If anyone is “regurgitat(ing) old tired mantras,” it is Jules Ohrin-Greipp (Debate the facts rather than fears,” Yuma Sun, March 19) calling us birthers, deathers, fringers and depressing ignorant racists.  (Incidentally the author cites not one fact to justify the slurs. 

       Casting ad hominem slurs on the opposition is common on the left.  At every stump speech President Obama manages to call us Flat Earthers.  Had he been up on his history, our president would have known that outside of a few leaders in the Catholic Church, most people knew 2,000 years ago that the earth is round. Eratosthenes calculated its circumference within 50 miles of today’s estimate in about 200 B.C.   The Bible makes several references to the fact that the earth is an “orb” suspended in space.

         The president’s grasp of presidential history is lacking as well.  He compared our resistance to his energy policy to Rutherford B. Hayes’ resistance to the telephone accusing Hayes of calling it a “crazy invention.”  Rutherford B. Hays actually celebrated the invention and was the first president own a telephone. 

Conservatives are called “flat-earthers” because they refuse to recognize that solar, wind, and bio-fuels are the answer to our energy problems. We support individuals investing in a variety of energy alternatives.  Both my daughter and my niece have made their own solar panels to use on their Northern Arizona acreages.  My husband and I built a solar oven way back in the 70’s. 

          All the science, however, reveals that gas, oil, coal, and nuclear energy, (the types of energy about which the left says “Katie bar the door!!”)  are by far the most efficient, most abundant, and the most reliable. First of all, let us dispense with one of our president’s favorite canards, that the United States consumes 20 per cent of the world’s energy and has only 2 per cent of the reserves, a mere 23 billion barrels.  North America actually sits on 1.5 trillion barrels, perhaps more than the entire Middle East.   We have an abundant supply.

           And it’s efficient. Studies at Cornell University illustrate the inefficiency of ethanol.  A car getting 30 miles per gallon on gasoline would get only 20 mpg using ethanol.  It takes 2 gallons of fossil fuel to create 3 gallons of ethanol. The producers gas and oil “to produce ethanol [because they] can't afford to burn ethanol.”   

          Nuclear power is mega efficient.  A nuclear plant takes up about 2 acres of land and can produce 1000 megawatts of power per hour.  It would take 240,000 acres (375 square miles) and 9,600 turbines to produce that much power and 20,000 acres or 31.25 square miles of solar panels. Both types of energy rely on the weather, but a nuclear plant produces its 1000 megawatts 24 hours a day.

          If we could get Katie (the Department of Energy) to quit barring the door, we might very well be paying 2 bucks at the pump again.