paul Roetto wrote on April 02, 2009 09:33 PM: Put them on top of all the warehouses. Next to the areas the power is being used. Why go out to the desert and pave it over, then run miles of electric lines to get it to the end user. Might as well put them in the western Australian Desert and then run power lines under water.

Brendan wrote on April 02, 2009 08:58 PM: This editorial shows much ignorance on the part of the author. First, how many solar panels do you see on top of Los Angeles and Las Vegas homes and businesses? Very few, but rooftop solar requires no $2 billion trasmission lines, or the bulldozing of vast areas of desert land, which holds as much carbon as some forests.
Second, there are tens of thousands of acres of disturbed and destroyed (from an ecological standpoint) former agricultural lands in private hands that are just sitting there kicking up dust and collecting invasive species. These lands could be used for these large centralized generating facilities, and in many cases the transmission infrastructure is already there. As water becomes less available to waste on alfalfa in the desert, these lands will be freed up for solar as well. With these lands you'll get no complaints from environmentalists, and the environmental permitting process will be much easier. Feinstein is not saying "No" to everything, she is just saying no to a public lands give-away of our natural heritage.

scott henderson wrote on April 01, 2009 10:36 AM: This would be funny if it wasn't so serious. Coal plants can't be built, gas fired plants are discouraged, and now we can't use solar. I guess we will soon be sweating in the dark

SamT wrote on March 30, 2009 11:50 AM: @patrick: Replace "educating" with indoctrinating.

douglas wrote on March 29, 2009 08:02 PM: it's comforting to know that poster "keepnvstrong" guarantees that energy costs won't rise.

if our energy bills rise, can we invoice the poster for the difference ?

Fair and Balanced Fred wrote on March 29, 2009 07:54 PM: "Feinstein, who regards the 1994 California Desert Protection Act as one of her proudest achievements, noted that in one of the largest land purchases in California history, with the intent of protecting it. 'I feel very strongly that the federal government must honor that commitment,' she said.

Yep. Nineteen of the 130 solar project applications in CA may be under review, the 19 that have been proposed to fall within the land purchase that "the Wildlands Conservancy spent more than $40 million buying . . . [then] turn[ed] it over to the government".

Obviously, Feinstein is a RADICAL, EXTREMIST, TREE-HUGGING ECO-TERRORIST! (Oops. Sorry, I've been listening too much to the bloated, cholesterol colony, gut bucket, cigar-sucking, Oxycontin addicted, AM radio, Alpha Male of the Republican party.)

Or, maybe she just wants to take a look at applications for solar projects that fall within the boundaries that the conservation group bought, then turned over to the federal government.

Seriously. The wind is howling right now. We love that. We love the desert. Go out to Red Rock in two weeks and see the BURST of blooms! The snow melt fills the life-giving springs and streams.

Why do the Arkansas-based R-J hacks HATE the Mojave?

This is my home. This is our home. Send the Arkansas hacks back to Hot Springs and Texas and the Episcopal monastery.

The desert is beautiful. Don't let any R-J hack tell you otherwise.

Fair and Balanced Fred wrote on March 29, 2009 06:38 PM: Sen. Feinstein's office will be looking at 19 of the 130 (less than 15%) of the current California applications. Let's pretend she's cuckoo and irresponsible, and that we can't make up the power elsewhere. Remember, these are not pristine lands, they are, as the above editorial defines reality: "an encyclopedia entry on God-forsaken scrub" (like Red Rock Canyon).

This angry, white, middle-aged male's god is suspect, but our God doesn't "forsake" any part of Its creation; a metaphysical aside beyond the ken of most political hacks.

The piece above has all the fingerprints and feel as though authored by a handlebarred "troglodyte" with COPD and a hat (have you ever heard him on AM radio? Apologies to the troglodytes).

As right-wingers are absolutely addicted to logical fallacies (have you tuned in AM radio lately?) we see that from the gate this piece begins with a combination of Straw Man and Slippery Slope fallacies: "OK, there's that teensy problem that our electric bills may triple, while our total national output of electricity may drop to less than half of what we actually need. But the key here is to re-define 'need.' Do we really 'need' to air-condition Las Vegas hotels and casinos till they're cooler than 90 degrees all summer? To heat the homes of old and sick people in the snowy north till they're above 40 degrees in the winter?"

Uh, huh. Of course we need cool casinos and need warmth for "old and sick" people in the "snowy North" in winter. Our troglodyte builds that straw man, pretending Feinstein's proposal would lead to hot casinos and frigid homes, then so bravely knocks down the straw man it created.

Or, are we descending down a slippery slope of hot casinos, beginning with examination of 19 solar applications in CA?

Fallacies indeed.

KeepNVStrong wrote on March 29, 2009 06:06 PM: LET'S BUILD THEM HERE IN NEVADA!!!

First let's get the facts straight. Solar power doesn't "triple electricity prices." It's directly competitive with fossil power now.

But sikar DOES deliver 10 TIMES THE JOBS and 10 TIMES THE IN-STATE ECONOMIC ACIVITY OF FOSSIL POWER

A 2008 study for California, carried out by Black & Veatch, one of the world's largest builders of coal-fired power plants, found that solar power is now directly competitive with gas-fired power.

Building solar thermal plants is one of the most cost-effective investments in getting the economy going as well. The report says:

In terms of economic return, for each 100 MW of installed capacity, the CSP plant was estimated to create about $628 million in impact to gross state output compared to an impact of about $64 million for the combined cycle plant and $47 million for the simple cycle plant.

LET'S GET THOSE JOBS HERE IN NEVADA.
LET'S EXPORT POWER TO CALIFORNIA AND KEEP THE JOBS AND TAX REVENUES.

All those guys finishing up on City Center and the Bridge can switch over to building power plants.

patrick wrote on March 29, 2009 04:57 PM: I could never afford to spend my day educating people here if I only made $90,000 a year, get real.

little p patrick wrote on March 29, 2009 04:22 PM: Please bend over and grab your ankles, stupid taxpayers. I'm making $90,000 a year as a UNLV professor to sit on my arse and blog on the RJ. Us Dem's we're cool. We just suck the blood of Republican hard workers and tax them at
90% rates so we can sit on our arses
all day on the taxpayers dime.
SUCKERS. HAHAHA YOU DUMB ARSE REPUBLICANS!!!

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