Levin rants against environmentalism: " 'Oh, we want clean air and clean water.' And what does that mean? Poverty!"
November 13, 2009 2:20 pm ET
From the November 12 edition of ABC Radio Networks' The Mark Levin Show:
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He steals three hours of our airwaves every weekday.....
Well, at least the stone age had clean air!
(Same response as with the image above.)
I keep telling Myself swimming in the Great Lakes when I was a kid in the 60's pickled and preserved Me.
What has President Obama done to prevent the jobs from coming back? As far as I know... he bailed out the auto industry which would have been a million or more jobs lost... so that action alone averted total unemployment disaster, something that the republicans won't recognize.
In the IT world, hundreds of thousands of programming jobs have gone to India, encouraged by the Bush administration... I supposed President Obama hasn't done enough to reverse that... but I'm pretty sure that's not what Levin is talking about.
The notion that unregulated business and unregulated profits, trickle down to jobs is laughable. They'll take the cash and ship the jobs overseas live we've done for decades.
I beg to differ!
Isn't Obama producing brain-eating, socialist, zombie robots?
I heard it on the street, and I read it on the internets, so it MUST BE TRUE!!!!!
Well, we don't know. But since those "other industries" haven't been scooping up the hundreds of thousands of folks who actually have lost their jobs in the past year, I think your hypothetical has a probability of about .0001%.
Anyone in the car industry knows that would not have happened... it's better for them for them to disappear than to be invested in... and yes it would have been millions of jobs overnight. Thousands of dealerships closed overnight... look at the spectacle it became when 20% of the dealerships closed... how would it have been if they all did?
The supply chain for GM is huge and it would have bankrupted thousands of small companies that would have impacted Ford as well, since they share the same supply chain.
But even if Bush or McCain was president, they would have bailed out
the car companies too... no matter what the Repubs think
Give it rest already.
Well then, by all means, Mr. Levin -- I URGE you to take in as much dirty air and water as you want, in LARGE quantities.
Switching over to a green economy is going to create jobs. All those wind towers and solar panels have to be built and installed by somebody, right? They don't appear by magic, do they? Now, if you're talking about jobs in the petroleum industry, yes, there are liable to be fewer as demand falls. These will be more than offset by the jobs in sustainable energy, however. Almost every home in America will need to be retrofitted in some way. It will be a boon to the construction industry, among others.
I'm really not worried about less gasoline for my car. It's nearing the time for me to replace it, because an engine rebuild will cost more than the car is worth. What I'm hoping to do is completely refurbish it, and convert it to battery powered electric propulsion. It's only used around town, anyway, and with the cost of new cars what they are, for about half the cost of getting a new one I can keep one I already like, and it will be fully electric! Not that complicated, not that difficult. So, how about NO gasoline for our cars, Mr. Levin? Too much to wrap your tiny brain around, I suppose.
Know what I want? A small business loan for, say, half a million dollars. I want to start a local business buying up used cars and converting them to battery/electric. Over 100,000 miles, at 20 mpg, that's a savings of 5,000 gallons of gas, plus thirty oil changes, a couple of break jobs, muffler jobs. Really, all they'll need is wipers and tires. My local car-buyer magazine has anywhere from one to two dozen ideal candidates every week. So, for, say, $20,000 dollars, you'll be able to buy a completely refurbished car, with a 100,000 mile drive train warranty that uses zero gasoline. Just the savings in gas alone will pay for half the cost of the car, and that's assuming the price is still around $2 in TEN YEARS. Anyone want to take that bet? I'll have to hire people to help, too. I want to start a small business. Having a public health option that I can purchase for myself and my employees means I have lower overhead, so, actually, I think it will help me as a small business owner.
I'm getting really tired of the 'can't-dos' in the media. "We can't! It's too hard! It's too scary! We don't wanna!" Phooey! Roll up your sleeves, get off your well padded backsides, get out there, and do some actual work! You'd be surprised at how well it agrees with you. I love America! I'm excited about our future! And scared babies like you, Mr. Levin, really are no longer worth my time.
The percentage of its rated power that a windmill can actually produce, given the variation of wind speeds at the installation site, is called its capacity factor. A realistic capacity factor is 25%. That means that over time, the windmill actually delivers 25% of its rated power.
A typical large wind-driven turbine is rated at about 1,500 kilowatts. It's 350 feet tall and has a fan blade of about 240 feet in diameter. It will actually deliver about 375 kilowatts. It can power about 375 microwave ovens, or 6250 60-watt light bulbs simultaneously (only when the wind is blowing at about 25 miles per hour, which is a very strong wind). An average (1 gigawatt) power plant can power nearly a million microwaves, or 16 million light bulbs at the same time.
A power plant near me produces 1,100,000 kilowatts (1.1 gigawatts) of power. At a 25% capacity factor it would take nearly 2600 large wind turbines to produce the same power as this nuclear power plant. And this is not a particularly large plant.
If you placed these 2600 wind turbines the recommended 5 rotor-blade diameters apart, they would stretch for 600 miles. That's as far as the distance from Michigan to Georgia. In practice wind turbines are not placed single file, they are placed in several rows, like crops, in what are called wind farms, but you get the idea.
