Posted on 03/13/2012 10:15:47 AM PDT by null and void
Wow. Just wow. Just when you thought Rush Limbaugh couldn’t possibly be any stupider (as most of you know, his vile, disgusting and misogynistic comments on Sandra Fluke have worked out so well for him), he decided to double down on the dumb.
On his March 5 program, Limbaugh said the following about the wind and solar energy markets (emphasis added):
The problem with the Chevy Volt [the reason Limbaugh started his alternative energy rant in the first place] is just like all of Obama’s green energy, there’s no business there yet. There’s no solar energy business yet. There’s no wind energy yet. It’s not there yet. But we can’t have more oil. We can’t have cheaper gasoline prices.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the actual clip of the remarks for your listening pleasure (it’s only 16 seconds, but you’ll be gobsmacked at the amount of stupid packed into such a short time):
Now those of us who have listened to Rush practically at the beginning know that he has made his living being mendacious, angry and crude, but the fictional Snerdley should have warned him how ridiculous the above statement was.
Let’s start with our personal passion, the solar energy industry.
1. There’s no solar energy business yet.
Really, Rush? Really? Did Snerdley not alert you to this study by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Greentech Media? Or this announcement by Rhone Resch? Or this report from The Solar Foundation, which reports that there were more than 100,000 jobs in the American solar industry as of August 2011? Is that enough evidence for you that not only does the solar industry exist, but that it’s one of the few bright spots in an otherwise painfully slow recovery?
How about these facts from our friends at SEIA:
• The U.S. solar market grew to a $6 billion industry in 2010, up 67% from $3.6 billion in 2009.I don’t know about you, but that sure as heck sounds like an industry (and a thriving one at that) to me.
• Solar electric capacity installations reached 956 MW in 2010, more than double the installations from 2009.
• At year end 2010, the U.S. had 2,593 megawatts (MW) of installed solar electric capacity. This included about 2,086 MW of photovoltaics (PV) and 507 MW of utility-scale concentrating solar power.
• Solar water heating capacity grew 5% in 2010, as 2.4 million square feet of solar water heating capacity was installed at homes and businesses throughout the country.
Rush, you should have done some homework so you didn’t sound like quite such an idiot.
2. There’s no wind energy yet.
My colleagues over at Windpower Engineering and Development could probably speak to this more effectively than I can, but here are some of the stats on Limbaugh’s “non-industry,” courtesy of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA):
• The fourth quarter of 2011 saw 3,444 MW of wind power capacity installed, bringing total installations in 2011 to 6,810 MW.
• The U.S. wind industry now totals 46,919 MW of cumulative wind capacity through the end of 2011. • There are over 8,300 MW currently under construction involving over 100 separate projects spanning 31 states plus Puerto Rico.
• The U.S. wind industry has added over 35% of all new generating capacity over the past 4 years, second only to natural gas, and more than nuclear and coal combined.
• Today, U.S. wind power capacity represents more than 20% of the world’s installed wind power.
• The U.S. wind industry represents not only a large market for wind power capacity installations, but also a growing market for American manufacturing.
• More than 400 manufacturing facilities across the United States. make components for wind turbines, and dedicated wind facilities that manufacture major components such as towers, blades and assembled nacelles can be found in every region.
Add to that the nearly 75,000 jobs currently in the wind industry, and you can see that Rush yet again proves to the world that he won’t let facts get in the way of a good lie.
3. But we can’t have more oil. We can’t have cheaper gasoline prices.
This is a common complaint amongst conservatives: If we just opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the U.S. coastline (which Obama has, in fact, done) or processed shale oil, we could rid ourselves of the scourge of being dependent of foreign nations for our energy supplies.
This, of course, is a straw man and ignores the central fact of oil production (and, by extension, gas prices). When the United States or any other country extracts oil and puts in on the market, it doesn’t stay in the country of origin. So no matter how much oil the United States produces (unless we happened to be sitting on oil reserves like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela — the evidence suggests we are not), it wouldn’t lower the price of gas one bit.
Our oil would be swept up into the international oil market, where the prices are still controlled (in large part) by OPEC and speculators on the commodities markets. Extracting more oil wouldn’t bring down gas prices, no matter how much Limbaugh and his friends want it to — and there would be significant environmental dangers instead (as we found out to our own detriment two years ago).
So what have we learned from this, apart from the fact that Senator Al Franken may have been right? We’ve learned that we need to be ever-vigilant as the solar industry, and when people lie about us, we need to fight back — and fight back hard.
I would request that all of you take a minute of your time to email Rush (his email address is the ever-so-modest ElRushbo@EIBnet.com) or post a comment on his Facebook page, letting him know (rationally and politely, please) that the solar industry not only exists, but is alive and well in this country — and we won’t take his lies lying down.
You mean the Navy hasn't gone solar and wind power yet?
They could mount lots of windmills on those big suckers! and do you realize how many solar cells they could glue onto those aircraft carrier decks?
< /sarc >
“fictional Snerdley”
What!?
Snerdley’s not real?
