This Just In: Solar Power Sucks!

Shocked face time:

(Special thanks to Grammy for her shocked face)

 
Man I just knew THIS ONE would make it (just like I was convinced Forsyth Community College (1-26) was going to make the NCAA tournament).

From Reuters: Solar Trust of America files bankruptcy:

Solar Trust of America LLC, which holds the development rights for the world's largest solar power project, on Monday filed for bankruptcy protection after its majority owner began insolvency proceedings in Germany.

The Oakland-based company has held rights for the 1,000-megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project in the southern California desert, which last April w on a conditional commitment for a $2.1 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Golly, Solydra looks like a deal compared to this one. At least at Solydra taxpayers were only out $500 million or so. To be fair the loan guarantee was never received but it was close!

Exit question: How does Secretary Chu still have a job?

Unintended consequences: Obama’s war on first responders

Blinded by left-wing ideology, the administration is now putting firefighter's lives at risk all in the name of their misguided attempt to convert an unwilling public to lethal alternative-energy sourced transportation. This from Townhall.com (emphasis mine):

Last week, the Obama Administration sought to increase the Chevrolet Volt purchaser tax credit from $7,500 to $10,000.

All this for a car so dangerous to first responders that the Department of Energy allocated $4.4 million dollars for programs to prevent fire fighters from electrocuting themselves while trying to rescue crash victims.

You mean first responder now have to have special training to deal with an accident involving a Chevy Volt. What's next? A napalm powered car? Hell why not nuclear powered cars? Anything but highly efficient, affordable and SAFE evil oil.

Seriously, how many people need to be sacrificed at the alter of the alternative-energy God until the electorate wakes up and realizes that this is nothing more than liberal feel-good navel gazing?

So just for the record, not only are the owners of the Volt in mortal danger due to the car's inability to not catch fire, but now those who we pay to save lives in emergency situations are at risk as well.

Honestly, I don't have a problem if someone is stupid enough to buy this toxic time bomb. I figure that's just natural-selection working its way through the truly stupid among us. You know - culling the herd as it were. But when the decisions these self-righteous simpletons make put innocent first responder's lives at stake, then surely something has gone way way wrong here.

Do you think for one minute that if the government was not involved it this, ahem, project that it would have ever seen the light of day. Can you just imagine the discussion in the boardroom?

CEO: So let me get this straight - the Volt will cost (unsubsidized) over $100,000 - it only goes about 25 miles on a charge - oh and it has the propensity to blow the hell up. Have I missed anything?

Jr. Exec in charge: Um well yes sir, it seems when the battery goes bad it will cost the owner about $10,000 to dispose of it properly.

CEO: Son.

Jr. Exec: Yessir.

CEO: You're fired.

Jr. Exec: Yessir

However, that's fantasy-land folks, because the ever present Obama administration stepped in and got the ball rolling. Not because it was right for the market but rather because it was right with his ideology regardless of how many lives it will cost.

What's that you say? How is this Obama's fault? Well let's see - he and his administration is not only subsiding the manufacture of this rolling bomb but he is taking taxpayer money and offering up to $10,000 rebate on the damn thing.

It is just amazing the contortions liberals will go through just not to face reality. Oil is our best option right now not pixie-dust and car bombs. But, liberals, unable to help themselves and let the market decide when an alternative vehicle is right, they just gotta muck with it. And by doing so all these horrendous unintended consequences is the result.

And who ultimately will have to pay for all this nonsense? Well it looks like first responders with their lives and the rest of us with our wallets.

Europe is Officially a Testosterone Free Zone

Europe's 2012 Car of the Year

Guess what car was named the Europe's Car of the Year for 2012? The classy Audi A6? Nope. What about the BMW 6 Series? Not quite. Surely the sexy Mercedes SLK made it to the round of 9? Sorry no soap. In fact none of these made it to the second round. What super cool classy make-ya-wanna-drive-all-day automobile was the selection committees' number 1? Drum roll please - Why the Chevy Volt of course! Wait, say WHAT?

The joint candidacy of Opel/Vauxhall Ampera and Chevrolet Volt, with 330 points, has been distinctly preferred by CotY 2012 Jury members, who put Volkswagen Up! second with 281 points and Ford Focus third, with 256.

First of all please tell the marketing folks at Volkswagen to NOT put an exclamation point in their products name, if you need to put it in that's probably a problem. Second tell your design team to stop stealing their ideas from the Fischer Price Little People Mover Bus.

