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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Fossil Fuels,
Facile Fools
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 7/11/08

Isn’t Ed Begley, jr., such a charming fellow! A greenie who’s not a meanie, who’s been at it for decades, lecturing and imploring all of us to live like him. To be Green in every way. Recycle. Solar. Wind. But, buried in his latest outing is the text of what any True Journalist would find sufficient reason to be skeptical of all this ‘alternative energy’ and ‘energy independence’ blathering. Fat chance.
 
On Larry King’s attempt this week to appear knowledgeable and educational – America’s Teacher on Cable! – on energy policy, Begley constantly noted how he ‘picked the low fruit’ when he began his tutelage, in a day when he had little money and ‘couldn’t afford solar electric’ and couldn’t afford solar hot-water, and a host of other methods which today continue to be lacking in cost-effectiveness. In comparison to that old Reliable Petroleum, all these ‘alternatives’ are a joke. Like the joke that is ethanol.

 DRILL, DRILL, DRILL is the new mantra of traditionalists, and the left’s mantra in response is, It will be years before any new petroleum would result. That was their argument stopping earlier projects, including refineries, pipelines, transmission towers – a long list of refusals by greenies who want to make us all be a Mini-Me to Begley. Of course, the same mantra applies to all the alternatives yet devised in the minds of lefties: gonna be a while to get these miracle cures to the patients.
 
With a considerable nest egg from his one successful career event, “St. Elsewhere” Begley is financially able to engage in energy adventures. As is the much touted Jay Leno, who’s ‘gone green’ in his massive car garage at his home.  Fine stuff, these methods, but they ain’t’ gonna fill the gaping maw that is widening daily in our energy needs.
 
We must, and ultimately will, go beyond the Begley Brigade, for we are a growing nation now in competition with China and India and Indonesia and Japan and soon others who have the temerity to build their own comfortable worlds derived mostly from energy.
 
Put the blame on James – the steam engine patented by James Watt in 1798 ‘started capitalism’ according to lefty economist Lester Thurow, shifting the emphasis from labor to capital investment to expand the already burgeoning industrial revolution. Thus the forests of England perished, or nearly so, until coal was found in England. Then came oil, the switch for the Royal Navy made just before WW-One by its then chief, Winston Churchill. This began the dependence on Arabia, where British and American petroleum geologists made the discovery of the famous Ghawar deposits.
 
Without our own Ghawar, we will remain short of ‘independence’ in energy. If there is an American Ghawar, the greenies’ meany attitude against such searches makes it hard to find. There is already a Ghawar in our oil shale, and coal – problematic in themselves, but an ‘alternative’ to punching holes in the earth.
 
At which we’ve become very adept lately. Directional drilling can turn a pipe-string horizontal at tremendous depths, taking the drill-bit thru a formation akin to drilling a long board from one end to the other in a single act, rather than multiple drillings across its grain. Today, drillers can tap into formations located miles in every horizontal direction from where the hole begins vertically at the platform. One site, one driller team, one platform, many formations tapped. And all very clean these days.
 
Fossil fuels will be the pathway, for some time; just as coal was found just as England’s forests were almost 90% depleted, so will some new solution arise to shift us from fossil dependence. But it won’t be the ethanol idiots who will ‘solve’ this problem. Government is dumb, the private sector is the cure. As much as the left adores government and hates Halliburton, it is the government, with the willing compliance of certain corporations which put us in that corn-based fuel fix, brought to us by corn fools who were manipulated by tax incentives.
 
And that’s where old fools bring new foolishness to the mix. Remember that Boston Tea Party? The East India Company had acquired a monopoly on that Asian area’s resources, but their mismanagement screwed the pooch, becoming that era’s Enron –and they called on Parliament’s whores to bail them out. Thus, Americans were required to buy their tea only from that monopolistic, government-sponsored source, albeit for a considerable discount, thus generating a quick cashflow to the stressed corporation. And that one went into Boston Bay like ethanol has today.
 
