Vermont Environmentalists: “Time Out” for Industrial Wind
Sherri Lange, Master Resource, 6 September 2011
Does This Fat Make Me Look Green?
Chris Horner, AmSpecBlog, 6 September 2011
Enough with the Green Jobs
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, 5 September 2011
Where the Jobs Aren’t
David Brooks, New York Times, 5 September 2011
The Lies We Tell about Green Energy
Sherman Frederick, Las Vegas Journal Review, 5 September 2011
No net jobs were created in America last month (even as the people needing jobs increased), as the Obama Administration drafted a host of new job-killing regulations and threatened costly lawsuits against employers. But rather than rethink his failed economic policies, Obama is planning to spend billions more on green-jobs fantasies and boondoggles, in his upcoming “stimulus” proposals. Forbes describes some of the past green-jobs fiascos promoted by the Obama Administration that cost taxpayers billions while creating no lasting jobs:
even as the president claims he is now laser-focused on job creation, he wants the public to forget all of his previous taxpayer-funded efforts to create those “green jobs” of the future, many of which have been abject failures. Like the $20 million federal grant given to Seattle to weatherize houses. The promise? To create “2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.” . . . The reality a year later: “only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.”
The much-hyped company Solyndra, which manufactures—um, make that “manufactured”—solar technology, has closed its doors and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Only a year ago Obama gave it $535 million in low-cost loan guarantees, touting the company “as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs,” according to an NBC-affiliate report. Now another 1,000 people have become unemployed victims of Obama’s job-creating skills. And taxpayers have become victims of another half-billion dollars sucked down the Obama job-creating drain. . .
It’s a trick employed by rhetoricians from time immemorial. When their case against an opponent is unpersuasive on the merits, they invoke the image of something their target audience fears or hates. Thus, for example, political pleaders have asserted that money, Dick Cheney, or Zionism “is a cancer on the body politic.”
Perhaps the most influential use of this tactic in modern times is the attack on carbon dioxide (CO2) as “global warming pollution” and on CO2 emitters as “polluters.” Many who know better, including highly credentialed scientists, routinely couple the words “carbon” and “pollution” in their public discourse.
In reality, CO2 — like water vapor, the atmosphere’s main greenhouse gas — is a natural constituent of clean air. Colorless, odorless, and non-toxic to humans at 30 times ambient concentrations, CO2 is an essential building block of the planetary food chain. The increase in the air’s CO2 content since the dawn of the industrial revolution — from 280 to 390 parts per million – boosts the water-use efficiency of trees, crops, and other plants; helps protect green things from the damaging effects of smog and UV-B radiation; and helps make food more plentiful and nutritious. The many health and welfare benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment make CO2 unlike any other substance ever previously regulated as a “pollutant.”
A closely related abuse of the English languge is the oft-repeated claim that America is “addicted to oil.” Although popularized by a Texas oil man, former President G.W. Bush, the phrase is a rhetorical staple of the same folks who inveigh against “carbon pollution.” NASA scientist James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous carbonophobe besides Al Gore, recently denounced the Keystone XL Pipeline as a “dirty needle” that, if approved, would feed our supposed oil addiction. [click to continue…]
Costco is removing its electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, citing lack of consumer demand, reports Jim Motavalli in the New York Times. Plug-In America, an EV advocacy group, has issued an “action alert” urging its members to email Costco CEO James Sinegal and ask him to maintain and upgrade the charging stations. From Montavalli’s article:
Costco, the membership warehouse-club chain, was an early leader in offering electric-vehicle charging to its customers, setting an example followed by other retailers, including Best Buy and Walgreen. By 2006, Costco had installed 90 chargers at 64 stores, mostly in California but also some in Arizona, New York and Georgia. Even after General Motors crushed its EV1 battery cars, the Costco chargers stayed in place.
Yet just as plug-in cars like the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt enter the market, Costco is reversing course and pulling its chargers out of the ground, explaining that customers do not use them.
“We were early supporters of electric cars, going back as far as 15 years. But nobody ever uses them,” said Dennis Hoover, the general manager for Costco in northern California, in a telephone interview. “At our Folsom store, the manager said he hadn’t seen anybody using the E.V. charging in a full year. At our store in Vacaville, where we had six chargers, one person plugged in once a week.”
