SUVs Saved Chrysler
Henry Payne, Michigan View, 24 May 2011
Smearing Skeptic Scientists: What did Gore know and when did he know it?
Russell Cook, Climate Depot, 24 May 2011
Natural Gas a Natural Winner? Let the Market Decide!
E. Calvin Beisner, Master Resource, 24 May 2011
General Motors Will Never Repay Taxpayers
Shikha Dalmia, Reason, 24 May 2011
Fact Checking Al Roker’s Climate Claims
Greg Pollowitz, Planet Gore, 24 May 2011
Getting Hosed at the Pump? Don’t Blame Obama
Larry Bell, Forbes, 24 May 2011
I’ve long suspected that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) keeps Brawny paper towels in his kitchen cabinet. Brawny paper towels are the best—they’re the quickest, thickest picker-uppers—and Rep. Waxman lives in one of the richest Congressional districts, so it makes sense that he uses them, right? I think it does. Rep. Waxman’s logical affinity for Brawny paper towels is troubling, because they are manufactured by Georgia Pacific, which is owned by….KOCH INDUSTRIES!!! Possibly, every time Rep. Waxman wipes spilled caviar off his marble countertops, he’s funding the insidious KOCHTOPUS!!! I doubt his far-left base would appreciate this apparent financial link to a company reviled by liberals for supporting conservative causes. Why, it’s as if Rep. Waxman is contributing to the Tea Party!
I know what you are thinking: These are baseless and ridiculous claims. Indeed. Yet they are no more baseless and ridiculous than the stunt Rep. Waxman pulled yesterday at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the Keystone XL Pipeline. I explained in detail the politics of the pipeline in a previous post. Suffice it to say, it would double U.S. imports of Canadian tar sands oil, and it is staunchly opposed by environmentalist special interests. The focus of yesterday’s hearing was a Republican bill that would speed up the pipeline approval process, but Rep. Waxman wanted to take the panel in a different direction. Namely, he wanted to fabricate an association between the Keystone Pipeline and the left’s favorite piñata, Koch Industries, a.k.a, the Kochtopus.
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A staple of climate alarmism is the claim that snow pack in the arid West is shrinking and melting earlier in the spring season, diminishing supplies of water needed for irrigated agriculture in the hot summer months. But this year, snow pack is at record highs. Indeed, snow is piled so high that the big worry is not about summer drought but flash floods.
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British columnist Johann Hari recently took to the Huffington Post to try to whip up alarm about the supposed dangers posed to drinking water by ‘fracking,’ a.k.a hydraulic fracturing, an American-made technological miracle in natural gas production that has roughly doubled known North American gas reserves in only the last five years. I rebutted Hari’s baseless environmentalist talking points in a previous post, and I am much pleased to report this morning that the British Parliament agrees with my debunking of his nonsensical claims.
According to Public Service Europe (by way of the Global Warming Policy Foundation),
“Shale gas drilling has been given the go-ahead by members of the UK parliament who have insisted that the process is safe. An inquiry by the Energy and Climate Change committee concluded that fracking, the process by which gas is extracted from shale rock, poses no risk to underground water supplies as long as drilling wells are properly constructed.”
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In announcing his intention to seek the GOP nomination in 2012, Tim Pawlenty visited Iowa yesterday to deliver so-called “hard truths” to the American people. Given that he was in Iowa, Pawlenty’s stance on ethanol is the perpetual elephant in the room. Most non-Iowan fiscal conservatives seemed happy with Pawlenty’s comments, though its not clear why. The WSJ, today, wrote a short op-ed praising the Pawlenty for his unprecedented, “amazing” steps in Iowa:
One of the immutable laws of modern American politics is that no candidate who wants to win the Iowa Presidential caucuses can afford to oppose subsidies for ethanol. So it’s notable—make that downright amazing—that former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty launched his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination Monday by including a challenge to King Corn.
