The government is establishing 17 new “solar energy zones” on 285,000 acres in six states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. More than half of the land — 153,627 acres — is in Southern California.
Interior also established 19 million acres — nearly 30,000 square miles — of so-called “variance zones” that will allow developers to propose solar projects in those areas. Environmental and other review of projects proposed in variance zones would be handled on a case-by-case basis.
The Obama administration has authorized 10,000 megawatts of solar, wind and geothermal projects that, when built, would provide enough energy to power more than 3.5 million homes, Salazar said.
10,000 megawatts on 19 million acres? That works out to 500 watts (peak) unreliable energy per acre of environmental destruction, millions of birds chopped up, habitat destroyed, power lines everywhere, and a massive legacy of stupidity and environmental destruction from the moron in chief.
You can get that much energy from a few tiny fossil fuel powered plants.
h/t to Dave G
Who would have thought that we would one day be in a fight to save humanity from the eco-loons. They truly are a danger to our fossil-fuel-powered economy and the affluent lifestyle we have come to enjoy over the half century or so. They want to turn back the clock on the industrial revolution.
This is insane. Also note the huge long-term ecohazard and clean up costs of solar farms, and this aspect is presented here: http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/the-sun-is-setting-on-solar-power-the-moneys-gone-and-nobodys-asking-any-questions/
An excerpt:
I asked this about turbines on the “green energy is for morons” post. People just do not realize what a mess this is. I have been asking people for years “what happens when these things are abandoned?” You can’t abandon a mine, power plant or anything similar without “reclamation”. I tell people I would rather live next to oil wells (which I do) or a mine because these are dismantled and removed when the coal/oil run out. Yet no one asked about “green energy”, mostly because they obediently followed the idea that green is good. It will be a huge problem.
Reality c, you make good points in your morons post. Yes, I also hear that abandoned wind farms are a major eyesore, and ecohazard. And clean up expense… or are we just going to let them rot, a worsening eyesore on the landscape for decades? The proprietors, the campaign donors and cronies, reap their massive subsidies, get their salaries and stock options, and then get the heck out, leaving the wreckage behind, probably just moving on to milk the next govt subsidy. Can you say: “my company just went bankrupt, lol! And now I’m rich as h!” http://toryaardvark.com/2011/11/17/14000-abandoned-wind-turbines-in-the-usa/
3 points on wind that are important as I mention above that are usually overlooked or ignored in the mad leftist rush toward costly unsightly ineffectual wind power. Two points are the declining property values and health problems for those unlucky enough to live in the vicinity. Those spillover costs are rarely factored in. And huge point is the birds. No kidding on that. Especially the big raptors. You can google it and find shocking numbers. At just 1 wind farm in the Central Valley CA I saw estimated numbers of Falcons & Eagles etc killed, by breed, and it was near a million big birds a year, at just one wind farm! (Speaking of Big Birds! lol… while Romney may want to unsubsidize one Big Bird, O is killing big birds by the millions!). I wish I had the link. At the very moment that we heard about these appalling bird deaths, we should have put an immediate halt to it all. But the libs pushed “Forward” without a moments hesitation as if they didn’t have the slightest concern. Shameful.
Speaking of losers……
Apparently Obama does not even have Oregon, New Mexico, and Minnesota locked down anymore. For a Democrat, that is black at that, and what’s more a socialist, that is UNBELIEVABLE!!!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html
He even has lost 8 points in California. Turn out the lights. This pasty’s over.
Typo:
party’s
That’s no typo. Our communitiy disorganizer is a patsy to the green energy nuts and hopefully it is over in a few weeks. If not, we are in real trouble.
Pasty works for me!
Romney’s first big “what’s your brand?” debate statement began with something climate skeptical blogs and more recently popular book writers competently allowed him to focus on: E-N-E-R-G-Y.
It is not in a metaphorical but in a literal sense that energy sets our lives, our whole economy, in motion. To ration it is to ration vitality itself, akin to banning coffee, but with much more deadly consequence.
The pasty party being over works for me
My first thought was:
Californians are pretty much broke in a stagnant economy. They won’t be building houses, they certainly won’t need as much electricity so the idea is throw these in before anyone in the state wakes up to the reality of the situation.
And how many acres of federal land have been put aside for oil and gas development where the government is encouraging such development? None, really.
