Venture capitalist Bob Metcalfe writes in the Wall Street Journal that his firm has been discouraged from investing in tabletop-sized nuclear reactors because about $50 million of the requested $100 million investment would be swallowed up by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission itself.
Waxman-Markey delenda est!
This one-inch fish is shaping up to be the excuse for blocking water-cooled solar projects on public lands in Western deserts:
Remember the allegedly endangered spotted owl that nearly brought timber harvesting in California to a halt in the 1980s? Not only was the spotted owl never “endangered,” but now with logging greatly reduced, it (and all else) faces an even more devastating threat — uncontrollable forest fires. Go green, yeah!
So now we have a situation where there’s a “planetary emergency” (just ask Al Gore) and where solar power could be part of the solution to the alleged problem. But because of the one-inch pupfish that lives in desert pools (a vital part of the global ecosystem?), the solution to the emergency can’t be implemented. Go green, yeah!
Click here for today’s Wall Street Journal story on the all-important pupfish.
The New York Times reports to day that the Sierra Club wants to raze dams in the Northwest and replace them with
… wind turbines in more places, to help balance power generation by ensuring that some are always in an area where the wind is blowing, or relying more on the Northwest’s natural gas plants in combination with energy-saving measures.
This is, of course, another half-baked, hare-brained idea designed more to cause energy chaos and shortages than to provide “clean energy” and help the “endangered salmon.”
The erratic nature of wind power cannot be remedied by more windmills in more places because… well… wind power is erratic. Just because the wind isn’t blowing here doesn’t mean it’s blowing there. Then there are the problems of all those expensive transmission lines that would need to be installed for the extra windmills, the eyesore nature of windmills, their large footprint, the migratory bird-Cuisinart controversy, additional taxpayer subsidies and more.
And what’s this, the Sierra Club wants to replace low greenhouse gas emitting hydropower with fossil fuels? Are they serious? What about the planetary emergency? Is saving salmon more important than saving the world from the dreaded global warming? Didn’t Kofi Oil-for-Food Annan just say that global warming kills 300,000 people every year? And WWAGS?
Energy-saving measures? Now we get to the nut-cutting, as Lyndon Johnson used to say. “Energy-saving” is green-speak for rationing — and isn’t that what the greens really want?
A new report from the Obama administration’s Department of Energy says we may no longer be the “Saudi Arabia of coal,” according to the Wall Street Journal, because we may only have 120, rather than 240 years years of economically accessible reserves.
I promise to worry about what people will do for energy in 120 years right after I finish worrying about free enterprise and capitalism surviving the Obama administration.
The greens are using their chokehold on water supplies to thwart water-dependent solar projects.
This may upset Al Gore. His venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, has invested millions of dollars in the solar power firm, Ausra, which uses the water-dependent solar technology.
It’s hard to pick sides on this one. Maybe the Earth can just open up and swallow both of them.
Tom Hayden, Chicago Seven radical and former Mr. Jane Fonda, will help Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) celebrate the 20th anniversary of
… Sacramento voters going to the polls to shut down Rancho Seco, a nuclear power plant operated by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) about 25 miles southeast of the city. It was the first and only time voters shut down a nuclear power plant – but it has been called the “shot heard round the world” since it echoes to this day.
Yes, that would be the greens celebrating the shutdown of a power plant that emitted no carbon dioxide…
And speaking of “social responsibility”, Reuters reported today that Russian Prime Minister and former KGB officer Vladimir Putin — that’s right, Mr. Human Rights himself — upbraided a Russian businessman for being “greedy” and asked him,
“Where is the social responsibility of business?”
Perhaps a future Russian chapter of PSR could be called Physicians for Putinism?
The ongoing battle over the proposed reactor at the existing Calvert Cliffs, MD nuclear power plant is shaping up to be do-or-die for the U.S. nuclear power industry, according to a report in Carbon Control News.
The Constellation Energy-Electricite de France joint project moved a step closer to reality on April 28 when the Maryland Public Service commission recommended that initial construction on the reactor be allowed to commence. Then on May 19, the proposed reactor became one of four projects to be considered by the Department of Energy for part of the $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees available for new nuclear projects. At least $10 billion in loan guarantees are needed for the plant to proceed, according to Constellation.
