For around 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, an area the size of Virginia has had nearly every wild organism on it killed off and replaced with a single monoculture crop, one that requires massive amounts of diesel fuel, pesticides, and fertilizers to be expended upon it every season. As a result, world food prices have soared, while high oil prices remain unmoved thanks to corn ethanol’s meager net energy production.

The increased prices of grain, milk, and meat have led to a global rush to put marginal acreage into production. Listen closely and you can hear the buzz of the chainsaws as the production of “green” biofuels in the U.S. causes whole swaths of rainforest to be clear-cut to make room for increased agricultural production. After all, the world will not eat less just because America has decided to burn one-fourth of all its corn.

Now, 24,000,000 arable temperate acres (37,500 square miles) is quite a footprint by any standard, but to truly appreciate what we are doing to the environment with biofuels production, let’s compare that to the footprint required to produce an equivalent amount of fuel via environmentally unfriendly oil.

In a convenient coincidence, the Prudhoe Bay field of Alaska produces about the same gross amount of energy (about 475,000 barrels per day) as total U.S. ethanol production. In terms of net energy, of course, Prudhoe Bay is much more productive than U.S. ethanol production, since it doesn’t require any fertilizer (and only minimal tillage). But let’s be generous and say that ethanol and Prudhoe Bay productions are equal.

The entire Prudhoe Bay oilfield covers just 213,543 acres. Were the oil industry to poison the entire field with herbicides and plow under the dying residue, it would still have affected less than 1 percent of the land we are currently plowing under for ethanol production. But of course, most of Prudhoe Bay is not developed – only around 5,000 acres are paved for roads and oil pads. Prudhoe Bay has cleared less than three-hundredths of 1 percent of the land that has been cleared to produce ethanol. Put another way, ethanol’s footprint is 5,000 times larger than oil’s.

And this comparison is not merely hypothetical, since just east of Prudhoe Bay we have a potential oilfield that may be twice as productive as Prudhoe – the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. For those worried about development’s impact on A.N.W.R., consider that the coastal plain covers 1.5 million acres – larger than Delaware, but still less than 7 percent of the territory we are now sacrificing to corn ethanol production. We could plow the whole place under and do less damage than ethanol (assuming one could somehow plow permafrost).

Assuming only 5,000 acres were developed for drilling, we would do far less damage in A.N.W.R. than ethanol does in the lower 48, for twice the fuel and more than twice the return in terms of net energy and net economic good. No one has ever had to argue that oil is a source of net energy or that it can pay for itself – unlike ethanol.

If you worry about your energy’s development footprint, clearly oil is preferable to ethanol – unless you believe that an acre of land in Alaska is 5,000 times more precious than an acre in Iowa.

Mac Johnson
June 10, 2008

http://www.macjohnson.com

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

If, that is, John McCain can be persuaded to see the light, come to his senses, and make a prime time speech in which he apologizes for being wrong about global warming and climate change, has learned that CO2 is not the enemy, that humans have no identifiable effect on climate, which has always been changing, and humans cannot stop it; and that it is far more important to produce enough energy from all sources, nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind, oil, and coal, than to go tilting at the windmills of Greenism to stop the unstoppable climate change, which is entirely natural and organic.

If John McCain can learn that lesson, he can turn the issue of global warming and climate change on its head, and use it to take down his opponent and the Greens and Greenism in the next four months. But it must be done as a frontal attack, a headlong cavalry charge straight up the hill into the face of the enemy; something neither his opponent nor the Greens are prepared for. It would throw them into total panic and disarray.

Last week oil prices spiked $10.75 in one day, a new record, closing Friday at $138.54. Unemployment rose 10% in one month, May, from 5% to 5.5%. The Dow dropped 394 points, the biggest drop in over a year. The average working stiff has seen his cost to commute to work and home again double in less than two years, even as the equity in his house plummeted. And airlines are cutting hundreds of flights, and thousands of jobs. The high cost of not drilling for oil in America is going to savage the economy at every level.

Cybercast News Service (CNS News), in a June 6th article entitled "Lawmakers Split on Drilling for Vast Amounts of Oil in USA," reports that the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management estimates there are 139 billion barrels of untapped, recoverable oil onshore and offshore in the United States. This does not include the vast Bakken oil fields of Montana and the Dakotas, or the enormous shale oil deposits in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, or the oil sands of Oklahoma. CNS interviewed four members of Congress and found the Republicans supporting Jed Babbin's call to "drill here, drill now," while Democrats were opposed.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said, "You've got that right. We can't get it (the oil) because the environmental elitists are preventing that with moratoria saying it would take ten years to get it developed. "Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) also said Congress should deregulate to allow more drilling. "My sense is that the most direct route is for Congress to take direct action and give the American people more access to American oil."

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) replied, "No," adding that he would "never say never," but that circumstances would have to be "pretty drastic" for him to agree to more drilling. "I am more concerned about global warming and the impact of fossil fuel," he said. House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) told CNS he needs to study the issue more. "I haven't studied enough to make that decision," he said.

But a lot of middle class, working class, and fixed-income Americans have studied the issue quite enough, and they're beginning to get angry, visibly angry, at the inexcusable inaction of Congress. As gas prices continue to rise through the summer, the anger will swell into fury. "Earth to Mike Honda," they'll be saying soon, "For us, your constituents, five dollar gasoline is pretty drastic. Earth to Charlie Rangel, how many years do you have to study to learn what you can learn in a day? If it takes that long, Charlie, are you sure you're smart enough to be a member of Congress?"

Wasn't it Mark Twain who once quipped, "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress - but I repeat myself."

Presently, we import 5.4 million barrels of oil a day from OPEC countries. At $138 a barrel, that's $745 million dollars a day we're "exporting" to Saudi Arabia and its neighbors. At 40 jobs per million dollars (at $50,000 a year per job) that's 29,800 jobs for Americans we are "outsourcing" to OPEC each day, rather than investing that money in American oil production and American jobs. At 29,800 jobs a day, that's 10,877,000 American jobs we are exporting to OPEC each year, and if the price of oil rises, so will the job loss. Democrats have threatened to punish corporations that outsource jobs to other countries, but the Democrats' own misbegotten Green policies are the No. 1cause of outsourcing in America.

