From McCain’s prepared text we see the Arizona Senator easily top Palin’s lies (see “In her big speech, Palin repeats the GOP’s big energy lie — plus three other energy lies, too“):

My fellow Americans, when I’m President, we’re going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much.

LIE #1: McCain has no plan to reduce oil imports — indeed, throughout his career he has explicitly rejected every plan that might reduce oil imports substantially, including fuel economy standards, biofuels, and renewables. Heck, he even rejected the plan offered by billionaire conservative oilman T. Boone Pickens to aggressively deploy clean energy and alternative fuels over the next ten years (see The real, Luddite McCain: “The truly clean technologies don’t work”).

We will attack the problem on every front.

LIE #2: This is, of course, the GOP’s Big Energy Lie, widely debunked (see “The Big Energy Lie — Blog round-up“).

We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we’ll drill them now.

LIE #3: No, we won’t drill them now. We might drill these new wells in 10 years, as the U.S. Energy Information Administration expert on offshore drilling explained to me (see “The cruel offshore-drilling hoax, Part 1“).

We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas.

LIE #4: McCain has fought against wind and solar and alternative energy for his entire career because he genuinely but mistakenly believes “The truly clean technologies don’t work” (see “Anti-wind McCain delivers climate remarks at foreign wind company” and “Why McCain hates renewables but pretends he loves them.”)

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Consider this:

1. McCain has a significant chance of dying in office.
2. Palin is a global warming denier.
3. If the the next president doesn’t provide very strong climate leadership at home and abroad then we have doomed our children and countless generations after them to ever worsening misery and suffering.

What is the morality of electing a President or Vice President who doesn’t understand the urgent need for very strong domestic action and international leadership to mitigate man-made climate change?

What does McCain’s choice of Palin say about whether he really considers global warming a priority issue, given that he put a global warming denier a heartbeat away from the presidency (see “No climate for old men“)? What does it say about his judgment? At least they found common, albeit Luddite, ground on renewable energy (see “Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, NOT energy expert” and “The truly clean technologies don’t work”).

Let’s go through the three points:

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Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The McCain campaign just released an ad claiming that Gov. Palin (R-AK) “took on Big Oil.”

Watch it:

In fact, Palin is a champion for Big Oil. And in Sen. McCain’s acceptance speech tonight, he will repeat the lines used by Big Oil in their own public relations campaigns:

– “Energy independence” by drilling everywhere, even in protected places.

– Support for more alternative energy without effective commitments.

– Eventual reduction in global warming pollution.

He repeatedly made these points over the past two plus months.

This speech will attempt to obscure the facts that tell the real story of a McCain-Palin Administration:

– Denial of science. When asked about global warming, his running mate, Gov. Palin, said, “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

– Opposition to clean energy. McCain missed all eight critical clean energy votes over the past year and voted against a renewable electricity standard four times since 2002.

– False promises. Drilling everywhere will not reduce oil or gasoline prices. The Department of Energy determined that drilling in the outer continental shelf “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices.”

– Big Oil subsidies. McCain would provide $39 billion in new and existing subsidies and handouts to big oil over the next five years.

– Choosing Big Oil before clean energy. McCain announced that he would have cast the deciding vote against the extension of tax incentives for wind, solar, and efficiency in December 2007 and February 2008. That bill would have eliminated $13 billion in existing tax breaks for big oil.

– Fueled by Big Oil. McCain’s campaign is run by oil industry lobbyists, and has taken over $1.5 million from the oil industry.

So McCain’s clean energy flourishes tonight are all pomp but no circumstance. His record shows that he supports the Big Oil agenda along with the Bush Administration and Governor Palin. His “energy independence” proposals would only yield more profits for Big Oil, and his mention of clean alternative energy is nothing more than a talking point.

Nature recently ran an article on “Energy alternatives: Electricity without carbon.” Like most discussions written by people who don’t follow clean energy closely, the article lumped baseload solar (also known as concentrated solar thermal power) in with solar PV and generally treated it as an afterthought.

Here is everything that they wrote about baseload solar:

Solar cells are not the only technology by which sunlight can be turned into electricity. Concentrated solar thermal systems use mirrors to focus the Sun’s heat, typically heating up a working fluid that in turn drives a turbine. The mirrors can be set in troughs, in parabolas that track the Sun, or in arrays that focus the heat on a central tower. As yet, the installed capacity is quite small, and the technology will always remain limited to places where there are a lot of cloud-free days — it needs direct sun, whereas photovoltaics can make do with more diffuse light.

Costs: The cost per kilowatt-hour of concentrated solar thermal power is estimated by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, at about $0.17….

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On the Tavis Smiley Show Monday, Newt Gingrich revealed the propaganda strategy of American Solutions For Winning The Future (ASWF), the 527 corporation funded by right-wing billionaires to sell a Big Oil agenda to the American public. First, he repeated the central falsehood of his campaign:

Well, we launched at American Solutions a petition drive called “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” to make the obvious point that if you used America’s energy resources and you didn’t have to buy oil from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia it’d be a lot less expensive.

Gingrich’s “obvious point” is an obvious lie. The United States has only two percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves but uses 24 percent of production. Under Bush, domestic drilling has surged — but so have oil prices. The only sufficient American energy resources to get off foreign oil are efficiency, wind, solar, and other unlimited, renewable energy.

He then outlined the next roll-out of his propaganda campaign, building on the current petition drive and YouTube contest with a book release on September 22 and a movie release coinciding with “Solution Day” on September 27.

Watch it:

The book, Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, blames “anti-energy, left-leaning politicians” for the energy crisis, absolving Gingrich, Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Enron, Exxon Mobil, Peabody Coal, Tom DeLay, John McCain, hedge-fund speculators, and others in the conservative elite who have profited from skyrocketing energy prices and blocked reform while the rest of us suffer.

The movie, We Have The Power, extols the virtues of nuclear power in a visit to Three Mile Island and stars Newt’s wife Callista as she talks with industry lobbyists.

Gingrich’s false “Solution Day” coincides with the Green Jobs Now Day of Action. Go to the website — GreenJobsNow.com — to fight for real solutions, not more pollution.

Palin’s full speech contained yet another energy lie, one that is very revealing :

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world’s energy supplies….

Not even close. Yes, if you live in a world where the only energy source is oil, then the Persian Gulf countries do produce 20% of the total world supply — although it would be next to impossible for Iran to cut it all off. And kind of stupid, since they’d lose tens of billions of dollars in revenues themselves.

But we don’t live in a world where the only energy supply for the world is oil — well, maybe Palin and the McCain campaign does, but the rest of us don’t. In the world the rest of us live in, oil is maybe 20% of total world energy usage. And I’m going to ignore efficiency, even though it is certainly the largest energy resource (see “Energy efficiency, Part 2: The limitless resource“).

Bottom line: A really self-destructive Iran might in fact be able to cut off a few percent of the world’s energy supply.

And one more thing. If you were really worried about the possibility Iran might cut off a fifth of the world’s oil supply, cut off some 20 million barrels of oil a day, then it is inane to say you confront that threat by saying “we need to produce more of our own oil and gas.” If you opened every conceivable area now off-limits to drilling, you might get 1 million barrel of oil a day starting in 10 years.

The only way to prepare for losing a fifth of the world oil supply — or, more realistically, to prepare for the reality peak oil –is to transform our transportation system into one that can also run on electricity (see “Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence“)

Here is the total global energy use:

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