My top 5 favorite political cartoons for the week….
by Mike Lester at Townhall.com…
by Clay Jones at GoComics.com, liberal spin but still funny…
by Chip Bok at Townhall.com…
by Dana Summers at Townhall.com…
by Glenn McCoy at Townhall.com…
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
My husband’s in wind energy. It’s actually an excellent renewable resource. I get the joke, but at the same time, I’m all for pushing in a more renewable direction energy-wise.
The Lester and McCoy comics in particular made me laugh :)
Seems to me if we’re a fan of life, renewable resources like Wind Energy would be the way to go. Maybe I’ve missed the headlines, but I can’t think of a massive disaster in the wind or solar energy that has cost lives.
How many lives are we fine with losing because we want cheap energy from coal, oil, and nuclear sources?
Now I have to love babies AND windmills??
phhhhhtttt
Cause the deaths from elective abortion are comparable!!
I like the idea of wind energy (lower case) and solar in certain limited instances. These will grow in usage in time as the economics of their application makes sense to the users.
Ex: You can vote for using less nuclear and coal generated power by unplugging from the system now. Why wait? And quit driving and start walking–this will help lower the dependency on middle eastern oil and also potentially contribute to the pro-life cause with fewer lives lost as you will not get into any accidents.
The point of course is that with the conveniences of modern life that fossil fuels and nuclear power provide also comes technological and environmental challenges–things such as minimizing risks to life and protecting our air and water quality. We have made tremendous strides in both of those areas and we continue to do so.
There is an attractiveness to the idea of being closer to nature and depending less on the power grid and modern communications. The Amish do fairly well in this regard, but even they depend on products brought here by modern means of transport and find their lives made easier at times, for example by accepting rides in automobiles and using cell phones. There is no ideologically pure lifestyle completely free of “harm” to the environment or risk of the loss of human life.
All of the future engineers, scientists, and inventors that we aborted since Roe v. Wade would no doubt have us much further down the path to a better life if only we had allowed them to live.
Ex Gop Voter
And when business not American’s get a vision of alternative energy sources then we will have real change. Until that happens they’ll keep on telling the public what they need to think kind of like the pro-aborts do. Maybe if there were some type of grassroots effort where more money was spent on helping small business that are pro-environment and small businesses that are pro-life where the American taxpayer had a real choice. My hope is that Americans wake up but even with what is happening in Japan I don’t see that happening. I’m hoping some type of miracle happens where people will understand the power they have to effect positive change. Wouldn’t it be really cool if history were to record that in a time when air and water quality were at an all time low and unborn babies were being treated like trash the american people woke up and created businesses where life and environment were cherished. And of course in that order.
Ex-GOP Voter says: March 20, 2011 at 3:01 pm
1. Seems to me if we’re a fan of life, renewable resources like Wind Energy would be the way to go.
2. Maybe I’ve missed the headlines, but I can’t think of a massive disaster in the wind or solar energy that has cost lives.
3. How many lives are we fine with losing because we want cheap energy from coal, oil, and nuclear sources?
===========================================================
Ex-RINO,
1. I have seen reports of studies to determine the number of birds injured and killed by flying into the blades of spinning wind powered generators. But the proportion wind mills to available airspace is so minescule the data would be meaningless.
2. That might account for the dearth of human deaths attibutable to wind mills.
3. The question reminds me of the dearly departed George Carlins routine about the FDA maximum allowable percentage of rat feces in food products.
But seriously I have lived off the grid. I generated my own electricity and stored it in a bank lead plated deep cylcle batteries.
It is an expensive proposition to purchase enough solar panels, batteries and back up generator and assoiated equipment to produce enough electricity to power the lights and small box appliances.
Go on-line and do a little research for yourself.
“Yor bro ken”
Not everybody is into generating their own electricity. Not everybody is a former Operation Rescue anti-choice domestic terrorist.
Cranky Curmudgeon,
‘Freedom Fighter/Domestic Terrorist’
I do have my mood swings, but they don’t arc quite that wide.
When you toss words around promiscuously they loose their value.
I just read where a fellow on the east coast was convicted of ‘domestic terrorism’ for minting his own silver coins to be used as a medium for bartering.
