Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Arnold Schwarzenegger has received over 100,000 likes, for a Facebook post about the alleged benefits of renewables, which included a fantasy about people who choose petrol powered cars spending an hour with the car of their choice, locked in a sealed room with the engine running, without a gas mask.
From Arnold’s post;
I don’t give a **** if we agree about climate change.
…
Renewable energy is great for the economy, and you don’t have to take my word for it. California has some of the most revolutionary environmental laws in the United States, we get 40% of our power from renewables, and we are 40% more energy efficient than the rest of the country. We were an early-adopter of a clean energy future.
Our economy has not suffered. In fact, our economy in California is growing faster than the U.S. economy. We lead the nation in manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, entertainment, high tech, biotech, and, of course, green tech.
…
There are two doors. Behind Door Number One is a completely sealed room, with a regular, gasoline-fueled car. Behind Door Number Two is an identical, completely sealed room, with an electric car. Both engines are running full blast.
I want you to pick a door to open, and enter the room and shut the door behind you. You have to stay in the room you choose for one hour. You cannot turn off the engine. You do not get a gas mask.
I’m guessing you chose the Door Number Two, with the electric car, right? Door number one is a fatal choice – who would ever want to breathe those fumes?
Read more: https://www.facebook.com/notes/arnold-schwarzenegger/i-dont-give-a-if-we-agree-about-climate-change/10153855713574658
Schwarzenegger is wrong about renewables being “great for the economy” – as WUWT reported back in May, the cost of energy in California is having a significant impact on jobs, and is contributing to decisions by many businesses to relocate to Texas. This has become such an issue, that Californian Democrats who represent poor, working class areas recently mutinied against Governor Brown’s efforts to introduce tougher CO2 emissions targets, and sided with Republicans to defeat the bill.
But its the fantasy about people being gassed which really bothers me. The green movement has a growing track record of utterly grotesque, even murderous fantasies, and hysterical calls for their opponents to be persecuted. It seems sad that someone of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stature felt a need to add to this perversity.
Note from Anthony:
It appears the great musclehead mind has confused Carbon Monoxide, and Carbon Dioxide, something I’m no stranger to via threat from one of my own local nuts eco-activists, Sherri Quammen: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/22/letters-i-get-letters/
Ahnold and Sherri, they are both of the same caliber of thought.
And next up we have the Charlie Manson plan for climate fact checkers. Stay tuned
Yes there is a cadre here who do post some vicious stuff and they hate anyone who is ‘liberal’ in other ways who come here to support this site. This is toxic for WUWT and limits the reach of this site.
Please explain how this “limits the reach of this site”?
Are you suggesting other haters will hesitate to reference this thread because the vast majority here think Arnold is completely out of line?
Personally, I think he should be prosecuted for inciting criminal activity against a group of people that are trying to bring some sanity to the discussion.
Your thoughts, please.
“they hate anyone who is ‘liberal’ in other ways who come here to support this site”
No!
Wake up!
Not every person who sees himself as a liberal has these strange fantasies.
It’s the same old If nuclear fission is so safe why don’t you go without protection to the floors of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor buildings?
BTW, not all liberals are anti-energy anti-reliability anti-technology anti-nuclear anti-GMOs. See for example http://atomicinsights.com/
It’s impossible to read the Facebook post without a German accent, which does not help matters.
You would need to read it with an Austrian accent to be accurate. But no one seems to be concerned with accuracy, so what the hell.
Puffed-up Arnie said: “Renewable energy is great for the economy, and you don’t have to take my word for it”.
I think, for once we should heed his advice.
He’s never had much advice worth taking.
Does California “produce” 40% or use 40%.
Truly bizarre. You know, when I was a kid and there was no mainstream environmental movement, you sort of hoped people would get on board with protecting the planet. But now it’s become full-blown insanity. For Arnold to claim that California’s economy is booming, and all because of renewable energy is truly nutty. Step one would be to untangle all of the subsidies from those industries and see how they’re really doing. I don’t think these industries are, you know … sustainable.
want to know how hes going to run an electric car full blast stationary.
if he hooks it to dyno it prob won’t run an hour full blast.
I wonder if Arnold picked up a few bad habits and ideas from his late “Uncle Teddy” from Massachusetts.
Its all pretty rich coming from a guy who makes commercials for car insurance in the UK and who drives a Humvee and has other cars that include a Bentley Continental, Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, Porsche 911 Turbo and Dodge Challenger. Then there was the little matter of his commuter run from LA to Sacramento via private jet.
Another Hollywood Hypocrite
Arnie thinks the power supplying the electric car comes out of the fairy energy land
And where does the terminator think the electricity for his electrical vehicle comes from…somewhere there is a fossil fuel burning power station producing the electrons that go into his lead acid or lithium battery to recharge his Tesla or Volt or Leaf behind door number 2… what a dumb ass…sure he might die in the sealed room behind door number 1 but without fossil fuel his electrical vehicle ain’t going nowhere…
False test setup Arnie. Room 1 with the car running for eight hours: fine. But room 2 with the electric car should also house the ‘power station’ used to charge the battery overnight. I figure the exhaust from that can be more obnoxious.
