All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 2, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:04
December 2, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Got to say, had a great holiday.
I hope yours was pretty good as well over the Thanksgiving Day break.
I know Kid had a great holiday.
He told me all about it.
And I did too.
I saw a great movie.
I was telling Kid the other day, Quantum of Solace.
Got to check that out.
Great movie.
Daniel Craig, the best bond since Sean Connery.
Maybe even equivalent to Sean Connery.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm going out on a limb here.
Politics is nothing when you're getting provocative with movies.
I mean, I'm telling you, great movie, action-packed.
And yeah, they take their shots at everybody, the right, the left.
But in Quantum of Solace, the bad guys, and this is what I loved about it.
Plus, I just like Craig and I like the new Bond, I don't know, more graphic, more gritty persona these days.
But the bad guys in Quantum were a front group, or I should say the front group for the bad guys in the Bond movie was an environmental group.
They were a bunch of greenies who behind the scenes were exploiting natural resources and taking over the world.
And I thought, it's about time.
Welcome back.
Third hour of the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Jason as Rush Recuperates.
We'll keep you up to date on that as well as everything else going on.
1-800-282-2882.
Check out RushLimbaugh.com.
I got to get to some of the environmental news.
Speaking of that, then we'll try to check in on the Senate race in Georgia.
I'll keep you updated on the Franken situation in Minnesota and that Senate race.
Lots of things to talk about, plus your calls.
But there is a group, I think it was in Politico out there that is starting to monitor something called the gore effect.
This weekend, after I saw the movie, I actually mowed the lawn.
It was a blistering global warming, 38 degrees in the Twin Cities on, what, Saturday?
So I thought 38 degrees.
I mean, put on the sunblock, get out there and make your final mow so when the snow comes, it doesn't, you know, snow on long grass.
That's the way we do it.
Mowed the lawn on Saturday, snowed on Sunday.
And it has been cold ever since.
I mean like 17, 18 degrees in the Twin Cities.
It has been cold all the way down to Atlanta.
We've got another cold snap coming.
The cold started early in the United States.
This will be, I believe, the second year, 2007, 2008, where we've had below normal temperatures.
We've been flat since 1998, in spite of the fact that quote-unquote greenhouse gases have risen.
We had an immense, immense cooling from 1945 to about 1976.
And then we had warming, both of which were apparently divorced from carbon dioxide emissions because they gave opposite results.
And yet we are told ad nauseum by both political parties, by both presidential candidates this year, by the mainstream media, by Hollywood, by everyone, that the real crisis in the world is global warming.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As I mentioned earlier in the program, Bjorn Lomborg, or Bjorn Lomborg, I should say, wrote a book called A Cool It.
And this guy's an environmentalist from Europe, and he actually believes that global warming is occurring.
He just doesn't think it's a big deal.
He says, if you take a look at all of the supposed heat-related deaths that would occur if the temperature dares goes up three degrees in a century, he also pointed out, however, those would be offset, much more than offset, by 1.8 million fewer cold-related deaths.
That is to say, there are far more many people who die of cold than of heat-related stress.
But you didn't know that, did you?
And frankly, it's indisputable, and yet nobody knows that.
So if the temperatures actually go up about the same amount they've gone up in the last century, it ought to be cause for rejoicing.
Sea levels going up.
The sea level rise maybe as much as a foot, foot and a half, maybe two foot.
Well, that's about the same as the sea has risen in the last 150 years.
We've done okay.
Agricultural output will dwindle if, in fact, we allow global warming to parch the soil.
Well, au contraire.
In fact, agricultural output, by all estimates, is expected to double over the next century.
So, according to Lomborg and other scientists, if global warming does occur and the predicted rate, even if it does occur, allowing for it, which is not scientifically certain, we may have doubled ag output in the year 2081 instead of 2080.
Now, do we want to spend $180 billion a year for 100 years on all of this?
And by the way, even if we spend it, the reduction in Fahrenheit temperature, 0.3 tenths of a degree.
So instead of going up, say, 4 degrees, it would go up 3.7 degrees.