At some point, something has to give, and it will either be the U.S. economy or Greenism, the obsessive-compulsive Environmentalist Personality Disorder that will sacrifice the jobs, fortunes, futures, and lives, of three hundred million Americans, in slavish homage to the myth that burning "fossil fuels" is causing climate change, and that by reducing our "carbon footprint" we can end climate change. Nothing is further from the truth. The climate has been changing as long as there has been a climate, long before we could have had anything to do with it.

How we ended up with a majority in Congress, and two presidential candidates, who are so appallingly ignorant of the basics of climatology, climate history, and the ubiquity of climate change, after this debate has already been raging for years, is a complete mystery to me. It is, in my opinion, Congressional malpractice: the willful or negligent failure of most members of Congress to become well informed about the real science and history of climate change and what the effect, if any, of CO2 on the global climate really is, or isn't, before making legislative decisions that profoundly affect the lives of 300 million Americans. And I wonder: can we sue Congress, for Congressional Malpractice?

Can we sue Congress for acting on false assumptions, when, by the exercise of reasonable care and due diligence, they could, and should, have become fully and honestly informed on the global warming and climate change issues, before making bad decisions that adversely affect the U.S. economy and the lives of every one of their constituents? Don't they have that duty? And haven't they breached it? And aren't we paying for it?

There is only one way to rescue America from the rising cost of energy that threatens to overwhelm the U.S. economy. And that is to produce more energy. As soon as possible. In America.

We don't have time to wait for pie-in-the-sky fantasies, such as cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass. A little arithmetic tells us that to replace oil with switchgrass, which according to National Geographic can produce "up to" 1,000 gallons of ethanol per acre, per year, we'd have to produce a billion gallons a day, to replace the gasoline and diesel we consume. That's 365 billion gallons a year, plus another 15% to provide the energy to produce all that cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, for a total of 420 billion gallons a year. This would require 420 cellulosic ethanol plants producing a billion gallons a year, each, and so far, we don't have one. Not one producer of cellulosic ethanol on a commercial scale. And it would require 420 million acres of switchgrass farms, which would be a 150% increase in American farmland. And would not the adverse environmental impact of converting 420 million acres of wildlife habitat to switchgrass farms be enormous? Where are the Greens now? Why isn't the Sierra Club demanding an Environmental Impact Report?

Congress needs to come to grips with the fact that there is no credible evidence that CO2 causes "global warming. "It has been warmer in the past, when CO2 was lower than now, and the temperature dropped 0.7 degrees last year, while CO2 was rising.

But CO2 is plant food, fertilizer, plants suck it up and grow, and more CO2 in the air means plants grow faster, and need less water. With a growing world population facing chronic food shortages, we need more CO2 in the air to produce more food, not less.

And this means the misguided, misbegotten, delusional era of Greenism has to end. Soon. Now. The delusions of the radical environmentalists have taken us down this dangerous road, and the chickens are coming home to roost. And the chickens are very expensive. Having quarantined 90% of Federal lands from energy exploration and development, and blocked construction of nuclear power, and fuel refineries, it is the environmentalist policies, the Green policies, the Greenism, of the last generation that has put American in the spot it's in, and America can only get out of the spot by rejecting the delusional Greenism of the past, and embracing a rational energy policy for the future.

I'm with Barack Obama. I want "change"...but maybe not the same change Barack Obama wants.

Here's the change I want:

1. Legislation to immediately lift all moratoria on oil and natural gas exploration and development on Federal lands, except National Parks.

2. Legislation to grant a 100% tax credit for all new capital investment in energy production in the U.S. and its territorial waters. If you spent $20,000 to put solar panels on your roof, you get a $20,000 tax credit. If Exxon puts $75 billion into developing new oil production in the U.S., Exxon gets a $75 billion tax credit. This would "send a message" to OPEC that the party's just about over, and it would create millions of new jobs for working class Americans in America.

3. Legislation to fast-track NRC-approved nuclear power plant designs, and to require Green plaintiffs suing to block the construction of nuclear power plants, geothermal plants, oil refineries, or any other energy project, to prove by "clear and convincing evidence" that the proposed project was unreasonably dangerous, or that the harm it would cause was greater than the benefit it would confer.

Barack Obama said recently that he will deliver "$150 billion over the next ten years" to develop alternative energy.

That's way too little, way too late. America needs it now, not ten years from now. We don't need to pass it through the government skim machine.

And Barry Boy is clueless. By granting a 100% tax credit for new capital investment in energy in the United States, we unleash the magnificent ingenuity of the American people, who will pump $150 billion into energy development in one year, not ten, and produce ten times, or a hundred times, as much new energy in ten years as any government-managed program ever could.

That's change.

And that's the end of Greenism.

Raymond Kraft

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.325/pub_detail.asp

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

-------------------
Response from James Taylor:

I find no fault with your article except to say, but their is more! There are 75,000 dams in the US, 8,000 are 50 feet or more in height, but only 850 of them produce 5mw or more. The Greens will not let us expand our hydro-electric resources even though there is no carbon released. Cheap and abundant electrical energy could end the use of oil for heating which should be a win/win solution. This makes their real goal a little clearer. They are trying to force America to reduce all energy use, renewable or not.

Al Gore stated in 92', that the internal combustion engine needs to be phased out over the next 25 years. He and his liberal following are using global warming as an excuse to restructure our nation, and allow us to be dominated by the rest of the world. Open borders with non-citizens allowed to do as they please while Americans are limited to only so much carbon use each year. If you drive or fly too much, or kept your home too warm in the winter, you would pay a fine and lose your vehicle.

I have also read about some Greens even filing lawsuits against wind and solar farms.
Thanks for all the good work you are doing, James

« Close It

It's a problem driven by domestic supply restrictions imposed by the Democratic Congress in the face of growing worldwide demand. The Democrats preach energy independence while they do everything in their power to prevent it. If the American people truly want change, this would be it.

