In my column of 18 May 2009, Of Lemmings and Men, I detailed electric power generation methods and the costs involved. And that the US administration, in their quest for a “green” (read no carbon emissions) economy has chosen to ignore the one technology that already exists in the US that not only has no carbon emission, but slightly lower than the cost of existing coal, gas and oil fired generation. Nuclear energy is basically a US technology and it already represents about 20% of power generation in the US now. Wind and solar technology not only costs much more, but also are imported technologies. Wind generation technology is mainly a Spanish export where a substantial amount of Spanish electricity is wind powered. But a recent announcement by a Spanish economist states that for every job created by wind power in Spain costs two other jobs. And the created jobs are mainly temporary. As for solar power, a gulf state in México, attempting to become more “green”, has started a wide project of solar powered street lighting. And that technology will be imported from Germany and South Asia. And the Mexican government estimates that the electricity generated will cost 20 times as much as “standard” oil fired generated power.
You also might keep in mind that both solar and wind power operate at the whims of nature. Not by the timely needs of man.
But Nuclear power has been vetoed by Sen. Harry Reid and his Nevada NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard). The Yuca Mountain depositary for radioactive waste has an investment of 13 billion dollars now. Seven billion from the nuclear power industry as required by law.
Mr. Obama, what ever happened to creating US jobs? You offer nothing but lies.
Now, let’s look at another related subject: Greenhouse gases.
The US government recognizes only five greenhouse gasses. These are the gasses that trap heat into the atmosphere. They are: CO2, Methane, Nitrous oxide (NO2) and other miscellaneous gasses, listed in order to their greenhouse effects on the atmosphere. Of these gases, CO2 represents 72% of the total effect on the atmosphere with the remaining other gases contributing 28%. And a significant amount of these gasses are man-made. But note that all of this ignores water vapor.
The US government does not list water vapor as a greenhouse gas “because it is almost completely naturally present”. This accounting method reminds me of a story about an account applying for a job. He was asked what 2 + 2 equaled. After five minutes of scribbling and cranking an adding machine, he asked, “What do you want to show?”
OK, let’s look at the contribution of water vapor to the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere. Now remember that water vapor is invisible to the eye (not clouds which are small water droplets in the air).
When we add water vapor to the mix of greenhouse gasses, we see that the effect of water vapor alone to the total greenhouse effect is 95.000%! The remaining gasses make up the other 5%. CO2 represents 3.618%. And of that 3.618% in CO2, 3.225% of that amount is man-made.
Another way to present this is that water vapor is 94.999% natural and 0.001% man-made. CO2 is 3.502% natural and 0.117% man-made. Doubling or reducing the CO2 content to this mix would not affect the climate any more than natural climate variations from year to year.
Mr. Obama, you, and your administration, by the use of phony accounting, lie!
In fairness, I should also point out that if the earth had no greenhouse effect in its atmosphere, this would reduce our global surface temperature from the present +15 degrees C to -18 degrees C. In other words, without some greenhouse effect, the earth would be an ice ball!
Added to this mix, the US government wants to introduce a cap and tax market for “carbon credits” in a special market that will make the credit default swaps and derivative trading (that fomented the present economy crash) look like a Sunday School picnic. Scientific American already is reporting that an existing UN cap and tax market is already hopelessly corrupt.
This is not to say that our atmosphere does not need cleaning up. Especially for particulate and NO2 emissions (the main contributors to smog). But this does not include a march to economic oblivion.
Mr. Obama is promising that no new taxes will come from cap and tax. A lie! Raising the cost of energy taxes everything and everybody. At least China, India and many other “developing” countries have told the US to take a long walk off a short pier on this issue. And China, alone, is now the highest CO2 emitter now.
Some reading for you on this issue: www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/uk_watervapour.html www.physicalgeography.net/fundmentals/5b.html
And for much more, just go to Google.
Liars!
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Richard N. Baldwin T., a HispanicVista.com (http://www.hispanicvista.com/) contributing columnist, lives in Tlalnepantla, Edo de México. E-mail at: [email protected]