I suppose its worth praising him for making a slight improvement to the Obama/Bush/Gingrich/*insert politician* doctrine, but it ends with slight. The “don’t pull the rug out from under them,” slowly-end the subsidy approach isn’t a real stance, and its not an end to the subsidies. [click to continue…]
In the politically divided climate there seems to be little agreement. But everyone seems to concur that, despite a slight dip, the prices at the pump are too high and that expensive energy drags down a struggling economy.
Even Congress has heard the voice of the people. However, the White House is still pushing policy that pumps up prices.
In recent history, one prevailing viewpoint has been pre-eminent when it comes to America’s energy: climate change crisis. Policy has been centered on the idea that the climate is changing and that this is a new crisis caused by man’s use of hydrocarbons and that if we’d quit using hydrocarbons all would be well with the world. This philosophy has been out there long enough that most have tired of it—viewing it as just another “doomsday scheme.”
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The Los Angeles Times editorial board last week penned a widely circulated thesis that “[t]he environment and public health will be thrown under a bus for the sake of his [President Barack Obama’s] reelection in 2012.” While I would love, love, love for this to be true, it isn’t; the L.A. Times editorial board’s contention that the president has abandoned greens to score political points is bunk.
In fact, this administration is waging a war on conventional energy supply and demand in this country, with very real repercussions for everyday Americans. Just ask the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, oil and gas drillers along the Gulf, or coal miners in Appalachia, all of whom have urged the Congress to roll back the president’s regulatory crackdown in an effort to protect their livelihoods.
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“The UK’s National Grid has launched a competition to design the electricity pylons of the future that will carry green electricity from onshore and offshore wind farms, and other power sources, to the consumer,” Power-Gen Worldwide reports. The winning architect, designer, engineer, or student of those disciplines will receive a £10,000 ($16,131) prize. The public will be invited to comment on the final contestants in September, and an expert panel will select the winner in October.
Both the competition and the design selected are intended to raise consciousness. From the article: [click to continue…]
Sen. Lamar Alexander Sets the Record Straight on Wind Subsidies
MasterResource.org, 23 May 2011
California High Speed Rail on Fast Track to Nowhere
Babbage, The Economist, 23 May 2011
The Facts about ‘Fracking’
John Stossel, Reason, 19 May 2011
Obama’s Supposed Support for Drilling
Dana Joel Gattuso, Planet Gore, 19 May 2011
U.S. Nuclear Policy after Fukushima: Trust but Modify
Jack Spencer, Heritage Backgrounder, 18 May 2011
Update on Japanese Nuclear Crisis
Barry Brook, Brave New Climate, 18 May 2011
Energy blogger Robert Rapier has an excellent post about the naive hatred shown towards the fossil fuel industry by what he calls Democrats. I’m not completely convinced that its a position held by all of those on the left (rather than environmentalists, a subset of the left) but the knee-jerk anti energy sentiments tend to aggregate more on that side of the isle. Read the whole thing, especially his thoughts on clueless celebrity activism. He quotes an environmentalist who struggled to come to this realization:
There was virtually nothing in my office—my body included—that wasn’t there because of fossil fuels… I had understood this intellectually before—that the energy landscape encompasses not just our endless acres of oil fields, coal mines, gas stations, and highways…. What I hadn’t fully managed to grasp was the intimate and invisible omnipresence of fossil fuels in my own life…. I also realized that this thing I thought was a four-letter word (oil) was actually the source of many creature comforts I use and love—and many survival tools I need. It seemed almost miraculous. Never had I so fully grasped the immense versatility of fossil fuels on a personal level and their greater relevance in the economy at large.
Comfort, check. Survival, check. And this is a common phenomena by many who engage in similar types of activism against fossil fuels. The individuals who have worked to make our lives, while often getting rich in the process, are reviled by a good portion of the population. A prime example is the newest assault on the Koch brothers by Henry Waxman (D-Calif.): [click to continue…]
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