There’s a post over on Instapundit on thorium reactors – The New Green Nukes. Thorium reactors create little waste and can’t be used to make bombs. There’s a lot of thorium all around the world. India and China are already looking ahead to this, as Instapundit notes.

Thorium reactors should be cheaper than coal. We know today for a fact that wind and solar will be a lot more expensive than coal. Worse still, wind and solar can’t scale to meet more than 10% of our electric needs — which would be half what we get from the 100 Brezhnev-era nuclear plants we currently have.

Coal currently provides 50% of our electricity. We have a lot of it, but it’s dirty. If we pursue Obama’s energy plans we can expect this percentage to actually go up, as old nuclear plants are retired and “renewables” fail to fill the gap … and as our total electric production declines. Energy costs will be a lot higher … which will have consequences.

Obama said so himself to a semi-private meeting back in 2008 … “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” That’s one hell of an admission. Obama even lumped natural gas in with coal, as he spoke.

source: http://www.forumeter.com/video/178449/Obama-My-Plan-Makes-Electricity-Rates-Skyrocket

After the lobbyists got through with it, the cap and trade plan that passed the House is actually worse than Obama’s plan. “Coal” won free permits for its current base of emissions. CO2 is declared to be a pollutant and acceptable levels of CO2 emissions are chiseled into stone. Specific renewables are favored — wind, solar, biomass. Nuclear gets fried. Any novel ideas are implicitly disfavored — this is subtle but important as novel ideas won’t get funding at any level … including thorium reactors. Thorium will be the dog that didn’t bark … at least not in the USA … but a dog that may bark in India and China.

The House Energy bill may die in the Senate, but this train has already left the station as the EPA has already declared CO2 to be a pollutant. Much of Obama’s energy plans will get adopted through regulatory mechanism and funding priorities. “Legislation … I don’t need no stinking legislation !.”

Obama’s beliefs on Energy are based on his professed acceptance of AGW theory. But our politics have gotten us to the point where — even if you believe in AGW — we’ll have the worst of all possible outcomes … much, much higher kwh costs and more global pollution … and that’s even without a blow-up in the Middle East.

The answer needs to be “all of the above … and fast.”

Cheat is a weed that diminishes wheat field production, but is similar and difficult to eradicate. I image rape started out being a diversion or distraction to whoever was naming unplanned grasses.

I just thank the stars that barley, flax (where linseed oil comes from), and sunflowers got named by different means.