I am sick and tired of listening to Rachel Maddow prod on about energy, with enormous misstatements and idiocy that completely contradicts her smart image.
Tonight on Real Time With Bill Maher, she ignorantly crowed that wind power is .001% of our electric supply. It is approximately 2%.
Rachel Maddow once said the government has closed 200 million acres to development, which is good because it saves the critters. They actually closed 2 million acres. 200 million acres would cover California, Oregon, and part of Washington State combined.
She followed this up by asking "why isn't America spending more on infrastructure?"
Well, Rachel, maybe if they didn't CLOSE everything to development dumb ass!!!
Now, Rachel isn't the only offender. It is a case of us liberals losing touch with reality as oil washes ashore on the Gulf. We ask for clean energy and deny it at the same time.
This is partly our fault
More below
I work in the renewable energy business. I know how it works. I know what it takes to make a project happen.
Rachel Maddow, perhaps, has never really asked the question "why don't we build more solar, wind, or geothermal energy plants?" If she has, then she asked the wrong person.
While she rails about loose regulation for oil, does she know about tight regulation for wind, solar, and geothermal?
There is currently a race against time for the big solar industry. While other nations, like Spain, Germany, China, even Abu Dhabi, are building big solar plants, America is not. Why? Is it because of Republicans? No. Greedy electric utilities? No. It is out of touch environmental groups who block every effort at innovative technology. They have decided that there is no room for mitigation for habitat issues. They are fighting tooth and nail these projects, and even the transmission lines to get them to market.
Now most of the proposed projects in the California desert will fail to get permits in time to qualify for the Stimulus tax credits. Thousands of green jobs hang in the balance. Good for you environmentalists!
In 2002, after Calpine was awarded leases to develop two 50 MW geothermal plants near Medicine Lake in Northern California, environmental groups spread lies about the clean energy plants, so much so that the 9th Circuit Court revoked the leases. The plants were to be built on one of the best geothermal resources in the United States. They never were built. Instead, more coal power had to be imported into the state. Good for you environmentalists!
Cape Wind, the first large scale Offshore Wind Farm in the United States, finally got their permits this year. It only took 9 years. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Europeans now get power from offshore wind.
We are losing the technological battle because we continue to dip our toes in the water with clean energy.
In California, all large investor-owned utilities are required to get 20% of their power from renewable sources. San Diego Gas & Electric said they would have to build a power line 100 miles to the Imperial Valley (a place with among the best solar and geothermal resources on earth). They tried to build along an existing corridor in Anza Borrego Park. Environmentalists and other interest groups fumed. Lawsuits ensued. Anza Borrego is 50 miles north-south. There is little room for the transmission line the utility had approved in December 2008. But, they are ready to build the $1.9 billion line this year, creating hundreds of jobs in the process. Environmental groups continue to sue.
Ignorance dominates. To paraphrase Ice Cube, Rachel Maddow either doesn't know, doesn't show, or doesn't care about what is going on in the world of renewable energy.
Stop the ignorance. Realize that if we really want to get off oil, we have to make hard choices.
Rachel, stop blabbing like a jack ass, and read up on the facts. Or else you are making things worse by making the public less informed.