A Gallup poll released in May showed that 57% of the American people wanted the U.S. to drill in coastal and wilderness areas. The percentage of Americans who bought Pelosi's line about price gouging fell from 34% in May 2007 to 20% in May 2008. It could be a winning issue for the Republicans and John McCain.

More than 15 billion barrels of oil have been sent down the Alaskan pipeline from Prudhoe Bay, some 60 miles to the west of ANWR, over the past three decades, much more than the six months' supply expected in the beginning by those who predicted a similar environmental disaster there.

The local caribou and other critters have thrived. Yet, Pelosi and the Democrats want to to keep ANWR's estimated 10.6 billion barrels of oil off the market and out of our gas tanks.

Buried in a Department of Interior Appropriations bill passed in December 2007 was an amendment proposed by Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., passed by a 219-215 vote in June, that prevented the establishment of regulations for leasing lands to drill for oil shale.

The Western U.S. is estimated to have reserves of a trillion barrels (yes, that's the real number) trapped in porous shale rock, an amount three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. On May 15, 2008, the Senate Appropriations Committee in a 15-14 party line vote rejected an amendment by Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., to allow oil shale drilling and overturn the Udall moratorium.

The U.S. Congress has voted consistently to keep 85% of America's offshore oil and gas off-limits, while China and Cuba drill 60 miles from Key West, Fla. The U.S. Minerals Management Service says that the restricted areas contain 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

There are 3,200 oil rigs off the coast of Louisiana. During Katrina, not a single drop was spilled. More than 7 billion barrels have been pumped from these wells over the past quarter-century, yet only one thousandth of one percent has been spilled.

A study by Louisiana's Sea Grant college shows that there's 50 times more marine life around oil platforms that act as artificial reefs than in the surrounding mud bottoms. Some 85% of Louisiana fishing trips involve fishing around these offshore rigs.

The Flower Garden coral reefs lie off the Louisiana-Texas border. They are surrounded by oil platforms that have been pumping for 50 years.

According to federal biologist G.P. Schmahl, "The Flower Gardens are much healthier, more pristine than anything in the Florida Keys. It was a surprise to me. And I think it's a surprise to most people."

We would suggest that John McCain revisit his reservations about ANWR and run against the drill-nothing Congress. Energy development and the environment are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, we would suggest that the first joint town hall meeting with Barack Obama proposed by McCain be held on one of those offshore Louisiana rigs.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
June 09, 2008 4:20 PM PT

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=297904745555169

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

the fraud that has made Al Gore a centimillionaire. If we look at the real climate data, the long term temperature trends show us that the climate is 0.4 degrees warmer than 1,000 years ago, and 3 degrees cooler than 8,000 years ago (http://www.globalwarmingart.com/). The Hadley Center for Climate Prediction charts the global temperature falling 0.4 degrees from 1988 to 1992, then rising 0.8 degrees from 1992 to peak in1998, then falling 0.7 degrees by January 2008.

The climate has been changing as long as there has been a climate. It's not our fault, and we can't stop it.

But I digress.

Currently, the U.S. imports roughly 25% of its oil, 5.4 million barrels a day, from OPEC, mostly from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria. At $130 a barrel, we are exporting over $700 million dollars a day to OPEC. $1.4 billion every two days. $256 billion a year. That's more than one-third of the US trade deficit of $720 billion. And that's why the value of the US dollar is falling. Not the only reason, but a big reason.

For 20 years, environmentalists, Democrats, and a few misguided Republicans have been busy keeping ‘Big Oil’ out of ANWR and out of the oil fields on the Coastal Shelves, where there are an estimated 635 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to heat 60 million American homes for a century, and 115 billion barrels of oil, enough to replace 100% of the oil we now buy from OPEC for 21 years. At $130 a barrel, that would cut out trade deficit by $5.4 trillion over 21 years.

Yes, $5.4 trillion, which is enough to pay the entire federal budget for nearly two years.

Critics say that opening up 2,000 acres of the 19,049,236 acre Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil production would do little to bring down the price of gas and that may be so. But it would add jobs by the millions, to the U.S. economy. With an estimated 10 billion barrels, ANWR could produce 1 million barrels a day for 30 years. At $130 a barrel, that's $130 million a day. That's $47 billion a year.

A million dollars creates 40 jobs at an average pay of $50,000 a year. $130 million creates 5,200 jobs at $50,000 a year.$47 billion creates 1,880,000 new jobs for American workers at $50,000 a year. At current oil prices, by keeping ANWR off limits, Democrats reduce employment for the middle-class, working-class Americans they pretend to care about by 1,880,000 jobs. And that's enough jobs to cut the unemployment rate from 5% to 4%.

But what if we open up the Coastal Shelves for oil production, too? And produce 5.4 million barrels a day, to replace all the oil we buy from OPEC?

That would re-invest the $256 billion a year we now deport to OPEC back into the U.S. economy. And that would fund 10,152,000 new jobs for working-class Americans, jobs that pay an average of $50,000 a year. And that's enough new jobs to reduce the unemployment rate, in theory, from 5% to 0%. Zero. And that is the high cost of keeping ANWR "pristine." We can lay the blame for 100% of America's unemployment at the feet of the Democrats, liberal Republicans and environmentalists who keep ANWR and the coastal oil reserves off limits. (Thank you Senator John McCain. – emphasis added)

Put another way, every year that we continue buying 5.4 million barrels of oil a day from OPEC, we "outsource" more than ten million American jobs to OPEC. If politicians really cared about working-class Americans, they would be rushing to open up ANWR and other oil and gas reserves on federal lands as quickly as possible to create ten million new jobs, revalue the falling dollar, stimulate the economy, and write a declaration of independence from OPEC.

But, they don't.

By Raymond Kraft
June 5, 2008

http://www.aim.org/guest-column/10-million-jobs-the-high-cost-of-saving-anwr/

« Close It

There in a sentence is another example of the dynamic that drives conservatives away from John McCain. Not only do the vast majority of Republicans support exploration in ANWR, they also deeply resent the idea that such a position is on a par with a proposal to strip mine Yellowstone. But here is John McCain comparing exploration in ANWR to drilling in the Everglades or the Grand Ganyon. It isn't just that McCain's position is opposite that of the Republican party. It is also that he uses the harshest rhetoric of the left to convey that disagreement.

