“Think of it as ‘pathological science’ or ‘wishful-thinking energy.’ We’ve had ‘green energy’ for thousands of years in the form of water-wheels in some form or other and windmills have served for centuries to grind grain and other such tasks . . . the failing of green-technology isn’t that it doesn’t work. Much of it does work marvelously. The failing of green-tech is that RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW it can NOT be harnessed in such a fashion as to replace carbon-fuels. In fact after six decades of devotion to the ‘lovely idea and sweet promise of green energy evolution’ the largest and most reliable renewable energy source right here and right now in America is still the wood burning stove which generates 2.5%** of our nation’s energy. Today, 2011, coal still accounts for 48%.”
Solyndra, Bird-killing Windmills^^ or Cold Fusion:
Green-tech Still Leaves America ‘out in the Cold’
The Solyndra stimulus money and its ensuing bankruptcy form a classic case-study highlighting crony-capitalism and the dangers of the federal government picking winners and losers in the not-so-free market. Latest information reveals Solyndra was one of 18 companies receiving more than $10 billion in total backing from the Department of Energy several others are also reportedly in financial difficulty. The $535 million given as part of President Obama's 2009 stimulus program and his campaign promise to “create five million green-tech jobs” was clearly an abuse of American taxpayers. Since even before the Solyndra bankruptcy each of the 3,500 green-tech jobs so far created within the Obama $787 BIllion stimulus cost an average of $10.88 million dollars or a total of over $38 BIllion; and since Solyndra got more money from the federal coffers in 2009 than 35 of our states did, it’s NOT surprising that some of the biggest names in liberalism are running for the hills to avoid questions about the controversy. Some of the less well-known names as well, the leadership at Solyndra, are running for the hills. While protesting their innocence mightily to the mainstream media (MSM) and saying they “did nothing wrong,” the Solyndra honchos have revealed that they will as a group “avail themselves of their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination” and remain silent when they get to Capitol Hill. Privately Solyndra execs tell the MSM that the “falling price of ordinary solar panels” doomed their company. More on this in a few paragraphs.
UNmentioned, by the way, in the president’s latest waves of attack on the “tax loopholes for the rich” is the fact that General Electric paid $0 taxes on $14 Billion in profits largely because of the tax loopholes favoring businesses regarded as “green” by the Obama administration and progressive politicians. This is one reason that GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immeldt was named Obama Jobs Czar even though 80% of his firm’s jobs are located outside this country.
Obama’s Energy Department meanwhile faces a September 30th deadline to give fourteen companies final loan guarantee approval totaling more than $9 billion. House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders Tuesday wrote Energy Secretary Steven Chu voicing concerns about rushing the approval process just to meet that deadline. Back to Solyndra . . . Congressional subpoenas for Solyndra execs are likely to come to naught . . . the nothing we’ll learn from them is dwarfed, however, by the nothing the Obama administration understands about business or the free markets.
Here’s a fact for you: despite all the presidential and vice-presidential ballyhoo about its promise; and the White House creating a Solyndra propaganda video . . . Solyndra never once showed anything close to even ONE profitable quarter in its five years of existence and their so-called “advanced designs” offered little more than a 12-15% greater efficiency for double or triple the money. Two weeks ago the FBI and Energy Department officials raided the Solyndra headquarters in California after claims that as little as six weeks ago the top company officials had sworn to California Rep. Henry Waxman (former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) that things were “looking up” and that the company expected “to double revenues in 2012.”
Rajjpuut takes that clever tongue-in-cheek “report” to mean that the Solyndra officials actually were telling the truth-expecting to lose twice as much money in 2012 . . . hence their September, 2011 bankruptcy filing. I remember a Lieutenant JG that once told our ET gang that we’d have “three times the liberty (time off)” we’d recently been given when the ship got to Hong Kong. Of course we all knew that since we’d been at sea for 46 straight days (a.k.a. recently), he wasn’t promising much since 3 X 0 = 0.
The Obama administration’s shocking lack of a clue when it comes to the verities of business came to light when the Energy Department official in charge of the loan program that subsidized Solyndra, Jonathon Silver, responded to a question about the Obama administration using stimulus money “to pick winners and losers” this way.
