The Green Energy Myth

The Solution to Economic Recovery

Richard Salbato

I do not believe in man made global warming and have written many articles on the subject (see below) but for the sake of this Newsletter, let us assume that CO2 does cause global warming and we are at fault. How do we solve this problem, if in fact it exists?

Let us look first at what energy is and what it does for society. What keeps my body alive and able to do something is the calories that I put in it. Without these calories I would die. What are calories? Calorie is a pre-SI metric unit of energy. Energy is the power to do something. At the time of our first humans we used energy, the power of our own bodies to get food, warmth and anything we needed. Later we found that we could use animals to do some of the things we needed to survive. Later we invented the wheel to give both us and the animals more power with less energy. This power is the heart of prosperity and has always been. Power equals prosperity and is the heart of all prosperity and nothing else is.

The use of the animal, the wheel and tools were the main source of prosperity in the world for 5000 years. Then came a fast pace of inventions that changed the world, the use of wind power to move ships and pumps to lift water, the steam engine and finally oil, gas, coal and electricity for energy. These energy sources that produced massive amounts of power in very small spaces changed the world.

It was the United States of America that first found or utilized these new energy sources the most and with the greatest inventions and so became the most powerful nation in the world almost overnight. We must never forget that energy is the blood of prosperity that equals a good and happy life.

Look around and see what your life would be like without electricity, gas, oil at home, at work or at play.

Over the last ten years state and federal governments have done everything they can to reduce our use of the very power that brought our prosperity. There reason is dependency on foreign oil and/or global warming. I can show that at the turn of the century, 1901 to 1911 there was more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is now and we did not have all these cars and airplanes. Nonetheless, the question in this Newsletter is that even if that were true, what is the best thing to do about it? Since global warming is a world problem, what can America do? In the last 20 years America reduced CO2 by 2%, while Brazil increased 33%, Pakistan increased 57%, India increased 70%, Indonesia increased 110%, and China increased 132%. Did alternative energy sourced give us this 2% reduction? No! What reduced our energy is better used of oil, gas and electric – efficiency.

Solar Panels

The use of solar panels for electric power plants actually uses more gas or coal than without them. Does that seem strange? Solar for individual houses can reduce the use of power, but for solar to power in large communities it has to have a back up system of fuel, such as coal or gas. Since these systems have to be always ready to use and go off and on they actually use more fuel than they save. The reason for this is that to start up a motor, or a large generator takes more fuel than to just leave it running. This has been proved. Even for individuals it takes 10 years to pay back the original costs.

Not only that but Environmentalists do not like solar because it takes so much land for so little energy and it interferes with the natural use of the ground for birds and animals. Solar produces an inconsistent 36 horsepower per acre. There isn’t enough land in the world to make solar work. Even in individual homes it is almost never cost effective. Not to mention almost all of them are built in China and take a precious metal that only China produces.

Wind Power

An even greater myth is that wind power saves energy and helps the environment. But first I want to express my greatest anger over wind power. In an area I am familiar, the Altamont Pass in California, it is estimated that the wind mills just in this one area kill 80 golden eagles per year, and 2,400 raptors and owls, as well as 7,500 other birds. The Feds have never prosecuted these companies for this in spite of the fact that they fined Exxon Mobil $600,000 for killing 85 birds. It is estimated that 1.8 million birds will be killed by wind turbines per year. That is the environmental impact, not to mention how ugly they are.

But do they save energy. They take a great deal of steal and concrete to build, which is done with oil and gas. They take a great deal of infrastructure, roads, power lines and back up gas generators. They cannot be built close to where the energy is used. Generators have to be running all the time even when not used because it is more efficient that way. When all this is taken into consideration wind uses more gas than it saves. Not to mention the fact that almost all of them are built in China.

Cellulosic Ethanol

Cellulosic Ethanol is made from grass, wood chips, sawdust, corn stalks, corn cobs etc. However, when figured out this method would cost $24.00 per gallon. It would wipe out the nitrogen that is needed in the soil for the farmers and was already tried 90 years ago. It takes 42 times as much water to produce and creates 50% more Carbon dioxide than gas and oil. To account for 10% of our energy use would take 42.1 million acres.