Bill Kristol called McCain's latest blast at a GOP base position shot "gratuitous," and he's right. Every Republican Congressman or Senator who supported exploration in ANWR can look forward to an attack ad arguing that John McCain has condemned their vote as the equivalent of drilling in the Grand Canyon. Here's a representative e-mail from a listener who tuned into yesterday's show in which the McCain ANWR answer was center stage:

Dear Hugh,

I have been all but jumping out of my skin while listening to your show today as it is so spot on about John McCain. My problem with him has always been that, not only is he wrong on the issues; not only is he arrogant about his positions; but he always resorts to the worst sort of liberal demagoguery in making his case. His comments about Guantanamo, torture, ANWAR, global warming, etc., uniformly concede the liberal, MSM stereotypes about Republicans and even Americans generally.

It is certainly possible to hold differing positions than other conservatives on a variety of issues without giving credence to the caricature of Republicans as a bunch of racist, war-mongering, chicken-hawk, environmental plundering country-club elites--or bible-thumping, bone-headed bubba's for that matter. And it is certainly possible to disagree without trafficking in the anti-American left about our "image being destroyed abroad. But McCain has made a career of not simply disagreeing with Republicans, but of tarring them with this liberal-elitist brush. What is so ironic about this for McCain is that, in the unlikely event of a hoar-frost settling in in Hell and him winning the nomination, he will find that all of his MSM cheerleaders will desert him faster than you can utter "carbon-tax."

Paul D. M______

Paul has focused in on McCain's biggest problem with the Reagan conservatives: It isn't that he is a maverick. It is that his sanctimonious posturing does not admit that anyone opposite him could possibly be right. McCain's opposition to the Bush tax cuts; his promotion of McCain-Feingold; his undercutting of the Constitutional Option with the "Gang of 14"; the two attempts at "immigration reform" know as McCain-Kennedy; and now the McCain-Lieberman global warming bill and the opposition to exploration in ANWR -- all of these positions are diametrically opposed to core beliefs of the core of the party he seeks to lead, and not only does McCain hold to all these beliefs, he disparages those with whom he disagrees and uses the rhetorical overkill of the Left to do so.

"I don't know how any how any conservative cannot support cap and trade," asserted McCain. Think about the mind-set behind that statement. Translation: Only idiots can disagree with me.

I don't know how any conservative can say, "I don't know how any conservative can disagree with cap and trade." That's because there are quite obviously many conservatives who do disagree with it, and they are legitimate participants in the public debate. Conservatives believe in that debate, not in shutting it down.

John McCain is running as an anti-conservative. As a result he has failed in the first four contests to win even a plurality of Republican votes cast, and now the primaries enter the contests where only Republicans can vote. I don't doubt McCain's sincerity on ANWR or a dozen other issues, but I am certain that he is not the man to lead a Republican Party pledged to many things with which he not only cannot agree, but about which he cannot even imagine disagreement.

By Hugh Hewitt
Thursday, January 17, 2008
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/HughHewitt/2008/01/17/anwr_drills_mccain__yet_another_slam_by_mccain_on_the_gops_base

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue.

But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.

Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment -- carbon chastity -- they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.

Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.

There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.

So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research -- untainted and reliable -- to determine:

(a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and
(b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.

Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.

But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.

Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table, and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing.

By Charles Krauthammer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052903266.html
(registration may be required for access)

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

Fact #1. The combined ownership of oil reserves by the independent, investor-owned oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Conoco-Phillips, BP, Chevron and others is barely 4% of the total known oil reserves in the world. By itself, ExxonMobil’s share is 1.08%.

Fact #2. Oil is a global commodity sold on mercantile exchanges for whatever price it can command. Speculation in oil prices is the primary reason they have been driven to utterly insane costs per barrel. It has nothing to do with actual supply and demand.

Fact #3. No nation on Earth is or can be “energy independent.” The geopolitics of oil is complex, but as nations such as China and India have seen their economies grow, their need for oil grows with it and thus they compete with long established industrialized nations for existing oil supplies. This competition has an impact on prices.

Fact #4. The OPEC nations, those in the Middle East and including Venezuela, control 77% of the world’s known oil reserves. Like Russia and Mexico, where the oil industry is controlled by the state, it is generally poorly managed. Several Big Oil companies that were induced to undertake exploration and development in Russia and Venezuela actually had their assets nationalized or stolen at prices well below their investment and value.

Fact #5. Energy is the master resource. All nations with any hope of growing their economies require it, mostly in the form of electricity, but also for oil’s role in transportation. The failure to have a national long-range energy policy that is based in reality can severely impact energy prices.

Fact #6. The United States has, for years, pursued an energy policy based on environmental myths such as “biofuels” in which corn is turned into ethanol to reduce the import of oil, but it costs as much to produce ethanol as to refine oil and it provides less mileage per gallon, thus negating any reason for this additive. Likewise, suggesting that wind or solar energy can generate anything more than its current 1% of the nation’s electricity needs ignores their unreliability and the fact they are heavily subsidized, a form of hidden consumer tax.

Fact #7. It costs billions to explore, discover, extract and transport oil. It takes lots of lead-time as well. The United States Congress has, for decades, refused to permit the extraction of vast oil reserves in ANWR despite the fact it would have little or no impact on the Alaskan wildlife reserve. In addition, Congress has declared 85% percent of the nation’s coastal, offshore areas off-limits to any exploration for oil or natural gas.

Fact #8. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under the mandate of Congress, requires Big Oil to refine oil into some 17 different formulations in the name of clean air. With three grades of gasoline, that means that refiners must produce some 45 different blends. The quality of air in America is excellent, but the cost of gasoline at the pump continues to rise as the result of these mandates.

