Sunday, April 22, 2007

Watermelon Day

Ha, another global warming rally impacted by cold weather. And now we must suffer "Earth Day", where greens prostrate themselves before the great goddess Gaea and pledge to badger their betters another year.

This repeated collective silliness annoys me. Why? Because it's ineffective - it's nothing but a big party for likeminded poseurs. (Yeah, they need love too, but in their case all it does is spread more disease and cause abortions). Then they ride home in their SUVs and leave their trash behind.

And because they're dominated by lefties, all of their prescriptions have to involve the govt - heaven forbid that lefties would actually do or pay for anything themselves.

Who says govts can do anything? All any of them can do is take your money, spend it on what they want, pick favorites and deprive you of life, liberty and property if you don't cooperate. This doesn't work with CO2 or the sun. Increases in solar activity may well account for most of the claimed changes in our global average temperature anyway, rendering anthropogenic contributions as significant as spitting in the ocean is to the tides.

But let's suppose we puny humans are causing the change, and that we really know the consequences, that they don't result in net improvement, and that dealing with the results isn't better or cheaper than changing our ways. Then what?

After conservation, the answer lies where it always has - in science and engineering. You want cleaner power? - we're the guys who make it happen. You want more fuel-efficient cars? Tell us what you want and give us the time and money and we'll do all that the laws of physics permit. And who do you think developed, say, solar PV? An activist? A celebrity? A lawyer? A politician?

Yet when was the last time Greenpox et al ever spent a dime on engineering or basic scientific research? No, their history is about imposing additional costs on clean, reliable power sources like nuclear power. Their obsession with energy threatens our supplies, and if you think some forms of energy are dangerous, think of how dangerous it will be *not* to have the energy we need.

I suppose that the lack of support makes sense to them, because they ignore engineers and scientists if they don't like the answers. Colby Cosh gives a terrific example wrt windpower here. The problem, which ought to be obvious to anyone paying attention, is that wind is not necessarily in sync with power demands.

No problem, we'll just store the juice when it's there and dole it out when it's needed, right? Sure, once we get affordable reasonably efficient and reliable non-site-specific storage mechanisms that can work on utility scale. This will work well with solar, windpower and handling peak loads on the grid without having to keep usually oil-fired "peakers" running. Win, win, win - someone will get richer than Bill Gates if they can make this happen.

Again, where's Greenpox et al? They could be training scientists and engineers or funding research toward such a universally useful technology. But as usual they're spending it on lobbyists, exhibitionists and more fundraisers to defoliate us with their mailings about protecting the rainforests.

Lefties aren't about anything but power and control, and any issue they get involved with will be redirected to serve their political ends. The sooner the true greens kick out the reds the sooner we can make environmentalism the nonpartisan issue it always should have been.

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