A de minimis effect.
I bring this up because I believe it's today.
You've got 190 countries meeting in Poland to set up the next Kyoto Accord, which this president-elect will sign.
Ironically enough, they will disperse about 13,000 tons of CO2.
You like that?
They're all going to meet for the preliminary UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
And in the process of meeting, 10,000 people will disperse 13,000 tons of carbon dioxide.
The Learjet liberals, hypocrisy has got nothing on them.
So we're set to basically shut down the American economy with the Kyoto Accord if we go down that road, all for absolutely nothing.
And at some point, at some point, we've got to start taking a look at how many, well, outright lies the global warmests can deliver.
I mentioned earlier this Gore effect that some of the skeptics have put together.
The so-called gore effect happens when a global warming-related event or an appearance by the former vice president, climate change crusader, along with his buddy James the prevaricator Hansen at NASA.
It's then marked by cold weather or unseasonably winter weather.
Every time Gore speaks, he sticks his foot in his mouth because the weather essentially disproves him.
Now, I understand the vicissitudes of climate.
I understand how that happens, but it is rather comical.
March 2007, Capitol Hill media briefing on the Senate's new climate bill canceled due to a snowstorm.
October 22nd, Gore's global warming speech at Harvard coincided with a near 125-year record-breaking low temperature.
A week later, on October 28th, the British House of Commons held a marathon debate on warming during London's first October snowfall since 1922.
It's the Gore effect, according to the Politico, and I'm loving it.
Sooner or later, we're going to have to start taking a skeptical look, and I wish the media would do their job.
You know, Jefferson, as much as he fought with the newspapers of his day, once said if it came to newspapers or government and which one he'd rather live without, he'd rather live without government.
He thought newspapers were the watchdogs of freedom, the watchdogs of government.
Newspapers now, as well as the mainstream media, sadly, are the cheerleaders of government.
They don't criticize what the government says.
They go after industry.
They go after conservatives, to be sure.
But the point is, they are supposed to be the watchdog.
And yet they're not.
And the evidence is quite palpable when you take a look at Al Gore gets a total pass by these people.
How many series on your evening news have you seen where your local anchor or anchorette actually takes a skeptical look at global warming?
Any?
Zip zero nada?
And certainly for the national news media.
And yet, James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been wrong so often it boggles the mind.
How many times that NASA and Hansen have had to retract something they've said earlier?
Hansen admitted to Scientific American a few years back that he initially exaggerated the effects of global warming in order to get attention to the problem.
He then said that 1998 was the hottest year on record, only to retract that and admit it was in the 1930s, long before the quote-unquote greenhouse gas era that's 1940 and beyond.
And lately, what was their real doozy here lately?
It was what?
That October, last October, was the warmest record on record, I believe it was, around the globe.
Even though China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its worst snowstorm ever, the Swiss lowlands had got the most snow for October since records began.
Zurich received 20 centimeters, breaking the record of 14 in 1939.
October was cold in the United States.
So how did they say, how did James Hansen and the NASA Goddard Institute say October was the hottest on record despite all these record low temperatures?
Whoops.
They made a mistake.
Their crack researchers actually plugged in September for October and compared September to October going back in history.
They had to retract that as well.
Why is it that we keep looking to these global warming alarmists as though they are or have a monopoly on virtue and truth when in fact they've been caught in more prevarications, they've been caught in more outright falsehoods than you can shake a stick at.
But we're ready to sign the next Kyoto Accord.
We're ready to pass the Lieberman-Warner cap and trade bill that will cost our national income $670 billion by 2030, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.
Employment down 3 to 4 million jobs by 2030.
Electricity prices up 130% by 2030?
There comes a point, friends, when we better get real.
And if you want to do something about this, you better give some encouragement to your local conservative politician, especially a few Republican governors I can think of, who are as green as green can be.
Rather than fight something that's unpopular, rather than push the polls or move the polls, these new Republican green governors want to follow the polls.
And environmentalism is hot.
It's cool.
