THE BIG GREEN DRAGON

The other day I had a rare experience of meeting with our DC Representative.  (Republican)  As with the norm, these things are short.  He gave our local Tea Party board just under an hour to meet with him.  He brought two staffers.  There were three of us from the board.  He's looking for support for the Nov. election, running against a left-wing looney who lives on Kool-ade.  I did my homework.  I took notes with me.  I tried to hit some issues I thought were critical to us.

Backing up for a second....I happen to have known and watched this young man for a long time.  He went to school with my son and daughter.  He was locally known in the early days as a firebrand conservative. Was a nice young man.  Now he is around 37 or 38 yrs. old.  Still young, but has been in this political arena his entire adult life.  Now he is a career politician.  

During this interview, he rather off-handedly said to me, "I want to get us off oil."  This was in the middle of my telling him I was not happy about the Smart Grid and Smart Meter incentives, grants, and federal force taking away our choices on energy.  I was so taken aback that I didn't know quite what to say for a minute...and then the conversation was flying all over the place with the others at the table and the moment fled.  I remember thinking to myself, "What was that?"  And then I thought, "That is too large of an issue to even try to approach in this short venue."  So I followed up and emailed him later.  There has been no reply.  Which is also typical.  I rarely hear back from elected officials these days.  

So getting off oil?  I have no idea where that came from or what possessed him to say such an idiotic thing.  I suspect the Republicans and Democrats in Congress are both going in the same direction of green energy.  And I suspect this is due to the heavy lobbying by green environmentalists and the green energy corporations funding campaigns to skew the money their direction.  I see it happening all around us locally, i.e. the two parties moving toward "sustainable" hell. 

What on earth is causing people to move in a direction that is so completely detrimental to our national sovereignty, our economic health, and our freedoms?  A "Green Dragon?"  Seems so.

I just read two articles proving the idiocy and economic damage caused by this green energy insanity.  One article is from Britain.  The other is from Germany.  

First from Britain, is THIS one.   Snippet here:

 "The Government’s ideological obsession with wind power is inflicting ever greater damage on Britain, driving up our energy bills and ruining our countryside. Brutalist, expensive and inefficient, wind farms are nothing more than vast monuments to political vanity. They contribute little to our electricity supply, yet they cost us all a fortune."

Then Germany chimes in:

"The public discussion about Germany’s green energy transition has taken a new direction. The rise of electricity prices in Germany is suddenly no longer blamed on the billions spent for building solar and wind farms, biomass plants and power grids.
Now it is “the industry” which is being blamed for its lobbying which has resulted in a variety of financial reliefs, compensations and tax exemptions and for abandoning the ‘community solidarity’ of this ‘national effort."

Back in the states, also at Junk Science, came this from Nevada:

"As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prepares to host his fifth annual National Clean Energy Summit on Aug. 7, a Nevada Journal examination of Nevada’s renewable energy sector shows that over $1.3 billion in federal funds funneled into geothermal, solar and wind projects since 2009 has yielded and is projected to yield just 288 permanent, full-time jobs. That’s an initial cost of over $4.6 million per job."

Whoa....$4.6 million per job?  That is a lot of kilowatt hours for some folks who could use them.  Divvy that up and imagine what great things could be done if that money had stayed in the private sector.

I don't know about you, but I'm seeing the handwriting on the wall.  When a former firebrand conservative comes home to talk with his constituency and casually states he wants to "get us off oil," I have to conclude that a very large Green Dragon has threatened, cajoled, bribed, extorted, and breathed some heavy duty Global Warming fire on some formerly sane people.

And since that is likely the case, and there is no great substitute candidate for whom to vote, I'm feeling the breath of that Dragon on the back of my neck.  Maybe that is why people think there is Global Warming when there actually isn't.  It can get very hot in hell with Dragons hanging around. 

"PARDON ME BOY, IS THAT THE CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO?"

(Above is the oh, so charming, but politically incorrect, song from You Tube.)

I think trains are cool, although I find them intimidating.  When I was a child a train track ran just a few feet from my Dad's tire store, situated a block from Main Street. As a little girl, when I heard the whistle, I'd go out outside to the front of the store and stand there, feel the ground move, my hair blowing from the passing machines on the track. I'd count the cars. I'd wave at the engineers and the guy who manned the caboose. They smiled and waved back. I'd go back in and report to my Dad how many cars, as if the information was very important.  Huge and powerful, a mighty sight for a little child.  

Anthony Watts, over at WattsUpWithThat, reports on  "renewable" energy and the latest development in ......the steam engine.  Yes, you read that right.  The steam engine.  Dreaming of bygone eras...it sounds so charming.  