There is a reason ‘everybody does not generate their own electricity’, but the patently obvious reason is lost on someone with your intellect.
Most people no longer have a need for buggy whips and whale oil.
When Henry Ford developed a method to manufacture automobiles relatively inexpensively and entrepreneurs discovered new methods to locate, recover, refine and distribute products made from crude oil, horse drawn carriages and whale oil lamps were no longer in demand.
If you or Ex-RINO long for those ‘good ol days’ I suggest you commune with the Amish or move to Cuba.
CC says:
Not everybody is into generating their own electricity. Not everybody is a former Operation Rescue anti-choice domestic terrorist.
Is this coming from an Anti-Life domestic terrorist???
“Maybe I’ve missed the headlines, but I can’t think of a massive disaster in the wind or solar energy that has cost lives.”
That’s because wind and solar generate practically no energy relative to gas, coal, and nuclear. Wind and solar are safe because you don’t get much output. They’re also very expensive to produce.
But I still think we should use them if they can help. We need to make use of every reasonable means to produce energy.
“Not everybody is a former Operation Rescue anti-choice domestic terrorist.”
Not everybody is a former Catholic turned anti-God extremist from a state full of conceited heretics who are proud despite the fact that their accent is so absurd that their speech can barely be described as the English language.
Yor Bro Ken
Did you know that there considering putting nuclear waste under the ocean floor? If there were a way to make nuclear energy safe as in it’s potential for destruction very very limited I wonder if it would still be effective as an energy source. That’s what needs to be worked on while safe energy sources are introduced on a wide scale. What do you have against windmills? If I didn’t like the appearance of windmills which I don’t I think windmills are beautiful and had to choose between windmills and the foodchain being compromised I think I would choose windmills. I’m believing that someone will come up with a solution where nucleur energy would continue to be just as safe as it is effective. That would be worthy of a Nobel Peace prize.
This is so off topic and if it just helped me a little I would just keep it to myself but I feel so much better I will share it. I have ADD and I also suffer from clinical depression. Besides that sometimes my thinking is just strained and it’s very hard for me to concentrate and sometimes the depression accompanies it. Well I like to read and ran across several articles about hypothyroidism and how sometimes even with blood tests it can remain undetected. O.K. but if you have all the symptoms but no proof how do you know if that’s the problem. Well today I was having a typical day for me depression upon awakening and throughout the day. Difficulty concentrating but I started notice a difference and my concentration was much better. And I felt so happy. Not just a little happy very happy. So I just asked God what had happened I hadn’t felt this good in a long long time. Even with the welbutrin I never felt this good. So the Holy Spirit just showed me fat. So I thought hmm fat. Thinking maybe I had missed it. At this point I was doing a little research for school and again encountered information about fat so I started thinking about what I had eaten today and decided to go get me some chips. Then I remembered I had eaten avocado earlier. Of course avocado contains fat. At this point I thought well if avocado contains folic acid you will see what effect folic acid has on hypothyroidism. And of course it does. I feel so good I can’t even remember the last time I felt this good. Anyway I had to share it with you’ll because you’ll are almost like family to me. I had noticed in the past when I took folic acid I felt better but avocado must have a lot of folic acid because not only did I feel better but my concentration improved as well. Sorry will try not to go off topic too much in the future. Hope everyone has a environmentally friendly and very healthy week.
1. I have seen reports of studies to determine the number of birds injured and killed by flying into the blades of spinning wind powered generators. But the proportion wind mills to available airspace is so minescule the data would be meaningless.
Point: the companies involved in producing and maintaining wind turbines/farms actually are working on resolving this (relatively minuscule) number of animal deaths. It’s generally bats that are the concern, as they rely on sonar more than on sight. Credible animal activists don’t even bring up the bird deaths at this point, as skyscrapers cause more deaths than all the wind turbines in the U.S., as do cars.
Wind and solar are safe because you don’t get much output. They’re also very expensive to produce.
