2010

Mommy, Are We Beyond Petroleum Yet?

by Marlo Lewis on July 13, 2010

in Blog

No, Sylvester, not even close! As noted in a previous post, on Earth Day (April 22), a Navy F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet became the first aircraft to “demonstrate the performance of a 50-50 blend of camelina-based biojet fuel and traditional petroleum-based jet fuel at supersonic speeds.”  Camelina is a non-edible plant in the mustard family.

Navy Secy. Ray Mabus crowed that the biofueled fighter demonstrates “the Navy’s commitment to reducing dependence on foreign oil as well as safeguarding our environment” and to being “an early adopter of alternative energy sources.”

Secy. Mabus neglected to mention that camelina-based fuel costs $65 a gallon (ClimateWire, 6/28/10, subscription required) – about 30 times more than commercial jet fuel. Only an organization funded with your tax dollars could afford to ignore so much pain at the pump.

Plain and simple economics — not the alleged machinations of Big Oil or Congress’s unwillingness to put a price on carbon – explains why America remains dependent on petroleum.

More evidence (as if any were needed) that politicians cannot mandate and subsidize us into a beyond petroleum future comes from an unlikely source — EPA.

SugarcaneBlog.Com reported yesterday:

Once again, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has had to rollback the ambitious nationwide mandate for cellulosic biofuels that Congress created in the 2007 energy bill. EPA announced today proposed regulations to implement the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) for 2011 but said the goal of 250 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels cannot be met. EPA is proposing to set the standard in the range of 5 to 17 million gallons.

This means that next year, somewhere between 0.004% and 0.015% of our motor fuel will come from cellulosic ethanol. I feel more energy independent already, don’t you?

By way of background, in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), Congress mandated that importers, blenders, and refiners sell 36 billion gallons of renewable motor fuel by 2022, with 16 billion gallons classified as cellulosic. As you may recall, President G.W. Bush touted ethanol made from plant cellulose such as switchgrass in his 2006 state of the union address.

Five to 17 million gallons is a very long way from 16 billion gallons.  Of course, some miracle may happen between now and 2022. But as for 2011, EPA is in wholesale retreat on cellulosic ethanol. If refiners actually sell 17 million gallons of cellulosic in 2011, the RFS program will fall short of EISA’s 250 million gallon target by 94%. If refiners sell only 5 million gallons, the program will fall short by 98%.

EPA says it “remains optimistic” about the commercial potential of cellulosic ethanol. Well, did you expect EPA to badmouth a mandate that expands its control over the  transport sector?

Bloomberg Businessweek explains more clearly than EPA does why the agency had to back-peddle so furiously: “The Environmental Protection Agency proposed requiring less cellulosic ethanol to be blended into gasoline next year than sought under U.S. law because production of the alternative fuel hasn’t reached commercial scale.”

The lesson should be obvious. It was well and memorably expressed by three MIT scholars in their retrospective on the Carter era energy programs:

The experience of the 1970s and 1980s taught us that if a technology is commercially viable, then government support is not needed and if a technology is not commercially viable, no amount of government support can make it so.

Post image for LibertyWeek 101: The IPCC’s Bunker Mentality

LibertyWeek 101: The IPCC’s Bunker Mentality

by Richard Morrison on July 12, 2010

in Blog, Features, Politics

Richard Morrison and Marc Scribner welcome back long-lost co-host Michelle Minton to Episode 101 of the LibertyWeek podcast. Among other issues, we discuss the IPCC’s latest attempt to muzzle its own advisory scientists (segment begins approximately 10 minutes in).

