Climate change, wind turbines & higher energy costs. Obama's laughing all the way.

It's a done deal. Global warming - or is it climate change...wait, I think it's now called climate disruption - whatever the name, President Obama has declared it's real, it's here now, people are dying, and we all have to pay the price for it.

Of course since not everyone in Congress (or America in general) believes this climate hoax, Obama has been unable to get his coveted Cap and Trade legislation passed, which would simply raise taxes exponentially on average Americans - without doing a thing to actually impact the earth's temperature. No worries. He'll just bypass Congress to get what he wants. He's been doing it since he's been in office, so why stop now?

In this instance, Obama is unleashing the unbridled power of the Environmental Protection Agency on existing power plants to impose drastic carbon-dioxide emission restrictions on them this Monday. It doesn't matter that this will not diminish the earth's temperature (which is a good thing, since we've been in a cooling pattern for years), but the regulations will indeed increase prices for all of us. 

Unfortunately, uninformed citizens believe that renewable sources of energy are the answer. In fact, on Memorial Day, the Detroit Free Press published results of a Sierra Club poll declaring that more than 3 in 5 DTE Energy customers and Michigan voters support replacing the state’s coal-burning power plants with renewable energy sources. 

But as pointed out by a very knowledgeable engineer I know whose career was in climate systems at Ford, how many of these same people would choose renewable energy sources if they were informed that doing so would double or even triple their electricity rates, and that such renewable resources mean blanketing the Michigan landscape with tens of thousands of wind turbines (want a visual of how those wind turbines would look? Click here.) 

The bonus is that all these wind turbines would generate only intermittent (e.g., unreliable) power while they effectively kill thousands of birds that fly into their path. Imagine trying to power all of Michigan's air conditioners in August on a typically non-windy day in a Michigan summer - all while paying exorbitant fees for traditional energy sources.

As for the EPA regulations set to be put on existing energy plants this coming week, only 1100 pounds of Co2 per megawatt-hour of power will now be allowed to be emitted by power plants. About 40% of America's energy comes from coal, and current well-running power plants are at about 40% efficiency, which equates to about CO2 of 2605 lbs per megawatt. To achieve the EPA’s 1100 lb requirement, the plant would need to reach 95% efficiency. There is currently no viable commercial energy source that comes anywhere close to that level, nor is there a viable method to capture CO2.

But plants required to do everything they can to meet government mandates means skyrocketing electric rates for all of us (see a snapshot from Heritage.org below). This will hurt consumers, businesses, jobs and, of course, the overall economy in general. And for what? To calm the hysterics of those who are completely uninformed that climate change is a complete hoax good for nothing more than propaganda to terrify people into accepting higher costs and a lower quality of life.

Obama promised he would bankrupt coal mines and increase energy costs for all of us. Those are about the only two promises he has kept since taking office - that and the one about fundamentally transforming America.

Do we really want to kill traditional energy sources in favor of useless ones?

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