Actually, we don't have enough and never will.  Conservation, conservation, conservation.  Solar, solar and more solar.  The earth is not disposable and we have nowhere else to go.

Depending on the cooling technology utilized, the water requirements for a nuclear power station can vary between 20 to 83 per cent more than for other power stations.

Denver Water Consumption

Denver's 1.1 Million customers use 211 gallons per person per day for a daily total of 232.1 Million gallons per day.  One nuclear reactor's makeup water per day, 15 million gallons. 

When both reactors at the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania operate in summer,  nearly 30 million gallons of makeup water per day (or nearly 21,000 gallons per minute) are needed from the river to compensate for cooling tower drift.

Colorado Electricity Consumption

44,236 MW = About 37 nuclear reactors = 550 Million gallons of water per day = Over twice the daily consumption of water in Denver.  Cost of one reactor = $6 to $9 Billion = cost of 37 reactors = $333 Billion @ $9 Billion each.  $333 Billion = 41,625,000 rooftop water heaters @ $8000 each.  Hot water for bathing, etc. accounts for 13% of household energy consumption = 5,750 MW = 4.8 nuclear reactors = $43.2 Billion = 5.4 Million rooftop water heaters.

Is nuclear power renewable energy?

Nuclear energy uses Uranium as fuel, which is a scarce resource. The supply of Uranium is expected to last only for the next 30 to 60 years (depending on the actual demand). Therefore nuclear energy is not a renewable energy.

Sign me up, I'm a "Liberal" If your elected Democrat doesn't talk and think like this, you have a problem and perhaps you should encourage that "Centrist" to switch parties. I certainly wouldn't contribute my money or time to a person just because they use a "D" by their name. People who pretend to be liberal can get elected in Colorado, e.g. Ken Salazar, a liberal Hispanic, Bill Ritter, a liberal, law and order, Catholic kind of guy ("Law and Order" types scare me, they usually consider "prison building" a solution). Ben NightHorse Campbell, a liberal Native American. Liberals can get elected in Colorado, even if they are DINOs. MC

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'Liberal'? If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of 'Liberal'. But if by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal'." John F. Kennedy

Wikipedia

Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, et al., all DINOs. Anti-tax, anti-prosperity and anti-justice for all is anti-American. Look no further than the peamble of the US Constitution or the beauty of the concept, "E pluribus unum"

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. "

NY Times
September 9, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Our One-Party Democracy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.......................................
...........................The G.O.P. used to be the party of business. Well, to compete and win in a globalized world, no one needs the burden of health insurance shifted from business to government more than American business. No one needs immigration reform — so the world’s best brainpower can come here without restrictions — more than American business. No one needs a push for clean-tech — the world’s next great global manufacturing industry — more than American business. Yet the G.O.P. today resists national health care, immigration reform and wants to just drill, baby, drill.

“Globalization has neutered the Republican Party, leaving it to represent not the have-nots of the recession but the have-nots of globalized America, the people who have been left behind either in reality or in their fears,” said Edward Goldberg, a global trade consultant who teaches at Baruch College. “The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.......................”

Continued at the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html

If anyone attended the recent conference which was held in Golden this past Saturday, I would be interested in an informal report particularly as it might relate to future applications of thin-film solar products.
So, thanks for any information which you might provide.... I have not yet seen anything about the conference in the Denver Post...... etc......

IMO, I don't find wind turbines as unsightly as telephone poles, power transmission towers and cables, roof top TV antennas, TV broadcast antennas, etc.. As a matter of fact it would look something like energy independence ought to look. There was a time, back 100 years or so, chimneys sprouted from every roof and spewed black coal smoke, some went out back to get water from the well, take a dump in an out house, dump edible garbage in a hog pen, dump the rest somewhere out of sight and lit houses with oil lamps and candles. Question is are we ready to evolve? MC

NY Times
August 28, 2009, 8:17 am
Standards for Small-Scale Wind Power
By Colin Miner

The Associated Press Standards are afoot for small turbines aimed at individual homeowners and small businesses.
The American Wind Energy Association is developing a series of standards that will measure the safety, reliability and performance of small wind turbines.