So let's just go along to get along.
It's too tough to follow, to fight the polls.
Well, part of being a statesman, in fact, the difference between a statesman and a politician is a statesman leads.
And leading, as someone once said, is not getting Boy Scouts to go to some pizza hut or something.
Leading is going against the grain and educating the masses when they're wrong.
And that's what we need from a few brave Republicans out there.
James Inhoff of Oklahoma has done great work on this.
And there have been a number of them, but far too many, especially in the Republican governor ranks, are throwing in the towel.
Schwarzenegger, Chris, Polenti, you name it.
And folks, there is a clear and present danger to your freedom, whether a puddle that shows up in your backyard once a year, once every two years, is going to be declared a wetland, depriving you of your property rights by the Army Corps of Engineers.
That's what's at stake.
Whether your electricity bill is going to skyrocket, we're in the business right now of seriously considering a ban on America's most abundant power source, coal.
You can't build a coal plant anymore without having 14 environmental lawsuits, and you're going to have an outright ban on it if some of these global warming kooks get their wish.
Now, I don't have to tell you what that's going to do to your electricity bill.
It's going to skyrocket.
But they don't care.
They're these trust fund brats running around the country screaming the sky is falling because it's just fine for them.
It's not going to be fine for you or the American economy.
So with that, let's go to a quick break.
Come back with calls.
1-800-282-2882.
Jason Lewis in for El Rushbo on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
All right, here we are once again on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Jason Lewis filling in for Rush today.
Hopefully he'll be back tomorrow.
We'll keep you abreast of that as he recuperates from a little bug he got over the Thanksgiving Day holidays.
In the meantime, back to the calls we go in Providence, Rhode Island.
George, thanks for waiting.
You're on EIB.
Good afternoon, Jason.
How are you?
I'm good, George.
How are you?
One of the issues that keeps being thrown around is that there are climate change deniers out there.
And I believe, indeed, that there are climate change deniers out there.
The two largest and most publicly known happen to be Al Gore and James Hansen.
Now, I say that because they have argued repeatedly that climate change in any direction, colder or warmer, will be a disaster for the planet, for wildlife, for the ecology, for everything.
So they can only argue that if they believe that the current climate is the opposite.
Normal.
Which happens to be in complete contradiction to everything that has been proven about climate change over the last two million years.
Well, first, let's take each point at a time.
Number one, there is no constant temperature in the Earth.
The climate is always changing, whether it's the Little Ice Age or the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Ages I mentioned that we're probably coming out of now, if in fact there is warming.
There absolutely has never been a constant climate.
So to even debate the point, you know, you can be frivolous about it and say, goodness gracious, these guys are making a political point about changes in the weather.
Hello?
Yep.
And you bring up the little ice age and the medieval warming period that this, quote, science can be supported by such deception as the man et al. hockey stick graph, which attempted to prove that there was no medieval warming or little ice age, is ridiculous.
If Brian's theories were supported by that, we wouldn't know his name.
That was Michael Mann, wasn't it?
Mann et al., yes.
Yeah.
And a couple of Canadian researchers totally debunked the hockey stick that showed only in the 20th century a temperature spiked.
I mean, I don't know how many times, I don't know how many times, George, that the climate alarmists have been proven wrong by anybody looking at the data.
If there were a functioning media that was skeptical and curious for the truth at all, these people would have no credibility whatsoever.
We can only hope that it changes.
And by the way, I understand the ice is reforming at the Arctic this year in record fashion.
It is growing and growing.
I'm still waiting for somebody to tell me how 40 degree below zero temperatures at the Antarctic can somehow melt ice.
George, thanks for calling.
Let's go to Seattle.
You bet, George.
Seattle and Matt, you're next up on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi.
You know, last call I actually discussed largely what I was wondering, but I guess, you know, if the scientific data is such that there is let's say there were global warming, you mentioned, you know, you would save deaths that result now in cold would not happen in warming.
Does there become a point where there should be some sort of, even if it's minimal, but some sort of long-term plan, particularly from like conservatives, you know, because we keep hearing like it's not that big of a deal, but at what point does it become a big deal?
