My morning’s news reading took me to the reports of the extremely hot weather in the northeast and eastern part of the United States which includes the big metropolitan area that stretches from Washington DC up to New York City and even farther, both north and south. Some of our biggest population areas are in that awful heat wave which also includes miserably high humidity as well as temperatures into the high 90s and even into the low 100s predicted for New York City today.
It led me to speculate on a couple of things..the first being Queen Elizabeth 2 of England who is scheduled to visit NYC and the site of Ground Zero (9-11-2001) The Queen is always garbed in matched clothing including a hat, usually a matching coat or jacket over a matching dress– plus gloves and matching shoes…and always the Queenly purse. I am wondering how this woman who truly qualifies as an "Old Lady" will fare in the deep steel canyons of NYC where the 100 plus heat and humidity will be trapped when she visits the Ground Zero site. Will she be sweating like a construction worker? Will her hair fall into stringy humidity-laden silver ropes? Will her dress have dark sweat stains under her arms? In other words, will she react to the heat and humidity like other mortals??? I doubt it. She probably has never sweated in her entire life. I don’t think her hair has ever had a bad day. Most Old Ladies would fall under the warning to not even go out in the high heat….stay inside with air conditioning if at all possible. Old Ladies DIE in heat waves and so do OLD MEN (I wonder if her OLD MAN Phillip is with her?) Well, that is one speculation. (one Wag said that the reason Queen Elizabeth always looks like she does— so staid and so sober— is because she has never let a fart in her whole life…it would be hard to be cheerful and smiling under such a circumstance).
The other one is even more deep: would all these sweltering cities along the eastern seaboard have enough steady electricity if the Green Crowd had their way and were able to cut off coal, oil, natural gas-powered electric power plants from these carbon sources and replace them all with wind power? Dream on! One tidbit I read told about some Green Energy experimental projects for NYC including one with wind turbines providing electricity for one small island in the metro area. After a few weeks of steady wind turbine action, the big windmills had broken blades that quit turning and thereby produced NO electricity for the experimental island. Other wind projects for NWY were designed to possibly produce electricity for 5000 homes. I wonder how many "homes" make up the NYC area and how many of those homes (and businesses) badly need electricity today to keep the AC going in all those thousands and thousands of places??? It is probably a lot more than 5000!
The same speculation applies to Washington DC. Would the Obama family and all the Congress people who think Green Energy from windmills is the "cats’ pajamas" be willing to try to go it in the heat wave with electricity from windmills today? Let’s say the power fails and the entire Capitol goes without AC….also the White House and all the other government buildings in DC……would they still be smiling and happy about their use of Green Electrical Energy?
You can answer that for yourselves!!!!
That’s just about the craziest strawman argument against investing in renawables that I’ve ever heard.
No one is talking about shutting down the power grid and beginning again at zero.
mccloud wore