First I do not believe there is any evidence to suggest that the rising food prices has anything to do with global warming. Figures vary but a consensus opinion is 70% of the rising food prices are a factor of energy costs and biofule production. The rising energy costs as the base article discussed is a larger factor artificially caused by government policy.

I think it is not untrue to say virtually the entire rise in food prices has to do with congressional mandates. http://www.reason.com/news/show/125883.html is a good article that discusses the causes of this critical issue.

As for the question why doesn’t the government do its own drilling shows such a profound misunderstanding of economics as to be shocking. Everything the government does is inherently less efficient then private enterprise. To think that having the government get into a business that it knows virtually nothing about and expecting sudden national wealth is contrary to all experience.

Having public oil companies do the development of the Alaskan and off coast deposits will have many positive results. By adding to the world oil output prices will be reduced under supply and demand principals. How much depends on many factors. Nonetheless, if you increase supply it must have a favorable impact on price.

The other aspects that would impact the national economy constructively are the fact that the operations will provide jobs and government funding through taxes and lease arrangements. The deposits will have a significant influence on the trade balance. The current account deficit is negatively impacting the dollar’s value of the currency market. A reduced deficit will through dollar supply and demand forces enhance the value of the currency making imported goods cheaper.

Equally significant the wealth of United States will stay in United States. Instead of funding unstable and unfriendly economies these oil trillions will be pushed through the American economy with positive results.

Implying that there will be more green house gases pumped in to the environment by drilling for US oil is largely inaccurate. The United States must have the energy and will get it from the international market if it doesn’t produce domestically. By denying United States producers these sources has increased world prices by decreasing supply. Obviously under supply and demand forces high energy prices will lower demand incrementally and that is undoubtedly the strategy of the radical environmentalists. However the cost of this strategy is enormous; the destruction of the United States economy, the starvation of much of the world, the forced deindustrialization of the modern economies, potential war, environmental disaster are just a few possible out comes of our present energy strategy.

A less radical approach would be the wholesale development of domestic energy and the prompt conversion to a nuclear / hydrogen economy. The silly flirtation of costly alternative energy sources that can not be economically sustained and in most cases cause more harm then they prevent leads the lack of focus on sound engineering policy that would work and not destroy the environment or world economy.

Solar energy is limited by the per square foot energy output of the sun. With one hundred percent efficiency at the most intense part of the day a solar cell can produce slightly less then 100 watts per square foot. Unfortunately no one can produce solar cells with more then 40.7% conversion efficiency. Moreover the sun is only at peak intensity around 25% of daytime and there are many other systems drains that reduce the overall efficiency.

These factors require enormous areas of land to get the output to satisfy demand. The Scientific American article’s 30,000 square mile projection of needed solar farm real estate is a factor of physics and present usage not wishful thinking.

Finally the constant uninformed mournful declarations of the lack of adequate methods to deal with nuclear waste is true not because there is not safe and viable way of waste storage but because congress and the courts have not allowed any of the solutions to take place.

The process of the handling of nuclear waste used in much of the world is complex and there are a number of steps involved. First the waste is made in to a glass in a process called calcination. This substance as a molten fluid is poured into a stainless steel cylindrical container. When cooled, the fluid vitrifies into the glass. Such glass, after being formed, is very highly resistant to water and it would require about 1 million years for 10% of such glass to dissolve in water.

After filling a cylinder, a seal is welded onto the cylinder. The cylinder should be then stored, in an underground repository. In this form, the waste products are expected to be immobilized for a very many thousands of years.

This method is safe to transport, environmentally not dangerous and much easier to deal with the millions of tons of airborne carbon. The problem in United States is the courts have tied up this process for decades and waste is stored at nuclear sites in vulnerable forms.

If congress actually was inclined to resolve the issue they could. As it is the problem festers with a continued real opportunity for disaster.

That said, Concentrating Solar stations aren't as big as all that (tho, we will need a buncha them). And solar will be more important than you think. See http://www.nrel.gov/csp/projects.html
and
http://www.westgov.org/wga/initiatives/cdeac/index.htm

However, tax breaks need to be extended and even increased in the short term. That is important and it's a shame to see someone so knowledgeable ignore what should be a significant part of our portfolio.