You've got to understand something about our liberal friends.
You know, there used to be an old adage, war is the health of the state.
And a lot of anti-war type civil libertarians still use that.
And I think there's some truth in that, that when you're at war, people are afraid and they will, quote unquote, give up their liberties for safety.
Well, you ever notice that everything that the liberals promote is based on a crisis like a war, war on poverty, and some might even say a war on drugs, but that's probably a topic for another day.
But you take a look at there's a health care crisis, there's an education crisis, there's a climate change crisis.
And what they're trying to do is manufacture a crisis that would normally, you know, people would not give up the kind of light bulbs they could choose for their home.
But if they're told they're all going to die and their children are going to die, why, it's just like having a war.
You've got to give up your liberties because we're fighting this war on climate change.
No, I disagree with your premise.
There is nothing that is scary about the Earth's climate.
The fact is, it's always been changing, and we need to debunk this before it removes every liberty we've ever enjoyed.
So what sort of facts, like, I mean, why isn't it just something where scientific research can just be shown out in the light?
You know, I guess that's the part that confuses me.
Because there's an agenda.
We spend, I think the figure I saw was $6 billion a year on climate change.
General Electric wants to sell wind turbines.
The ethanol crowd wants to sell hybrid cars and get subsidies for ethanol.
There is a vested interest in this.
And do you realize how much money the Sierra Club has raised by scaring the bejebers out of first graders on global warming?
Follow the money.
It's not the oil companies.
It's the environmental movement that is raking in cap and trade and a carbon exchange.
Are you kidding?
People are going to rake in billions on that.
So could you direct me to like, where's the place where I can go to get some good factual information?
Try the late Michael Crichton's State of Fear.
Just read the appendix.
That's right.
Talent on loan from Rush today.
I am Jason Lewis, Minnesota's real anchorman, subbing for America's real anchor man, Rush, who's recuperating, as you all know by now, 1-800-282-2882.
Don't forget RushLimbaugh.com.
Let me give you an update on the Senate races, the two big ones, obviously, Georgia and Minnesota, before we get back to all things environment and a few other topics we've been discussing today.
Apparently in Georgia, the polls are open.
They close at 7 p.m. for the race between Shambliss and Martin.
I think Shambliss is scheduled, I shouldn't say scheduled, but predicted to win, slightly favored, I think the pundits point out.
He already beat Martin in their first battle in November, but as you know, fell short of a simple majority, needed to win the seat outright.
Polls, as I say, close at 7 p.m.
Now, if, in fact, the Democrats could knock off a couple of these races, Georgia and Minnesota, they would have this filibuster-proof Senate, in which case there would be no filibuster stopping, say, the Kyoto Accord, part due, or anything else, which is a very, very dangerous precedent.
On the other hand, then the Democrats will own everything.
And it may very well be, it may very well be, I'm not going to say it's immaterial.
Obviously, these guys, Coleman in Minnesota and Shambliss in Georgia, would be more friendly to, at least on the margins, limited government than certainly their opponents.
So that's all to the good.
But you've already got Olympia Snow.
You've already got Susan Collins and a few other moderates.
I think the Republicans would have to have many more than just, you know, 41 seats.
And I don't know that they've got that if they can flip, if the Democrats can flip these moderates, which they probably will on a number of issues.
Now, up in Minnesota, the canvassing board, when you go into a recount or an audit, if you will, and that's the administrative or procedural aspect of the votes on November 4th.
Now we're going to go into a recount because the margin was so small.
That's all administrative.
It's not a technically, it's not a contested election.
The recount has been effectively done, and Coleman has won three times in Minnesota.
The canvassing board, which will certify the final count, has rejected Al Franken's attempt to count some anywhere from 6,000 to 7,000 absentee ballots that he says shouldn't have been rejected.
And by law in Minnesota, those are always subjected to a lawsuit in a contested election, but it's never taken as part of an administrative recount, per se.
