Greens define “renewable energy” as you doing without.
Don’t look now but mainstream media (aka the lamestream media) is beginning to throw up the white flag and admit that their cure for supposed man-made global warming and our reliance on foreign energy sources is just to use less electricity.
How will this happen? First by guilt, then by force.
In the heat wave, the case against air conditioning
By Stan Cox
Sunday, July 11, 2010; B03
Washington didn’t grind to a sweaty halt last week under triple-digit temperatures. People didn’t even slow down. Instead, the three-day, 100-plus-degree, record-shattering heat wave prompted Washingtonians to crank up their favorite humidity-reducing, electricity-bill-busting, fluorocarbon-filled appliance: the air conditioner.
This isn’t smart. In a country that’s among the world’s highest greenhouse-gas emitters, air conditioning is one of the worst power-guzzlers. The energy required to air-condition American homes and retail spaces has doubled since the early 1990s. Turning buildings into refrigerators burns fossil fuels, which emits greenhouse gases, which raises global temperatures, which creates a need for — you guessed it — more air-conditioning.
A.C.’s obvious public-health benefits during severe heat waves do not justify its lavish use in everyday life for months on end. Less than half a century ago, America thrived with only the spottiest use of air conditioning. It could again.
Just consume less energy! What a novel idea. Ignore that people in developing nations would gladly slit your throat to enjoy the energy consumption advantages you have thanks to 200-plus years of liberty and innovation (converting to horsepower – Americans use about 4.5 horsepower per capita, while their counterparts in Pakistan and India use less than 0.25.”[ Courtesy of Power Hungry by Robert Bryce) Ignore that there's a direct relationship between the amount of electricity a country generates and its GDP (America is top in both electrical generation and GDP, followed by China and then the Western world with a high rank by Russia too [Bryce again]). No, no, our lifestyle, says this pretentious Ghia worshiper, is too “lavish.” No doubt his next commentary will extol the virtues of horse-drawn carriages (while ignoring disease from horse manure concentrations) and candles to replace light bulbs (ignoring productivity loss, among other things).
Once again the Greens’ definition of progress is technological regression.
How will this be done?
First by guilt trips by those like Mr. Cox. Then next via “smart utilities,” which is a fancy way of saying that your power company, under fiat by the government, will dictate the amount of energy you may use since we Americans aren’t like Pakistanis and Indians and can thus afford the energy prices. It’s no joke, unfortunately. It’s being seriously considered by the Leftist Greens and their government enablers.
[WND] In “Climategate [A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam],” [Brian] Sussman warns readers about the coming Smart Grid, Smart Meters, Smart Thermostats and Energy Star appliances – which he says will allow unseen bureaucrats to regulate all of the appliances in America’s homes.
“This is not fantasy,” says Sussman, an award-winning television meteorologist, “This is reality. Smart Meters have already replaced the whirling, old-fashioned electric meters on the side of millions of houses in America – they monitor electricity usage minute-by-minute and can be read remotely. The remote controlled Smart Thermostats are being installed as well and further enable bureaucratic control the temperature of your abode. The Smart Grid, which was mandated in the 2007 Energy bill and funded with ‘stimulus’ money, is coming next. The grid will possess interactive broadband capabilities to further control all of the new generation Energy Star appliances you will be forced to purchase – like your washer, dryer, water heater, and even your flat screen TV.”
Sussman notes the pandering tone of the Washington Post piece. “Look at the arguments presented in this story,” says Sussman. “In a post-AC nation, we’re told that ‘Congress will adjourn for the summer, giving ‘tea partiers’ the smaller government they seek,’ or that on a hot summer evening we’ll all trade the electrical stove for the barbeque and eat on the porch. Do the environmentalists and their media partners think Americans are that easy to fool?
“I live in California,” Sussman adds. “On certain summer evenings it’s illegal to have a barbeque. Guess will just have to stick to a salad.”
And why are the Greens forced to do this? Because it’s not about the environment or “saving” the planet from imaginary tidal waves swallowing San Francisco after polar icecap thaws, but it’s about control, and socialism, and collectivism, and increasing the power of the state. It’s about eroding personal liberty, and what’s more liberating that power consumption?
The Greens know that the facts are coming out, and the future of renewables simply cannot mathematically replace our need for oil, coal, natural gas (or nuclear) fuels. Wind and solar, for example, fail miserably in how we measure utility consumption: power density, energy density, cost, and scale.
For instance, again quoting from Robert Bryce:
The energy sprawl of renewables can easily be illustrated by comparing the footprint of a typical U.S. nuclear power plant, in this case, the South Texas Project, with that of wind and solar. Using conservative calculations—which means counting all 12,000 acres of the South Texas Project’s land area as part of the two-reactor plant’s footprint—yields a power density of about 300 horsepower per acre (56 watts per square meter). Compare that with wind power, which produces about 6.4 horsepower per acre (1.2 watts per square meter). Or look at solar photovoltaic, which produces about 36 horsepower per acre (6.7 watts per square meter). The results: Wind power requires about 45 times as much land to produce a comparable amount of power as nuclear, and solar photovoltaic power requires about 8 times as much land as nuclear. The corn ethanol scam is even worse, requiring about 1,150 times as much land as nuclear. … Thus, if the world’s policymakers really want to quit using carbon-based fuels, then we will need to find the energy equivalent of 23.5 Saudi Arabias every day, and all of that energy must be carbon-free.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg too. Because of intermittent breeze and sunlight, both solar and wind must be backed by traditional power sources, which as the Danes have learned, makes such power sources unsustainable without huge subsidies from government.
But that won’t stop the subsidies, of course. But just be prepared for the next bi-pronged attack of guilt and artificial outages.