Posted on 02/02/2021 7:04:19 AM PST by Kaslin
When giving speeches and talking to audiences, I've often been struck by how few Americans, even those who are highly educated, have any idea where the energy they use in their home or business comes from. I've asked college students where the electric power is generated, and they shrug and then point to the electric socket in the wall. The electric currents just come magically through that plug.
For millennials, supporting green energy is cool and even virtuous. It's a popular and costless way to save the planet -- until the power doesn't flow through the grid. Then the laptops, hairdryers, Netflix shows, computer games and iPhones run out of juice.
That may happen one of these days -- and in the not-too-distant future (just ask Californians about blackouts), when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
Which brings me to President Joe Biden's take-no-prisoners approach to energy. The goals: kill fossil fuels; stop the building of pipelines; enter international treaties that outlaw fossil fuel use; end drilling on federal lands; strangle the oil and gas industries with regulatory assaults. And then throw billions and perhaps trillions of tax dollars at wind and solar farms.
So, let's go back to the question I ask students: How much of our energy needs today are met with fossil fuels -- the so-called dirty energy?
The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently released a chart showing the latest official data on U.S. energy production sources from the Department of Energy. Some 80 percent of all our energy comes from oil, gas and coal. Less than 5 percent comes from wind and solar. Somehow, Biden is going to magically flip these percentages around in five or 10 years? Even the federal forecasters who support renewable energy think that is highly unlikely.
Even if Biden were able to quadruple American production of green energy over the next decade -- a huge undertaking -- we will be meeting about 25% of our power needs. Where will we get the other 75% of our electric power and transportation fuels? Battery-operated cars such as Teslas and Chevy Volts need electric power to recharge the massive batteries.
As we produce less oil and gas domestically, two bad things will happen. First, gas prices are going to rise rapidly -- perhaps to above $4 a gallon. Prices have already started to rise at the pump to more than $2.50 a gallon in many markets. Second, we will make up for the lost domestic energy production by importing more energy from Saudi Arabia, Russia and OPEC nations.
We will reverse the energy independence achieved under former President Donald Trump to dependency on OPEC nations under Biden. This certainly isn't good for the U.S. economy and jobs here at home. But it's great news for the Saudi oil sheiks, Russia's Vladimir Putin and the communists in Beijing -- all of whom are going to make out like bandits. They can't believe their good fortune.
Maybe so, my younger and more idealistic friends say. But at least we will be doing our part to save the planet. Alas, no. China and India are building more than 100 coal plants as we shut ours down. China and Russia just signed a multibillion-dollar deal to build a pipeline from oil-rich Siberia to the big cities of China. Would Beijing invest in that infrastructure if they had any intention to stop using fossil fuels? Trump was right when he said that we have the toughest environmental standards in the world. So, shifting energy production out of America only increases greenhouse gases.
Perhaps over the next several decades, wind and solar power will be cheap enough to meet most of our energy needs. But are we to starve ourselves of energy in the meantime? Are Americans willing to pay $4 or $5 a gallon to fill up the tank with Saudi oil or Russian gas?
Wouldn't it be smarter, safer and, yes, more virtuous to get the energy we need from Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota or even Alberta, Canada, than from countries that hate us?
Funny thing is, when talking green energy, hydroelectric is RARELY mentioned.
All they push is the most polluting, environmentally destructive *green* sources going.
Funny thing is, when talking green energy, hydroelectric is RARELY mentioned.
All they push is the most polluting, environmentally destructive *green* sources going.
To continue with my earlier report on the benefits of global warming, now let’s look at global cooling.
Crop yields will decline, areas where crops could be grown will no longer support the crops. There will be less land viable for pasturing. Heating requirements will go up.
So we see the advantages to global warming and the disadvantages to global cooling.
That’s because Hydro means dams. Building dams is evil. The left wants to un-build dams.
They push the stuff that doesn’t work while criticizing any energy source which does work.
They don’t like energy. Having access to energy helps a society get wealthy, and the Left find it easier to exploit poor people.
And they never talk about nuclear power. Nuclear plants produce zero greenhouse gases. Yet we are not focused on building nuclear plants as part of our energy future.
Well, doesn’t everyone know, that electricity magically is there, when you plug in your phone to recharge???
sarcasm.
My understanding is that the potential sites for hydroelectric are rather limited, and that many of the promising ones have been used.
Of course, there’s also environmental pushback, because dams can always affect something.
The watermelons are the biggest bunch of Dumbasses in history. Useful/useless idiots.
I know there are drawbacks.
There, fixed it.
Yup. Electricity comes out of unicorn butts.
CRANK UP the Lawyers and tie up everything Biden tries. If nothing else it SLOWS the effort.
Exactly. The "Big Guy" and his Cokehead son can't make as much shaking down domestic energy producers as they can foreigners. Besides, this way he can seem to placate the Green Simpletons of the AOC branch.
Those pioneers who built water wheels by streams were so evil, pure evil. /s
I’ve visited our coal plants here in Kentucky. Most of the space is taken up by stuff used to clean up the exhaust, with a small part of the plant used to actually burn coal and produce energy. They’re retiring three coal plants right now, but nobody (that I’m aware of) knows what we are going to do to replace that capacity.
They’re expanding solar, but that is a drop in the bucket compared to what even just one of those plants produced.
I’m not going to predict the future, but I’m thinking about getting my own solar and wind up and running on my property, for the coming brownouts. It’s amazing what you can do with an auto alternator and a few batteries.
This sounds like another one of Crazy Nancy’s ideas
Solar and wind can never work on a large scale, even if it were free. Both solar and wind require vast tracts of land. Solar farms make the land unusable for any other simultaneous use. Wind farms are very destructive to birds and bats. On a large scale would be an environmental disaster. Both solar and wind are intermittent and incompatible with societies energy needs without vast energy storage. The technology for efficient large scale storage does not exist.
Killing the US energy supply isn’t the goal - its a means to the end of killing the US.
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