Green Energy, Dead Birds

Backcountry Notes ^ | September 8, 2009 | Jay Henderson

[jay1949]

What is happening with alternative "green" energy, involving such environmentally-unsound measures as erecting windmill generators along Appalachian ridgelines which are migration routes for songbirds, raptors, and Monarch butterflies, is a boondoggle, a fiasco, a travesty -- but it is all very politically correct, so none of that matters.

[bassmaner]

Only a matter of time until the enviro-commies flock into courtrooms demanding that these be shut down. Of course, they'll wait until *after* they get the coal-fired plants shut down, too, so power blackouts will become commonplace.

Maximize the crisis, doncha know, just like Saul Alinsky and his acolyte in WH taught us ...

[larry hagedon]

Have you seen any of these dead birds? I dont think so. There are in fact very few dead birds. The numbers were produced from computer simulations, created just like those global warming computer simulations.

There are no prosecutions as there is no evidence. In fact there are virtually no dead birds to be found.

We lose more birds from flying into office buildings windows than from wind turbines.

This is just a smear tactic against Made in America by Americans energy.

[jay1949]

Yeah, and the moon walk was filmed in the Arizona desert.

Some articles WITH PICTURES:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/01/02/MNITTM9FA.DTL&o=1

http://greenairradio.com/?tag=red-tailed-hawk

http://quite-rightly.blogspot.com/2009/07/birds-and-bees-get-to-sue-obama-green.html

[familyop]

A bird was found dead near a wind turbine. Quick, curtail more property rights, and ban all wind turbines! ...anti-American, NIMBY hags. They’re probably communistic HOA witches, too.

[larry hagedon]

Yeah, so you found some dead birds, and passed more than that in highway road kill hunting for the dead birds near windmills.

As I said, windmills are not killing near as many as the wild eyed naturalists and those opposed to Made in America by Americans Energy would like us to believe.

Finding one or two dead raptors does not change the reality that few birds die from wind turbines.

[larry hagedon]

We have long charged Democrats and environmentalists with using false environmental issues to attack American industry.

Snail darters to attack hydro power development, spotted owls to attack logging, and now windmill bird strikes are being grossly exaggerated for the political purpose of attacking the American wind power industry.

[jay1949]

It may well be that reasonable men can differ on some aspects of this situation. I do not contend that wind farms should not be built; only that there a certain places, such as mountain ridges which are migratory flyways, where they may do more harm than is warranted. Migrating birds and butterflies are the survivors of the nesting season and their long-term survival is important. That was not the main point of my article, however; it was that so-called “green energy” is not ecologically neutral. I am strongly in favor of “home-grown” energy, including drilling for oil in the east Gulf and off the Atlantic Coast and in that little piece of rock in the ANWR, any and all of which will provide more usable energy in the near and mid term than wind power projects, and also including the use of high-tech coal power generation plants which burn American coal and the use of natural gas - - we have lots of both. All the petroleum and coal and natural gas industries need to go forward is permission; they don’t need subsidies, as the corn ethanol and wind power projects do.

[larry hagedon]

It is a myth that only alternatives or greens are subsidized. In fact the petroleum industry has been subsidized to the tune of trillions of dollars over the years.

All oil refineries and pipelines were built with large subsidies, earmarks, and tax breaks. Of course we spend billions to keep the sea lanes open for tankers and protect them from terrorist and pirate attacks.

Gas stations are often subsidized by local government when they are built, as are most commercial buildings in America.

These subsidies come in many forms, and are often more or less hidden from us taxpayers, such as, but by no means limited to; no or low interest loans, loans with no expectation of payback, earmarks, grants, tax breaks, free land, public employees working for private companies and a hundred other creative ways to support and enable private development. These subsidies are often buried in unrelated legislation or not even officially acknowledged or recognized, say a public works engineer or perhaps laborers on unofficial loan to a private construction project.

George Soros is getting a two billion dollar subsidy from the US for oil drilling in Brazil. Payback is unlikely, in my opinion, tho a big chunk will surely end up in Democratic election coffers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166.html

Not all subsidies are government, many foundations, charities, and corporations subsidize economic development of every sort imaginable.

You can not get away from subsidies in America. It is politically popular among us conservatives to attack ethanol subsidies while we ignore and even deny petroleum subsidies.

We can not even ban public subsidies, earmarks, and tax breaks, as they are so deeply embedded in every level of government; national, state, county, city and township. With millions of pages of code to search, and every effort taken to conceal many of them, it is impossible to even roughly quantify them.