Fact #9. America imports two-thirds of the oil it uses. All of its transportation runs on oil. The population continues to grow. Failure to encourage the construction of a single new refinery since the 1970s puts a further strain on the ability of Big Oil to provide the nation’s oil and diesel fuel needs.

Fact #10. Democrats continue to demand that Big Oil’s profits be confiscated in some fashion and some of the inducements offered to explore for more oil be ended. Because the costs of exploration, extraction, refining, and transporting of oil represents billions, the actual profit margin of a company like ExxonMobil is about 10%, well below what industries such as pharmaceuticals and banking enjoy.

For these and many other reasons, Americans are being impoverished at the gas pump because Congress has dithered and failed (emphasis added) in one of its most important responsibilities.

Alan Caruba

April 29, 2008
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

My solution to this issue is easy. Mr. Mumaw, the rep from Pinnacle West Capitol Corp, can take a PAY CUT to help his company stay afloat. In fact, if we look at failing or poorly run businesses over the past 10 years, we see that the few "top managers" are paid an obscene amount of cash to "manage the day to day operations" of their company. ALL of them should be forced to take a pay cut to pay for the issues raised in the dockets.

It is not your or my fault that Palo Verde has suffered maintenance issues which need repair. Nukes are expensive to build, operate and maintain. IF APS management had set aside an operation & maintenance fund for these issues, instead of PAYING for huge homes all over the world for the corp. execs , maybe the company would have the funds necessary to maintain Palo Verde.

Compare a small airplane owner with APS. There is a fixed cost to fly. Fuel is 5 dollars a gallon, the plane burns fuel at 10 gallons an hour. It costs, just in fuel, a known amount of $50 an hour. BUT, the engine has a finite life of 2000 hours and costs $30,000 to overhaul. That cost must be figured into the operating expense. A prudent small airplane owner would set aside $15 an hour for each hour of engine time, to pay for the known cost of the overhaul. This is called planning, something APS apparently does not do well.

From the Chairman's Letter & Message, 2006 annual report:

"Over the next 10 years we plan to invest nearly $15 bil­lion in electric infrastructure for Arizona. Many of the 'bright ideas' we adopt today, and many decisions we will make in the next few years, will determine the kind of company we will be into the middle of this century."

Where do they plan on getting that kind of money? If they don't have it, THEY CAN'T SPEND IT. If I don't have $30,000 to spend on a new car, I DON'T GET IT. Simple. What don't they get?

I know that Pinnacle West Capitol Corp is having money issues. So am I. Retired cops are on a fixed income. The people who manage Pinnacle West Capitol Corp make more money in 10 minutes on the toilet then I did in a year as a Police Officer, actually working.

Those same "managers" MUST be taken to task as to where all of the billions of dollars they take in annually, goes. They MUST be held accountable to their financing. If they screw up, they need to pay, not the consumer, which is you and me. Not a single one of them is "worth" the many, many millions of dollars each is paid for the work they do.

I am offended at the attitude the managers of APS take with the numerous rate hike requests.

Lastly, I have been in my current home since 2000. When we moved in, the utility payment to APS from the prior family was $300 a month. With hard work, I was able to reduce our "budget payment" to $190 a month. I then replaced the 25 year old air conditioner units with new high efficiency units, shaded the south windows, replaced the water tank with a new high efficiency one, added insulation... Guess what, even with all of the cost cutting by turning up the thermostat, keeping lights off, and the improvements to the home, I now pay $300 a month.

APS can shut up.

Thanks for your time. Feel free to share this (if you care to) with whoever you want.

Matt Bucko
Scottsdale, AZ

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

Today, the American trucker is faced with upcoming emissions controls which will force them to trade in their older trucks for the more expensive, emissions compliant ones. Since my start in the trucking industry, equipment costs have more than doubled, the cost of maintenance, paying taxes, insurance and complying with Federal regulations has tripled, and fuel prices have quadrupled. However, not everything has risen for the American trucker: our miles per trip have been cut in half while freight rates have remained steady, right where they were in 1987. Not a day goes by that we do not receive an e-mail, read a blog or a newspaper article relating the story of yet another independent owner/operator having to park his truck permanently, unable to pay the fuel bill.

Manufacturers are reluctant to pay trucking companies a fair price to haul their goods, fearing public outcry when prices skyrocket to offset the increase in transportation costs. Tensions are rising as frustrated truckers attempt to renegotiate contracts for some type of fuel surcharge that will cover the rising cost of fuel. They see their livelihood – their Freightliner, Peterbilt or Kenworth – driven away by the repo man. They see Congress bailing out banks and Wall Street speculators and giving hard earned tax money to illegal aliens for free health care and education, yet Congress is silent on the plight of the American trucker. Department of Transportation head Mary Peters is so self-absorbed in convincing the American public we need Mexican truck drivers, she is ignoring the very lifeblood of the American trucking industry – American truckers. Is part of Peters’ mindset the same as that of the produce and construction industries? Is there an effort to convince the public we need Mexican drivers, who get paid considerably less than the American truckers, so they can bring in low-wage workers to replace us as we park our trucks? With fewer American truckers on the road, the argument seems to take a life of its own.

Congress, believing in and/or profiting from an Al Gore-inspired global warming hoax, can only come up with such solutions as biodiesel, ethanol and other technology that does absolutely nothing in the short term. For years, they have grabbed their ankles and bent over for militant environmentalists, refusing drilling in ANWR and other domestic locations. Their appeasement has given us a dangerous dependency on foreign oil, giving terrorist-supporting countries a measure of control over the U.S. economy that will have disastrous consequences. With every barrel of oil we buy from the Middle East and Venezuela, we fill the coffers of those very countries who are giving arms to the Islamic enemy I faced while driving a truck in Iraq. All the while, the lunatic, progressive Left still will try to convince you the war in Iraq was “fought for oil.”

