CORRECTING LIES ABOUT NEW ENERGY

Mistakes about green energy myths
Eric Casey, April 29, 2010 (Letter to Washington Post)

"Robert Bryce's April 25 Outlook commentary…contained several misleading arguments.

"First, the fact that it takes relatively more space to generate wind or solar energy is irrelevant. A large solar farm has exponentially less environmental impact than the same land allocated to an oil or gas refinery. One need only look at the recent oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico to understand that energy produced per square meter is not a particularly useful way to compare…"

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"Second, Mr. Bryce asserted that in spite of Denmark's extensive use of wind power, it has only managed to keep carbon dioxide emissions flat since 1990. In fact, Denmark Energy Agency data show that carbon dioxide emissions per capita have dropped by roughly 25 percent.

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"Finally, his claim that alternative energy simply exchanges dependence on one set of unsavory regimes for another mistakenly confuses production capacity for production potential. The United States has the world's second-largest reserves of rare-earth elements (after China) used in alternative energy technologies. Should China's control of production prove problematic, the United States could simply ramp up production…"