I hate to be long-winded, but here it comes:
I live in Texas, just north of the Eagle Ford oil formation. It appears that this may be one of the largest oil finds in the history of America, but it is dwarfted by one other, which will be discussed later. In Texas, we have very little federal land, and we are able to take advantage of our natural resources. What is happening over the Eagle Ford formation is amazing. Small towns that have for decades been struggling to survive are now bustling. Poor farmers and ranchers who have struggled their whole lives to live and work on the land that they love, rather than facing foreclosure, are becoming multi millionaires over night……Contrary to our current administration’s attitude, that is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Make no mistake, enviornmental extremeists are going to pull out all the stops to see if they can keep us from taking advantage of the Eagle Ford. Protection of our environment is very important. It is possible, however, to take advantage of our bounty of natural resources, resources that have made us a great nation, and be vigilent in the protection of our environment. Our environmental laws should not be the vehicle environmental extremists can use to shut down the progress we desperately need if we are to succeed as a nation. We can all name examples of our enviornmental laws being twisted to accomplish the goals of a tiny minority of environmental extremists. We should all be environmentalists, but not extremists.
Thanks to our current administration, the meaningful governance of our environment has been taken away from Congress and usurped by the E.P.A., which is now run by a group of extremeists, and their power has become frightening. In the past, the E.P.A. has been the vehicle under which meaningful environmental reform has been accomplished, and therefore most Americans have a good attitude towards the E.P.A. No one is in favor of a dirty environment. Unfortunately, the power-play by the current administration and the E.P.A. has the ability to help bring our nation to its knees, at a time we simply cannot afford it. The E.P.A. no longer looks out for the people of America, they crave power that they are already abusing. Until this changes, the E.P.A. should not be viewed as a favorable institution by the vast majority of Americans. We need to question everything they do, and weigh the benefits against the detriments of each of their new regulations.
It has been obvious for at least 30 years that the aging of the baby boomers will be a fiscal challenge. Rather than facing this challenge, the can has been kicked down the road for 30 years. The next kick may send the can over the cliff, making it impossible to survive as a great nation.
The unfunded liabilities of our nation are staggering. Our sixteen trillion dollars in debt, although significant, pales in comparison to the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, which together may amount to one hundred trillion dollars.
The safety-net concept of Social Security is a good and necessary concept, but we need to be able to pay for it. As a nation, we should provide a means for less fortunate people to have medical care. However, we should not provide that medical care with a 2700 page law that no congressman who voted for the bill even read. We should not provide that medical care by lying about it’s cost. We need to face those costs with honesty and determine how we can pay for it without permanently crippling out nation.
How do we pay for this? It brings me back to the original question: How many acres of federal land have been put aside for oil and gas exploration where the government is encouraging such exploration. Sadly, the answer may be zero.
How much recoverable oil lies under Federal land? According to the GAO, not exactly a right-wing organization, there is more recoverable oil in the Green River Formation than exists in the rest of the world, an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. The Green River formation lies under a mostly vacant area of land where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together. And who owns the land and the mineral rights? We do!
In small plots of land over the Eagle Ford, the landowner’s mineral rights are 25% of the gross revenues of the well. For an oil find such as this, the Federal Government could do better than that. Do the math….if oil stays around $100 per barrell and we negotiate a 40% royalty interest, the revenues from the Green River Formation could be $60 trillion dollars, enough money to erase all of our fiscal transgressions over the past 40 years. Can this be done in an enviromentally sensitive manner, absolutely. Will it cause changes in the landscape? Yes it will. Are those change worth the benefit? Yes they are.
In their testimony in front of Congress, the GAO also pointed out some of the “socioeconomic challenges” of development of the Green River Formation, which include bringing in a “sizeable influx of workers who along with their families put addtional stress on local infrastructure” and making “planning for growth difficult for local governments.” Our respons to this should be…”don’t throw me in the Briar Patch”.
There will also be other problems created by the development of the Green River Formation, such as the Middle East Nations having to find other countries to buy their oil, and the reversal of our current balance of payments with other nations. We can handle that, too.
The technology to take advantage of the Green River Formation may not currently exist. But it will never exist unless we make the attempt. Only a few years ago, the technology to take advantage of the Eagle Ford did not exist, and look what we are doing now.
Make no mistake, we cannot dig ourselves out of our current economic situation without harvesting our natural resources. We are fortuate to have this opportunity and it may be our last chance to survive as a great nation. It is incomprehensible to me that we are not doing all we can to take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity.
This election will hopefully put this green nightmare away for good.