Cooler Heads Digest 9 July 2010

by William Yeatman on July 9, 2010

in Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

The Greenhouse Protection Racket
Marlo Lewis, Pajamas Media, 9 July 2010

Climate Change: A Collective Flight from Reality
Roger Helmer, Washington Times, 9 July 2010

Markets, Not Social Values, Should Determine Price of Electricity
William Yeatman & Amy Oliver Cooke, Denver Daily News, 9 July 2010

Climate Clique Looks after Its Own
Gerald Warner, Daily Telegraph, 8 July 2010

Austerity Green: EU Fatigue for Renewables
Matthew Sinclair, Master Resource.org, 7 July 2010

Oil Sands Push Tests U.S.-Canada Ties
Phred Dvorak & Edward Welsch, Wall Street Journal, 7 July 2010

Putting Wind Power into Perspective
Greg Pollowitz, Planet Gore, 7 July 2010

Maryland’s Smart Grid Fiasco
William Yeatman, Baltimore Sun, 5 July 2010

News You Can Use

Hefty Cost of Fuel Switching

Proponents of a carbon tax often claim that natural gas is a ready alternative to coal for the generation of electricity, but according to a new study by the American Public Power Association, the fuel switch would cost $680 billion.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Energy Rationers Still Can’t Get Their Act Together

The majority staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee have spent the week putting together an energy-rationing package to bring to the floor, which Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) planned to do next week.  But it has already been reported that the package won’t be ready by next week.  That is apparently because decisions on some key issues remain to be made.  This is not news.  The Democratic majority have been trying to put something together that can get 60 votes since last fall.

First, it was the Kerry-Boxer bill, which was similar to the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House on 26th June 2009 by a 219-212 vote.  Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) moved that bill out of her Environment and Public Works Committee last November before the UN global warming pow-wow in Copenhagen.  But the public’s overwhelmingly negative reaction to Waxman-Markey meant that it was dead in the Senate.

Then Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) spent months working with Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on an alternative described as less ambitious and capable of attracting bi-partisan support.  Graham eventually dropped out, most likely because of the blowback against him in South Carolina, and Kerry and Lieberman finally introduced their bill in May.  Like Kerry-Boxer, the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act has no chance of gaining the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate.  I doubt that it could get 50 votes.

That leaves it up to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  In the spring of 2009, Bingaman passed several measures out of his committee with the support of ranking Republican Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).  These include a renewable standard for electric utilities, new building energy efficiency standards based on California’s, and a variety of other lesser “clean energy” provisions.  That is reportedly the basis of the package now being put together.  Like most other big bills brought to the Senate (and House) floor these days, the bill is being put together in secret, so it’s hard to find out what might be in it.  However, it has been reported that it does not contain a cap-and-trade scheme or mandatory targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The obstacle remains how to get the 60 votes to invoke cloture and pass the bill.  The other major decision is whether to attach it to a bill addressing BP’s Gulf oil leak disaster or to replace the House version of Waxman-Markey.  If the latter, the Senate would then send H. R. 2454 back to the House in hopes of adding cap-and-trade in a House-Senate conference committee and passing it in a lame duck session after the November elections.

The fact that Senate Democrats have not been able to take the first step toward enacting energy-rationing legislation in the past year and still seem stymied is good news for American consumers, workers, and taxpayers.  With any luck, the Senate will not pass anything this year.  Even if it does, it’s not clear that the House would go along.

Climategate Update

Another Week, Another Whitewash

Only days after the Penn State University released its whitewash report on Professor Michael Mann’s involvement in the Climategate (which we reported on last week), a supposedly blue-ribbon panel did the same for University of East Anglia’s Phil Jones, the central figure in the scandal. Incredibly, the Muir Russell panel failed to address climate science, and lead investigators didn’t even bother to attend interviews of Jones. Needless to say, “This is another example of the establishment circling the wagons and defending their position,” as CEI’s Myron Ebell told the New York Times.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

Enron & BP: Global Warming as the Great Distraction

by Marlo Lewis on July 6, 2010

in Blog

In a three–part post over at MasterResource.Org, my colleague Robert L. Bradley, Jr. shows that BP  has much in common with Enron. Both companies aggressively sought rents (politically-contrived profits) via global warming policies. Both aggressively marketed themselves as green. Both were highly regarded as progressive corporations within the environmental community. Both became disasters.

For both companies, global warming advocacy and greenwashing became a fatal distraction, Bradley argues:

Just imagine if John Browne had used the time and resources BP spent on climate alarmism and ‘beyond petroleum’ on real safety and environmental issues.

BP might still have a capitalization of $150 billion and not face a potential worst-case scenario of bankruptcy and ruin. And more importantly, the U.S. Gulf would not be in an environmental crisis.