“The agency is not trying to pick winners or losers in the private sector” but merely “trying to assist companies that have already received substantial support from venture capitalists.” Mr. Silver’s naïveté aside, he, of course sounds like he’s discussing a green-tech version of “too big to fail.” Mr. Silver, venture capitalism is very high risk investment. Typically 5/8 or over 62% of all venture capitalism endeavors lose money. The venture capitalist is looking for NOT the 38% of such efforts that make money, but for the 7% that make “a killing in the marketplace.” The federal government should not be gambling OR doing venture capitalism with taxpayer dollars . . . particularly after three straightforward warnings from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to the White House warned that backing Solyndra was NOT a wise move.
IF and WHEN a green-tech company run by a 21st Century version of Thomas Alva Edison actually produces viable mass-market green technology . . . the government won’t need to be involved at all. Even the nutcases who “produced” muon-catalyzed fusion were offered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of start-up dough until their methodology was deemed fraudulent. Yet even today twenty-two years after that revelation, when Rajjpuut types in “cold fusion” in his web browser he gets 10,400,000 hits. Green tech is a lot like high school in that being popular is no guarantee of lifelong success. The mere highly-attractive nature of an idea (like green energy or radical environmentalism) might be a selling point for science fiction writers but real science ain’t done that way. As Edison rued: “science is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” . . . and the Obama administration has not done its homework on either green tech or global warming (radical environmentalism).
They have also been utterly UNforthcoming when it comes to the reality of green-tech's effect on the environment. For example we can't irrigate vegetables in California creating 40% UNemployment in some areas because tiny fish (the delta smelt) might get sucked into the piping; but the large electrical-generating windmills kill tens of thousands of birds and we hear not a peep (pun intended). They don't dare tell us of the environmental cost of their ridiculous "Cash for Clunkers" program that drove the average cost of a used car today up by $1,900. They don't tell us that hybrid "green" cars are about eight times more toxic in the manufacturing process than normal ICE (internal combustion engine) ones.
Think of Solyndra and other such frauds as ‘pathological science’ or ‘wishful-thinking energy.’ We’ve had real ‘green energy’ for thousands of years in the form of water-wheels in some form or other and windmills have served for centuries to grind grain and other such tasks . . . the failing of green-technology isn’t that it doesn’t work. Much of it does work marvelously. The failing of green-tech is that RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW it can NOT be harnessed in such a fashion as to replace carbon-fuels. In fact after six decades of devotion to the lovely idea and sweet promise of ‘a green energy evolution’ the largest and most reliable renewable energy source right here and right now in America is still the wood burning stove which generates 2.5%** of our nation’s energy.
Coal meanwhile still accounts for 48%. However, some groups claim that coal today only accounts for 23% of all our energy. The same groups claim that hydroelectric energy generates 7.3% of our renewable CLEAN energy and is our largest source of renewable. Since coal-generated electrical power is often used at peak use times to pump water to produce hydro-electricity . . . Rajjpuut will stand with the coal companies’ stats until some definitive study is done.
You do recall that candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008 that his energy policies “would necessarily make the cost of electricity skyrocket” and that they’d “bankrupt the coal companies.” Where Rajjpuut comes from that’s called “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
Despite all the raps on America by environmental excessivists, the United States is only the 2nd largest consumer of energy in the world (China is #1); and ranks only #7 in the world in per capita energy use (Canada is the only large country ahead of the U.S. and Norway is the only medium-sized country where their individual citizens use more energy on average they we do here in America). Meanwhile the United States has discovered far and away the largest oil repository in the world (the Bakken Fields) but cannot use it because of environmental regulations so except for a few companies allowed to drill on North Dakota Indian reservations we get nothing. We also have the largest natural gas resources in the world but they’re being assailed by the environmental Nazis. And in Western Colorado (where Rajjpuut once worked for a weekly newspaper lo’ so many years ago), Utah and Wyoming has enough keragen (a.k.a. marlstone or more incorrectly: “oil shale”) to provide energy for the entire planet at today’s consumption rates for the next seven and a half centuries . . . but Mr. Obama says, “NO! And his EPA is closing down coal plants; and his Interior Dept. is obstructing oil drilling offshore. But, by God, we can sure as hell put $535 million into Solyndra.
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** Because of smoke and emissions and spotted owls and snail darters and endangered ferrets the radical environmentalists running the Oval Office and our president do NOT consider wood either “renewable” or “green.” They hate logging operations almost as much as they do coal mining.
^^ Actually, we just heard that someplace around the San Joaquin Valley, CA that ELF (the Environmental Liberation Front) was squawking about bird deaths in a windmill valley claiming that endangered raptors were heavily victimized. It's a shame that elves don't fly.
