GREEN WITH ENVY

Most people in California have driven through the Altamont Pass. It is on I-580 between Tracy and Pleasanton. When I think of the Altamont pass, I think of three things, high traffic, high winds, and huge windmills. This is one of the largest wind farms in the world. Actually, there are 25 wind farms in the Altamont pass. Most people consider this to be an eyesore. Ground Squirrels love it, l because the windfarm kills on average 4,700 bird each year. Others, not so much because many of the dead birds are Golden Eagles which are increasingly rare in California. The 70 or so golden eagles who take on the Altamont Pass each year seldom survive.

We are distracted by looking at all those windmills and wondering why most of them are not actually spinning. I mean after all, the wind is literally buffeting your car, so why don’t more windmills notice or care? I finally talked to someone who, unlike me, actually knows something about windmills. He explained that different wind turbines are designed for different wind speeds. If the wind blows too slow, the big guys just shrug and ignore it. But if it blows to fast that causes a serious problem for the little guys. Apparently, the blades are designed to stop working if the windspeed is too high.

Other than being as ugly as sin and killing birds, I thought wind farms were fairly benign. And it is nice to get all the cheap electricity. Texas, which is literally sitting on a ton of oil and natural gas bought into the green energy thingee and today 25% of the electricity is provided by wind turbines. And you thought all those loud mouths Texans were Neanderthals who didn’t care about climate change, didn’t you?

So, anyway, Texas is taking a stand for the environment and everyone applauded. Until Yesterday. Yesterday it got cold. Most of us think of Texas as a place that gets really hot. And that is true, most of the time. But it can also get really cold. Then, a lot of people learned something really important. Windmills don’t work very well when they get cold. Apparently, these are warm weather devices. So, when it got really cold, the windmills stopped working. Bingo, millions of people lost their electrical power.  It is a good thing this didn’t happen during the summer, because a lot of people might have got really hot and bothered by the lack of air conditioning. This happened when it was really cold, so air conditioning wasn’t a factor. Staying warm, however, became a real challenge. There are real fears that a lot of people died.

Just when liberals begin to think they can actually think, God seems to intervene and provide a different perspective on things. This usually takes multiple catastrophes because liberals are slow learners. But to everyone else the lesson here is obvious. Freezing to death because of the lack of green energy is remarkably similar to freezing to death because of the lack of fossil fuels.

This creates a huge problem for the “Green New Deal.” Most of us have gotten used to having electricity help keep us warm in winter and cool in summer.  While many were concerned because both solar plants and wind farms are ugly as sin, take up a lot of space and were killing birds, we were willing to put up with this because using green energy makes us feel warm and fuzzy. But freezing to death because you can’t heat your home is just not that appealing. Some people are already starting to ask questions and the Green New Deal people won’t like the answers.

No, we can’t actually generate all the electricity we need from wind and solar. Yes, this is a big deal. No, even the hot air generated in Washington, D.C. isn’t adequate to warm homes in Texas. God has spoken, again, and environmentally conscientious Texans, relying on that cheap, efficient, wind energy are green with envy at their neighbors who stupidly rely on fossil fuels. Actually, they are probably blue with envy, but I am color blind.

TDM