The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 11)

What a nightmare! Wind, solar, photovoltaic cells, hydrogen, biofuels -- all of them already old, explored, expensive, destructive of environment. I am a retired engineer, 75 years old; my first solar project in 1964 at UCLA was a fake -- it produced limited heating under California sun for a single-story department store at the cost of about 5 times that of electric power. Solar power plants -- we designed and built them, small though they were (about 100 megawatts with the sun in zenith); they covered a lot of land while killing all life under those convex (or was it concave?) mirrors and cost some 1$/kilowatt-hour. Their cost was absorbed by law into the overall production by electric utilities, raising the average cost of kilowatt-hour from 7 cents to 8 cents. We also built wind farms on hilltops (those turbines are veritable cuisinarts for birds -- large ones, too, such as eagles and albatrosses); their cost of some $2 per kilowatt-hour was also by law sunk into the overall costs by utility companies.

p>Geothermal power -- that technology is older than either wind or solar by several decades; such plants have operated since the 1950's in California, the Philippines, Mexico. The residues of the hot stuff released from the earth contains highly radioactive Strontium and Cesium in addition to Arsenic, all to be buried in land fills. Their cost of about 20 cents per kilowatt-hour is also mixed in the normal electric power cost, thus hiding it from the public scrutiny. Well, how about hydrogen cells? Hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water, using huge amounts of electric power from coal, oil, gas, or nuclear power plants; then it has to be placed into heavy steel containers under pressure of several thousand pounds. Just like ethanol, hydrogen production is energy-negative; in addition, imagine a head-on collision of two such cars in a city intersection -- some four blocks of apartment buildings rendered into dust. Finally we come to photovoltaic cells - also an old technology. When used on space vehicles to run computers, their cost of some $200 per kilowatt-hour is justified for such a purpose -- but to run our factories, cars, and trucks? Plug-in hybrids? We already have those -- remember golf carts? And the electricity in those plugs -- where will it be produced and how? To call these technologies new is a height of ignorance -- but what else would you expect from our aging and criminally ignorant flower children? br> -- Marc Jeric br> Las Vegas, Nevada /p> p> Comprehensive and powerful! I wish Liberals had the courage to read this and study its clarity! Thank you, br> -- Tim Dougherty br> Granite Bay, California /p> p> NOTHING LIKE THEY USED TO BE br> Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. and Alan B. Somers' In Michael Phelps' Skin

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