The standards, which the organization hopes to have in place by the end of the year, come amid increased interest in small-scale and rooftop wind power — typically designed for individual homes, farms and small businesses, and producing 100 kilowatts of electricity or less.

“We are charged with hearing from all materially affected persons as part of the process,” said John Dunlop, a senior project engineer at the association, which was tapped by the American National Standards Institute, which oversees the creation of thousands of standards for things as varied as bottled water and swimming pools, to steer the process for small wind standards.

The new codes, which are still being completed, would compel manufacturers to put their turbines through a variety of tests that might, for example, demonstrate their reliability by having them operate continuously for 2,500 hours (including 25 hours when the wind speed is in excess of 33 miles an hour). Other tests might be used to ensure that turbines don’t exceed a certain decibel level while operating, or are capable of shutting down in extremely high winds, which can be dangerous.

Mr. Dunlop cautions that while a standard, which would be administered by the newly formed Small Wind Certification Corporation, would help the industry gain credibility, there are several things it won’t do.

“It’s not going to make turbines more efficient,” he said. “If someone puts a highly efficient turbine in a low-wind location, it’s still not going to produce any energy. We want to create standards that will allow consumers to know what they’re getting.”

John Breshears of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects, which is responsible for an experimental rooftop turbine project in Portland, Ore., said that standards would be a boon for consumers by forcing manufacturers to be honest.

“Right now manufacturers can make any claim they want,” Mr. Breshears said, “and they do.”

NY Times
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/standards-for-small-scale-wind-power/?hp

Can you hear me now? Howard Dean threw the gloves off, you should too. Starting with the economic advisors in the WH, I would start finding real liberals to help run the show. If he continues to surround himself with wimps (Democratic Party retreads) his administration is doomed, they wouldn't know an original thought if it bit them in the ass. Lots of really pissed off LIBERAL women like Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9) can help turn it around. This ain't politics, this is WAR against corporate America, the greatest villains in the history of the world. MC

"While the Obama administration offers kind words to unions, reform to ensure workers' rights to organize is not one of its priorities. Too many other liberal interest groups have become Beltway operations, packaged and polite affairs disconnected from the real grass roots."

Rage the Left Should Use

By Robert Kuttner
Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Where are the liberal protesters?

Wall Street and the abuses of corporate America crashed the economy, leaving regular people anxious and financially insecure. Yet the far right, not the reformist left, is getting the political windfall.

Something is severely off when economically stressed Americans confront members of Congress about "death panels" in the Obama health plan. The rumors, fanned by talk radio with a little help from Republicans, are false and even delusional. Yet the anger, if misdirected, is genuine.

People should be plenty angry about their jobs and their mortgages and their health insurance. With health care, however, virtually all of the fears attributed to the Obama health reform efforts more accurately describe the existing private system.

Continued:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702363.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Colorado has a House power ratio of .016 (7 members of 435) a Senate power ratio of .04, equal to all the other 49 states. Seemingly insignificant unless you look at Wyoming's House power ratio of .002. Getting rid of the filibuster might be a giant step in the right direction. If majority rule works in the house, surely it should be applied in the senate.

"Add the rise of the filibuster and the fact that small-state senators tend to stick around longer, gaining powerful chairmanships under the seniority system, and you've got today's change-resistant Senate." MC

The Gangs of D.C.
In the Senate, Small States Wield Outsize Power. Is This What the Founders Had in Mind?

By Alec MacGillis
Sunday, August 9, 2009

Wonder why President Obama is having a hard time enacting his agenda after sweeping to victory and with large congressional majorities on his side?

Look to the Senate, the chamber designed to thwart popular will.

There is much grousing on the left about the filibuster, the threat of which has taken such hold that routine bills now need 60 votes. Getting less attention is the undemocratic character of the Senate itself.

