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RonPaulR3VOLUTION
04-23-2009, 11:38 AM
Solar Isn't Green Enough For California
Energy Tribune - Apr 15, 2009

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=1598

http://www.energytribune.com/live_images/ET41509_turtle.jpg
An endangered desert tortoise, which didn't move when a vehicle approached, sits in the middle of a road in the proposed location of three BrightSource Energy solar-energy generation complexes in the eastern Mojave Desert. Photo by Reed Saxon: AP

The greatest threat to any perfect dream is to have it become reality. That’s because when pie-in-the-sky comes down to Earth it usually doesn’t taste nearly as good as the dreamers thought. And in the case of alternative energy, many dreams have turned out to be about as tasty as cowpie in the sky.

That’s certainly what’s happened with biofuels, as their true costs give lie to the idea that the world was only a few seeds away from eternal green energy. And that’s what may be starting to happen in with solar energy in California.

California seems like the ideal place: the land where abundant sunshine meets abundant environmentalism. But when solar makes the transition from perfect dream to needing an appropriate building site, it’s no longer green enough for the purists among the greens.

In response to public policy, nearly two dozen companies have proposed building solar and wind facilities on tracts of California’s sunny and windy Mojave Desert that were recently purchased from the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroad. And what has been the response of the advocates and even the actual authors of that same public policy?

"This is unacceptable," according to Diane Feinstein, the Democratic US Senator from California who beseeched Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to “suspend any further consideration of leases to develop former railroad lands for renewable energy or for any other purpose." David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy, was less supportive than Feinstein, stating that the proposed energy facilities "would destroy the entire Mojave Desert ecosystem.”

Funny, I thought solar was supposed to save ecosystems. Apparently, it might need to pave over some of them.

Also, I thought deserts were bad things, since Feinstein and other global warming prophets constantly threaten “desertification” as one of the most disastrous consequences of global Warmageddon. Which is strange, because it now seems that Feinstein believes deserts to be so precious that we cannot spare even a small fraction of just one to make clean, renewable solar energy. Maybe after global warming causes all that desertification, we will be able to build some solar plants in the new deserts?

Unless some tortoise wanders into them, because one of the great concerns with these solar plants is that they might do an unspecified harm to the desert tortoise. What, global warming is not as important as a single tortoise? I thought we were in a race for the life of the whole planet here. I guess we now see who wins in a race between the tortoise and the air.

To stop the building of government advocated solar energy plants on government land, Feinstein wants the government to declare the whole area a national monument. I suggest we call it the “National Monument to Energy Hypocrisy.”

This is not just because of the hypocrisy of advocating solar be built in sunny places and then claiming that deserts can’t be spared. But also for the hypocrisy of believing that crowding out a sliver of desert for alternative energy is unacceptable, while simultaneously subsidizing the destruction of far more productive grasslands and rainforests to make biofuels.

What’s the difference between these two destructive land uses? Well, besides biofuels also causing far more pollution to water and adding gobs of dreaded carbon dioxide to the air, the real difference is location. Biofuels occur in flyover country. Energy production, whether it is oil, gas, coal, solar, wind, or biofuels needs to be tucked away into dreadful places like Iowa or Texas. It is just too unsightly, too unclean and too imperfect to occur in the homelands of the well-off, sensitive advocates of alternative energy – whether its solar panels in California or windmills on Cape Cod.

The situation in California prompted California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to comment "If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave desert, I don't know where the hell we can put it.”

Well, let’s see… possibly acceptable sites might include: 1) the back corner of Greenie dorm rooms. These are already spoiled by development and heavy air pollution and I can tell you from personal experience that there is enough sun exposure that some students manage to grow alternative crops on the windowsills. 2) on top of the burned remains of Rush Limbaugh’s house. This ground is already spiritually unclean, as far as Greenies are concerned, and building solar there would satisfy the real purposes of most alternative energy advocacy: punishing those the left hates and advancing other political aims.

But even if solar were built in such potentially acceptable areas, it would be only a matter of time before someone in a more environmentally sensitive location – say the other millionaires in Limbaugh’s neighborhood – complained of the glare from the solar panels disrupting their prime nature views. No hardship is too small not to stop energy production. The fight against glare pollution must be right around the corner.