Government sucks at predicting winners, and at bailing out losers whom they’d chosen earlier to be the blessed winners. From that tea party to the ethanol scandal of today, we see how government loses, and when it loses, WE ALL LOSE.
 
The technology that would have been developed, directed and successful if not diverted by tax-incentives favoring ethanol is impossible to determine – that door is closed, those billions wasted. All due to government ‘encouragement’ that is now the same menu for the Begley Brigade. Maybe we will get subsidy for those very costly solar cells – though they’re being gobbled up by India as fast as they come off the assembly line. Costly infrastructure, such as generator stations and transmission towers and transforming substations, are impractical in many rural Indian outposts, so they rely on solar cells – not cost efficient, but the only option they have. Thus, that sucking sound you hear at the loading dock of solar cell manufacturers.
 
Wind? Sure, why not, but it will require millions of acres splattered with churning turbine blades, and also transmission towers [oh, so ugly] to bring it from windy areas to where people live and work. Ain’t cheap – wind power is yet to be as efficient as fossil-fueled electricity. Again, the ethanolics are proposing more tax manipulated incentives.  Anyone want to ask the East India Company how that turned out?
 
At bottom, ethanolics are still at it, and it’s as stupid to abide by their failed mentality as to ask the East India Company to manage international trade after that emblematic tea party. By Begley’s own admission, it’s costly to Go Green. Leno has almost as much money as Oprah – solar turbines and wind generators and the rest are within his price range. Note that few of the gliterati of Hollywood are imitating them – they have other places to spend their income.
 
As do most Americans. Solar cells on your roof? What about the cost? That’s not ‘low-hanging fruit’ by any economic measure. And they’re a wee bit ugly – the main reason Tipper Gore hasn’t outfitted her new, show mansion with such ugly rooftop distractions. And a windmill on your lawn?
 
Covering all of Los Angeles with solar cells – every park, sidewalk, street, roof, yard and playground – would generate energy in a day’s time equal to that held in the underground gasoline storage tanks of six typical gas stations.
 
And even the smallest city has more than six service stations – which is to say, when you see one of those gasoline tanker trucks growling down the highway, imagine its equivalent: miles and miles of solar cells traveling alongside it. Even if solar were cost-effective, it’s not gonna happen.
 
The reason that gas tanker will continue to occupy our economy for another generation? BECAUSE IT’S GOOD STUFF – more energy in a gallon of gasoline than a gallon of ethanol. By almost half as much, which we are only now discovering. Might have been nice if the ethanolics had told that truth to Congress before the billions in tax incentives were voted, and before corn prices were thus boosted, and thus the main cause for so much recent food price inflation. Hot dogs and beef patties and chicken breasts and porkchops are all higher, as they are fed ever more expensive corn – the reason your 4th menu was costly was due to ethanolism.
 
We use fossil fuels for a reason; the facile fools who want to go another direction have had their chance at navigating our national energy policy. The ethanolics will do no better with new schemes than they did with the old ones. We don’t need another energy visit to Boston Harbor – either the emblematic one brought by the East India Company screwing the pooch then with Parliament’s whorish tax breaks and monopolistic mandates to the colonists, or the ideas that emanate to moralistically from today’s Boston.
 
As Begley admitted that he goes first on foot, then on bike, then by public transit – that’s a lovely option for most folks with groceries to manage and kids to oversee – and then to his electric car and finally to his hybrid, so we can see what the ethanolics want to bring you. What Congress needs to legislate is a Twelve-Step Program for the ethanolics – get off the sauce, and quit screwing the pooch of our economy. Americans won’t and can’t use the Begley method.  They need more gas, at reasonable prices. The tax incentives for the oil industry are sufficient at present – the American parliament of whores need do nothing more than GET OUT OF THE WAY.
 
When you see a gas tanker on the road or at a gas station, smile and wave – its replacement would require eighteen square miles of solar cells. Imagine your town covered by ethanolics’ latest scheme, solar cells over your head at every intersection and in every yard and on every playground. That’s not low-hanging fruit, but it’s certainly fruity. And nutty. And flaky. ExileStreet

copyright 2008 Steve Finefrock

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