It would take two nuclear reactors occupying two city blocks to power all New York City. It would take the entire state of New Jersey covered with photovoltaic arrays to provide a like amount of power. Even in the more optimal solar areas of the United States Southwest the land required is vast and virtually unimaginable that it could be converted into solar farms without fanatic environmental opposition.

Equally importantly to size is cost. Power now from even the most efficient solar energy schemes is many times the construction and operational costs of any other electrical generation method. Only through vast subsides is any solar power generation possible.

Solar power enthusiasts have promised dramatic reductions of costs for decades without realized results. What should also be kept in mind is that solar power provides energy only during the daytime. The generation method requires an elaborate and expensive infrastructure to store that energy for night time usage. In the most optimistic projections solar power will be many times the cost of virtually any other type of electrical production method.

For those that promote the solar alternative ought to do some math. Go to the sites that sell solar cell arrays and add up the cost that it would take to generate adequate power for their home. Find out what the DC to AC conversion equipment will cost. Ponder the enormous expense for batteries for night time power. Find out how long the equipment will last until it breaks or loses it capacity. What you will discover is it will cost a good fraction of the worth of your home and by a factor of five you will never pay for it with savings before it needs to be replaced.

Living within eyesight of a major nuclear power plant and having been loosely associated with Navy nuclear power for many years I can say with utter conviction that it is a safe, economic and clean. Nuclear power is the safest technology that humankind has ever developed. It suffers grievously from wide eyed fanatics, ignorant do-gooders and endemic poor Russian engineering practices.

Nuclear power can provide cheap electricity to short range electric cars and hydrogen for everything else. It is the long term solution to the world’s energy woes.

The essence of the United States energy crisis is the solution is not being run by good engineering but by tunnel vision fanatics who do not understand economics or engineering; whose solutions give false hope to the ill informed and in the end do much more harm then good.

If there were any way to harvest and store solar energy efficiently, you'd probably have a good point there. Solar has a lot further than half a century to go before it can sustain the energy demands of a city of 15 million people (with an exponentially growing population fueled largely by illegal immigration) – government handouts or not. Nuclear is the only option that is currently capable of replacing hydrocarbon-burning electric generation plants, and we can't build those because it'd be Chernobyl on every streetcorner, just like it is in France – the environmentalists said so.

You're right about the state oil though. Government efficiency and responsibility being what it is, I'm sure our elected leaders would put the money to fantastic use. Maybe we could bring in the Saudi royal family to consult on the matter.

So the question is, why DONT we see the money? (I'm not saying I approve, but..) what if we opened ANWR under the condition that, rather than selling leases and letting the oil companies take the profit, the US Government, under the auspices of a taxpayer-held corporation, drilled for and sold at market all that oil?

Of COURSE I will be accused of socialism, but that's too easy. I'm not suggesting the nationalization of oil companies, nor dissolution of existing leases, merely observing that it is, in fact, OUR OIL, that our oil is worth quite a bit, and that perhaps we, as the payers of taxes, might like to see a bit more value come of our precious natural resources.

While I would contend our answer lies in burning less carbon fuel, rather than all of it as fast as we can, simple economics dictates that eventually, we will indeed burn all of it. If that is the given, than what is wrong with the idea that our nation could pay off our entire debt by simply, duh, taking responsibility for the dirty work ourselves?

And while I definitely agree that bio-fuels are an eco-nightmare, it is the farmers – not the environmentalists – who need the tough love on this addiction (tho, again, you are correct to blast gov policy for this). Farm-state legislators should be pressured.

Finally, though you (correctly) draw the link between high-food prices and bio-fuel, you ignore the other cause of food scarcity: loss of arable land to desertification due to, you guessed it, global climate change, something that burning all the oil in ANWR will only exacerbate. So while I agree that we may have to open up Alaska to drilling someday, the more prudent course is to accelerate transition to renewable and as clean sources of energy as we can – wind, solar and, yes, even nuclear.

What is so hard about envisioning a future in which we try and run as much as we possibly can, including cars and trucks, on electricity – and then getting that electricity from as many clean, renewable resources as we can? Sure, we have have to tap ANWR, but it should be a stop-gap, not a goal. Sure, heating oil and coal will linger, especially in the north and east, but that's no reason LA, San Diego, Pheonix and Salt Lake City can't run on the sun.