Mr. Hoover said that E.V. charging was “very inefficient and not productive” for the retailer. “The bottom line is that there are a lot of other ways to be green,” he said. “We have five million members in the region, and just a handful of people are using these devices.
Why is consumer demand for EVs — hence for charging stations — so low? [click to continue…]
Remember how the stimulus was pitched? In order to defibrillate job creation, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was supposed to inject almost $1 trillion of taxpayer money into the economy, in a manner that was “timely, targeted, and temporary.”
About a tenth of ARRA funds were given to creating so-called “green jobs,” and a spate of recent news stories suggest that these “clean energy” stimulus dollars have been a massive failure. Instead of “timely, targeted, and temporary,” these environmentalist earmarks are better described as “late, loose, and lasting.” Consider:
The Real Science Trashers
Dennis Byrne, Chicago Tribune, 30 August 2011
Gore: Deniers Are This Generation’s Racists
Caroline May, Daily Caller, 28 August 2011
Wind Power Is Dying
Tait Trussell, FrontPageMag, 28 August 2011
Hiring, Federal Environmental Employee: Integrity Not Required
Chris Horner, AmSpecBlog, 27 August 2011
Rick Perry’s $7 Billion Problem
Robert Bradley, Jr., Master Resource, 26 August 2011
Google “Hurricane Irene” and “global warming,” and you’ll find 23,000 sites where these two topics are both discussed.
The Huffington Post served up the standard alarmist narrative. Reporter Lynne Peeples quotes NRDC senior scientist Kim Knowlton, who told her: “No one is going to point to Irene and say this is climate change. But we can say that we are seeing the fingerprint of climate change this year.” Huh? Peeples interprets for us:
Knowlton was of course referring to the growing list of extreme weather events that have ravaged the U.S. in 2011 — from tornadoes and flooding, to droughts and heat waves. And now millions of Americans, many of whom have never seen a real tropical storm in their lifetime, are facing a major hurricane.
Note the clever juxtaposition of Knowlton’s two statements. Although the NRDC scientist does not openly — and unscientifically — attribute a particular weather event to global climate change, she encourages readers to do just that.
Hurricanes in New York are certainly not as common as hurricanes in Florida or Louisiana, but if Irene is evidence of global warming, then global warming has menaced the Empire State for centuries, because hurricanes have hit New York since before the industrial revolution. [click to continue…]
“Coal is making us sick. Oil is making us sick.” So said Senator Harry Reid. As the entire East Coast faced a fierce Irene, the lunacy of Reid’s statement was brought to light.
America’s energy is what kept people alive despite nature’s fury.
Over the weekend, the news was filled with clips of governors, mayors, and police chiefs begging people to evacuate and escape the storm, and shots of highways were filled with cars heading out. Reports warned that gas stations were out of gas and major power outages impacting millions of people could remain for as long as two weeks.
Buried between the lines of “storm surges” and “wind gusts,” is an untold story of the importance of energy in saving lives.
The Keystone XL Pipeline extension, a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline that would link expanding Canadian tar sands oil production with America’s refining hub in the Midwest and along the Gulf, today cleared a major regulatory hurdle when the State Department concluded that the project would have a “limited environmental adverse impact.”
This is the second-to-last step of the permitting process; within the next 90 days, the State Department must determine whether the project is in the national interest. If the Keystone Pipeline passes this final hurdle, then it would receive a Presidential Permit, and construction could commence.
A blog post at the National Corn Grower’s Association, which has since been taken down, was titled: “If the Government Could Mandate Unicorns…” A cached version is here.
When a two year-old throws a temper tantrum because he cannot have a pet unicorn, it can seem confusing, annoying or possibly endearing. No matter which gut reaction a parent has, they universally understand the need to explain the concept of “nonexistent.” When the Environmental Protection Agency continually demands the impossible, why are they treated any differently?
The issue is simple. The updated version of the Renewable Fuel Standard mandates usage of 250 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol this year and 500 million gallons by 2012. As of June 2011, zero gallons of qualifying cellulosic ethanol were produced. The target is, under current conditions, an impossible demand.
It is a demand based on promises. Much as parents may tell stories about unicorns and fairies, some players in the ethanol and environmental industries pushed a product which they were not prepared to deliver. In both scenarios, optimism created a beautiful vision of a world that does not exist. Once the story was sold, neither party could meet the unrealistic expectation that they had created. [click to continue…]
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