[jay1949]

larry: My main problem with “green energy” is that it isn’t all that “green” and is being sold as the safe, clean, and easy alternative to nuclear, coal and petroleum. A point that I make is that if we are going to subsidize something, it should be coal power - - old coal plants are very dirty, new ones are much, much cleaner, we have the coal and nearly all of the necessary infrastructure here already, and by encouraging the building of high-tech coal plants in return for conversion or decommissioning of old ones we make far more and far faster progress in reducing emissions of all kinds.

[_Jim]

In fact the petroleum industry has been subsidized to the tune of trillions of dollars over the years.

Hmmm ... at odds with published reports.

The EIA estimate of energy subsidies for 1999 provides the foundations for much of this study’s analysis. Total energy subsidies in 1999 were somewhere between $8.6 billion and $11.3 billion and included tax expenditures, direct expenditures, excise taxes, and R&D expenditures.

The oil industry received a subsidy of approximately $567 million, a tiny fraction of the total sum of energy subsidy and a far smaller sum than other energy industries received from the federal government.

pa390.pdf

[larry hagedon]

I fully agree with you about coal plants, we need more of them, and now with the new bio technology of using green algae to eat the CO2 emissions, we can get even more energy from them.

British Petroleum Oil Company recently put up 600 million dollars to do green algae research This will pay off big time. All the oil companies are on board, but BP is the leader in investment.

Here is a little secret; two nuclear plants that I know of are expanding production significantly. Cant tell you where they are, for obvious reasons, but it is the real deal.

[larry hagedon]

As I said, it is impossible to tabulate all of the thousands of earmarks, gifts, tax breaks, free consulting and other services and so forth from federal, state, county, city and townships.

Dont forget we are talking 50 years here.

I thought I also pointed out that Obama just subsidized George Soros to the tune of 2 billion dollars to drill in Brazil.

Any published report only touches the tip of the iceberg.

Trying to compute the benefit to the oil industry from the US Navy patrolling the seas to protect tankers and oil rigs from sabotage, terrorism, and pirates would be a hopeless task, but it is a huge figure also.

As I also said, the people we elected do not want us to know how they spend our money, so they hide it.

[nascarnation]

Shredded poultry baby!
Just the thing to feed to those suffering the Baraqqi recession.
They planned this all along.....

[_Jim]

Ground rules; Definitions first.

Subsidy:

1. a direct pecuniary aid furnished by a government to a private industrial undertaking, a charity organization, or the like.
2. a sum paid, often in accordance with a treaty, by one government to another to secure some service in return.
3. a grant or contribution of money.
4. money formerly granted by the English Parliament to the crown for special needs.

Subsidy vs Tax break:

There is an important economic distinction between a subsidy and a tax benefit.

... business firms, including oil and gas companies, generally receive a variety of tax benefits that are not necessarily targeted subsidies (or tax expenditures) because they are available generally.

[PLMerite]

“Only a matter of time until the enviro-commies flock into courtrooms demanding that these be shut down. Of course, they’ll wait until *after* they get the coal-fired plants shut down, too, so power blackouts will become commonplace.”

Exactly. The Luddite Left is against large-scale energy conversion of any kind, cheap or not, efficient or not, green or not. Except for their gated communities, they want the rest of us shivvering in the dark. We’re much easier to control that way.

[larry hagedon]

You are welcome to use your definition if you like, to me a tax break is and always will be a subsidy.

I am not going to waste much time on this. As I have pointed out, billions of dollars of earmarks, tax breaks, gifts, benefits of one kind or another have flowed to the oil companies, just as they are to the bio tech industry.

My point was, is, and will be that contrary to the assumptions of many, there have been trillions of dollars of oil company subsidies over the past 50 years. You can not honestly attack bio technology for subsidies, and at the same time deny oil company subsidies.

If you want to attack bio tech subsidies, that is fine with me, just do not sanctimoniously and falsely deny that oil companies have benefited massively also.

[_Jim]

You are welcome to use your definition if you like

As you are your own 'facts'.

(Psst: They weren't my own 'definitions' either; why do think I had them blockquoted?)

Enough 'wrestling with the pig' for one day ...

[jay1949]

“Here is a little secret; two nuclear plants that I know of are expanding production significantly. Cant tell you where they are, for obvious reasons, but it is the real deal.”

Good news . . . but it is disgraceful that development of nuclear power has to be kept in the dark. The Democratic Party attitude toward nuclear power is, in essence, superstition. They might as well be deciding energy policy with runes.