The standards to which energy is held by environmentalists are so high that only some sort of magic spiritual energy could meet them (assuming the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t rule that subsidizing spiritual energy violated the separation of church and state.)

If only worry, fantasy and hypocrisy could power generators, alternative energy might actually have a chance.

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=1598

sratiug
04-23-2009, 12:05 PM
Long live the tortoise!!! That was some funny shit, race between the tortoise and the air, lmao.

This is ridiculous. You put solar panels on the roofs of all the houses. You don't put them out in the desert and run miles of expensive cable with 30% transmission loss just so you can send the customer a bill for maintaining those lines and sending out bills.

Brooklyn Red Leg
04-23-2009, 12:11 PM
Fucking arrogant hypocritical douchebags. George Carlin was right.

YouTube - George Carlin - Saving the Planet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw)

Objectivist
05-04-2009, 03:00 PM
And the California Coastal Commission will not allow wind turbines along the coast, where the wind is.

We keep getting or electricity from Coal Plants in Idaho and other states.

JaylieWoW
05-04-2009, 04:31 PM
The soon to be winning quote of the article...


I guess we now see who wins in a race between the tortoise and the air.

I LoL'd big on that one.

Agent CSL
05-04-2009, 04:43 PM
We need to create tiny little wind turbines to be used in the place of gold and mercury for teeth fillings. I think, then, congress alone will be able to power the great state of California.

BenIsForRon
05-04-2009, 04:43 PM
The author of that article was a total demagogue. Environmentalists are trying to figure out ways to build human infrastructure without harming the environment. Things don't always pan out, like in this situation.

Other people would rather just not think about environmental damage, and just proceed to blow the tops off mountains for those shiny black rocks inside.

LibForestPaul
05-04-2009, 04:46 PM
The author of that article was a total demagogue. Environmentalists are trying to figure out ways to build human infrastructure without harming the environment. Things don't always pan out, like in this situation.

Other people would rather just not think about environmental damage, and just proceed to blow the tops off mountains for those shiny black rocks inside.

Yes. Correct. We hate turtles, except in soup.

silverhawks
05-04-2009, 07:24 PM
This is ridiculous. You put solar panels on the roofs of all the houses. You don't put them out in the desert and run miles of expensive cable with 30% transmission loss just so you can send the customer a bill for maintaining those lines and sending out bills.

Yes, but that would be INDEPENDENT solar energy, wouldn't it? And the panels would likely pay themselves down so fast that the public would be getting credit from the CA grid in no time.

Rather than one massive power plant you can continue to wrangle government funding for, and not tell people just how fast this technology paid for itself. Also, fairly sure that somewhere along the line money changes hands between the CA state government and local power companies.

What this says to me is: look for cheap solar panels, get together with friends and work together on making your own homes INDIVIDUALLY energy independent.

Objectivist
05-04-2009, 07:37 PM
The author of that article was a total demagogue. Environmentalists are trying to figure out ways to build human infrastructure without harming the environment. Things don't always pan out, like in this situation.

Other people would rather just not think about environmental damage, and just proceed to blow the tops off mountains for those shiny black rocks inside.

What's wrong with blowing the top off a mountain if it contains something that can improve your life?

YouTube - Mount St. Helens Erupting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omum8k-uueI&feature=related)
YouTube - Masaya Volcano Eruption (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaChWgbn18Y)
YouTube - Hawaiian volcano erupts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TVLUBRfHgM&feature=related)

silverhawks
05-04-2009, 07:47 PM
The author of that article was a total demagogue. Environmentalists are trying to figure out ways to build human infrastructure without harming the environment. Things don't always pan out, like in this situation.

Other people would rather just not think about environmental damage, and just proceed to blow the tops off mountains for those shiny black rocks inside.

I get your point, there are environmentalists out there that are looking to live in harmony with nature, learn about and mitigate our effects on the biosphere; and then you have "political environmentalists", the Al Gore types that George Carlin was talking about, the ones that talk the talk, but don't actually walk the walk.