Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Put Up Or Shut Up


 
I have a proposal. To all of you “Save the earth-ers;” To all of you global warming, Tree hugging, Spotted Owl and Caribou saving, windmill lovin enviro-nuts. I have a very simple proposal: Put up or Shut up.  Just that – show me a VIABLE magic fairy dust alternative to our abundant and inexpensive natural resources of oil and natural gas. You have treated us for decades now to your constant and incessant nonsensical blather about everything not-oil, and yet what have you produced that can VIABLY replace it?  You have squeezed out bajillions of state and federal dollars for your myriad schemes and virtually all of them have proved to be majestically expensive failures. Many of these happy thoughts powered “alternative energy schemes have ultimately proved more environmentally devastating than the evil oil that they were supposed to be saving us from.

  Your constant refrain is that these ridiculous schemes will work if we just extract enough money from us working stiffs that are already squeezed beyond recognition as a free society for all of your other grand schemes. Your constant refrain is that if we just throw enough money at an unworkable problem it will eventually alter the dynamics of the universe to our whims.  Well that willfully ignorant attitude is a very easy one to take when the money you want to flush down the toilet of your grandiose schemes is not your own.  So my simple proposal is PROVE to us that your latest magic-energy will work in the same way that oil has.  That means do it without making someone else pay for it.  Oil and gas have cost the taxpayer nothing. So do that. Produce your magic fairy dust energy without forcing your fellow man to pay for your idea. Yeah, yeah I know you are thinking that oil companies are “getting” billions of dollars in “corporate welfare” in the form of tax breaks. So I will take a moment here to explain the difference between welfare and tax-breaks to those conceptually-challenged amongst us, otherwise known as liberals or progressives.

“Welfare” is taking money from the person or entity that produced it and giving it to those who have not.  Allowing me or a corporation to keep more of what they have produced is not “welfare” and costs no one anything. Allowing me or Mega-oil Corp to keep more of what they have legally and ethically produced costs you and me not one thin dime, zippo, nada.  “Corporate Tax-breaks” are the life blood of business. Without them few businesses could thrive or even survive. If your company could not deduct their business expenses to produce a “Net” profit after expenses they could not survive. If a bakery could not deduct its facilities, ovens, delivery trucks, and wages of its personnel before being taxed on the net proceeds they would literally pay more in taxes than their profits, thus negating any reason to be in business. Who would work to pay more in taxes than your net proceeds? Even the logically challenged liberals would realize this, either before or after going out of business in the first few months of their endeavors.  Likewise with the ginormous oil companies.  They do not as a percentage get more tax-breaks than the local mom & pop “green” grocer selling organic non-toxic tofu and love beads.  It is just easier to demonize the “Millions” of dollars of tax breaks that are “given” to these huge companies.  These companies accrue millions or even billions of dollars of “Tax-breaks” because they do trillions of dollars of business.  It is simply a matter of scale. A concept evidently lost on   progressives.  And all the while the anti-oil’ers rant on about the taxes not paid by these evil giant corporations while ignoring the hundreds of billions of dollars paid by them every year.  The “Big-is-evil” simpletons also conveniently ignore that the actual profit margins of these massive multi-national corporations are often quite less than those smaller companies finding favor in the eyes of their adoring left-wing sycophants. So, ‘nuff on that. The point is - allowing the oil companies to keep more of their own profits is a very different thing than telling me I have to cough up more of my paycheck to help you power your home on tofu and your car on good intentions.

So we had the power dams, and they were a wondrous thing.  They produced amazing amounts of energy, millions of jobs, and changed the way we lived, allowing for all of the electrical and electronic wonders of the modern world that could not have existed without them. But the landscape was dramatically changed in what was ultimately equivalent to one millionth the size of a head of a pin in ratio to the planet. Some critters moved as the waters rose, and a few drowned. Others thrived in the newly created lakes. That is what you lefties call evolution (survival of the fittest).  So the stream and valley lovers beat down the lake and electricity lovers and we can no longer build these magnificent producers of clean energy here in the US, while the rest of the world, not as firmly entrenched in the grip of such lunacy builds ever greater and more majestic dams and lakes, and provide immense fantastic agricultural opportunities where none previously existed. So dams are out (in the U.S.).

So then there was the solar power fantasy.  If we all just put solar power panels on our roof we could produce enough of our own energy to power our own homes and our cute little electric clown cars.  The problem here is that it is just false.  They do not produce enough energy to provide realistic amounts of energy consumed by a real household.  The answer to this dilemma of course by the solar-nuts is of course, use less electricity.  And my response to them is a simple “Bite me.”   Google; those stalwarts of the save-the-planet theology covered their entire roof of their massive buildings with state of the art solar panels, only to find that they were overrated, and did not produce even a third of their energy needs.  And in the desert, that solar power wet dream of the solar power worshippers - they were stopped from creating their solar powered nirvana by? - who else but the environmentalists, who do not want the massive amounts of necessary cooling water diverted to keep the solar power panels from melting down.  And more recently the hundreds of millions of dollars the government poured into Solyndra and Abound Solar and other solar power debacles have provided absolutely nothing but jobs for bankruptcy attorneys. And now it is discovered that Abound was recalling their panels because they set fire to rooftops where they were placed. One whistleblower at Abound opined that the solar panels worked great, just as long as they were not put in the sun.  So much for a solar powered future.

And then there is our Quixotic foray into those amazing windmills. Now I actually like those windmills as an energy source, but as it turns out once again, the bane of this renewable clean energy is none other than the environmentalists. As it turns out the windmills kill a good number of birds and bats that inexplicably seem to kamikaze themselves into the windmill blades in significant numbers. “Significant” in environmental-speak meaning of course whatever they want it to.  And of course the greenies profoundly love the windmills as long as they are put somewhere where they don’t have to look at them.  And of course there is the massive government subsidies required, without which even T. Boone Pickens has finally admitted renders them economically unviable. So much for the windmills.

And then there are the electric cars. It is almost too ridiculous that one even needs to point out that electric cars run on electricity that still needs to be produced and that electric cars simply move the problem from our right hand to our left. Where are we going to get the power to charge all of these cars every night (and all at the same time)?  Where are these massive new electricity requirements to be supplied from?  What are all of these new required power plants going to produce all of this new energy from? The current capacity is pretty much maxxed, even with the current creative energy swaps. Which of the aforementioned ineffective energy schemes will power all of these new glorified golf-carts? Will we move whole lakes, rivers or oceans, to cool the massive required solar power stations? Will we put massive new windmill farms on every acre of open land and on the roof of every building?  Will we forever steal from the working stiffs to fund one failed scheme after another? Or will we just burn ever more coal and oil to create more electricity, all the while  rationalizing that we are saving the planet by pretending electricity is just magically created by tofu eating do-gooders peddling massive electric turbines?

So yeah, it is that simple. Put up or shut up. Show me a “Green” technology that actually does more good than harm to the environment, and do it without extracting money from others to make it happen. Lesson two from “The way the universe really works for dummies” is that if something works better and cheaper it will sell as fast as it can be produced. No conspiracy theory about big oil companies squashing any competing fuels can change or prevent that.  The reason none of the magic fairy dust alternative energy schemes have taken off is that they are just not economically viable absent some insane subsidies from a massive government trough.

So enough of your passionate diatribe about these amazing new alternative energy schemes that will save us if we will just open our minds to the possibilities and learn about these wondrous planet-saving technologies without our indoctrinated biases. Just quit telling us how well it will work and show us. And until then just get the hell out of the way and let us do what is proven to work and that costs you and me nothing.

 

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