Why, for example, have even Democratic senators been resistant on health-care reform? It might be because so many of the key players represent so few of the voters who carried Obama to victory -- and so few of the nation's uninsured. The Senate Finance Committee's "Gang of Six" that is drafting health-care legislation that may shape the final deal -- without a public insurance option -- represents six states that are among the least populous in the country: Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Maine, New Mexico and Iowa.

Between them, those six states hold 8.4 million people -- less than New Jersey -- and represent 3 percent of the U.S. population. North Dakota and Wyoming each have fewer than 80,000 uninsured people, in a country where about 47 million lack insurance. In the House, those six states have 13 seats out of 435, 3 percent of the whole. In the Senate, those six members are crafting what may well be the blueprint for reform.

More at the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702045.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

"© Northeast Recycling Council, Inc.
February, 2007
ASPHALT SHINGLES WASTE MANAGEMENT IN THE NORTHEAST
FACT SHEET
February 2007
Background
Asphalt shingles make up roughly two thirds of the U.S. residential roofing market. They are made of the same four basic materials contained in hot-mix asphalt used in road construction. These materials include: fiberglass or cellulose backing (2-15%); asphalt cement (19-22% on a fiberglass-matt base, 30-36% on a cellulose-felt base made with paper); sand-sized, ceramic-coated natural rock called aggregate (20-38%); and mineral filler or stabilizer that includes limestone, dolomite and silica (8-40%). The asphalt used in shingles is made through the partial refinement of petroleum.i

Each year, the U.S. manufactures and disposes of an estimated 11 million tons of asphalt shingles. Of this waste, ten million tons is from installation scraps and tear-offs from re-roofing and one million tons from asphalt shingle manufacturers.ii The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that shingle waste makes up 8% of the total building-related waste stream and 1-10% of annual construction and demolition debris (C&D).iii
As a substantial portion of the C&D waste stream and because they are usually separated from other debris, asphalt shingles have the potential to be recycled. In addition, technology has created some money-saving opportunities for recycled shingle markets. Using hot-mix asphalt with only 5% recycled shingle material can save $1 - $2.80 per ton of hot-mix asphalt, as well as improve the quality of hot-mix asphalt used in paving."

More:
http://www.nerc.org/documents/asphalt.pdf

"Studies show that white roofs reduce air-conditioning costs by 20 percent or more in hot, sunny weather. Lower energy consumption also means fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming."

More at the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/science/earth/30degrees.html?hpw

Feel Free to post any info and promote yourself and organization. we are already getting 500 unique visits a day!
LeadvilleLifestyle is a 100% interactive website, you can upload videos/pics and blog. free classifieds,free forums and free business pages, also interacts with facebook and twitter!
launching coloradomountainlifestyle.com soon which will hopefully free the media in eagle/summit/lake counties and the central mtns of Colorado!

the user drives the content of the site! any questions just ask.

we encourage folks to get active and post video/pics or blogs!!! Free The Media!!! Stand Up!
http://www.leadvillelifestyle.com
http://www.coloradomountainmedia.com

coming soon coloradomountainlifestyle.com 100% Interactive websites!

I hope ProgressNow will use this to help communicate with citizens of colorado and the co mtns!!!

Batteries and something other than coal fired power plants to charge them. Perhaps solar? The total luminous energy output received by earth from the sun is 174 PETAWATTS (174,000,000,000,000,000) watts. The earth's annual consumption of energy is 16 TERAWATTS (16,000,000,000,000) watts. The potential for harnessing the sun is 10,875 times the amount of power consumed. MC

July 28, 2009
A Quest for Batteries to Alter the Energy Equation
By MATTHEW L. WALD
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — In a gleaming white factory here, Bob Peters was gently feeding sheets of chemical-coated foil one afternoon recently into a whirring machine that cut them into precise rectangles. It was an early step in building a new kind of battery, one smaller than a cereal box but with almost as much energy as the kind in a conventional automobile.

The goal of Mr. Peters, 51, and his co-workers at International Battery, a high-tech start-up, is industrial revolution. Racing against other companies around the globe, they are on the front lines of an effort to build smaller, lighter, more powerful batteries that could help transform the American energy economy by replacing gasoline in cars and making windmills and solar cells easier to integrate into the power grid.