The amount of electricity generated by a wind turbine is proportional to the wind speed to the 3rd power (a 20 MPH wind will produce 8 times as much energy as a 10 MPH wind). Therefore wind turbines often produce energy in bursts; when the wind gusts, the energy output spikes, when the wind dies down, energy output dips.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to store these bursts of energy for later use. There are no batteries large enough that are also practical, and pumped-storage systems, which use unwanted energy to pump water into an aboveground reservoir for later use in turning a water-driven generator, require a large body of water.
And when there is no wind, windmills produce no power, so a traditional power plant must be operational at all times to provide power during those in-between times.
Also, most areas of the country have so little wind that wind turbines are not practical. As indicated in the wind resource map below, most of best energy-producing wind power areas are located far from population centers. The white areas are those that don't have fast enough winds to make wind power viable.
Wind power does work. It is a clean and renewable source of energy. But it does have its limitations; we would have to have wind turbines stretching from sea to sea to equal the energy output we can get from traditional power plants, and they would only be a match for conventional power plants when the winds were strong. On calm days they would produce no energy.
And since most of the power would be generated in unpopulated areas, because that's where the strong winds are, we would have to incur huge losses to transport this energy to where it is needed.
And after all that, we would still need to maintain our current system of traditional power plants because we would have to have a backup source for when the wind is calm.
And since the traditional power plants can't be turned on and off like a light bulb, it will be necessary to use the traditional power plants to provide the bulk of our power and use the wind generated power to supplement the power plants.
All things considered, wind power has limitations that will relegate it to a role as a supplementary, not a primary, source of our electrical energy.
So the next time you hear a pundit say that we should throw over fossil and nuclear fuel in exchange for wind, know that it is not possible. And any proposals that are predicated on the replacement of natural fossil fuels, such as the replacement of real jobs with "green jobs" is as fallacious as an equation that is predicated on 2 plus 2 equaling 5.
I agree that wind power is not a 'magic bullet' solution to our current energy problems. No such solution exists. Solar works well, during the day. Wind farms can make a real difference, utilizing existing lines to move the power from where it's produced to where it's needed as well as on-site. Greater efficiency, geo-thermal, it's all part of a whole solution. The problem is that the transition will be unpleasant for typical utilities. Besides, coal plants are so cheap to run because coal is so cheap to pull from the ground and so easy to burn.
But we can't do it forever. No consumable source of energy will last forever. The only sustainable option is to change where our power comes from, and begin doing it now. We should have started this back in 1973, during the first real oil crisis. We didn't. So, 36 years later, we're just that much farther behind.
You've supplied many facts in support of your position, for which I commend you. But, your overall theme is that it can't be done. Nonsense. It can be done. We can choose to do it now, and suffer the pangs of switching over voluntarily, or we can wait and suffer the much worse consequences of being forced into to doing it. For me, there is really no need to think about these two choices. I choose the former. Big Oil and the Utilities industry would just like to wait a little longer. After all, this might cut into the easy money they make every day. Too bad. Our country must come first. We must be independent for energy. To continue relying on shaky and blatantly hostile regimes for over half our energy needs it tremendously foolish. My suggestion is to quit nay-saying, and start finding solutions. Now.
I'm willing to entertain nuclear power, if I can be guaranteed there will be no accidents, and if there is some safe and permanent way to deal with the thousands of metric tonnes of radioactive waste, from spent fuel rods to contaminated clothing. Of course, nuclear relies on government subsidies to be a break-even proposition, so fiscally, I'm opposed. The plants themselves are very expensive to build, their operation is costly, and after their life as a reactor is over, they will remain 'hot' for centuries, requiring them to be cordoned off and secured somehow. There's really no profit in it at all, unless it's supplied by tax dollars.
Or maybe this could just be put on the list of super fund cleanup sites with the rest of the crap industry leaves behind for tax payers to take care of.
Don't you think it's about time to try a different approach?
CO2 is a trace gas which makes up only a tiny fraction of 1% of our atmosphere.
WOW!
After hearing this, I switched over to the Jason Lewis show. Lewis had a caller on who said that carbon emissions were vital to plant life, and that "liberals" were basically at war with our forests. Lewis said "hey that's right- and the so-called environmentalists, if they do what they want, and cut down forests to put up windmill farms, they will really destroy the planet!"
This is the kind of crud that millions of people take in every single day. Sad, and scary.
It's an extreme example, but under the construct that we really had to choose between environment and economy, I think it applies. The population continues to grow, which means more production, more cars, more pollution. If we can see effects of it now, then it's obviously gotten to the point where it's not quickly correcting itself, so it's only going to get worse with increased pollution.
Bearing that in mind, where does it end? If we were really looking at a choice between poverty and an ever-worsening environment, surely we would have to choose poverty at some point. If we really have to go back to agrarian times to survive, then that's what we have to do. All the money in the world doesn't do you any good if you're dying.
Sounds like a variation on the movie (based on a story, and a Twilight Zone episode) The Box, where a couple is offered a million dollars but know that someone will die as a result.
There's also another TZ episode (I think it's TZ...) where a man makes a deal with the devil to become immortal, then the guy kills someone and isn't sentenced to death, but to life in prison.. which he realizes will be a problem.
http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/effects/index.html
Levin seems to want-- No poverty--Wow that's great, lots of money coming in. Polluted water--I could die with this one. Polluted air--I could die with this one too. He seems to want us to be not poor and dead.
Well I am going to go sit behind my car and breath in the lovely exhaust fumes as I always do in the evening while listening to Hannity. Such bliss!