Expensive to produce and incredibly inexpensive to maintain, relative to the other options out there. As for the output you get, I’d like to see your sources. It is extremely possible to produce enough energy for the entire world on wind and solar sources alone, and the field is constantly advancing. A wind turbine with basic maintenance lasts 20-25 years before needing major overhaul. Running your numbers on that projection, it vastly undercuts any other remotely safe form of electricity. Unfortunately, the cost is primarily up-front.
As an adamantly pro-life woman, I have to ask you fellows to do some more research into renewable resources before casting aside their contributions. I see absolutely nothing wrong with advancing our renewable options before we run out of the limited resources we have. And when I say limited, I mean only that they are not renewable; not unlimited. I do not mean to imply that they are depleted but that they eventually will be gone and that we had ought to strive for better. Would you not agree?
It’s too bad we don’t have a way to tap into the energy of bitter old abortion fans with 85 cats.
I’m all for renewable energy, if I could, I’d have my own windmill and solar power and all… I think it’s selfish to go on using Earth’s natural resources (oil, gas, coal) without gradually changing to renewable energy, because there will come a time in the future when those resources will run out, and people will be left in quite a despair if there’s no alternative. I’ve just seen some documentaries about renewable energy, and we’re not limited to solar and wind power, there’s also hydro energy (where appropriate), and some alternatives like hydrogen power and osmosis (energy produced by fresh water mixing with salty water) and scientists keep coming up with new ideas, I’m confident that in the future we’ll have a choice at least what kind of energy to use.
John L: wind and solar generate practically no energy relative to gas, coal, and nuclear. Wind and solar are safe because you don’t get much output. They’re also very expensive to produce.
This is true. For 2009, the US energy supply had 8% from revewable sources, and half this was from biomass, so wind, solar, hydro and geothermal only totalled 4%.
I’m not against wind power, but it’s still more than twice as expensive as natural gas per BTU, so there is quite a hurdle there to be overcome. Energy usage in the US is increasing and even as we increase the production of renewable energy, I don’t know that it’s enough to equal the increase in overall US energy usage. So, the bottom line is that we’re going to be burning a lot of oil, coal, and natural gas for a long time. The Department of Energy forecasts a significant rise in our usage of fossil fuels, like 30%+ by the year 2030.
Ethanol for energy is a joke, in my opinion. If it even is energy positive, i.e. if there’s a net gain from its production versus what energy is required to produce it, the gain is very small, orders of magnitude less than from crude oil, for example.
Hydrogen power requires energy expenditure in separating the hydrogen in the first place (from water or hydrocarbons), which there too is a major handicap. The costs of producing hydrogen, storing it, and building the new infrastructure system to distribute it is a deal-breaker, IMO, for now.
I’m all for nuclear power, but it’s a long and expensive process to build a new nuke plant, as much as half a billion Dollars in permitting fees, without the guarantee that a permit will be issued.
Per-capita, we tend to use energy for more things all the time, but with efficiency gains, our energy usage has stayed pretty much constant for the last 40 years. In Dollar terms, however, we now pay about 10 times what we did in 1970. IMO, we are finally getting to the point when high energy prices will mean a meaningful decrease in per-capita consumption. This is not going to be fun for us.
Wind power has many friends and foes, and I don’t know how it will end up. It does take a lot of land for a wind farm – 100 to 300 times are much land area versus a conventional power plant of the same generation capacity. Wind turbines also need “clean” wind and this means cutting down the trees in a 30 acre or so area around each one. I also question energy production figures as they are usually reported as peak power, rather than what is actually generated over time with the varying wind velocity.
I really don’t mean to bash wind power here. There may be a time when it’s just as economic as other sources, and once the upfront capital cost has been paid, yearly maintenance is now down to 2% or even 1.5% of that initial cost, for the useful life of the turbine. With it being harder and harder to find oil (for one thing), and the world’s rapidly expanding population, the demographics argue strongly for higher energy prices ahead, so we shall see.
My main experience with wind power is within the WE Energies system, in Wisconsin and Michigan. By law, Wisconsin utilities have to produce 10% of their energy from renewable sources by the year 2015. Wisconsin is pretty flat, without much hydroelectric production or potential, so wind power is the primary avenue left.
