buy it, doesn’t mean its bad technology… only that people didn’t buy it.