And so what Franken was petitioning the state canvassing board on was to do something they've never done.
And fortunately, the five members said, no, no, no, if you want to challenge the absentee ballots that were properly rejected on November 4th because signatures were missing or there was some improper aspect to them, you'll have to file a lawsuit.
Now, everybody's talking about Franken running to the U.S. Senate and having the Democrats seat him there.
I don't think it's going to go that route.
I think it's going to go to the Minnesota judicial system, and he's going to file a suit if the recounts hold up, as I think they will.
The canvassing board, I believe, certifies those on December 19th.
The point is, there are a number of challenged ballots that the canvassing board will have to decide on, but I don't know that many of those will be overturned.
They still could, and Franken still could eke out finally a victory on the third recount, but I don't think that's going to happen.
I think it's going to end up in court where Franken will have a much wider latitude to challenge the absentee ballots.
And then here's the real dynamic in Minnesota that I don't think most folks are aware of.
The state canvassing board, and this is the board that handles the administrative recount of which I just spoke.
They include the Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who's a liberal partisan who works with ACORN, speaks to ACORN.
There's been a lot of, I wouldn't say suspicious activity, but there's been a lot of suspicion of Mr. Ritchie with regard to monitoring the whole vote because he campaigned on expanding the franchise.
That means counting every vote.
We don't care where they're from, dead or alive.
We want to count them.
That's how insane this mantra has become.
But so far, it's been held in check because the canvassing board also has four other members, a couple of judges, and two members of the state Supreme Court.
Now, the canvassing board will rule, I believe by December 19th, that let's say they rule incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman wins and he wins by 200 votes.
That's it.
Now, Franken goes to court, and he files obviously in a lower court, appeals it just like Florida in 2000, finally goes to the Minnesota State Supreme Court, where you have two members of the state Supreme Court who would have to make a ruling on what they did as members of the state canvassing board.
That's going to be rather interesting to watch, but that's kind of the latest from Minnesota.
And as I say, the Georgia runoff is going on as we speak.
So all of that in the news today.
1-800-282-2882.
Back to the phones in Chicago.
Here's Dan.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Yeah.
How are you doing?
In fact, kittos to you.
It was wonderful to talk about that Gore effect because, of course, he went down to Georgia to campaign for Jim Martin against Tashbi Candless.
And sure enough, here on Election Day, it's gone below freezing over much of Georgia.
So, yeah, the effect took place.
The gore effect lives, yes.
That's for sure.
I'll tell you, he went to Manhattan back in January of 19 or rather 2004 with that PowerPoint presentation of his.
And it was on the coldest day in New York City since 1957.
It went down to one degree.
But he still blamed Bush for that extreme weather because it turns out that he thought that weather was getting so warm in the tropics that the air was becoming buoyant and rising and creating like a partial vacuum, which, of course, the air from the north had to come down and fill up.
So that's why it got cold in New York.
It's funny you should bring that up.
Right.
So they have it both ways, and he has a ready-made excuse no matter what anecdotal weather happens.
This is a catch-22.
What's, again, why the media is so derelict in their duty.
They never point this out.
But you're quite right.
If it gets warmer, it's global warming.
If it gets colder, it's global warming.
If there's a pattern of cold weather, why that's weather, not climate.
And they come up with all these shibboleths about why, you know, you're going to believe me or your own eyes.
Well, I'm going to believe my own eyes, and it's pretty cold out there.
Sooner or later, this becomes an article of faith, like religion.
Yes.
If you say if it gets colder, it's global warming.
And if it gets warmer, it's global warming.
You have removed any evidentiary debate.
You've removed the evidence.
There's no way I can prove evidence that then would refute your position because you're not providing real evidence because you've removed it all.
You just believe in something on a faith-based level.
Right.
You can't call it science.
Science demands one empirical answer for your research.
I mentioned Michael Crichton, the late, great Michael Crichton.
Oh, I love that book.
Was that not a fantastic book?
Yeah.
Can you imagine?