Just imagine if Enron’s Ken Lay had used the time and resources spent on climate alarmism and forced energy transformation on accounting, risk control, and the real things that promote business sustainability.

Enron might still be with us today.

Diverted management attention has an opportunity cost. Left environmentalists lobbied and praised BP and Enron for putting form over substance. A few shouted ‘greenwashing’, but most applauded their coveted split within the fossil-fuel industry on climate and energy.

Enron is no longer around. Instead it has become the poster child of political capitalism run amuck. And the Deepwater Horizon accident–for which, in an effort to save about $5 million, BP will pay tens of billions of dollars–may sink BP as an independent company.

What an irony: fake environmentalism driving out real environmentalism.

Cooler Heads Digest 2 July 2010

by William Yeatman on July 2, 2010

in Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

The All-American Light Bulb Dims, as Freedom Flickers
Deroy Murdock, National Review, 2 July 2010

A Wellspring of Politics, Not Science
William O’ Keefe, Washington Times, 2 July 2010

Running out of Little Green Countries
Chris Horner, AmSpecBlog, 1 July 2010

Blowout Prevention Act Would Blow Out Domestic Production
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 1 July 2010

The Windsurfer’s Windfall
Max Brindle, American Spectator, 29 June 2010

Everyone Knows…Except the Experts
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 29 June 2010

They Loved BP & Enron
Robert Bradley, MasterResource.org, 28 June 2010

Is Obama Putting Ideology above Science?
Detroit News editorial, 27 June 2010

News You Can Use

Price Tag of Obama’s Moratorium

According to a new analysis by the Heritage Foundation, President Barack Obama’s offshore oil ban, if extended through 2035, would:

  • Reduce GDP by $5.5 trillion
  • Reduce the average consumption expenditures for a family of four by $2,381 per year (and exceeds $4,000 in 2035)
  • Reduce job growth by more than 1 million jobs by 2015 and more than 1.5 million jobs by 2030

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

White House Convenes Climate Meeting

Twenty-three Senators finally met with President Barack Obama Tuesday morning to discuss how to move forward with energy-rationing legislation.  Darren Samuelsohn and Coral Davenport reported in Politico that the President made it clear that he wants the Senate to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, but that he recognizes that it may be necessary to settle for something much more modest than the House Waxman-Markey bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has indicated that he still wants the Senate to take up energy-rationing legislation when Senators return from the Fourth of July recess on 12th July.  Everything else remains to be decided.  First is the question of whether energy-rationing provisions should be attached to a bill to address BP’s Gulf oil leak or whether it should be a stand-alone bill.  If it is a stand-alone bill, then it will probably be brought to the floor as H. R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey bill which the House passed by a 219 to 212 vote on 26th June 2009.  That could keep alive the possibility of calling a conference committee and then trying to pass something in a lame duck session after the election.

What might be included in a Senate anti-energy package is still up in the air.

One Possibility:  Utility-only Energy Rationing

One possibility that has been floated and was reportedly suggested by Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Me.) at the meeting with President Obama is a cap-and-trade scheme that covers electric utilities only.  I’m not sure why a utilities-only cap-and-trade scheme would be any easier to pass than an economy-wide one, since everyone understands that it would only be the first step and that for the first ten or fifteen years an economy-wide cap-and-trade really only hits coal.

Another Possibility: Bingaman’s Anti-energy Bill

Another possibility that has been the most likely for a couple months is that the Senate will take up the anti-energy provisions passed out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year.  These include a renewable standard for utilities, new building energy efficiency standards modeled on California’s, and several other “clean energy” provisions.  If that is the way Reid decides to go, then it will put Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the Chairman of the Committee, in charge of the legislation.

That makes sense for several reasons.  First, Bingaman is not Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), a legislative lightweight who is not much more popular with Senate Democrats than he is with Republicans.  Nor is he Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is even more of a lightweight than Kerry.  Second, Bingaman passed these provisions out of his committee with the support of the ranking Republican, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), so he starts with Republican support and has every prospect of gaining more.  And third, Bingaman’s package does not put a price on CO2 emissions.  This makes it much harder to build public opposition to it as an energy tax.

