Posted on 03/27/2009 6:40:22 PM PDT by Kaslin
Energy: The governor wants to carpet the desert with solar panels. The senator says it will destroy the ecosystem. The battle between environmentalists and conservationists is one of alternative energy's big drawbacks.
Environmentalists and conservationists have long fanned local fears to block oil and gas exploration from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the Outer Continental Shelf. Even nonpolluting and carbon-free nuclear power plants have been stopped dead in their tracks.
So it's delicious irony to watch conservationists and environmentalists at each other's throats over where to site the alternative energy facilities and transmission lines designed to save us from our carbon addiction and our dependence on coal and foreign oil.
One of the problems with wind and solar, aside from the fact the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, is that they are land-intensive and require vast amounts of acreage to gather their little nuggets of energy.
In January, three solar researchers wrote in Scientific American that by 2050 America could get all of its electricity just from solar panels in the Southwestern desert. All that would be necessary would be 46,000 square miles, or about one-third of the state of New Mexico, America's fifth-largest state. Al Gore repeated this proposal before the Senate Energy Committee in February.
Based on this idea, some 19 companies involved in 14 solar and five wind projects have submitted applications to build solar and wind facilities on a parcel of 500,000 acres in California's Mojave Desert that would seem ideally suited for a solar or wind farm.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
lol...Cover all of New Mexico, and move the occupants of the state into Arizona.
Only a moron centralizes electric generation like that
This plan will never reach even 5% fruition
Would a few nuclear airbursts blind these solar panels?
“Our own suggestion is, once again, to classify nuclear power as a renewable resource, which in fact the reprocessing of spent fuel rods makes it. Then use infrastructure money from the stimulus package to subsidize a job-creating building program, sort of a domestic Manhattan Project.”
Great idea. NOW, Get that past those paranoid, Leftist, freaks, and liars in control today. Good Luck!
...General Short said to park these planes wingtip-to-wingtip so we can keep on eye on them.
Never heard of General Short before....but Pearl Harbor as I suspected
ping
I daresay that in this case, the senator is right.
More on the coming internecine warfare between the nerd (Gorebot) and tree-hugger wings of the eco-fascists here:
Now, it's not enough, but efficient solar power is a good supplemental source when demand is at a peak - like a sunny summer day. However, it's better with mirrors and a concentrated source, not photo-voltaic panels.
haha, yes.
Park those planes wingtip to wingtip by command of communist president FDR
This reminds me of the experiments being carried out with dumping large amounts of iron sulphate into the ocean to stimulate planktonic algae growth which in theory will absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and then once the plankton dies off, it will sink to the bottom of the ocean where the CO2 would be locked indefinitely. But what of the dead plankton that doesn’t make it far enough down either due to ocean currents or shallow waters. CO2 levels will increase and oxygen will decrease due to decomposition of the dead plankton. In areas where this occurs, it could very well create temporary dead zones with a very low to non-existent ability to sustain life.
With liberals, the “solution” is usually worse than the problem it was intended to fix. And these are the people that want to take over health care. What’s that saying: ‘first do no harm’?
PG&E is currently advertising on TV about their plans to build several Square miles of solar panels in the Mojave desert to power 600,000 homes. I guess they didn’t get the fax from Lady Di...
Gang aft agley ("the best-laid plans...")
Cheers!
.... or just built a few nuclear power plants that have a much much smaller ecosystem footprint.
It is a great idea, and an idea I myself have been pushing for 2 years now and even asked a Texas railroad commissioner about. Make nuclear a 'renewable' power source and then the renewable mandates can encompass nuclear.
Alas, all good ideas are opposed by the left.
You wouldn't even need nuclear. Just fly along in a crop-duster and drop grenades out periodically. Or use the modern equivalent, called submunitions. A big device that separates into smaller packets. They were designed to deny airfield operation to the enemy.
If they could pothole a runway, they could devastate a field of mirrors.
Heck, a swarm of youngsters with slingshots would be a disaster.
Compare that with the security used for a nuclear reactor.
That particular Senator is incapable of being right.
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