Here is Anthony's take on bio-coal used for "renewable energy:"  

"Here’s the strange part, they are converting an oil burning locomotive to run “biocoal”, and somehow they magically think the production process and the burning of it won’t produce any net CO2, saying the process is “carbon neutral”.  I think they’ve left out some parts, like the energy needed to produce and transport the biocoal fuel in the first place. Excerpts from the MSNBC story: 
A steam train built in 1937 is getting a makeover that will turn it into a “higher-speed” locomotive that runs on biocoal, a coal-like fuel made with woody plant material.
When finished, the train will be able chug along existing tracks at speeds up to 130 miles per hour without contributing to the greenhouse gas pollution blamed for global warming."

 The comments below that story are priceless, by the way.

The "renewable energy" used to fire up this steam engine is bio-coal made from........trees.  North Carolina has committed itself to a percentage of "renewable energy" by such and such a date.  To that end, our State has made deals with the energy sector and the enviromentalist lobbies to create biomass energy.  The problem with that is North Carolina's abundance of trees is named as a source for this "renewable energy."  Trees are a fabulous renewable resource.  The durable products we receive from trees are many and useful, furniture and paper being two of them.  But those two industries have been vilified for years for using trees to create their products from trees. So now we find that environmentalists who have complained for years about the use of trees for industries of durable goods are, all of sudden, just fine with burning up trees for "renewable energy?"  What goes on here?

From the News and Observer 

State regulators today resolved one of the more nettlesome conundrums of green energy: Do forests and tree farms count as a renewable energy resource?
The N.C. Utilities Commission said that they do, clearing the way for power companies to harvest entire trees for wood chips to be used as a fuel in power plants. Wood and other biomass are expected to supply much of the alternative fuel that in the coming decades will offset the state's heavy reliance on coal and nuclear power to generate electricity.
Duke Energy, the state's biggest power company, is already blending wood chips with coal to meet its green energy mandates under the state's 2007 energy law, which requires power companies to shift to alternative energy sources.
"This decision by the commission further reinforces that biomass, including woody biomass derived from whole trees, is a viable renewable resource for North Carolina," said Duke spokesman Jason Walls.

Read more here: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/business/state-whole-trees-count-as-renewable-fuel#storylink=cpy

Anthony Watts and the comments on his post proceed to explain how this bio-coal does nothing to reduce energy use.  It takes energy to produce bio-coal, just like wind turbines take more energy to create than the energy they eventually produce.  There is a downside to production of bio-coal.  The trade off would be taking a living tree which provides a carbon sink to the atmosphere and then turning it into an energy source.  Is this energy source any more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels? 

Supply Problem:

" The Tennessee Valley Authority—a government-owned power utility—has been conducting biomass/coal cofiring tests for the past several decades, and also has an interest in torrefied pellets. Unfortunately, it has run into the same problem as UNC. “There doesn’t seem to be enough material, or supply,” says Daryl Williams, head of renewable energy at TVA. “We needed a couple thousand tons for test burns at our plant in north Alabama, and we had a few vendors promising that, but when it came down to it they couldn’t provide it.”

My layman's view is that this is much more finite resource than any fossil fuel.  There is only so much dead wood laying around to be gathered up.  Once the dead wood is used up, in North Carolina there is nothing on the books inhibiting the harvesting of live whole trees to create bio-coal.  Which makes me wonder where the environmentalists go from there.  After they've successfully eliminated natural gas, then oil, and coal, and wind, solar and bio-coal turn out to be insufficient, what happens then?

 Are some people so caught up in their own propaganda on "renewable energy," that they can't see the forest for the trees?  Seriously. 

Side notes:  I've read quite a few positive articles on bio-coal, but find the information more hype for something unproven.  It isn't going to be the elixir of the Gods for fuel starvation policies.  Bio-coal might make some sense when made from only scrap tree material or forest clean up methods.  However, as I read further, I find that bio-coal costs 3 times more than bituminous coal  That would mean either major subsidies or excessive energy prices for consumers.  The article cites using downed trees from Hurricane Katrina, for instance.  (Hurricane Hugo debris ended up being used for land reformation projects, filling in revines, creating more useable land space.)  How often do hurricanes happen?  There is no mention of transporting the downed tree material, no mention of the energy used to create bio-coal briquettes, no mention of any reduction of CO2, etc. Also, no mention of the reclamation of land that coal companies have been held to for decades.  

 

Other Sources:

Sierra Club energy policies

Duke Energy Caves to Environmental Pressure Groups
EPA killing the coal industry deliberately