As truckers struggle with less-than-minimum wages, the concern in Washington is for ensuring illegal aliens have free health care, free schooling and decent working conditions. Yet Congress ignores the company driver who works 70 hours per week, unable to take time at home because, as fuel increases, his company is cutting back on loads. He is driving less, his “off time” taken in some far away city away from his family. Industry publications pay lip service to the issue by advising truckers to “slow down” to save fuel, as if “slowing down” will alleviate the problem of high fuel costs. Most of us maintain the legal speed limit due, in part, to speed governors on our trucks and general safety. Once again, rather than standing up for the American trucker, Congress and the industry itself toss out cute slogans and “feel good” press releases, while the American trucker must decide between paying for fuel and paying his mortgage.

News stories have increased in recent weeks about talks of “shutdowns” and “strikes,” much as they have in years past. Some desperate truckers have resorted to using “off-road,” “non-taxed” diesel, which is the same fuel used in over-the-road trucks without the added taxes, to fill their tanks. The fuel, which is dyed red, is sold for farm and construction equipment. While legal to use in the fuel tanks of refrigerated trailers, it is illegal to use this red “off-road” diesel in the truck’s fuel tank. The trucker will ultimately get caught and fined outrageously, as DoT officers increase inspections and enforcement.

In addition, locking fuel caps are becoming a necessary security item, as unscrupulous thieves (especially in larger, urban areas) siphon fuel to sell to the highest bidder/trucker desperate for a break from the highway robbery at the pump. This, too, is to the detriment of the trucker if he gets caught buying stolen fuel. Violence is always a possibility, as truckers with no tolerance for such thuggery vigilantly watch for potential fuel thieves.

One of the places truckers can explain their plight and give vent to their frustrations is the blogosphere, as there are few organizations representing the independent trucker. The Owner/Operator Independent Drivers’ Association (OOIDA), born out of the trucker strikes in the 1970s, with lobbyists in Washington, has refused to advocate a strike or shut down, as it would, according to their website, violate Federal anti-trust laws. Their members are getting frustrated as the organization has been unsuccessful in assisting them in obtaining fair freight rates. Bumper stickers proclaiming “Just Say No to Cheap Freight” plaster members’ trucks, yet bumper stickers do not pay the fuel bill and for every trucker who refuses a load at $1.00 per mile, there are three more who will take it. None of them will stay in business long in this climate.

Will 2008 see a repeat of the 1970s, when the striking union truckers shut down factories and nearly brought the nation to its knees? Without the organization of the labor unions, it will be a daunting task, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility. Many of us will refuse to shut down, a lesson in futility that will do more damage to the economy than any election year propaganda piece the mainstream media can spew in support of one candidate or another. Renegade organizers, some reliving the nostalgia of CW McCall’s Convoy, are holding rallies across the country, encouraging truckers to “shut down” with dates ranging from March 24th to April 3rd. While the news reports and blog posts claim the shutdown will “call attention to the plight of the American trucker”, there are few, if any, clear cut answers or solutions to bring to the table. This is not just an election year issue. With military vehicles, first responders and the transportation industry that fuels the American economy struggling to service the needs of the nation, we cannot wait for a Clinton, Obama or McCain to wave their magic wand and walk on rivers of diesel fuel in November. November will be too late.

It will take more than empty rhetoric and nonsensical, make-me-look-good sound bites. It will take immediate and instant solutions, such as permanently lowering fuel tax rates on over-the-road diesel, lowering of tolls and other Federal and state taxes on all truckers – whether the one truck owner/operator or the large fleet owner. The country can afford this – standard business practices dictate that you cut where necessary to absorb immediate costs. We can start by completely cutting funding for National Public Radio and anything named after Robert Byrd (D-WV). Every trucker, every motorist, every family needs to demand we open our lands to domestic drilling – Montana, Alaska, and off the coast of Florida, California and Texas. We must end the reliance on hostile nations to provide oil for our nation. Call the White House; call fax and e-mail your representatives and senators. Demand they take action – NOW. We have the technology – do we have the will?

With more operating funds, the trucks will continue to roll. The stores will be filled with food and other goods. But without an immediate, plausible solution, there will be no need for a $600 rebate check. There will be nothing in the stores to buy with it.

Mark R. Taylor

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=1387042

Mark R. Taylor served in Iraq from January 2004 to May 2005 as a civilian convoy commander. His commentary has appeared in Landline Magazine, American Daily and Townhall.com and he has appeared on The Captain’s America and other radio programs. Mark Taylor’s website is: www.americantruckersatwar.com.

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

Not a single nuclear power plant is under construction in the U.S., and the current waiting period for government approval for construction is now estimated to be four years. Demonized by the myth of human-caused global warming, expansion of American hydrocarbon energy has essentially stopped, too. For reasons well familiar to American engineers, there are, at present, no other practical means of generating lots of useful energy.

So, if we cannot produce energy, why will we cease to import it? The reason is simple. We can no longer afford it. We are being outbid for energy in the world market.

Prices, as denominated in U.S. dollars, of the most valuable material things in the world are now rising at historically unprecedented rates. Energy, grain, metals, machines, and luxury real estate are all rising far faster than even the most extreme estimates of monetary inflation would justify. Even ordinary homes are selling at prices that the majority of Americans cannot afford without becoming enslaved to large debts that they are increasingly unable to maintain.

Everywhere one turns, the price of the best of everything is being bid to levels beyond the reach of most Americans. A mundane example is found in used earth-moving equipment – for which a large auction market exists. At auctions in the U.S. of such equipment today, the newest and best one-third of the equipment is purchased by foreign buyers – the poorer, more worn out equipment is purchased by Americans.

Money serves as a medium of exchange, a standard of value, and, if the money is sound, a storage medium for unspent capital. Each day, the choice of money and value of money are determined in the market by hundreds of millions of individual transactions.

The actual market exchanges, however, are goods for goods, services for services, goods for services – things of value for other things of value. Money facilitates these transactions.

Americans are being outbid for energy – and all other things of great value in the world market because they no longer produce sufficient things of value to offer in trade.

With a government-controlled educational system that has sharply reduced the number of productive Americans and with policies of high taxation, regulation, and litigation that constantly increase restrictions upon the activities of the productive people who remain, United States production of useful goods and services has declined to a level that will no longer sustain the current American way of life.