Not only was it a great fictional read, but the appendix and the research, this guy's done more double-blind studies than Al, you know, in one week in medical school than Al Gore's ever done in a lifetime.
And his appendix is worth the price of the book.
But can you imagine if State of Fear, this wonderful book on a bunch of environmental radicals scaring the bejeebers for their own devious ends out of people?
Can you imagine if that would be made into a movie?
What a great movie that would be.
Oh, I keep telling people it's never going to be made into one because Hollywood's too locked in.
No, you're right.
There's even, you know, speaking to that, there's even rumor that the great book, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is supposed to be made into a movie.
You know that's going to be a disaster when they talk about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as, you know, John Galt.
I mean, can you, it's, it's, Hollywood probably is incapable of all of that.
But your point's so noted, thanks for calling.
Christine and Greg.
You're welcome.
You bet.
Thank you, Dan.
Christine, you're up next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Earth to Christine.
Are you there, dear?
Yes, I'm here.
Fire away.
Okay.
Just want to say, you know, I'm in the Sacramento listening area, and I've been listening to Rush since he was on local KSBK when he first started out.
A long time listener.
First time caller, actually.
Good.
And also, I just want to say, you know, my husband's an amateur astronomer, and he's been following this stuff, and we are just so noted.
We are Christian conservative.
And I just want to get it out there to the public.
Did you know that also, you know, they're talking about the polar ice caps melting and all this stuff.
Did you know that Mars, the polar ice caps are melting?
Yeah, someone had come up with the scientific data on that a few months ago, suggesting that solar activity or sunspots have much more to do with changes in the weather than the carbon dioxide.
Exactly.
So, you know, if the polarized caps on Mars are melting and the polarized caps on Earth are melting, wouldn't that suggest that it actually is cyclical and maybe has to do with more solar activity?
And maybe it's not the CO2 emissions from Earth that are causing all of this global warming, so-called.
Well, to get serious for a moment, that has been the criticism of the global warming models and why when you go back in history, they never, if you take a global warming model, as they say, and you apply it in reverse, it is not a very good predictor of what's happened in the past.
And the reason some of the critics say is because they overweight the impact of carbon dioxide compared to all the other feedback.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Great point.
Thanks.
Exactly.
And I just wanted to get that out there.
It's, you know, it's happening throughout the universe, okay?
Not just on Earth because the horrible humans are emitting all these horrible CO2 emissions and creating global warming and the polarized caps melting.
It's ridiculous.
Well, you've got to remember it's a great way to redistribute wealth because if in fact we have to cut back on our energy use and energy conservation is going to be our energy policy, that is going to redistribute income from the people that use the most energy.
That's why there's always been a strong strain of socialism deep within the environmental movement.
Christine, thanks for the call.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
1-800-282-2882.
That's the contact line for the remaining number of calls we can squeeze in to the top of the hour.
Hope you've enjoyed the program.
I'm always appreciative of Rush and Kit and Ed and Mike and Jess here in the Twin Cities for helping me out when we do these fill-ins.
Always appreciative of all of you, too.
So Curtis in Fayetteville, Arkansas, you are up next.
Hi.
Hello.
Hello.
Hey, Jason.
Yes, that would be me.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just wanted to call and let you know about this fellow that I met at a dinner party, fascinating individual.
And the topic of politics came up and it led to energy uses.
And the time we were trying to, in the news, trying to get the offshore oil ban lifted.
And I was like, you know, that's great.
That's great.
You know, we're putting pressure and more pressure on the congressmen, you know, and get them to do their jobs and lift this ban.
Right.
And then everybody at the dinner table, except for me, were saying, no, no, no, no, we can't do that.
We can't use oil.
And this one fellow that I just met that night puts his hand up in the air and makes like a declaration, we've got to eliminate all forms of carbon.
And I'm thinking, I'm thinking, dude, aren't you mostly made of carbon?
And I found out in an article in the paper that this guy is overseeing a project at his local church where they erected three wind turbines.
And it cost them $42,000 initially to put these things up.
They did it in like a day or two, a day or two.