The death of Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) complicates the situation.  Majority Leader Reid is short one vote until a successor is appointed by West Virginia’s Governor, Joe Manchin.  But Reid might be worse off after a new Senator is appointed.  That’s because Manchin is the most ferocious opponent of anti-coal policies among high-ranking elected Democrats.

Across the States

What Is EPA Doing in West Virginia?

On April 1st, the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated new Clean Water Act regulations for the discharge of conductivity (i.e., salinity) from surface coal mining operations in West Virginia. The regulations were established in order to protect the Mayfly, a short-lived insect that isn’t even an endangered species. At the press conference to unveil the new standards, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson conceded that the new regulations were stringent enough to outlaw mountain top removal mining. Last week, however, the EPA notified Arch Coal Inc.’s Coal-Mac subsidiary that its MTR project at the Pine Creek Surface Mine in Logan County, West Virginia, would receive a Clean Water Act permit. EPA’s coal crackdown engendered a bipartisan rebuke from almost every state and federal politician in West Virginia, so perhaps the EPA is signaling that it intends to be flexible. Tellingly, the EPA did not make the permit approval public.

ClimateGate Update

Mann Exonerated by Penn State Panel Designed To Exonerate Mann

To the surprise of no one, Professor Michael Mann, (creator of the debunked Hockey Stick global temperature reconstruction), was cleared by a Penn State University investigation prompted by Mann’s involvement in the ClimateGate scandal. PSU initiated the investigation in November, 2009, at the behest of alumni. It appointed a panel and tasked it with answering these questions:

I. Did Mann engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly: any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?;
2. any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4,as suggested by Phil Jones?;
3. any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?;
4. any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities?

In January, the panel exonerated Mann on the first three charges. After learning of PSU’s decision, Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told PSU investigators, “It’s thoroughly amazing. I mean these are issues that he explicitly stated in the emails. I’m wondering what’s going on?” Hear, hear!

That January ruling left little doubt that the “investigation” was a showcase to clear Mann, even though the panel decided that the fourth charge necessitated further inquiry, the results of which were released yesterday. As CEI’s Myron Ebell told the New York Times, “It’s no surprise that it’s a whitewash of Dr. Mann’s misconduct, because it was designed to be a whitewash.”

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

Blowout Prevention Act Would Blowout Domestic Oil Production

by Marlo Lewis on July 1, 2010

in Blog

Yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held a hearing on H.R. 5626, the Blowout Prevention Act of 2010. Although the sponsors claim their intent is simply to prevent a disaster like the blowout of BP’s Macondo deepwater well from ever happening again, the bill would establish, as a precondition for obtaining a permit to drill, a test no oil company can pass.

Let’s look at the bill’s first substantive provision:

SEC. 2. NO DRILLING WITHOUT DEMONSTRATED ABILITY
TO PREVENT AND CONTAIN LEAKS.
(a) FEDERALLY PERMITTED HIGH-RISK WELLS.—
Effective one year after the date of enactment of this Act, the appropriate Federal official shall not issue a permit to drill for a high-risk well unless the applicant for such
permit demonstrates, the Chief Executive Officer of the applicant attests in writing, and the appropriate Federal  official determines that—
(1) the blowout preventer and other well control measures will prevent a blowout from occurring;
(2) the applicant has an oil spill response plan that ensures that the applicant has the capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail; and
(3) the applicant has the capability to begin drilling of a relief well within 15 days, and complete such drilling of a relief well to control a blowout within 90 days of the well control event that causes such blowout.

The unattainable standard is in Section 2(a)(2). Under this provision, no oil company may obtain a permit to drill for a high-risk well unless it demonstrates the ”capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail.” But, as is painfully obvious, the Macondo well has been gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months with no clear end in sight. Nobody has the capacity to “promptly stop” the blowout after the preventer and other well control measures failed — not BP, not the oil industry working as a team, not the federal and state governments working with the oil industry.