This summer the Obama administration plans to announce how it will distribute some $2 billion in stimulus grants to companies that make such advanced batteries for hybrid or all-electric vehicles and related components. International Battery is vying for a modest chunk of it.

CONTINUED:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/science/28batt.html?hpw

"President Carter insisted on the realities of responsibility and the need for radical change." As opposed to, consume, dispose, destroy.

NY Times
July 15, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Carter’s Speech Therapy
By GORDON STEWART
IN the summer of 1979, as millions of Americans idled in creeping gas lines, President Jimmy Carter was preoccupied with matters abroad: first he was in Vienna completing SALT II with Leonid Brezhnev, next pleading for it before Congress, then away in Japan and Korea, hoping to rest in Hawaii afterward.

Instead, a White House reeling from approval numbers lower than Nixon’s urged Mr. Carter to get back home fast and do something. In other words, make a speech that would silence the mobs and revive his presidency. The networks cleared their schedules for July 5, 1979.

We speechwriters hacked together a draft of what was to be the president’s fifth speech on the energy crisis since taking office, and sent it to Camp David, along with word that we didn’t much like it. No one there liked it either, and on the morning of July 5, The Times blared, “President Cancels Address on Energy; No Reason Offered.”   Read More »

Diesel from algae is starting to look very promising. MC

Exxon to Invest Millions to Make Fuel From Algae - NYTimes.com

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/business/energy-environment/14fuel.html?_r=1&hpw

The program is a joint venture with a biotech company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.

"Even if we tap every renewable power source available, it won't mean a thing without a final, crucial step: reinventing the grid."

By David Roberts

Popular Science

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-06/next-grid#

NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/07/08/08greenwire-breakthrough-reported-on-low-cost-alternative-to-388.html

"The dignity code........It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm."

I'm having trouble finding balance, even though we have been blatantly provoked by charlatans in positions of trust MC

NY Times
July 7, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
In Search of Dignity
By DAVID BROOKS
When George Washington was a young man, he copied out a list of 110 “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” Some of the rules in his list dealt with the niceties of going to a dinner party or meeting somebody on the street.

“Lean not upon anyone,” was one of the rules. “Read no letter, books or papers in company,” was another. “If any one come to speak to you while you are sitting, stand up,” was a third.

But, as the biographer Richard Brookhiser has noted, these rules, which Washington derived from a 16th-century guidebook, were not just etiquette tips. They were designed to improve inner morals by shaping the outward man. Washington took them very seriously. He worked hard to follow them. Throughout his life, he remained acutely conscious of his own rectitude.

Continued:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/07brooks.html?em

NY Times
July 7, 2009

Making a Cash Cow Out of Manure Isn't Easy

By DEBRA KAHN of ClimateWire
ATWATER, Calif. -- The gurgling is loudest near the edges as Carl Morris jumps on a tarp covering a lagoon of decomposing manure.

"It's the world's largest waterbed," said Morris, chief operating officer of Joseph Gallo Dairy Farms in California's Central Valley.

The moonbounce-like, 60-millimeter-thick tarp covers the farm's 24-foot-deep pond. It's a holding tank for manure from 5,000 Holstein and Jersey cows, and the decomposing waste produces 400,000 cubic feet of methane gas per day. That, in turn, powers a generator and provides steam to run a cheese-making plant. It's also very stinky.

"There's nothing high-tech about it," said Morris, who estimates that the farm saves about $2,700 per day in electricity and steam power, plus 400,000 gallons of propane per year.

Continued:
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/07/07/07climatewire-making-a-cash-cow-out-of-manure-isnt-easy-45070.html

NY Times
June 25, 2009

By SUSAN SAULNY

CHICAGO — The Sears Tower, that bronze-black monument that forms the 110-story peak of the skyline here and stands as the tallest office building in the Western Hemisphere, will soon have another unique feature: wind turbines sprouting from its recessed rooftops high in the sky.

