Obama on Coal and Electricity Rates... "Rates will necessarily skyrocket"

These two videos have come to light regarding Obama's "policy" on "Cap-and-Trade"

He mentions "Solar, Wind, and Bio-Diesel"... Solar and Wind power have not met the bloated promises that were made, in fact, Solar panels have a nominal efficiency hovering around 30%, this varies on the design of the panel itself, where more advanced models may be 40%. Efficiency is where the light received by the panel being 100% and only 30% is converted to electricity.

Wind power is no better in its efficiency... I recently read an article (found here: Wind Turbines and the Energy in Wind Many thanks to the engineer who wrote it.)

Wind turbines are at the mercy of physics, and those physical limitations were spelled out in Betz's Law... and to quote the above article:

"First there is the little piece of bad news called the Betz' law. Back in 1919 a smart German physicist named Albert Betz figured out that the most you can possibly get out of wind turbine is around 59% of the power in the wind. This is an unassailable bit of physics. Stop whining about it. I'm not going to prove it here but it is not hard to at least understand why we can never convert 100% of the wind's power."

The reasoning behind the max efficiency of 59% is because to either reach 90 or 100% efficiency, would mean stopping the air completely. This is physically not possible since the air has to continue to move through the blades in order to maintain motion.

"A given wind turbine has a "design point" that generally defines it's peak efficiency at the wind speed for which the system is designed. At wind speeds above and below the design speed the efficiency is the same or less - maybe much less. If a turbine's best efficiency is 40% at a wind velocity of 9 meters per second (about 20 mph), it will be 40% only at that wind speed. At all other wind speeds it will be something worse. That wind turbine will generally operate at lower than its best efficiency, because wind speeds are never constant or average. "

Now you might want to let that sink in for a minute. Basically, due to the variations in wind speed, efficiency will be relatively low, and on top of it, it will not provide a steady, stable source of power. It will need to be offset by another source that can be adjusted to compensate for the sag created by slowing in air motion. And this is a problem in itself since power grids can't instantaneously compensate for variations in power. Nuclear, coal, natural gas, they all provide a steady source of energy that is stable. Electrical needs require this. In addition, the amount of wind turbines required to provide any really meaningful amount of energy would be enormous, and is simply not practical on a massive scale. In niche areas, where energy generation is difficult (Hawaii comes to mind) They are useful so long as your energy requirements do not exceed the real estate you're willing to give up to accommodate the turbines. (We won't go into the noise these things create)

From the article I quoted above he does state the following:

"As cool as wind turbines are, I've got to tell you that I don't think wind energy will ever supply more than a small percentage of our (human race) electricity needs.You just can't get that much energy out of given amount of space. You'd have to have them just about everywhere. Still, it can, and should, be a part of a diversified energy strategy."

In fairness I would agree to a point. But lets not try to convince ourselves that Wind and Solar will replace Coal, Nuclear and Natural Gas. It just ain't going to happen and isn't physically possible no matter how much Obama and the Democrats want to squeeze that turd of an idea out of their collective butts.(colorful metaphor isn't it?)

Now we come to the idea of "bio-diesel" Given the amount of diesel fuel consumed in this country (and remember, Ships use it too in LARGE quantities), there simply ISN'T ENOUGH corn or vegetable oil or whatever other organic matter that can be used for the process of manufacturing it to offset what is being used today from petroleum. I would agree that as a mechanism for recycling waste vegetable or other oils is a fine idea... but we SHOULD NOT be dedicating our food supply to energy production in any way shape or form. This is just NUTS! Why? Because there is only so much land available for farming... this does a number of things that are detrimental in a catastrophic way... If you increase your land area by utilizing open spaces for farming "energy production," you decrease those open spaces, expose valuable soil to erosion, dramatically increase you fresh water consumption, not only in the growing of crops but in the production of the chemicals needed to produce the bio-diesel such as methanol, which is essential to the process. These create a dramatic increase in demand for items we have in limited supply, Food and Fresh water are chief among them. Water becomes a premium commodity, and food prices will skyrocket. Not to mention to address the cherished arguements of the left... it DAMAGES THE ENVIRONMENT!!

Don't take my word for it... do your own research and draw your own conclusions.