In short, the bill would hold applicants for drilling permits to a standard that none can meet. Moreover, as fully documented here, the sponsors of the Blowout Prevention Act know very well that once the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail, physics takes over and there is no way to stop oil from spilling into the ocean environment. Consider these excerpts from a colloquy between Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson:

Stupak: . . . so no matter which one of the oil companies here before us had the blowout, the resources are not enough to prevent what we’re seeing day after day in the gulf, not only the loss of 11 people, but we’re on, what, day 56 or 57 of oil washing up on shores. There is no other plan. There is no way to stop what’s happening until we finally cap this well, correct?

Tillerson: That is correct. . . . There is no response capability that will guarantee you will never have an impact. It does not exist and it will probably never exist.

Now, you might suppose that although Section 2(a)(2) would effectively bar all drilling of “high-risk wells,” it would not affect offshore wells that are low-risk. Alas, no. Sec. 16(12)(A) defines “high risk” to include any “offshore oil or gas exploration or production well within 200 nautical miles of the coast of the United States.”

At yesterday’s hearing several members criticized this language as indiscriminate, because it ignores the site-specific circumstances (such as oil pressure, temperature, and geology) that would affect the risk level of a particular drilling operation. Chairmen Waxman (D.-Calif.), Markey (D-Mass.), and Stupak may thus agree to define “high risk” more narrowly — for example, offshore wells in water deeper than 1000 feet.

Even with this modification, however, the bill would still wreak havoc on offshore oil production. As the Department of Interior notes in its May 27 report, Increased Safety Measures for Energy Development on the Outer Continental Shelf, U.S. deepwater offshore oil production surpassed shallow water oil production in 2001, and in 2009, 80% of offshore oil production and 45% of offshore gas production “occurred in water depths in excess of 1,000 feet.” The future of offshore oil is in deep water. Even if “high risk” applies only to deepwater wells, H.R. 5626 would sabotage the industry’s future.

Sec. 16(12)(B) also defines ”high risk” to include any ”onshore oil or gas exploration or production well in the United States . . . that, in the event of a blowout, could lead to substantial harm to public health and safety and the environment.” Is there anyone in the environmental movement who does not think an oil spill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) “could lead to substantial harm to . . . the environment”? Let’s call this provision the ANWR Prohibition Clause. Of course, it could effectively prohibit onshore drilling in many places besides ANWR.

Federal officials won’t be able to finesse these strictures, even if they want to, because the bill would empower “citizens” to enforce the Act and its associated regulations and orders via litigation:

Any person may commence a civil action in Federal district court of appropriate jurisdiction on such person’s own behalf to compel compliance with this Act, or any regulation or order issued under this Act, or any regulation or order issued under this Act, against any person, including the United States, and any other government instrumentality or agency (to the extent permitted by the eleventh amendment to the Constitution) for any alleged violation of any provision of this Act or any regulation or order issued under this Act. [Sec. 16(a)]

Enact the Blowout Prevention Act, and every eco-litigation group will be able to sue any agency that fails to hold any oil company to an unattainable standard.

All of this would be okay if oil were evil and abolishing U.S. oil production could not happen too soon. That seems to be an unstated premise of the Blowout Prevention Act.

That premise, however, is outrageously false. Although oil spills are bad, oil is good. Without oil, there would be no modern commerce and no mechanized agriculture. Life for most of humanity, including most Americans, would be poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Indeed, many of us would not even be alive.

Banning offshore drilling would increase consumers’ pain at the pump, destroy tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, cripple the economy of the Gulf coast states, and make America more dependent on OPEC oil. Presumably, those are not results most Members of Congress want to bring about. Yet Congress will set the stage for just such a policy disaster if, applying the so-called Precautionary Principle to domestic oil production, it demands proof of absolute safety as a precondition for approving the operation of offshore and onshore wells.

Blowout Prevention Act — or Oil Production Prevention Act?

by Marlo Lewis on June 30, 2010

in Blog, Features

That’s the question I address today on the free-market energy blog, MasterResource.Org.

This morning, the  House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Environment is holding a hearing on the Blowout Prevention Act. The bill text says that the federal government “shall not” issue a permit for an offshore oil well unless the applicant can “demonstrate” that he has the “capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail.” However, as the ongoing disaster in the Gulf makes painfully clear, once “the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail,” there is no way to “promptly stop” oil from spilling into the ocean. At that point, physics (two fluids coming into contact) takes over.