Program staff
Bo Snerdley
The official "program observer" and call screener. His real name is James Golden. From comments Limbaugh has made on the air, it would seem he assists with research as part of preparation for the show and is in the control booth as the show is being broadcast. He co-hosted a Sunday night talk show, James and Joel, on WABC with Joel Santisteban from 1992 to 1998.
Snerdley is a pseudonym Limbaugh invented many years earlier when he was a disc jockey on WIXZ (when Limbaugh went by the name Jeff Christy); he would use the name Snerdley for supposed-listeners who would write or call in, usually professing to be big fans and part of the "Christy Nation". More recently, the name Snerdley has been used for his call screeners, both male and female.
During a show in 2004, Limbaugh was not at the microphone for the last segment of the second hour (it was only about ten seconds), and Snerdley came on instead: "This is Bo Snerdley, Rush will be right back on the EIB Network." It was one of the very rare times his voice was heard on the program before 2008. "Bo" Snerdley screens callers at the Palm Beach Florida broadcasting location and in New York City.
In February 2008, Snerdley, who is African-American,[12] was appointed by Limbaugh as the show's Official Criticizer of Barack Obama: "certified black enough to criticize"[13] On the July 24th show, "Bo" was put on the air as the "Official Obama Criticizer", and spoke for roughly 5 minutes with Rush about the incident with Cambridge police. On October 16, he requested (and received) air time to air a five-minute rant, that criticized NFL players, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and media commentators who opposed Rush Limbaugh's potential bid on the St. Louis Rams.
Per wikipedia US uses 3.7 B megawatts per year. I've looked to find basic data on this but google searches seem clogged with solar- and wind-power sites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
Anyhoo, it looks like solar is less than 1%, and this doesn't take into account it's the low-hanging fruit - the tough questions are transportation, cost/mW, etc.
I can prove he’s real. I know his brother Smuggley.
This anDORKa fool must be logic-addled. I wonder if his beanie has a propeller on it to power his enormous genius brain. Give back the money you stole from all of us, genius.
How about "Drill Baby Drill" AND a ban on exportation...or a tariff on imported oil?
Sorry, I did my maths wrong. US uses 3.7 Trillion mW. Which puts solar at 0.0001%.
The guy rings like a bitch.
So that's who he is. Didn't know that.
Was it that long ago? I remember Bob Grant calling them idiots.
But then sooner or later, he called everyone an idiot.
How about; it's well past time we stop doing it?
You shoulda asked him, what if you put it where the sun don't shine?
After years of mandated LEED on government projects we are now entering an era where NetZero is going to be imposed as well, even taking a precidence over the LEED Green issues.
We are going to see millions and millions of photo cell dollars spent with a 40 year pay back analysis on systems that will last five to twenty years.
It’s my impression that he’s a very talented man. Imagine working with Rush five days a week for how many years?
I would have listened to their show more, if I'd known James was Bo Snerdley.
Obama's approval numbers are way down, and Rush is still the number one radio show in the world. I'd say it worked out pretty well for him!
I think that it says a lot for Rush that he has had this long term relationship with “Mr. Snerdley”.
Guy must not have checked the latest info on that liberal debacle. Rush hasn't lost any money from the media push against him. Two of the four national advertisers who left him have asked to come back, and the others that publicly distanced themselves from his show were advertisers for local radio stations, and they merely asked that their ads not be played on his show. Some may not have been played then, anyway, but those folks just wanted to make sure to be public, so the libs wouldn't come after them.
Obama is losing support in the polls, and some of that number are women, who don't agree with the birth control mandate. I'd say it's Obama who came out on the losing side of the issue this week, not Rush.
Ooops! Bans? Tarriffs? Those have consequences that affect the market too. It's like rent control. We see how well that works. That would invite more corruption.
If they would just Drill Baby Drill and leave the "Big Oil Guys" do what they do best, they would make one hell of a splash in the world market. Think US navy pre-WWII and post WWII and the time it took to get there. It's possible.
More importantly, the simple threat to the world crude market of unleashing the American potential would drive speculators to "speculate" that there would be a massive introduction of supply to the market coming to a refinery near you. If you were speculating and you saw all of "Big Oil" suddenly investing 10s of billions for new extraction and exploration, would you be betting on prices going up or down? The price of oil would be near immediate as the investors looked to take their money out of the market. And that would be 6 months to 2 years before the glut of supply was actually available.
Let them sell to whoever they want to. They are going to sell to whoever will make them the most profit.
Profit = Revenue - costs (shipping+exploration+extraction+taxes+legal+permits+Insurance)
If American companies can reduce shipping, taxes and regulatory fees, we could end up paying $2.50/gallon in about 2 to 5 years. Half of that would be federal/state/local taxes.
Yeah, I don’t know about that. Why the hell should we drop the price and then give away our oil to China and India?
We should be able to drop the price here, develop it here and consume it here. Hell with the rest of the world.
What’s wrong with not allowing oil derivatives to be traded as currently practiced? The whole price per barrel racket is phony baloney.
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