Earth Day Blackout

This neighborhood is full of greenies, most of whom I consider “useful idiots”. They live in giant 4,000 square-foot houses, but drive hybrid cars to save the environment. Earlier this week one of the neighbors stopped by to urge me to participate in a neighborhood Earth Day Celebration on the 28th. The entire neighborhood is suppose to turn all electric lights off between 8:30 and 9:30, and each of us is to bring lighted candles to a neighborhood social hour. That will save us from a lot of evil CO2, which they believe cause global warming. Apparently none of them are aware that candles are made from paraffin, which is petroleum based, and each candle creates 9.6 times as much CO2 as a 40-watt light bulb. As part of the Earth Day celebration a local filmmaker is showing a film touting the virtue of wind and solar power. Don’t get me wrong, I am all in favor of alternative energy to supplement traditional energy sources, but these idiots believe we can shut down the traditional power plants, and replace them with solar panels and windmills. That simply can’t happen until we discover something better than batteries to store power, and the greenies ignore repeated studies that prove it is impractical to rely on wind and solar for more than 20% of total power usage. The greenies brag that the cost of producing alternative energy is approaching that of traditional energy, but they forget to mention that alternative power has to be backed up by traditional power plants to maintain baseline power in transmission lines, and to supply power when the sun doesn’t shine, or the wind is less than optimum. Therefore we have to pay for two systems instead of one, doubling the cost of energy. As an example, Britain had the coldest winter in 20 years this winter, and during two weeks of arctic cold there was no wind or sunshine at all.

There are three sources of proven clean energy available now: hydro, nuclear, and geo-thermal. Those sources are vastly underused because they are taboo to the greenies. The Obama administration claims its goal is to make the US independent of foreign oil, but they don’t want to develop any of our own resources. Dams for hydroelectric might ruin the view, and upset the salmon; they just put a stop to nuclear power plants by shutting down nuclear waste storage; and geo-thermal energy has never been developed in the US. Instead the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency intend to declare CO2 a harmful pollutant so they can tax it, and create their crazy “cap and trade” scheme. Consider that CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere; it is invisible, tasteless, and harmless, and human activity account for only 3.225% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere. Each humans exhale at least a half-pound of it per day, and plants need CO2 to survive.

The only reason to tax CO2 is to make conventional energy so expensive that green energy becomes attractive. No one is saying what the cost will be to society, or to the economy. I hear estimates that Cap and Trade will double the cost of electricity to the average home. Poor people simply cannot afford that, so the middle-class will be forced to subsidize that cost. Further more, the increased cost of energy will send what manufacturing we have left overseas, resulting in more jobs lost.

The Obama administration has promised that green energy will create over two million new jobs. They don’t mention how many people will loose jobs when they shut down traditional energy sources, or the social issues that will result from higher energy costs, higher fuel prices, and higher prices for farm products and manufactured goods. Here in Colorado, the greenies managed to put a stop to drilling down to one of the largest reservoirs of natural gas in the world, because drilling might disturb wildlife in the mountains. In Oregon and California the greenies just vetoed plans for a large wind farm in the Mohave Desert because it may disturb the view of the barren waste. They want windmills, but not in their state. Consider that it would take a wind farm the size of Wisconsin to supply electricity equal to the output of one nuclear power plant, and the wind farm grinds to a halt when the wind stops.

When the neighborhood went dark last night, I turned on all my indoor lights and my outdoor Christmas lights to show what I think of the World Wildlife Fund, and of Obama’s plan to make us a third world nation.

Gråulf