In short, the Act sets a standard that no oil company can meet. As written, the bill would effectively prohibit all future offshore drilling. Logically, moreover, it implies that all existing permits to drill should be revoked.

Two points should be kept in mind.

First, although oil spills are bad, oil is good. Without oil, there would be no modern commerce and no mechanized agriculture. Life for most people would be nasty, poor, brutish, and short. Many of us would not even be alive.

Second, banning offshore drilling would increase consumers’ pain at the pump, destroy tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, cripple the economy of the gulf states, and make the United States more dependent on OPEC oil.

Green Stimulus Fails To Be “Timely, Targeted, and Temporary”

by William Yeatman on June 30, 2010

in Blog, Features

Back in February 2009, when everyone thought a deep depression was imminent, Keynesian economists and their political boosters demanded big government spending. According to their calculations, a “timely, targeted, and temporary” infusion of taxpayer money would defibrillate our moribund economy, the growth of which would make the trillion-dollar price tag seem like small potatoes. It was elementary!

So the White House pushed, and the Congress passed, a gigantic trillion-dollar stimulus, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It was, however, anything but “targeted.” Instead, it was a grab bag of special interest handouts.

About $90 billion of those taxpayer funded giveaways went to “green” energy, which is about as trendy a cause as there is right now. Today, on the thirtieth of June, almost a year and half after the stimulus passed, the Department of Energy has awarded a scant 15% of its “green” energy stimulus funds. So much for “timely.”

Despite the fact that so little of the stimulus has yet been spent, House leadership already wants more. This week, powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Michigan Representative Sandy Levin (D) is pushing a bill that would extend Stimulus green energy tax incentives, to the tune of $20 billion. So it seems that “temporary” was also a sham.

Bio Jet Fuel — the Real $600 Toilet Seat?

by Marlo Lewis on June 28, 2010

in Blog

The custom-designed $600 toilet seat for P-3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft — often depicted as the epitome of government waste — is an urban legend.

The “seat” was actually a plastic molding that fitted over the entire seat, tank, and toilet assembly, for which the contractor charged the Navy $100 apiece.

However, in the subsidy-driven world of biofuels, government can flush lots of your tax dollars down the gurgler.

DOD’s Quadrenniel Defense Review Report (QDR) crows that in 2009, the Navy “tested an F/A-18  engine on camelina-based biofuel” (pp. 87-88). Camelina is a non-edible plant in the mustard family.

On Earth Day 2010, an F/A-18 taking off from the Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, became the first aircraft to ”demonstrate the performance of a 50-50 blend of camelina-based biojet fuel and traditional petroleum-based jet fuel at supersonic speeds,” enthuses Renewable Energy World.Com.

At the event, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said: “It’s important to emphasize, especially on Earth Day, the Navy’s commitment to reducing dependence on foreign oil as well as safeguarding our environment. Our Navy, alongside industry, the other services and federal agency partners, will continue to be an early adopter of alternative energy sources.”

Renewable Energy World also reports that the Navy ordered 200,000 gallons of camelina-based jet fuel for 2009-2010 and has an option to purchase another 200,000 gallons during 2010-2012. Sounds impressive, but let’s put those numbers in perspective. In just three months in peacetime, the flight crew of a single vessel — the USS NASSAU, a multi-purpose amphibious assault ship – flew more than 2,800 hours and burned over 1 million gallons of jet fuel.

Neither Renewable Energy World nor the QDR mentions how much camelina-based jet fuel costs. Hold on to your (toilet) seat! According to today’s ClimateWire (subscription required), the price is $65.00 per gallon. That’s about 30 times more expensive than commercial jet fuel.

Those who wonder why government can’t just mandate a transition to a ”beyond petroleum” future should contemplate those numbers.