But two of the turbines had to be replaced because of maintenance problems and the fact that they just weren't working very well.
And this guy is overseeing this and it's causing all this kind of maintenance.
And he says, every kind of problem that I have to deal with every day, I have to fix it.
He's got a degree in environmental dynamics, and I've never even heard of that.
Have you?
No, it sounds like he's well suited for what he's doing, however.
Yeah, if you're going to be educated in something, I mean, you know, more power to you.
That's fine.
Well suited for make work.
These windmills, don't get me going on windmills.
They're all over the Midwest.
They're all over California.
They're going up in schools.
I mean, when your local school district builds a high school, they're throwing a windmill in there.
Cities are getting involved, and they are a total ⁇ I hate to be so blunt about this.
I'm going to step on a lot of toes and get a lot of nasty emails, but they are a misallocation of resources in an immense way.
Go ahead.
I mean, if you think about all alternative sources, wind, solar, biomass, all of those, if they were viable, no government subsidy would be necessary.
If they weren't viable, or if they aren't viable, which I don't think they are, no amount of subsidy will make them so.
If you take wind power alone, which provides about two-thirds of 1% of all U.S. electricity, if we try to ramp that up to 20% by 2030, you're looking at $2 trillion.
You're looking at windmill corridors as far as the eye can see.
You're looking at windmills offshore.
You're looking at transmission superhighways, 12,000 miles of electric lines, according to the Wall Street Journal and the Investors Business Daily.
You're looking at a total malinvestment that could be spent on abundant energy, whether it's offshore oil, whether it's coal, whether it's even geothermal for that matter.
They do not come close to paying for themselves, which is why they've had, what, $14 billion in taxpayer subsidies over three decades?
Yeah, and I totally apply this guy's effort for looking at alternative energy sources.
I mean, that's what we should be doing.
But I'm reading this article and I'm trying to see, you know, I'm a numbers guy.
I have a technical background.
And I'm looking at the numbers and it says, you know, they cost $42,000 when we sell these things.
They've already had to replace two out of the three turbines.
They didn't tell me how much it costs to replace them.
So that could have been another, you know, $10,000 for a turbine.
I have no idea.
There are a number of health hazards associated with these things, too.
There's a constant humming noise with anybody in the vicinity.
There's what is called flicker that when these huge, massive things with 95 feet long blades are flickering in the sun.
It distracts drivers, not to mention aircraft.
You've got sheets of ice being thrown from the blades in the northern climates.
This is a, quite frankly, a disaster.
And yet the only people screaming the loudest are dedicated left-wing environmentalists and people who are selling the wind turbines.
Yeah.
And this guy was also putting in the article, he was saying that he won't be able to see a benefit from these turbines for at least 15 years.
Yeah.
$42,000 just up front.
That's if, excuse me, that's if everything worked perfectly.
Well, I got to go, but let me give you a final fact here.
You'll like this.
Christopher Book, I believe, or Booker wrote this not long ago.
If you take a look at the 10,000 turbines in America already, they represent about 18 gigawatts of installed capacity, but they only generate 4.5 gigawatts of power.
The wind doesn't always blow.
That's less than the power that's supplied by a single coal-fired power station.
You're looking at these wind farms, these massive, monstrous, bird-killing, environmentally offending wind farms all over the country that will require 100,000 acres for a 550-watt megawatt wind farm.
For a power plant, a gas-fired, coal-fired power plant, you're looking at 15 acres.
How this has ever become an environmental solution boggles my mind.
I'm Jason Lewis, and this is the Rush Limbaugh Program.
All right, my thanks to Kid, as always, Ed filling in for a mic on the board back in New York.
Jess doing the technical stuff, the real stuff that keeps this operation going back here in the Twin Cities.
Always a pleasure.
Look, the final thought is, go out there and, by the way, go out there and buy State of Fear if it's still in paperback or hardcover.
I'm not certain.
Great book on the environment.
The final thought is, though, these alternative sources require subsidies as far as the eye can see.
Let us use our own abundant resources.
▲
Export Selection