Corn Ethanol

Corn Ethanol can be converted to gas for your car but the cost is .25 horsepower per acre as compared to gas at 148.5 horsepower per acre and that is underground. Corn is used to feed all forms of live stock, cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc. It is also used in 40% of all our packaged foods, the very use for fuel is already running up our food costs. If we wanted corn ethanol to just account for our energy we get from the Middle East we would have no corn for food.

In Brazil they use sugar cane for fuel and 90% of their cars run on it, but they have thousands of acres, it has a better ratio of sugar to fuel and I support it. However, we do not have the climate for sugar cane in America and it would be cheaper to buy fuel from Brazil than subsidizing corn in America.

Electric Cars

Even electric cars are a myth if you think it will make us energy independent. The best batteries for cars add about 30% to the weight of the car. This weight reduces the miles per watt. The batteries use a rare earth metal that is controlled by China and makes us energy dependent on them. Almost all of these batteries are also made in China. Battery cars are not dependable because the batteries are subject to excessive heat or cold and reduces the time of life. They explode or burn easily and do not hold a charge when not in use. I use my car only once every three days so if it was electric, I would have to keep it plugged in all the time. There is almost no gas stations today that can recharge a car, but even if there was it takes about 4 hours to fully charge an electric car battery. Since hot or cold effects the battery will you trust it when hit by extreme weather.

The only place batteries have worked is in very light golf carts, or motor scooters which use normal batteries and these scooters cost less than $300.00 and the batteries are $20.00. Electric scooters are a big boom in china. We have had electric cars from the time of Edison and they have never worked.

The government has given Fisher $529 million loan to make Electric cars.

The government gave Nissan a $1.6 billion loan to make Electric cars.

The government gave ETE a $465 million loan to make Electric cars.

The government gave Johnson Controls a $229 million loan to make Electric batteries.

The government gave General Motors $195 million to build Electric batteries.

In all $2.5 billion in tax payers money has gone into electric cars and nothing has happened.

Government Tax Money for Green Failures

Every green company, solar, wind, battery, or car has received government money or subsidies and all have gone broke or will go broke. Loan Guarantees for green energy in 2009 was $78 billion. I don’t have the figures for 2010 and 2011.

Mineral Rights to Property

One of the great things about America is our rights to property and all that that entails including all mineral rights. Believe it or not most countries in the world the people do not have these rights, but the government owns all mineral rights. One of the great reasons we became the first nation in the world to become an oil producer is that people could profit on drilling for oil. Of course the Fed has a great deal of land that they own and to this day in almost every case the oil and gas fields on this land is not drilled. The Fed and State governments have off shore mineral rights and again this is where we have problems getting the right to drill.

The Only Solution to Prosperity and Climate

We are in an economic depression and we are at fault. Throughout the history of America we became the most prosperous people in the world because of innovation. It’s a sad thing but because of our very poor education system I feel I have to explain what that word means. We became the greatest nation in the world because we invented things, methods, new products and faster, easier ways to do things. Our farming went from 25 people per acre to one person per 100 acres because of innovation. We are the ones who invented electricity, gas, oil, power generation, cars, airplanes, automation, robots, railroads, iron ships, atomic power, radar, sonar, computers, the internet, the cell phone, face to face telephone, and on and on.

How does government help innovation? Stay out of the way. The great innovations of the last 15 years have been the cell phone, Google, and facebook. All of these people say they could not have done this with the regulations we have today.

There are already no innovations (already invented) that from en economic point of view are even greater than what we have done in the last 15 years. These are in the energy field, gas and nuclear.

