Sen. Whitehouse Bashes Fossil-Fuel-Funded GOP Attacks on Solar Energy and American Workers

[Rhiannon12866]

May 3 - Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, delivers remarks on the Senate floor after House Republicans passed a measure to repeal President Biden’s pause on tariffs for solar panels from four Southeast Asian countries.

Across the United States, the solar industry employs 250,000 workers. These are well-paying jobs in an industry that saves families money on their electric bills and decreases our carbon footprint.

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Decentralizing energy is labor intensive,

And cost effective. Texas could have the best energy infrastructure, given their land and opportunity. But Republicans are owned by the Big Oil energy, so that won't happen until the voters figure it out.

[Rhiannon12866]

2. And will they ever figure it out? They reelected Abbott despite the loss of power during the winter

Storm when so many froze and died.

[Finishline42]

7. RE: Texas and Solar

I guess there's a bunch of non-engineers in the Lone Star State...

Link to tweet

?s=20

[OAITW r.2.0]

8. Yet Republicans in Texas are trying their damdest to stop this energy reality.

They are bought and owned by Big Oil....but Big Solar and Wind are bypassing this political roadblock and taking it to the consumers directly, without any support from the State,

[Finishline42]

9. It's one of the paradoxes of wind and solar...

Who owns the land that wind and solar farms are being sited? Farmers and ranchers. Guess which party they mostly belong to?

Imagine the millions of acres in barren parts of Texas and how many cattle they can support? Wind and solar farms convert mostly worthless land into a monthly income producer. They also pay property taxes to pad the budgets of counties that don't have much to work with.

[NNadir]

3. With due respect to the Senator, I bash the solar industry because it depends on fossil fuels.

The solar industry hasn't done shit to reduce the use of fossil fuels. It hasn't done shit to address climate change.

After 50 years of wild cheering, the 5 Exajoules of energy produced by this stuff (WEO, 2022, Table A1A, page 435) doesn't even match the year to year growth in the use of dangerous natural gas (+7 Exajoules from 139 EJ to 146 EJ from 2020 to 2021) and was even worse against the growth in the use of coal (+8 EJ from 157 EJ to 165 EJ from 2020 to 2021.)

At a cost of trillions of dollars, the solar industry has done nothing to address climate change; although it should, in no time whatsoever, generate lots of jobs for truckers hauling electronic waste off to landfills, or to ports where we can send them to countries where poverty and corruption rule, and then tell ourselves, in the sort of lies that are very popular, that they're being "recycled."

The longer we hold on to these myths as having value in political posturing, the more we are screwing future generations. This lie may get votes, but it will do nothing, absolutely nothing to address climate change. It's played out. The results are in.

Week beginning on April 23, 2023: 424.40 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 420.19 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 399.32 ppm
Last updated: May 04, 2023

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

The more we lie to ourselves, the faster things get worse.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, should make the fossil fuel industry happier than the solar affectation. I suspect they're well aware of it, and enjoy happily playing the "bad guy" to keep the mythology going while the money roles in. The sun goes down every night, or at least I heard that somewhere.

[Rhiannon12866]

4. Thank you, you sound a bit like my Dad.

He was an industrial engineer, managed the power company in this part of the state.

[NNadir]

5. People understanding engineering and science are very different than handwavers.

Last edited Fri May 5, 2023, 03:32 PM - Edit history (1)

This of course excludes engineers who are employed by handwavers.

I doubt Elon Musk's engineering staff could get away with too much truth.

The handwavers, by the way, regrettably won. We're still throwing vast sums of money on the reactionary idea of so called "renewable energy" and in fact making it worse by throwing more than half that money on energy storage without having clean primary energy.

Also what your father and I may share is the warm glow of advanced age and the apparent ability to have aged while thinking critically the whole time.

Here we are, above 424 ppm and still buying the same snake oil to address it.

It doesn't bode well for future generations. They will need to be remarkable to overcome what we have done.

[Duppers]

6. BRAVO!!

[Rhiannon12866]

10. The senator is definitely on a mission!