But the greens are claiming that the project’s 49.99% ownership by Electricitie de France would allow a foreign government to control a U.S. nuclear reactor and are raising concerns about Constellation’s finances, including its ability to secure financing for the eventual decommissioning of the plant.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce told Carbon Control News that the Calvert Cliffs project,
“… will have a ridiculously huge bearing over what happens with the rest of the industry.”
The greens are downplaying the notion of any imminent “nuclear renaissance” since only four applications have been filed with the DOE for loan guarantees. The anti-nuclear group Public Citizen told Carbon Control News,
“Four applicants is not a renaissance.”
The Department of Energy projects that world energy consumption will increase 44% between 2006 and 2030 provided that current laws and policies remain unchanged.
FOXNews reports,
A key part of President Obama’s energy plan — replacing fossil fuels with green alternatives — is facing increasing opposition from an unlikely source: environmentalists.
Some environmentalists, who have successfully fought a wind farm on the border of Oregon and Washington, are trying to block a massive solar plant in the Mojave desert. And now an Oregon county is considering a ban on wind power in the foothills of the blue mountains.
“We all want to be as green as we can be. But at what cost?” Richard Jolly of the Blue Mountain Alliance. “To take everything from us? This valley could be surrounded by them.”
It was scorned in the Katrina hurricane,
And we howled in the North Dakota rain,
But it’s all right now, it’s CO2 gas,
But it’s all right, biomass trash makes no gas, gas gas…** – Suggested shower lyrics for Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) sung to the tune of a Rolling Stones’ hit in wishful rationalization of why its OK to support global warming alarmism AND the burning of biomass for electricity.
Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) says that, “The climate crisis facing the world is no joke, and closing our eyes to the problems created by it doesn’t make them go away.” Rep. Baird is referring, of course, to the supposed problem of manmade emissions of carbon dioxide. So since he believes that we are a crisis caused by manmade CO2, you might reasonably think that Rep. Baird would be all for a climate bill that dramatically reduces rather than condones CO2 emissions.
Instead, however, Rep. Baird says that support from Northwest states for the Waxman-Markey climate bill is being “alienated” by the bill’s restriction on the burning of biomass (i.e., scrub wood and brush) from federal lands for electricity generation, according to a report from Carbon Control News (April 29). The Waxman-Markey-loving Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council oppose biomass burning as undermining the bill’s chief goal — that is, reducing manmade greenhouse gas emissions.
Rep. Baird calls the Waxman-Markey ban a
“bad, foolish, irresponsible policy”
that he will
“work to the utmost of my ability to defeat.”
About the greens, Rep. Baird says,
It’d be nice if some of these folks lived in reality for once.
A worthy wish for us all, Rep. Baird.
Former Energy Secretary James Schlesinger and renewable energy expert Robert L. Hirsh opine in the Washington Post today,
Why are we ignoring things we know? We know that the sun doesn’t always shine and that the wind doesn’t always blow. That means that solar cells and wind energy systems don’t always provide electric power. Nevertheless, solar and wind energy seem to have captured the public’s support as potentially being the primary or total answer to our electric power needs…
Realistically, however, solar and wind will probably only provide a modest percentage of future U.S. power. Some serious realism in energy planning is needed, preferably from analysts who are not backing one horse or another.
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that,
House Democrats are weighing a plan to give some of the nation’s biggest polluters a 10-year cushion from the impact of greenhouse-gas regulations to get a cap-and-trade system in place now.
Under the proposal, electric utilities would get free permits to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases for as long as ten years, after which they would gradually begin paying. In exchange, utilities would be required to shield consumers and businesses from higher electricity rates during that time. They would also make investments in conservation and renewable energy to lessen the industry’s reliance on coal.
“We’re going to have some of the money allocated to ratepayers,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) “How much and what percentage, I don’t know.”
Keep in mind that the federal government’s printing presses are churning out more dollars than ever before — so there’s plenty of money to buy-off everyone. Why didn’t anyone think of Zimbabwe-ing our way to green paradise before?