by Robert M. Traxler
President Joe Biden made a statement in Japan that the exorbitant cost of fuel gasoline, diesel even petrochemicals is a good thing. Oops, the President’s words, “Here’s the situation, and when it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger, and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over.”
It makes a reasonable and prudent person question the true goal of the leftist party in our nation; ready or not, they will ban fossil fuel, using artificial cost to force us to conform.
We have seen a constant litany of climate crises, all designed to increase government power over us and enrich the alternative energy industry.
Let us review: global cooling, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, global warming, and the current climate change. According to the science, the undeniable science that we must believe or be condemned as damned science deniers, the Earth would have been destroyed (or at minimum not be able to sustain human life) three times by now, and if we are still here, a fourth in 2030.
Former Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, in his best-selling books “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Earth in the Balance,” predicted global warming would cause Florida to be inundated with rising ocean water as the polar ice caps melted. OK, but then he purchased a multi-million-dollar mansion in Florida?
Gore’s undeniable truth was that the poles would be ice free by 2009, but then amended it to 2013; he quoted the COP26 conference as undeniable.
Acid rain was going to destroy the world ocean’s ability to produce oxygen and we all would suffocate. Global cooling would render the agricultural regions of the world covered in permafrost and unable to produce food. According to the “experts,” we in Michigan would be covered in year-round ice by now. The hole in the ozone layer was going to see us all die from radiation and plants burn up from the suns unfiltered radiation.
The cause of the hole in the ozone layer was fluorocarbons in general, but freon in particular. The belief is that because freon was banned in the United States, it saved the world; the truth is, the world uses more of the chemical under a different name than it did when we all were going to die from it and has for decades — go figure.
Are wind and solar energy a good thing? No, they are a great thing, but it is nowhere near ready to replace fossil fuel, not even close, even though the federal government has spent 550 billion dollars in 2021 and trillions overall to pay off the alternative energy lobby.
We have been told that all the alternative energy industry needed was a “little nudge” according to President Obama, and we would be free of fossil fuels. We did, and we are still dependent on fossil fuels and will be for decades. The problem with wind is that to make the turbines and collectors takes fossil fuels and to have basic power when the wind is not blowing at 14 miles per hour. For solar, if the sun is not out for 15 hours a day it takes more battery storage than we have or will have for decades.
The wind turbine folks tell us a turbine will power up to 2000 homes. We have over 750 wind turbines in Michigan, heavily subsidized by our state. If you do the math, that is more than 1,500,000 homes, or almost 35% of our power needs; however, turbines power 6.12% of our needs– someone is cooking the books.
“High gas prices and rolling blackouts are a good thing to force us off fossil fuels.” The sad thing is that we have a large portion of the nation who agree with that. Well, let’s see what happens when the rolling blackouts roll over them. California has seen blackouts, and most of the folks in the homes affected voted to oust the politicians whose policies required it.
President Biden may have let the truth out when he said we fundamentally need to change our society, ready or not, to be what the American academic and environmental corporate lobbies wants it to be, the pain caused to American families in the process be damned. My opinion.
Robert,
Shame Shame…..Enough with those pesky facts already…………It doesn’t line up with their (progressives) propaganda…….
Just waiting for 2030 and AZ to chime in and disprove those pesky facts……….
Well wrote Sir!!
Cheers!!!
Mr. Wilkens,
Sir,
Thanks for the comment. Interesting that the end of the world scenarios come and go with folks always saying we must believe the next one and the next, with no explanation as to why they were wrong, we must have blind faith in the undeniable or inconvenient truth and send money.
Thanks again.
Mr. Traxler,
It is a common tactic of some to employ hyperbole to make their point. You have cited several good examples of this in your piece this week. Perhaps the best one, though, is the claim that unless global cooling/warming, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, the massive die-out of corral reefs, etc. were radically checked, the planet would become uninhabitable twenty years ago.
The problem with this tactic is that the blowhards who use it have a hard time taking back their words when their exaggeration fails to come to pass.
I greatly dislike that some on the left have decided that overstating the facts is a good strategy to encourage better stewardship of our world.
Florida is not under water, although parts of it are experiencing rising sea levels in recent years, as are parts of New York City, its boroughs, and Long Island.
Some places in the US are finding their ground water contaminated because runoff from agricultural fertilizers has gotten into their wells.
Fracking has produced some rather extreme consequences in Oklahoma, where seismic activity has increased over the last decade quite substantially.
But the pearl-clutching events have not yet come to pass, and maybe they never will.
I loved your line, “Are wind and solar energy a good thing? No, they are a great thing, but it is nowhere near ready to replace fossil fuel….” You go one to state that the technology is still too expensive, and in most places there are not enough hours of daylight or sustained winds of adequate mph to make them effective alternatives to fossil fuels. We cannot, as Biden suggests, throw the baby out with the bath water by raising gas prices to encourage ditching fossil fuel.
As I’m sure you know already, here in our small valley of the sun in the Phoenix, AZ, area, we sit in a spot prime for solar energy. Our sunshine is relentless, yet the cost of installing solar panels on our homes is still prohibitive for the average homeowner, even though the utility companies offer financial incentives to do so. We are a long way from becoming independent of dinosaur oil.
Some might say that capitalism itself is standing in the way of any changeover to solar here in AZ. There seems to be a kernel of truth to that theory, in that with all the potential, and all the companies offering this changeover, there seems to be no competition to make the technology affordable. The supply seems to far outpace the demand, yet prices never come down. Go figure.
But I digress.
I for one am tired of any and all factions who use hyperbole to sell a point of view.
If any cause is worth its salt, the simple statement of truth should be adequate to sell it.
To do otherwise is just embarrassing.
Ms. Mandaville,
Thanks for the comment. A thought, if the government did not subsidize politically correct alternative energy perhaps the free market would make a better product? A market exists for new ideas but as the old wind/solar is subsidized by the government innovation is not encouraged. Keeping an open mind about mind concerning nuclear and hydro would help, but even discussion is cancelled, and the government and environmental industry lobby will not consider it. Hydro energy has been in use for centuries the world over.
Thanks again.
Ms.Mandaville,
“Fossil” and “Dinosaur” oil is now known to be a naturally occurring within the earth and scientists are in agreement. Mr. Rockefeller hung the “Fossil Fuel” moniker on his product to produce the desired effect it was rare and finite, thus demanding higher prices. It is abundant and not rare at all. If we had a president that cared about the American people he represents, he would open any and all oil sources to produce all needed fuel and bring down prices to an acceptable level. But since he is beholden to the extremists in the Nut Party, there is no expectation of him find his testicles.
DTOM,
We learn something new everyday, fossil fuels indeed do come from fossils another big lie. Thanks for the information.
DTOM, you keep sucking down those gas fumes and filling up your tank. You’re exactly what the Petro billionaires are counting on cha-ching!
Could barely subsidize green energy R&D in America these past few decades because that’s not how the free market is supposed to work, but now that those free market consequences are hitting us in the face, it’s a corporate conspiracy.
Excellent point Mr gless, I’ve seen many alternatives to gas and oil, like even Mr Traxler said about hydro I’ve seen one that looks like a guitar pic and doesn’t interfere with the migration of fish like the old dams did, also I’ve seen solar panel systems that could be used for sidewalks and driveways, but like you said when the Petro billionaires do everything in there power and buy off our politicians who’s left to invest money on R&D , it sure the hell isn’t going to be Robert Traxler.
Skoal!!