Wednesday, July 23, 2008

This is a tough one

lessee, now.

Al Gore- Former US Senator and Vice President. Winner of the 2000 Presidential Election. Winner of a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. Respected worldwide as a leading figure in the effort to respond intelligently to the prospect of global warming.

Megan McArdle- thinks well of herself.
...

and, ummm

and....

is good at projecting her own flaws onto others.

Don't get me wrong, I think that Al Gore has a hobby. I just think it's a pity that hobby is making a fool of himself in public. His speech on global warming is full of misstatements, exaggerations, and outright untruths. What's worse is that I'm sure he believes every word of it.
She continues
Al Gore's program for energy is not merely costly, it's impossible. Electric power needs several different sources: baseload generation, and peak capacity generation. Alternative energy sources are iffy for this. Wind is not reliable, and the places where it is more reliable tend to be either rather far from where the power is needed, or smack in the middle of the view from Robert F. Kennedy's vacation home. Solar requires vast land area to work, which is its own sort of environmental problem, and again, the best sites tend to be in the middle of the Arizona desert, which means large new investments in transmission. To replace our current, mostly coal fired, fossil baseload generation would involve the construction of massive new nuclear capability. This is a) blocked by Al Gore's friends in the environmental movement b) going to get you into a nasty fight with Harry Reid and c) not feasible in a decade in the current regulatory environment. Forget the price. Where are you going to put hundreds of new nuclear plants?
See, Gore may know more about the technologies involved, have access to and interest in the work being done to solve the feasibility issues involved in alternative energies, and the public stature to be able to push society, at least a little, towards speeding up the development processes, but he can't convince Megan to disregard the literature she gets from energy lobbyists, so what has he really accomplished?

6 comments:

spencer said...

smack in the middle of the view from Robert F. Kennedy's vacation home

What a shocker that she'd just randomly pick a Democrat to smear as a straw man elitist.

Because, you know, Republicans with vacation homes are just lining up to get those newfangled windmills installed right in their viewsheds. Everyone knows this.

Like I have said, she's not an idiot. She is a fair (at best) propagandist who thinks we're all idiots.

Anonymous said...

T. Boone Pickens is now running TV ads here in the Midwest, saying he believes we can't drill our way into energy independence, even though he's been an oilman all his life. Apparently he's going to unveil a plan to build large windmill farms in the West. I'm sure Megan will poo-poo his credentials, too.

Susan of Texas said...

The financial news is terrifying, yet Megan is fiddling with trite Republican talking point. She has nothing to contribute. The market is bad, Al Gore is a fool, Senators are stupid. I can get that kind of deep analysis from anyone with a pulse.

spencer said...

I can get that kind of deep analysis from anyone with a pulse.

True, but most of those people are not 6'7" tall.

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