So far as energy and other valuable items are concerned, the American people are attending a world auction. They are weaker buyers than are the people who now supply most of the world's goods. They are being outbid by these people.

Prices at this auction will simply rise until the weaker bidders fall away. These weaker bidders are over-governed, over-taxed, over-regulated, over-litigated Americans who simply can no longer compete in world markets – because their government has placed such huge unproductive burdens upon them.

As the 30% of energy that is now imported into the United States is lost to other bidders, a lot of things are likely to change. Of the remaining 70%, more than half is used for essential activities such as food production and distribution and winter heating. So, at least 60% of U.S. discretional energy use will end.

With this end will consequently come the end of many luxuries. Air conditioning, night-time lighting, vacation and other non-essential travel, non-essential computer and Internet activities, and many other things that Americans now take for granted will become unavailable to them.

It is much easier to rise in prosperity than it is to fall. The political repercussions of the coming sharp fall in American prosperity – which is now inevitable – will be severe.
As a result of this fall, Americans will either succumb to the greed, fear, irrationality, and envy that has led them to elect those who have caused these problems – thereby worsening their plight, or they will cast off their chains and rebuild their country.

In the current election cycle, Americans are clearly choosing more politicians of the kind who have caused this tragic disaster. When conditions become much worse, whom will they choose?

by Arthur Robinson
March 24, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

At the same time, in the same Bill, in H.R. 5351, the House of Representatives saw fit to give a HUGE tax break to Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s dictator. I suppose I could say, “Please excuse Harry. It was his father’s fault.” But that’s no excuse. Maybe the explanation is that he played with glue too much as a child. Suffice it to say, while the tax increases on oil companies at this moment in our fragile economy was a vicious personal assault on every American, the tax break for Hugo Chavez was clinically insane.

Investor's Business Daily (IBD) put it this way in an editorial titled, "Tax Cut for Hugo:"

"It goes to show that Congress is more willing to empower dictators than to get serious about America's energy supply."

Regardless of what you think of President George W. Bush, or any individual member of Congress, that’s not relevant in this discussion. H.R. 5351 was crafted to gift to Hugo Chavez an incredible amount of United States taxpayer money – your money – money that could otherwise have fed your family, paid your mortgage, and clothed your children.

Why did Speaker Pelosi and Representative Harry Mitchell (AZ-D5) recklessly and knowingly reward an anti-American dictator, a partner of Iran and Russia, by raising taxes on American citizens? How could tax increases be in our nation’s national interest? Have we learned no lessons? What could possibly be in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s self-interest to pass such a bill. Is her issue a pathological gut-wrenching hate of the United States of America?

Why does Rep. Harry Mitchell repudiate his fellow citizens, many of whom struggle to survive from payday to payday, some of whom are losing their homes to foreclosure? Of all the things Harry Mitchell has lost in his life, I’m sure he would tell you he regrets most losing his mind.

There is not one person in the United States, citizen, alien or illegal alien that will not be seriously financially harmed by this potential legislation. The increased cost of petroleum, and all related products derived from petroleum, will not only cost every American more, the increase will cost every level of government more, and those increases will also be passed on to American consumers in the form of state, county and municipal tax increases.

First Congress attempted to destroy the world’s food supply with corn-based ethanol; next they engineered the declining value of the U.S. Dollar attempting to hide their profligate spending, and in the process destroyed the American middle class; then they refused to close the nation’s borders which resulted in the loss of millions of jobs and the deaths of more than 70,000 United States citizens at the hands of an illegal alien in the last two decades – a carnage that continues to this day; and now they seek to push the United States into an economic depression raising the price of energy by adding multiple layers of additional taxation. Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez prances around the globe demonstrating conclusively that the inmates really are running the asylum – in many countries, some very close to home.

When Venezuela’s newspapers, radio, and TV began to criticize Hugo Chavez several years ago, he simply 'nationalized' the media – seized it, just as he did the petroleum industry. Now the Venezuelan media prints only his propaganda. If that were not enough, Chavez has repeatedly demonstrated intense anti-Semitic behavior. His history of hysterical diatribes against Israel and the Jewish people is uncontested.

If France, Germany, Korea, Russia and Pakistan openly (or secretly) assist Iran in the development of nuclear weapons, and Venezuela is their mutual ally, how long will it be before the United States faces the specter of a nuclear Venezuela? Well, somebody better start thinking about it! Venezuela already manufactures and distributes Russian AK-47’s throughout Central and South America.

Monisha Bansal of CBS News said: "Senate Democratic leaders have indicated they would fast-track the bill to try to avoid a Republican filibuster." Fast-track the bill? Just as the Senate tried to do with “comprehensive immigration reform?”

Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner said:

"Middle-class families and small businesses are feeling the squeeze from rising costs for gasoline, food, and other costs of living..."

"[H.R. 5351] actually carves out tax breaks for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez -- courtesy of American taxpayers. This is unacceptable, and the Democratic leadership is irresponsible for bringing the bill to the House floor.

"I am disappointed that the Majority voted down a Republican proposal to eliminate the tax relief for Hugo Chavez and give it to those who need it most: middle-class American families."

Arizona’s Democratic Party delegation in the House of Representatives voted unanimously “Yea” to H.R. 5351. If the following group of ne’er-do-wells were any more stupid, they would have to be watered twice a week.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-8) Yea
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-7) Yea
Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-5) Yea
Rep. Ed Pastor (D-4) Yea

As you might expect, Arizona’s Republican delegation unanimously voted “Nay.”

You have to wonder. Does Representative Harry Mitchell, AZ-D (5) have delusions of adequacy? We should help him dispel those thoughts at every opportunity.

Red State Patriot

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

Saturday’s open session will feature Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s presentation, “Securing a Clean Energy Future.” This is code for the increased use of wind turbine and solar energy. At present, these two provide barely one percent of the nation’s energy needs. They are incredibly inefficient and are incapable of replacing coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear energy to meet the needs of the nation.

The term “clean energy” is code for opposition to greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, but CO2 is just 0.038 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere and plays an insignificant role as a greenhouse gas. It is the Sun that is the determining factor when it comes to heating or cooling the Earth. The Earth is getting cooler, not warmer.

