Are we all wasting our energy? No pun intended.

Going "Green"

Bryce used to be a left-liberal, but then: "I educated myself about math and physics. I'm a liberal who was mugged by the laws of thermodynamics."
Bryce mocked the "green" value of my riding my bike to work:
"Let's assume you saved a gallon of oil in your commute (a generous assumption!). Global daily energy consumption is 9.5 billion gallons of oil equivalent. ... So by biking to work, you save the equivalent of one drop in 10 gasoline tanker trucks. Put another way, it's one pinch of salt in a 100-pound bag of potato chips."
How about wind power?
"Wind does not replace oil. This is one of the great fallacies, and it's one that the wind energy business continues to promote," Bryce said.
The problem is that windmills cannot provide a constant source of electricity. Wind turbines only achieve 10 percent to 20 percent of their maximum capacity because sometimes the wind doesn't blow.
"That means you have to keep conventional power plants up and running. You have to ramp them up to replace the power that disappears from wind turbines and ramp them down when power reappears."
Yet the media rave about Denmark, which gets some power from wind. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says, "If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark."
"Friedman doesn't fundamentally understand what he's talking about," Bryce said.
Bryce's book shows that Denmark uses eight times more coal and 25 times more oil than wind.
If wind and solar power were practical, entrepreneurs would invest in it. There would be no need for government to take money from taxpayers and give it to people pushing green products.

Link:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/26/going_green_105720.html