That being said, is there any doubt that the European car show is trying to make a statement here? Here is their summary:

Volt/Amperaoffer is a mature product, after years of development and perfectioning by General Motors, and the first example of an electric vehicle with extended range. Others will come along this path. The concept, addressed to the fears of potential customers in front of an incipient recharging net of electricity for vehicles, implies energy generated on board, to continue the journey, once exhausted the rechargeable batteries. In the case of the Ampera/Volt, that means a 1.4 petrol engine working in semi-stationary regime. The balance between electric drive range and combustion-engine help takes in account the usually short daily displacements of the average car user. The electrical autonomy is rated at around 60 km with normal driving, then it comes the 1.4 to the rescue.

General Electric’s New Early Retirement Program

I saw this today at Gas 2:

A memo leaked to Green Car Reports lays out GE's plans for their new fleet of Volts… [T]he memo, sent to employees of GE Healthcare Americas team explains that all sedan, crossover, and minivan purchases in 2012 will be replaced by the Chevy Volt.

GE will offer estimates for installation Level 2 Charging Stations, through all-gas use will be allowed when there is not electric option. Any employees who opt out of the Volt program will not be compensated for their expenses.

Given the propensity for this rolling bomb vehicle to explode looks like GE is trying to trim their work force!

Just a reminder - Al Gore is still crazy

Greenhouse Gore is at it again. This time he is being interviewed by Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky on UStream. During the interview he equated the skeptisim his movement is receiving to the civil rights movement of the sixties (emphasis mine):

"I remember, again going back to my early years in the South, when the Civil Rights revolution was unfolding, there were two things that really made an impression on me," Gore said. "My generation watched Bull Connor turning the hose on civil rights demonstrators and we went, 'Whoa! How gross and evil is that?' My generation asked old people, 'Explain to me again why it is okay to discriminate against people because their skin color is different?' And when they couldn't really answer that question with integrity, the change really started."

Moral equivalence time? Bull Connor was out of his mind. And he paid dearly for his belief that blacks are inferior to whites. But now, Gaia Gore is trying to equate the hatred of blacks in the south with the 'hatred' of his beloved climate change movement. Never mind that there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that man is causing any change in the climate. He continues by suggesting the way to win the day is simply ostracizing those who don't believe the way he does:

"- but there came a time when racist comments would come up in the course of the conversation and in years past they were just natural. Then there came a time when people would say, 'Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don't go for that so don't talk that way around me. I just don't believe that.' That happened in millions of conversations and slowly the conversation was won."

"We have to win the conversation on climate," Gore added.

So, rather than blinding us with science (all apologies to Thomas Dolby), Al wants his religious followers to make the debate about conscious and faith. Brilliant! This takes that pesky scientific method out of the debate and makes it a leap of faith! Well done Al well done indeed. He then suggests that there is a 'vast right wing conspirecy' crippling he and his follower's great work.

"This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money," Gore said.

This is just rich. All the research I have seen questioning the climate alarmists have concentrated on the data NOT the reputation of the scientific community as Gore suggests here. In fact it has been the other way around. Any scientist questioning Grand Pubba Gore and his nonsense gets their funding cut off and ostracized from the scientific community. Projection?

This just in from Al ‘Greenhouse’ Gore: I’m still irrelevant

 
I think more people have actually written about this than saw the show, but 'Jump the Shark' Al was at it again as a guest on Countdown this week. I'll not bore you with his 'Spring Uprising' nonsense, but I did pull one plum out of his monotonous drone (Emphasis Mine):

"We need to have an American spring," Gore said. "You know, the Arab Spring - the nonviolent part of it isn't finished yet - but we need to have an American Spring, a kind of an American Tahrir Square. Non-violent change, where people from the grassroots get involved again."

"I want to tell you, Keith, this country is in trouble," Gore explained to the sympathetic Olbermann. "Our democracy has been withering on the vine, it really has been."

Democracy Withering on the vine, his highness laments. I would submit that if you substituted government, for democracy, he would see no difference. And that would be, well, terrible right? Al and his ilk just cannot fathom that the American people have simply had enough and are 'rebelling' in peaceful, spontaneous rallies against increasing the government. There simply has to be another explanation: The Koch brothers? Rupert Murdoch? or, um, some vague Evil Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

These people have such unveiled contempt for the American people that at the merest hint that the population is thinking for themselves their collective bowels turn to water. The idea of the democratic process working, where politicians actually do what they say they are going to do, is such a foreign concept, that all the elites can do is whine and cry foul. Every time the People take back their rights, the elite's decade's long hold on power diminishes that much more. And that ladies and gentlemen is what has their undies in a wad.