Cooler Heads Digest 26 June 2010

by William Yeatman on June 26, 2010

in Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

EU Countries Slashing Green Budgets
Patrice Hill, Washington Times, 25 June 2010

Markets Should Drive Colorado Energy Industry
William Yeatman & Amy Oliver Cooke, Denver Business Journal, 25 June 2010

Can a Carbon Cap Pass?
Myron Ebell, Politico, 25 June 2010

Climate Policy Not as Simple as Gore Thinks
Jim Manzi, The New Republic, 24 June 2010

Paul McCartney Compares Climate Skeptics to Holocaust Deniers
Josh Miller, FoxNews.com, 24 June 2010

A New Low for Science-the Black List
Fran Smith, GlobalWarming.org, 23 June 2010

Obama’s BP Time
Michael Lynch, MasterResource.org, 23 June 2010

Anti-Climate Law Initiative Qualifies for November Ballot
Dennis Theriault, San Jose Mercury News, 23 June 2010

Crude Stereotypes
Matt Purple, Spectator, 21 June 2010

News You Can Use

EPA Exposes Energy Independence Myth

Senator John Kerry claims that his cap-and-trade bill, the American Power Act, would make the U.S. “energy independent,” but according to the EPA’s economic analysis, the bill would raise gasoline prices to $5.00 a gallon in 2050 yet would leave U.S. petroleum consumption about where it is today.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

President Cancels Climate Meeting with Senators

President Barack Obama had to cancel his Wednesday morning meeting with a bipartisan group of Senators to discuss the need to pass energy-rationing legislation because he had to talk with General Stanley McChrystal before firing him as head of our Afghan campaign.  The meeting has not yet been rescheduled.

Despite Cancellation, Democratic Senators “Inspired”

Senate Democrats did go ahead on Thursday with their third meeting in three weeks to discuss how to proceed to the floor in July with an energy-rationing package.  Reporters talking to Senators as they came out of the meeting were greeted with uniformly glowing accounts of what happened at the meeting.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) told The Hill: “This was without doubt one of the most motivating, energized, and even inspirational caucuses that I’ve been part of since I’ve been here in the Senate in 26 years.”

Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) chimed in that the meeting had been “absolutely thrilling.”  Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was also over the moon: “A number of senators said this was the best caucus they’ve ever attended.  It was really very, very powerful. It was inspirational, quite frankly.”

So what did Senate Democrats decide to do?  They decided to include energy-rationing provisions in a bill to punish BP and the oil industry for BP’s Gulf oil leak.  This would force Republicans opposed to energy rationing to take a very difficult vote against the BP spill bill.

This strategy was first reported by Politico three weeks ago (which I discussed in the Digest here), so I’m not sure what made the meeting so exciting.  Perhaps they finally agreed on what provisions to include in the package?  No, they reported no progress on deciding the actual contents of the legislation.

My suspicion is that Senate Democrats, with no substantive progress to show for their three meetings, decided that they had to make a public show of progress.  Describing the meeting as exciting, inspiring, and thrilling was the best they could come up with.  They can try to hide it, but the fact is that the Good Bus Cap-n-Tax has run out of gas and is slowing to a stop.

The question is whether the Democrats’ huge Senate majority (plus a few Republicans) will be able to pass some modest package of regulations and mandates that will raise energy prices and cripple the economy.

Across the States

Marlo Lewis, from GlobalWarming.org

Louisiana Judge Overturns Obama’s Drilling Ban

On Wednesday, Judge Martin Feldman of the Eastern Louisiana District Court lifted the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on all oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in waters over 500 feet in depth. Feldman held  that the moratorium was “arbitrary and capricious” and would do “irreparable harm” to businesses that own, operate, and service vessels used to support offshore drilling – an industry critical to the region’s economy. Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar imposed the moratorium on May 28 in response to the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill.

Around the World

Chris Horner, from Pajamas Media

Spanish Green Jobs Critic Receives Bomb Threat

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada-the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure-was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic. The bomb threat is just the latest intimidation Dr. Calzada has faced since releasing his report and following up with articles in Expansion. A minister from Spain’s Socialist government called the rector of King Juan Carlos University-Dr. Calzada’s employer-seeking Calzada’s ouster. Calzada was not fired, but he was stripped of half of his classes at the university. My book, Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America,  details the Spanish “green jobs” disaster uncovered by Dr. Calzada, plus similar “green” economic calamities occurring in Germany and Denmark-also programs Obama has praised-as well as in Italy and elsewhere.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

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