WE Energies currently gets 3 to 4% of its energy as renewable, so a lot has to be done in a short time. Wisconsin isn’t great on average wind speed, either, so a lot of turbines are required, and people are resisting having them “in their backyard.” You can certainly see them for a long way, and (perhaps surprisingly) you can hear them too, from a good ways off.
myrtle miller says:
Wouldn’t it be really cool if history were to record that in a time when air and water quality were at an all time low…
Actually the all time low was decades ago (at least here in the U.S.). We have made tremendous strides in cleaning up our streams and air quality, and our coal generating technologies have made quantum leaps in reducing emissions and the trend will continue.
Doug says we have upwards to 8% of our energy was derived from renewable resources. Perhaps. But narrowing it down to wind and solar alone the number I have seen is closer to 1%.
Alternative and renewable energy resources are a great idea and they have proven sustainable and efficient applications in certain instances. However, forcing the consumer to purchase power made from highly inefficient renewables by setting mandates for their usage is a cruel tax on families already struggling to pay their bills.
Doug says we have upwards to 8% of our energy was derived from renewable resources. Perhaps. But narrowing it down to wind and solar alone the number I have seen is closer to 1%.
Alternative and renewable energy resources are a great idea and they have proven sustainable and efficient applications in certain instances. However, forcing the consumer to purchase power made from highly inefficient renewables by setting mandates for their usage is a cruel tax on families already struggling to pay their bills.
True, Jerry – for 2009, of the 8%, 1% was solar, and 9% was wind, so that’s 0.8% of our overall energy usage. Might be up a tad more now, and that 1% figure of yours sounds right on.
I think it’s crazy to use food such as corn to make fuel. That alone has driven up the price of food substantially, and the net gain, if any, from ethanol is very, very low. “Renewable,” yes, but at the cost of reducing the food supply.
Looking at solar and wind power alone, even if we go hog wild and increase production amazingly fast, it will not even keep up with the increase in our overall energy usage, and thus our dependence on other sources will grow.
I think energy costs and healthcare costs are the two biggest deals right now for the long-term consumer, and regardless of what happens in the US, energy looks like a bull market to me. Billions upon billions of people in China, India, Russia, Brasil, etc., just now getting into the “middle class” and just now starting to hanker for cars, washing machines, and so on.
Increased regulation, increased coal prices and other electricity-generating sources have already raised many Americans’ electric rates a good bit. I don’t agree with forcing the consumer to suffer yet further increases due to mandated energy-sourcing, nor the increased government debt from subsidizing such sources.
Doug – I see it the other way – as more money goes into the industry of renewables, costs will drive down. Because of the expansion that you mentioned – China, India, Russia, etc… – and the fact that they will be using more and more oil, I think we have to look at other energy sources aggressively.
It is simply insane to me that such a large chunk of our economy is at the mercy of a bunch of crazy countries. We see conflicts drive up the price of oil, and that trickles down into everything else we buy. We really need to start to shift things for the stability of the country.
I think it’s crazy to use food such as corn to make fuel. That alone has driven up the price of food substantially, and the net gain, if any, from ethanol is very, very low. “Renewable,” yes, but at the cost of reducing the food supply.
Do you know what parts of the corn they use to make ethanol?
The parts we don’t eat. Those are the best ethanol-producing parts of corn. Besides which, our nation is absolutely saturated in corn. Corn syrup is in virtually everything. Our livestock is corn-fed. Do you honestly have any idea how hard it is to cut corn out of your diet? And there are large farms growing corn that is altered to produce more without the nutritional value of ‘natural’ corn.
So if you ask me, using corn for fuel is highly desirable.
To clarify, ethanol production requires conversion of the corn’s starch, which could be used as a food source. In the wet milling process of ethanol production, the gluten and fiber are separated out and used as human and livestock food, consistent with MaryRose’s assertion. Researchers are studying the use of corn stover (leaves and stalks of the corn plant) for ethanol production, which will have less of an impact on corn prices. Signed, Eric of Flyover Country
Jerry
That’s true but hopefully the environmentaly accountability factor will be so much hisher in the future that people will be surprised that with the amount of scientific information available a better job of environmental stewardship wasn’t accomplished. I don’t think it’s enough to say oh look at what it was we need to say as earth citizens look what it can be.