MarsBlog.net

You can’t make this stuff up:

As most of you know, just over two years ago, my organization, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, found that the knuckleheaded leader of the global warming alarmism movement, Al Gore, consumes 20 times more electricity in his home than the average American household.

Since Earth Hour was recognized today, Saturday, March 28 from 8:30-9:30pm, I thought I’d see how the hypocritical, fear-mongering former Veep was celebrating at his home.

I pulled up to Al’s house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48pm – right in the middle of Earth Hour. I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on.

In fact, most of the windows were lit by the familiar blue-ish hue indicating that floor lamps and ceiling fixtures were off, but TV screens and computer monitors were hard at work. (In other words, his house looked the way most houses look about 1:45am when their inhabitants are distractedly watching “Cheaters” or “Chelsea Lately” reruns.)

The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.

I shit you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees…

If you’re unfamiliar, Earth Hour is where socialists and patchouli-dabbing tree-hugging hippies unite to dismiss electricity, fossil fuels and the modern conveniences that allow for historically unrivaled prosperity, longevity, health and quality of life throughout the world.

I guess I’d almost maybe be sort of a little surprised by this, if Drew Johnson hadn’t already revealed how Gore’s mansion consumes twenty times as much energy as the average american home...and even more than that after renovations aimed at improving its energy efficiency paradoxically increased energy usage by more than 10%.

Personally, I think Al Gore is perfectly within his rights to use as much electricity as he likes, so long as he is paying the bills himself…even during “Earth Hour”.  I find this amusing because it illustrates the hypocrisy of the environmentalist elitists like St. Al. I do not know whether or not Gore was personally pushing “Earth Hour”, and it doesn’t really matter – Johnson merely used the occasion to check up on the latest electrical goings-on at the Gore mansion and discovered that, “Earth Hour” or no, Gore’s lights were on, but no one was home.

Posted on March 29th, 2009 under Luddism, PPC. Tags: Earth Hour, environmentalism, gore, hypocrisy, Luddism, moonbats. Comments Off

One more illustration of why solar is not ready for the big time, despite it’s eco-trendiness as part of the Left’s goofy “green economy” fantasies – it isn’t anywhere near economically viable without significant state subsidies:

Before signing the $787 billion stimulus package into law on Feburary 17, 2009, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden toured an array of solar panels on top of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The photo-op allowed the President to once again extol the virtues of the coming “green” economy.

According to the Denver Post’s article on the event, “The sun generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes.” However, that claim cannot be verified at this time, and in fact, seems to be belied by the scant information provided by the museum and other sources. Laura Holtman, Public Relations Manager for the Museum said in an email, “Because the array generates less than 5 percent of the Museum’s power, [the purchased energy] is not a particularly large bill.”

…The solar array is not owned by the Museum, however. It is owned by Hybrid Energy Group, LLC. HEG owns the solar array, sells the electricity to the Museum, and receives tax incentives from the state and federal governments, while also receiving “rebates” from Xcel Energy. The rebates are funded by a surcharge collected on the monthly bill of every Colorado Xcel customer.

A 2008 article in the Denver Business Journal sheds further light on the subject. The article notes the total price of the solar array was $720,000. And Dave Noel, VP of operations and chief technology officer for the Museum, was quoted as saying, “We looked at first installing [the solar array] ourselves, and without any of the incentive programs, it was a 110-year payout.” Noel went on to say that the Museum did not purchase the solar array because it did not “make sense financially.” [emphasis added]

Additionally, most solar panels have an expected life-span of 20 to 25 years.

So how can Hybrid Energy Group afford to own a solar array that not even the museum would buy? In part, HEG gets “rebates” from Xcel’s “Solar Rewards” program. The Solar Rewards program is a response to Colorado voters passing Amendment 37 in 2004. The Amendment mandated that Colorado utilities procure a certain percentage of their power generation from renewable resources like wind and solar.

That’s right – renewable sources like solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, small hydroelectricity, hydrogen fuel cells, unicorn smiles, kitten farts, and magical pixie dust that turns Priuses into perpetual motion machines. The purpose of Amendment 37 was never about curbing carbon emissions – else it would have included nuclear power as an alternative.

Posted on March 25th, 2009 under Luddism, PPC. Tags: carbon, emission, independence institute, nuclear, Obama, power, renewable, solar. Comments: 1

Along with this month’s power bill came an interesting letter from the utility…interesting in how politically incorrect it is:

How long we will be able to freeze our rate depends upon federal and state energy policies.  Many in Congress see a CO2 cap and trade scheme or carbon tax as a lucrative source of potential government revenues, payable by electricity consumers.  Special interests at the state and federal level are pushing to require subsidization of uneconomical and inefficient power sources.

During the first quarter of 2008, we conducted a survey seeking our members’ views on subsidies proposed by lawmakers.  A carbon tax – which would increase energy costs across the board – was opposed by 84% of the questionnaire respondents.  77% opposed a tax to fund energy conservation, and 65% of our members opposed paying for solar subsidies.  They agreed with the Board of Directors that consumers benefitting from lower electric bills after installing a solar array should pay for the system themselves rather than requiring their neighbors – many of whom are already having difficulty paying their bills – to pay for it.

This year, new legislation is being proposed that would promote tiered rate structures.  Such rates would cause the per kWh cost to increase as you use more energy… The purpose of the tiered rates is to impose energy conservation.  However, the effect is to reduce the revenues needed to run the business [ie: the utility company] with the end result being rate increases for everyone.

Our members’ comments clearly indicate they can’t afford higher taxes and they want IREA to keep rates low; also that “rebates” (in fact, subsidies) disproportionally affect the poor and those on fixed incomes.  Since these new proposals – cap and trade, tiered rates, or a carbon tax – would result in trillions of dollars of additional power costs nationwide, devastating our economy and quality of life whil yielding little or no practical benefits, we plan to actively oppose such proposals.

The letter goes on to rally members to help the co-op fight such measures.

Nice to see a company whose business is targeted by environmentalist do-gooders actually fighting back against the directives and non-value-adding costs said do-gooders are trying to impose on them — and us.

I see nothing wrong with “alternative” energy, but I do think it’s wrong to mandate the adoption of alternative energy when the technology is not yet (and may never be) capable of competing with existing sources through equivalent or better reliability, availability, and affordability.  If subsidies are required to make such technology even remotely economical, and if significant, economy-wrecking penalties need to be applied to existing sources of energy to “incentivize” the switch to alternatives, the alternatives are clearly not ready for widespread adoption.

Environmentalists who are sincerely concerned with CO2 emissions and environmental damage from the extraction and use of fossil fuels, and who want to actually make headway against those things, would be taken much more seriously if they endorsed nuclear power – the real alternative energy.  It’s a pity that our local co-op is too small to build a nuclear reactor of its own.

Posted on March 9th, 2009 under Economics, Luddism, PPC. Tags: cap and trade, capitalism, carbon dioxide, carbon tax, electricity, energy, environmentalism, global warming, green, nuclear, power, tiered rates. Comments: 5