Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Congress / Kotz / Politics Meet George Voinovich, the Poodle Nipping at Al Gore's Heels
Posted by Pete Kotz on Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 5:30 AM
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In hell, on the other side of Dick Cheney's suite from the room reserved for the education theorists who believe that teaching phonics is outdated, I would leave a place for the mountaintop-removing assholes who keep spouting the oxymoronic phrase "clean coal."
But in fairness to Voinovich, I would note that one of the people in Congress who has fought longest and hardest against tightening emissions standards is the liberal lion John Dingell of Michigan. As with so many politicians of all stripes, principles get tossed under the bus when it comes to looking after the pecuniary interests of the folks at home.
Voinovich is right - Gore's idea is ridiculous.
First, there in no reason we need to stop using carbon fuels for electricity in the first place.
Despite Gore's shrill squealing about the "crisis" of global warming, neither he or anyone else has ever actually been able to prove that such a thing as man-made global warming exists at all.
Second, it couldn't be done anyway. Growing economies demand increasing supplies of energy. We are behind the curve already thanks to government caving in to the environmental wackos and blocking new power plants. Allegedly "clean" energy would have to ramp up at a geometric rate to not only replace what we use now but handle the increased supply that will be required going forward.
Wind and solar are not consistenly reliable sources of energy - as Texas recently found out when a sudden drop in wind precipitously reduced the power output of wind farms and put the power grid into an emergency situation. They had to shut off power to a bunch of industrial customer to prevent blackouts. All the wind and solar power has to have some source of backup power and most of that is going to have to be either carbon fuel based or nuclear power.
