NBC's Green Fraud

'WE have turned out the lights in the studio," NBC's Bob Costas told viewers of Sunday's Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game, "to kick off a week that will include more than 150 hours of programming designed to raise awareness about environmental issues." Discerning viewers with eyes keen enough to pierce the sanctimonious glare of Costas' candlelit silhouette may have noticed that the stadium's klieg lights still shone brightly. On a typical game day, a large football stadium burns about 65,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 35,000 cubic feet of natural gas. The cars driving to the game spew about 200 metric tons of CO2 (and that assumes nobody's driving SUVs or RVs, which is like assuming tailgaters are eating only sushi). There's also the electricity used to broadcast the game and to watch it. But thank goodness Costas turned off the studio lights for a minute or two.

NBC's "Green Week" continued apace: Morbidly obese contestants on "The Biggest Loser" lugged piles of recyclable cans up ramps and into enormous collection bins. Of course, the cans were delivered to the stunt by diesel truck. So a lot of energy - and sweat! - that could have been used toward fermenting homebrew tofu (or whatever energy is supposed to be used for) was wasted on viewer schadenfreude.

The winners of the challenge each received a hybrid SUV. Alas, one of the winners didn't own a car to begin with, so the net result was one more car on the road and a little more CO2 in the air.

This isn’t Communist China

Ah yes, but under Clinton we will be well on our way. If you remember Hiltery talked about regulating the Internet when her hubbie was busy with the Intern...she felt that some web sites were defaming and people's privacy rights were protected.

How are they going to monitor every forum post, every email and every Podcast?

The same way they will regulate what is said on the radio...by making it impossible to follow the rules and making the fines and penalties so oppressive that even an attempt at following the rules wouldn't be worth it.

check it out: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1491134/posts

What’s even more ludicrous about the PR stunt is that it accomplished nothing tangible... zero, zip, zilch. Costas said it wasn’t going to change the world to turn off the studio lights for the evening, but it was a small part. In other words, if all of you “little people” will only sacrifice the world will be better.

Phooey.

Costas gave his message behind half a dozen candles, as though burning candles was morally superior to burning kilowatt hours. Guess which emits more CO2 (although that’s not really a problem, but that’s a whole separate issue), candles or a few lights?

Next, the entire fradulent exercise took place in the evening, when the power is base load. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but power generation involves base load and peaking power. Base load power comes from big nuke, coal, and hydro power sources. It cannot be easily ramped up and down. So, base load is set to cover the minimum demand over a 24 hour period. When a million air conditioners kick in during the afternoon, the extra demand is met with peaking plants.

Peaking plants are often combined cycle combustion turbines, which are relatively cheap to build and burn oil or gas. You can ramp them up and ramp them down.

Cut afternoon air conditioning use and combustion turbines can be throttled back. Cut evening lighting use in a TV studio and the base load plants still burn energy. For NBC to make a tangible difference, the lights would need to be permanently cut. An evening’s cut is not really any reduction because the base load plant is still pumping out kWhs.

Of course, this is not entirely accurate today. Because of NIMBY and environmental zealots, utilities find it difficult and risky to build base load generation capacity, so some have turned to turbines as part of their base load. The risk is less and if oil and gas jumps, the public utility commission lets them pass the premium along to the rate base, increasing regulated profits. Too bad if electricity prices are higher than necessary as long as the regulated utility profits are secure and the greenies don’t have to put up with more coal plants, nuke plants, and the snail darters are safe.

Again, someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but the point is NBC’s meaningless act was truly meaningless. It was ALL symbolism and ZERO substance, making it the perfect metaphor for the entire environmental movement.

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