Posted on 04/25/2010 9:18:46 AM PDT by neverdem
Americans are being inundated with claims about renewable and alternative energy. Advocates for these technologies say that if we jettison fossil fuels, we'll breathe easier, stop global warming and revolutionize our economy. Yes, "green" energy has great emotional and political appeal. But before we wrap all our hopes -- and subsidies -- in it, let's take a hard look at some common misconceptions about what "green" means.
1. Solar and wind power are the greenest of them all.
Unfortunately, solar and wind technologies require huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy, disrupting natural habitats. Even an aging natural gas well producing 60,000 cubic feet per day generates more than 20 times the watts per square meter of a wind turbine. A nuclear power plant cranks out about 56 watts per square meter, eight times as much as is derived from solar photovoltaic installations. The real estate that wind and solar energy demand led the Nature Conservancy to issue a report last year critical of "energy sprawl," including tens of thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines needed to carry electricity from wind and solar installations to distant cities.
Nor does wind energy substantially reduce CO2 emissions. Since the wind doesn't always blow, utilities must use gas- or coal-fired generators to offset wind's unreliability. The result is minimal -- or no -- carbon dioxide reduction.
Denmark, the poster child for wind energy boosters, more than doubled its production of wind energy between 1999 and 2007. Yet data from Energinet.dk, the operator of Denmark's natural gas and electricity grids, show that carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation in 2007 were at about the same level as they were back in 1990, before the country began its frenzied construction of turbines...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The energy for electric cars for the most part comes from burning coal and oil. :)
Have a green day.
Even the libs are starting to catch on to the green energy scam.
Stored energy resources will never be replaced. Alternatives are too expensive and harm the environment.
There you go trying to let facts get in the way of an agenda.
It isn’t about being green.
It’s about controlling peoples actions and lives and future... and about money.
When tree huggers buy homes, they go in and gut the things ripping out perfectly good walls and floors and counter and everything else and dump it all in landfills. They destroy the integrity and appeal of older homes. How much more energy and materials do they consume making their new and improved homes green than merely embracing the home as it originally was.
Yup, the notion that electric cars are “green” is an urbanite illusion: they don’t produce pollution in the place you drive them, they produce it somewhere else.
Now, if you live in the LA basin, or any other city with bad air quality, more plug-in electric cars in your city-center might be a good thing for public health, but the idea that one is “saving the planet” from anything at all by driving one is sheer fantasy.
1. Solar and wind power are the greenest of them all.
2. Going green will reduce our dependence on imports from unsavory regimes.
3. A green American economy will create green American jobs.
4. Electric cars will substantially reduce demand for oil.
5. The United States lags behind other rich countries in going green.
There are so may people who don’t have a clue about “renewable energy.” One thing about the law of conservation of energy - you don’t get anything for free. And some processes are more efficient than others.
And the environmentalists will never be happy. Every conversion process will affect nature in one way or another.
No doubt, how we use energy could be a lot more efficient. There is room for improvement here.
But there is a limit and at some point it becomes inconvenient and our quality of life will suffer. Most people don’t realize that increased regulations and taxes will affect everything we buy. This little bit of critical information is being left out.
Until then, we are stuck with fossil fuels.
From Ry Cooder;
“Well, you see them folks all dressed so fine
Dancing, drinking champagne and wine
They’d pinch your pockets now if they could
‘Cause they ain’t doing nothing but feelin’ good
Feelin’ good, feelin’ good
All the money in the world is spent on feelin’ good
Red, yellow, black or tan
Makes no difference: a man’s a man
They oughta live together now if they could
Then the whole wide world would be feelin’ good
Feelin’ good, feelin’ good
All the money in the world spent on feelin’ good
Feelin’ good, feelin’ good
All the money in the world spent on feelin’ good”
2. Going green will reduce our dependence on imports from unsavory regimes.
3. A green American economy will create green American jobs.
4. Electric cars will substantially reduce demand for oil.
5. The United States lags behind other rich countries in going green.
Horsepucky.
Back when NASA was worth a bucket of spit; ie, the '60s & '70s, they did a survey of alternative methods of power generation. Guess what?
Wind power and Solar power tied for the two most inefficient methods of producing commercial electric power. The study said that even given just an 80% increase in efficiency, Wind and Solar could not break even over 10 years, due to maintenance costs alone!
Since then, efficiency in those methods has only increased about 25%. Just for fun, check your local wind farm and count the number of windmills that are feathered or tethered. Care to guess the number of mirrors in the average solar array that can't track?
Hell, even the commercials touting Solar have to show at least one vertical mirror, and some shots had six!
Want to know which methods of power generation were the most efficient/sustainable?
Nuclear. Ocean Thermal. And my personal favorite; Solar Power Satellites. (Mirror Or Microwave)
Upshot is, you just can't trust the Govt. where Science is concerned. Including NASA, back when it was good!
Fossil fuels? You mean the ones derived from the fossils of dead dinosaurs and after we run out of dead dinosaurs we run out of "fuel"? Those fossils? Not likely since it has pretty much been shown that oil and gas are produced naturally under the earth and have very little to do with "fossils".
Myth. The US has the world's largest stock of rare earth minerals, locked away under ChiFi's Desert "Protection" Act for the benefit of her husband's Chinese investments.
Robert Bryce is the managing editor at Energy Tribune.
Manhattan Institute is a conservative/libertarian outfit.
GREEN IS THE NEW RED
Thanks for the info. As long as the environuts got us by the short hairs, it’s as good as useless.
Not only will we be driving normal gasoline vehicles for hundreds of years (flyin' cars albeit), but the greenies never talk about how much energy and resources go into building one.
Caring for and keeping the ones we already have going great guns is truly caring for the environment.
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