The building’s owners, leasing agents and architects said Wednesday that they are literally taking environmental sustainability to new heights with a $350 million retrofit of the 1970s-era modernist building — and the turbines are only the tip of the transformation. The plan, to begin immediately, aims to reduce electricity use in the tower by 80 percent over five years through upgrades in the glass exterior, internal lighting, heating, cooling and elevator systems — and its own green power generation.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/us/25sears.html?hpw

A warning for all those litigious Colorado rightwingers embracing Twitter this year, from The Hill:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and former Michigan Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzis have threatened to sue a pro-Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) group over a posting on Twitter using their names.

Attorneys for Gingrich and Anuzis wrote a pro-EFCA group on Wednesday, asking them to disable a posting by the anonymously-owned “EFCANOW” handle, which asked followers to sign a petition supporting the labor legislation, and included Gingrich’s and Anuzis’s Twitter handles.

The suit marks a first for the political use of Twitter, which has taken off amongst lawmakers, political figures and interest groups since earlier in the year. The complaint gets to the heart of one of the most common practices of the site: directing a message toward another user -- even if the two don’t know each other -- by using an “@” sign.

“The posting falsely purports to have been written by Messrs. Gingrich and Anuzis and includes the Mark as well as the Twitter ‘handles’ of the foregoing individuals,” attorneys wrote in a letter. “The posting is deliberately designed to fraudulently induce readers into believing that…Messrs. Gingrich and Anuzis all support EFCA.”

The attorneys alleged that the posting, of which the authorship is unknown, violates the pair’s trademark and publicity rights, and invokes tresspassing and wire fraud laws, and maybe even so-called “RICO” laws, which are traditionally used to target organized crime groups...

Holy crap, RICO? The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act? Over a Tweet?

The problem is that the person who sent the "Tweet" in question was simply using the 'direct message' function in Twitter, which enables one to send a message directly to accounts prefaced with an 'at sign' (@). In this case, @newtgingrich.

I don't claim that everyone on Twitter fully understands what they're doing, but this was clearly not an intent to steal Gingrich's identity, just to have a little perfectly legal fun with it.

Embarrassed once somebody explained to him what actually happened, Gingrich sent out this carefully worded Tweet a couple of hours later:

A false story was planted this morning about my sueing [sp.--Pols] twitter. This is totally false and we have repudiated it with the media

And that's technically true--according to the letter sent by Gingrich's lawyer, he's threatening to sue the person who sent the "Tweet," the domain name registrar, and the web hosting company that hosts the site the message directed to. So no, not suing Twitter itself--but it's no less ridiculous.

The moral of the story? Well, someday, somebody's going to pull this on Tweet novice Dave Schultheis, and he should probably take a deep breath before calling in Scott Gessler.

The past few months have provided a dizzying series of messages in the blogosphere praising or persecuting the new President of the United States (POTUS). Thankfully, Salon.com produced an “over the nation” report on the Republican Party today that deserves more attention, and a more in-depth analysis (from yours truly, naturally).

Here’s the Salon.com link - The state (by state) of the GOP

Once again, Dick Wadhams’ penchant for media attention provides the clue for how to defeat him and continue the GOP decline:

"This notion that Colorado has suddenly become a Democratic state is preposterous. I think Democrats who have a grip on reality know that." -- State GOP chairman Dick Wadhams

The lesson from Dick is a hard and true fact of politically strategy from today to 2012, and unfortunately, too many high level Democratic leaders are positively oblivious to the concept. While basking in the glory of Barack Obama’s victory, I am seeing too many messages ignoring recent losses and weaknesses going into future ballots. This kind of complacency and false posturing is a formula for a disaster in the 2010 General Election.

Salon.com is absolutely correct by highlighting the dominance of the GOP at the county and community level. Even in Larimer County, the Democratic Party leadership is mute on the loss of a seat on the Board of County Commissioners. Reveling in the glory of former Democratic Party Chair Betsy Markey defeating Marilyn Musgrave is apparently too intoxicating to take a clear look at the dangers of the political landscape.

   Read More »