[oil pan 4]

Well it turns out the power meter can read apparent power.
Since I belive in math and reproduceable scientific experiments (unlike the AGW community), I will tell you what I did and how I did it. I dont make crap up and tell you to believe it.
You will need a power company power meter, kill-a-watt meter, 200w incandescent light bulb with drop light, and a 110v arc welder with a really horrible power factor.
I have a 2 main panels, since I split the lines coming out of the power meter. I turned off the house power so the meter was stopped. This leaves only my small power panel energized. No chance something can kick on and screw with my test.
Test 1, plug in the incandescent and count the number of seconds between marks passing on the disk.
It took 3 seconds for each mark to pass and check its actual consumption on the kill-a-watt meter.
Test 2 used my small arc welder with its horrible 0.22 power factor. It draws 120 watts of real power and 500 some units of apparent power. I removed the drop light and plugged in my welding machine in to the same kill-a-watt meter.
When the welder was flipped on it turned the power meter disk much faster. It was between 1 and 2 seconds per meter count.

Now if power meters only read true power then the welding machine with its 120watts of true power should have turned the power meter much slower than the 200w bulb with its 207 watts of measured true power.
Wouldn't you think?