Beating The Same Crummy Drum On Every Alternative Energy Source

But that’s a long road to travel. About 9 percent of the energy used by Americans comes from “renewables.” The rest comes from burning stuff or splitting atoms. But of that 9 percent, the vast majority comes from hydroelectric power and ethanol. Hydroelectric power has little room for growth since there aren’t any new dams going in, and ethanol doesn’t qualify as a green energy source since it requires so much energy to make itself.

Of the currently viable sources acceptable to environmentalists, many billions of dollars of subsidies have produced very little yield. Solar power provides one tenth of one percent of our energy. Wind delivers 1 percent.

When Obama takes credit for having “doubled the use of clean energy,” he has the advantage of working in a very narrow mathematical space. Solar produces 184 times less energy than coal does today. — Chris Stirewalt

Do you understand what that means, folks?

It means that you can put algae, solar, wind, electric cars, and fuel cells all together and they’re still a rounding error when it comes to our power needs. It means that we could spend a trillion dollars a year on all of these energy sources and the country would still be as dark as North Korea becsause all of them combined couldn’t support 1/10 of our energy needs.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t research any new technologies or that we should write them off forever, but we spend all this time, money, effort, and hot air on these power sources that are nearly inconsequential. Yes, in 20-30 years, they may be a big deal — or, they may be as important as whale oil. We really have no idea.

What we do know is that today and for the forseeable future, the economy runs on oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. That needs to sink with people.

When these environmental extremists oppose drilling for oil and talk about solar or worse yet, algae, as alternatives — it’s crazy talk. They might as well be saying that we should get rid of our cars so we can replace them with personal jetpacks. Maybe we will — someday, but who the hell knows when it’ll be?

Can we start dealing with reality please?

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