The "Green" in Green Energy Stands for...Your Tax Dollars!

 

 

Friends, it struck me recently that, to give the WaddyIsRight commentating empire a boost, we really need to get more solid conservatives opining.  Now now -- I know what many of you are thinking.  "But, Herr Professor Doktor Waddy, your honeyed words are transcendent! No one can hold a candle to you! Why would we ever waste our time reading others people's opinions?"  Sure, I get that.  Nevertheless, I feel that expanding our circle of commentary will be healthy and productive.  Who knows, even I might learn something! Ha ha! See, I made a joke there... Still, let's give it a try, shall we?

 

Our first guest essayist is Norm Ungermann, a former Allegany County Legislator from Cuba, New York.  Norm was kind enough to provide this short bio: "Nick,  I grew up on a dairy farm in Cuba NY , graduated high school, served in the US Army from 1962 to1964, began running an old Oliver cletrac when I was 13 loading coal from a train derailment.   I took some mechanical engineering at RIT. at night, worked for various construction companies and started my own excavating company in 1973 right after hurricane Agnes  48 years ago. I used to teach a forestry road building course for the New York State College of Forestry and the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association . My lesson plan is published in the Caterpillar Tractor hand book for land improvement. I served for 12 years as an Allegany County Legislator retiring at the end 2017. Our company does soil and water conservation work , all kinds of site work and currently produce approximately 150,0000 ton of aggregate annually .  We employ eight people."

 

Norm's article concerns the many limitations of "green energy".  Hope you enjoy it!  Feel free to add comments below.

 

The Uproar over Global Warming

In recent months, there have been several editorials about global warming – with one writer saying that conservatives and right leaning people are where all the lies come from. Because of that, I would like to put my .02 cents into the debate.

It is correct that the planet has warmed in recent years, but is it catastrophic? Over the last two million years, the land mass we know as NY, has experienced several Ice Ages, interspersed with warm periods. Gigantic glaciers covered the state, then retreated, each time wiping the landscape clean, changing the course of rivers, widening valleys, and exposing pre-glacial rock formations such as those visible at Rock City Park in Olean. Any geologist of your choice agrees that the last melt off in this area started around 22,000 years ago, taking 12,000 years to melt a several thousand foot thick glacier stretching from Long Island to Ohio. Was this melting caused by man? I’m reasonably sure there were not that many people around. Since this process took 12,000 years to complete, it is doubtful that any single cause was the culprit, but rather the constant natural evolution of our planet by things beyond our control. As the old saying goes…”If you don’t like the weather in Western NY, wait for a while, it’ll change.”

Twice in my 78+ years, I’ve seen it snow on the 4^th of July. Once when I was 10 or 11 years old, and again in my 40’s. I also remember a day on our family farm when I was a kid, that it got pitch dark in the middle of a summer day. The radio said it was because of a forest fire in Canada that’s smoke was eclipsing the Sun - which brings me to the forest fires out west. Could it be there are too many proponents of “forever wild” that we see more of these fires than before? When forests are not managed and/or harvested, naturally dying debris becomes the fuel for these fires to quickly start, spread, and hard to control. Perhaps the “tree-huggers” and local governments that ban forest management practices are instead responsible for these fires.

The premise of “green energy” is a nice idea, but are we creating more problems that those that come with fossil fuels? Green energy comes with plenty of drawbacks. The construction of wind and solar equipment alone requires the use of some hazardous materials, and particularly for solar, the use of many precious metals (unearthed and mined extensively all over the world). Worse yet, installation of these wind & solar fields compete for the same land that grows our food supply – seems everyone wants flat, well-drained soil to build on. Then, and perhaps worst of all, is what to do with the wind & solar apparatus after its (blink of an eye) 20-25 year service life? This equipment is largely unrecyclable and massive in size. How is this waste disposed of? We have only just begun the “wind era” locally, and after a few short years there is already a HUGE pile of windmill waste waiting for disposal, clearly visible from I-86 near the Bath, NY exit – take a look for yourself, before debating me on how good for the planet green energy is.

Also, if we went 100% “green”, our power at best would be intermittent. This fall, on a parts run to Batavia, I drove through the Town of Sheldon and saw dozens of windmills, and looking southeast towards Bliss, dozens more. It was a beautiful sunny day, and not a single windmill was turning – not one! If the windmills aren’t turning due to too much or too little wind, you can bet there is a fossil fuel generating station somewhere picking up the slack, so that no one is without power. Solar panels aren’t much better. We have too many days when the sun doesn’t shine, not to mention shorter daylight hours due to our latitude, and during winter months snow & ice can cover them for days at a time. So what happens when they are not generating the needed power supply? You guessed it – that old fossil fuel generating station is picking up the slack that wind & solar can’t provide. I read an article in one of my trade magazines about the City of Atlanta doing a study on what material had the least environmental impact for use as paving for highways and parking lots. Concrete won out, one of the reasons being, they found asphalt (black in color, like solar panels) raised the ambient (surrounding area) temperature by several degrees, while concrete did not.

AOC has made the statement that we need to get rid of all the cows to solve greenhouse gas issues. Maybe 20,000 years ago the dinosaurs passed too much gas, and caused this problem? How does one not see the foolishness of these statements? Just like going from energy independence a short time ago, to now asking our enemies to pump more oil and natural gas for us to buy, the fools can’t see the tie to inflation? But what do I know – I’m just a dumb bulldozer driver from Cuba, NY.

Norm Ungermann