The first innovation was in the new method of getting gas and oil out of oil shale and the discovery that we have more gas and oil in this shale than all the reserves in the world and enough to run our country for the next 250 years. This required many other inventions first. A new technology that is able to look miles into the earth to detect oil and gas, then a new method of fracturing this oil shale to release the oil and gas. This new method uses high pressure to fracture the shale, then injecting sand into the fractures so they do not close up allowing the oil and gas to seep out into the suction pipes. This method is so new and technical that China offered a billion dollars for the method. Nonetheless, because of this method, and only using private land it has turned North Dakoda into the modern day boom town. They cannot build enough houses and towns to take care of the new workers coming into their state. They claim that they can accommodate one million new workers right now that they cannot get. We have 14 other states that have the same oil and gas shale but the governments stand in their way. Over the next 5 years this innovation could put 5 million people to work. We just need government to get out of the way.

Another new innovation is deep offshore drilling. We have discovered that in the deep waters there is great reserves of gas and oil and we now have the methods to get to it. Brazil may very well become one of the most prosperous nations in the world simply because they are going after this oil in a big way. But America is doing everything they can to stop this, when in fact the reason for the great oil spill last year was more the government’s fault than anyone else because they signed off on systems they never even looked at.

Let us just ask a simple question, every oil well in Texas is mixed with gas and as you pass by all these oil wells you see large flames of gas being burnt off because the oil companies do not want to deal with it. How does that effect the environment? Why does the government allow this?

As for the environment, gas is 30% safer than oil and that is greater than any other green proposal except nuclear.

The Next Great Innovations – Nuclear Power

In spite of the problems in Japan with the earthquake, the safest, cleanest and only long term method of energy for the long term energy needs of the world is Nuclear. No matter what America does Nuclear power has been and will continue to be the fastest growing source of Energy in the world for the next 40 years. China alone has 150 Nuclear power plants under construction right now and will have to have many more in the future. Almost all of these are being built by American companies, who are taking jobs overseas simply because they cannot build here.

But I am not in favor of building more massive Nuclear Power Plants as we have now because these require a massive amount of government involvement, a great deal of power lines and cover too large an area that can be disrupted by accident or terrorism. Massive power outages can be a thing of the past if we had smaller power plants and this has already been invented and are being built.

The great new inventions of the Nuclear Industry are Power Plants the size of a a large truck producing 125 megawatts, whereas major power plants produce 1000 megawatts. That means that it takes a few of these plants to produce the same megawatts as a big plant. However, these can be produced in mass production in one locations, increasing efficiency, and shipping them all over the world. The fuel rods last 30 years and they are buried in the ground. They save massive amounts of power lines especially for remote towns and/or military bases, factories far from cities, and as is already used, for moving cities like large ships.

There has already been developed a Nuclear Power Plant the size of a Hot Tub that produces 37 megawatts and lasts 30 years. It is like a Nuclear Battery.

However, the great advancement in this Nuclear Power Industry is the use of Thorium instead of Plutonium. Thorium is four times more abundant than Uranium and has been used in reactors for 60 years, but now it is the future. It produces far less radioactive waste than uranium.

The salvation of the American economy will be in exports, gas, oil, coal, small Nuclear Power Plants, food, and electronics.

When we become the exporter again we will have a great GDP and a zero unemployment. This will happen when we export oil, gas, coal, Nuclear and food.

Notes:

1. Although we are decodes of getting away from coal as an energy source, I want to get away from it. I do not like strip mining and it is a joke to say that there is any such thing as clean coal. I do not mind shipping it to China but we do not need to use it here.

2. Throughout the world millions of children and their parents are dying very young because they cook with wood and charcoal in their homes. If this was replaced with oil or gas, they would not be dying. Not only that but oil and gas would be saving all the trees that they are cutting down. Look at these poor areas of the world and you will not find a single tree. I have that right across the border in San Diego, where you can go miles and miles in the slums of Mexico without finding a single tree.

3. The Oil, Gas and Nuclear jobs I am talking about cannot be sent overseas, like IPads.

4. It does not matter that I do not believe in global warming because even if it was true, the best solution to it is Natural Gas and Nuclear Power. oHoHowever, if you want my opinion read:

The Truth about Global Warming

Copenhagen's Climate Treaty

The Proof -  Global Warming - World Government

Finding Truth - The Birth Certificate - Global Warming

5. All the information above came from the book,

POWER HUNGREY by Robert Bryce