Bush Kills off Solar Energy Citing "Environmental"

joe1347 · Heavy Crude Joined: Sep 05, 2005 Posts: 153

For some perspective on how little land is needed to supply the USA with 50% of it's electricity using Solar Power

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"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." Homer Simpson

MyOldTDiIsStillGoing

MyOldTDiIsStillGoing

ProudFossil, thank you posting the Jun 15th AP story about what SDG&E is fighting with. When I saw the article a few weeks ago, I laughed at the DoubleSpeak that the article speaks of. I don't have the complete stat, but California's power consumption has doubled over the past 20 years but no power plant built during that time to run the power. They go and buy (or steal, depending on your prospective) from other states and they then wonder why they have rolling blackouts and Enrons.

Here is what Bush should do. He should get in his pickup (first put on his Texas cowboy hat, the big size), go out to Calif with his gun, and shot anyone who wants to stop any forward progress on the solar farms (in this case, the power line right-a-ways). The wild west has returned.

As for the Mojave ground squirrel that our fed government needs to protect, we look north to Alaska as our example of the environmental impact on those little critters. The solar panels will serve as sun shields so they can now be cooler in the desert heat. Thus, they can be "fruitful and multiply" since they aren't dying off in the heat. Just as the Alaskan Pipeline did with our bigger critters, the caribou, just the temperature issue is reversed. Man helping nature, oh so PC.

And an added benefit to the picture, since food will become more scares with the PO conditions, we now will have a larger squirrel population to hunt, thus, no humans will starves. food for thought.

It's a win-win situation. More power, more food. Killed two squirrels with one stone. (or bullet if we join the gun totted cowboy with that pickup mentioned earlier). And the squirrels definitely will enjoy the shade, yet, probably not the bullets.
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THE SIMPLE LIFE: One frozen pond, a few sticks, a little round puck, and a bunch of rowdy kids.

Plantagenet

The legal requirement for environmental impact statements on any kind of sale or lease or development of federal lands long predates the Bush administration.

Its irrational to blame George Bush for EIS laws that were passed through Congress decades ago at the behest of environmentalists whose oft-stated goal was to stop energy development on federal lands.

Cheers! Smile

Plantagenet

Look who's in favor of the moratorium and the EIS studies:

"Alex Daue, an outreach coordinator for the Wilderness Society, an environmental conservation group, praised the government for assessing the implications of large-scale solar development."

The environmentalists don't want those nasty solar energy systems killing any deer or birds or gophers or hurting their habitats or anything of that sort. Who knows what kinds of rare and endangered species of butterflies and squirrels might be found with enough multi-year EIS studies in the proposed solar development sites, and more EIS studies of the proposed roads to the solar sites, and more EIS studies of the proposed electrical transmission routes!!!! Very Happy

f2tornado · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 21, 2008 Posts: 51

If an empire penquin farts in Antarctica, Bush will be blamed for it. Right snow solar power costs about three times as much as coal and twice as much as wind. If the price of coal power production quadruples then Americans will be begging for "cheap" solar power but there won't be enough to go around. A coworker originally from Colorado informed me Excel Energy has a limited clean energy program where its Colorado customers can elect to pay higher rates in order to pay for the increased price of renewable power generation. Turned out after Hurricane Katrina hit, the bills people were getting in the renewable program were lower than the conventional bills. Of course the remaining customers wanted in on this action but were shut out because there was a limit to the amount of renewable energy Excel was producing.

MyOldTDiIsStillGoing

TWilliam · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 1706

You know, I'm not especially fond of the enviro-nazis myself, but at least they have the sense to know that it's NOT ok to pave and panel and drill and 'develop' the whole goddamned planet just because selfish @ssholes want the 'convenience' of their wireless, push-button, remote-controlled drive-in 'utopia'... Mad

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"It means buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, because Kansas? Is goin' bye-bye... "

Plantagenet

SILENTTODD

What would you expect from the worst administration in U.S. history? I mean even the only other contender, Warren Harding, pardoned Eugene Debs and kept us us out of war. "He was a good guy"(Harding)-Howard Zinn
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Skeptical scrutiny in both Science and Religion is the means by which deep thoughts are winnowed from deep nonsense-Carl Sagan

abelardlindsay

Remember the whole wind turbines kill birds scare? That was a complete manufactured farce. The amount of birds wind turbines kill turned out to be totally negligible compared to the amount that cars or high rise buildings killed yet it stalled wind power development for years.

MyOldTDiIsStillGoing

pedalling_faster · Intermediate Crude Joined: Dec 10, 2005 Posts: 848

Cabrone

Funny how when Bush and co want to illegally invade another country, spend trillions of dollars, kill hundreds of thousands of people and run an energy policy that sees oil prices rise to $140 p.bbl it all happens without too much resistance. However when clean, efficient solar power is desperately needed the same regime is stopped in its tracks by a handful of environmentalists and a squirrel.

I'm afraid it all seems rather too convenient to me. If the bonehead in charge had started getting serious about solar in 2000 that report would have been written years ago and the industry would be (excuse the pun) powering ahead.

The reality for US conservatives (when they have wiped the bias out of their eyes) is that in 2002 Bush and co had a fundamental decision to make on what energy strategy the country was going to go down and he got it catastrophically wrong.

The options on the table back in 02' were:

(a) Maintain current oil consumption by invading Iraq and placing more oil on the open market.

or

(b) Get serious about the future by going down an energy conservation\renewable\nuclear route, reducing our carbon emissions to boot.

Tragically for the entire world President numb nuts went for (a) (shamefully backed by the loathsome Blair) and in 2008 we are where we are, up the sh*t creek without a paddle.

So why do I, a citizen of the UK, give a damn what the US does? After all it's the US public that is going to get roasted for this mans incompetency, right?

Well it's because the US addiction to oil is sucking up around 25% of global oil, a resource that should be for all of us, not just the US.

Bush has done more than anyone to push all of us to a PO state ASAP and that affects me. That's why I give a damn.

It's a shame that the rest of the world doesn't get a vote on who should run the US - the current clown would not have got within a thousand miles of the white house.

People of the US and the world, the reality is that this administration has done more harm to global climate\energy\economic and political stability than any other regime in history (not even the grotesque Nazis managed this amount of damage). I look forward to the day that the US public wakes up, grows a pair of cojones and puts the whole damn weasel bunch of them on trial.

joe1347 · Heavy Crude Joined: Sep 05, 2005 Posts: 153