He’s Austrian and an ignorant man, neither of which could bar you from becoming governor of California. However, breathing in exhaust fumes is an allegory he should be more careful about using.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/the-real-bastards/
Pointman
The exhaust from a new car pretty is almost all CO2 and water vapor. In a sealed room with a modern car running you will not die of CO or other pollutant, but because of oxygen deprivation. You are more likely to die from the fumes from a charging battery in an electric car being charged and sealed in the same room.
I imagine Arnie’s appalled when ISIS preaches the same self-righteous sentiments: if you do not believe as I believe then you deserve to die.
What is this, idiot of the week? Lord knows we won’t run out of candidates, just in Hollywood alone! I’ll be back.
Arnold the Fool. I show power consumed by California in the year 2014 as follows :
total power produced in-state – 199,00 GWhrs, of which 22.5% was “renewables” meaning
solar (5.3%), wind(6.5%), geothermal (6.1%) and the remainder by biomass and small hydro.
Califonrnia imported 98,000 GWhrs from out-of-state providers, of which approximately
16% was from renewable sources. Arnold in all likelihood is quoting nameplate capacities
for renewables , especially for solar and wind, which is something renewable proponents
habitually do, and which is totally inappropriate and amounts to an enormous exaggeration
of renwable share. A windmill based on land, for example typically can average only 25 to 30%
of its nameplate capacity, and solar,even in a desert, typically averages 6 suns per day, which
amounts to 25% of its nameplate capacity. Large baseload power generators, which produce the most
power, typically run in the 90% range. Some nuclear plants habitually operate at over 100% nameplate
capacity.
His claim that California leads the way in low carbon power production is hopelessly inaccurate.
While California has a 50% low carbon production target well into the future, South Carolina, for
example currently produces over 60% of its power from its 7 nuclear plants, and two more will come
online within a year or so, upping the percentage to well over 80%, a figure that California will
never achieve thru renwables, at least not without a massive backup up system of pumped storage, etc.
California depends heavilly upon out-of-state power providers. If they have a 50% target, then that
is only for the 2/3rds of power they produce themselves – the power consumed by Californians will
actually be considerably less of the low carbon variety. California has made its money as the land
of imagination and BS. Its residents continue in this tradition.
And this is why I’m paying $0.35 per KW-hour.
What’s a climate skeptic? Who’s skeptical climate exists? Skeptics don’t gain anything by letting the *rauds dictate the terms of the debate.
Quote “Let’s put climate change aside for a minute. In fact, let’s assume you’re right.”. Interesting that he is by implication willing to concede the science, even if it is hypothetically. Also, the analogy is desperately flawed. To make it more real, we would need to include the output from the fossil-fuelled power station in the room with the electric car……
100000 likes on Facebook don’t tell anything without the dislike option
He’s a selfish egocentric POS.
He doesn’t give a crap about climate change agreement (as he said). He likes “renewables” because they are good for HIS economic well being. He conflates his economic well being with the well being of the remainder of the population and then somehow rationalizes that a less efficient system is good for the economy.
His past actions show what kind of a person he is … however entertaining, you can’t trust his judgment or intellect.
California is a backwardassed third world jerk water. Sorry Californians but it’s true. The problem with California is that it thinks it’s forward and the rest of country needs to “catch up”. There you go. How in the world does one argue with that “logic”?
And they keep asking us why we need guns.
Stop openly fantasizing about murdering us for, say, a generation and then we’ll have that conversation.
I think the headline “UGLY: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Gas Chamber Fantasy for Climate Skeptics” is over the top and is the kind of hyperbole used by the opposition. While what he says is complete bullshit as normal, his comments here can hardly be construed as him wanting to gas skeptics. He appears to be merely saying, given the hypothetical choice, which would you choose. I think skeptics would be better off leaving the hyperbolic hysteria to the alarmists.
And we have the hypothetical choice of rejecting his hyperbolic hysteria, since he’s the one that started it. Besides, his is not an isolated case–the death penalty seems to be a favorite threat employed by those seeking to gain and maintain control using, of all things, the “gas of life”.
Look, these people don’t live in a civilized world, otherwise what you suggest might work but it hasn’t so far.
They start gassing or shooting or electrocuting skeptics and there will be hell to pay.
They might as well be told before they start doing it.
Ironically, oil is the only green source of energy, and it is even a basic nutrient in some ecosystems.
Well, as long as we have jumped the German socialist metaphors, let’s conclude with sequestration of all carbon-based lifeforms that believe in the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming prophecy. Lead by example.