Skip to main content

The Trib hates solar panels...and wants you to hate them too!

Once more, dear readers, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review proves itself no friend of the environment, nor a help in finding solutions to America's coming energy crisis. No, instead, they remain stuck in the past, helplessly, willingly, in thrall to the gas, oil and coal companies that once powered our country but whose time has now come.

The good editors at the Trib decided to take aim at solar power in their editorial "More 'green' folly." The occasion? The shutdown of Evergreen Solar, Inc. in Massachusetts after two years there and $30 million in state subsidies. This serves as an excuse for the attack against green technology that follows.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_719316.html

The editors claim that alternative fuels are a white elephant, the only thing green about them their "insatiable appetite for the public's green." They "remain affixed to the public dime. And that's neither palatable nor sustainable."

Easy for the high priests of the fossil fuel industry to proclaim. $30 million for two years is bad, isn't it? Well, what about the subsidies for gas and oil?

According to a Reuters article from a year ago, discussing the budget for that year, President Obama wanted to eliminate oil and gas subsidies that together over ten years were equal to $36.5 billion dollars. That's billion with a B. Here's the article, lest you doubt;

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6103RM20100201

A little rough math reveals that to be 3.65 billion dollars each year. I don't see the Trib complaining about that, do I? No, it's only alternative fuels that catch their ire, because they have a definite agenda, one that marches in lockstep with ExxonMobile and BP and against our shared environment.

The only folly here is continuing to subsidize big corporations who routinely rake in billions in profit. This from the same people who think any subsidy is creeping socialism.

Oh, and I should mention that Evergreen Solar, Inc. moved and took 800 jobs to China. Perhaps that's because China is serious about alternative energy (they use fossil fuels as well, to be sure, but maintain a high level of green energy in comparison to the rest of the industrialized world) and willing to actually support it?

Comments

  1. Solar panels generate electricity by converting the energy radiated from the sun. The efficiency of these renewable power sources is getting better with the progress of technology and they are getting more common.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Today I Am Ashamed of My Alma Mater

Over a week ago, my alma mater, Clarion University of Pennsylvania, released what it touted as a "bold" and "ambitious" workforce plan for the next several years. The backlash was both strong and immediate, forcing the University Administration, currently headed by President Karen Whitney, to release a " Frequently Asked Questions " for its plan. The outrage on social media, as well as a MoveOn.org petition with several thousand signatures, doubtless have already channeled the displeasure of the community, alumni, and students with the plan. The University is accepting public feedback, but this seems to be only a political window-dressing for a plan that Whitney herself was  quoted  as saying "...is 95-98% a done deal." For over a week I debated over what form a blog on the topic would take, and while I realize that what I have to say here is little different from what I and others have already stated elsewhere, I feel the need to address thi...

How I Left Creationism

There is a discussion going on right now in the science community about whether or not we should debate creationists: it is a debate within a debate, if you will. There are good arguments on both sides, but I have to think that we should debate creationists, and we should do it as often as we can stand it. Why do I think this? Last week, I saw that Michael Shermer posted a link to a story of a woman who argued this very point. As a former creationist, it was going to debates between Shermer and Kent Hovind that began to convince her of the legitimacy of evolution and of science. I too was once a creationist. Without ever having read anything about it, without it ever having been mentioned in class (I never heard a word about evolution in high school), I was ready to pounce at the merest mention of the topic as false and godless, two of the favorite creationist talking-points. I look back at this self in amazement, at how ignorant and proud of that ignorance I was, how I failed to ...

The Hovinds...Still Poking at Straw Men

Kent Hovind, the false "Dr. Dino", and his ilk are at it again. In a new article on his website, Hovind (or whoever authored the piece, perhaps his son) claims that while creationists have no problems using miracles to explain events (a habit that perpetually makes them unfit to do real science), evolutionists criticize them for it, even though, in Hovind's mind, they rely on miracles just as much to explain their "religion" of descent through natural selection. This is, at its core, demonstrably nonsense. He claims that a "miracle" is needed to make stars and planets form out of gas, a supposed violation of Boyle's Law because there was no "outside force" acting on the gas and dust. How about gravity, Dr. Dino? That would certainly explain it, no miracles needed here. This attack is a non-sequitur. The objection has everything to do with astronomy and cosmology and nothing to do with evolution, which is the development of new species o...