Former CIA Director, R. James Woolsey, will address “the need to develop and support alternatives to imported petroleum.” I don’t know who Woolsey is shilling for, but I have personally heard his standard speech on this topic and I can tell you he is full of hot air. There isn’t a nation on Earth that can afford to reduce its imports of petroleum. It is a global commodity that is sold to the highest bidder. Oil doesn’t have a nationality—only a price.

The notion that America can, will or should reduce oil imports is a huge misrepresentation of the truth. Energy is the engine of our economy. Reduce or restrict its use and you will see businesses and jobs move anywhere it’s available. And yet Congress refuses to grant access to the vast oil reserves going untapped in Alaska or our continental shelf.

What’s scary about all this hogwash about energy efficiency and alternative energy sources is that these are the people who will shape the future of their individual States and of the nation.

Instead of advocating a better tax structure to encourage and stimulate industries and small businesses in their States, they are wasting time on discussing ways to thwart the building of new electricity generating plants, new refineries, and insuring that our own natural resources go unused.

These are the same governors whose States have been on a spending spree for a very long time, far outpacing their revenues. They have borrowed and borrowed to the point where our grandchildren and their children will be paying off the debt load.

America is in trouble and the governors want to discuss ethanol, wind turbines, and solar panels when they need to be discussing bridge maintenance, potholes, and jobs leaving for places where it costs far less to produce anything.

---------------------
Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2008/02/governors-ignore-infrastructure-discuss.html

« Close It

The Greens, however, using the utterly bogus “global warming” hoax and asserting the false notion that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will transform the climate of the earth, are successfully denying Americans electrical power.

There is no global warming and CO2 constitutes about 0.038% if the earth’s atmosphere. In past eras there was a lot more CO2 and the result was the lush vegetation that kept a lot of dinosaurs munching away for several million years.

The brownouts in California are testimony to what happens when there are an insufficient number of plants to generate electricity, whether it comes from coal, nuclear, or hydroelectric power.

Right now the population of America is just over 300 million. The rate of population growth is 30 to 40 million people a year – a number equal to the population of California today. All will want and need electricity. Where will it come from if the Greens are successful in thwarting the building of power generation plants?

“Coal-fired power plants are the wrong investment for our climate, our health, and our economy,” said Becky Tarbotton, director of Rainforest Action Network’s Global Finance Campaign. (1) Such plants do not affect the climate. (2) Americans now have the longest life expectancy ever, so our health is not an issue. (3) Our economy is entirely based on the availability and provision of electrical and other forms of energy.

The Greens opposed nuclear energy so successfully we haven’t seen a new plant built in 30 years. If you want to increase the amount of electricity and, at the same time, reduce the cost of electricity, build a few and watch what happens.

Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine points out that, “The construction of just one nuclear power station like Palo Verde (CA) in each of the 50 states, with a full complement of 10 reactors, would supply all of the energy that the United States currently imports – with, in addition and at current prices, $300 billion per year worth of excess energy to export.”

If we can’t get nuclear facilities built and we can’t get any new coal-fired plants, what does RAN propose? The same thing as the other Greens do. So-called “renewable energy.” And “efficiency.”

Neither solar, nor wind energy is EVER going to be able to produce the amount of energy Americans use and need. The laws of physics eliminate these “solutions” to our energy needs

Energy is measured in British Thermal Units, BTUs. One BTU is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2006 the United States used 99.5 quadrillion BTUs of energy for electrical energy and for our transportation needs.

What energy sources were used to generate the power? Fully 40% came from oil, 23% came from coal, 22% came from natural gas, 8% came from nuclear plants, 2.9% came from biomass, including ethanol, 2.8% came from conventional hydroelectric dams, and less than 1% came from all other alternatives combined, geothermal, wind and solar power.

Along with the efforts to stop any means to provide the power America needs for its present and future energy, the U.S. government heavily taxes energy industries and has placed so many restrictions on new nuclear and hydrocarbon power production that there has been very little development for two generations. On top of this, it has mandated that a large portion of the nation’s corn crop, an essential element of our food supply, be liquefied and burned for fuel!

The most recent “energy bill” passed by Congress and signed by the President actually bans Thomas Edison’s most famous invention, the incandescent light bulb!

If this keeps up, we are going to run out of energy in America for electricity and for transportation. The vast oil tar deposits in Canada are a target of the Natural Resources Defense Council that has challenged the granting of permits required to expand refineries and pipelines on both sides of the U.S. and Canadian border.

A recently proposed billion-dollar project by ExxonMobil to construct a storage facility and pipeline for liquefied natural gas off shore of New Jersey immediately drew criticism by environmental groups seeking to thwart access to this energy source. Meanwhile the State’s largest daily reported on February 9th that New Jersey ratepayers “will see double-digit increases in their electric bills.”

Whether it’s coal, gas or oil, the Greens are doing everything they can to return the United States to the same conditions that existed from before the Revolution to fifty years after the Civil War. The use and expansion of electrical energy did not really begin until the last century.

An energy catastrophe is looming for the nation and Americans cannot even look to Congress to avert it.

Alan Caruba

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

------------------------------------
Response by David R.:

You know, I've been thinking;

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

If you ever want to be deeply chilled, see the movie "Hotel Rwanda." It is a graphic, true, example of what civlization looks like in the first few weeks as its breaking down. I've been thinking about how to "get by" as these colossal idiots pitch civilization out the window. I see it coming from all sources. From the crazy greenies, to the Obamaniacs, to the Petroleumobsessives. As the Roman empire started to fray at the edges, average people started stealing the rocks from the aqueducts to make their huts. They destroyed massive, irreplacable, civilization spreading, infrastructure to serve their own immediate interests. Now, I see tweakers and street people stealing plumbing, electrial fixtures, even phone lines, for scrap. Destroying civilizations highly engineered devices to convert them to their base elements. This is what its like all over Africa. This is why they can't have a phone line or telegraph. This was what made it so difficult to put in railroads there. This is why they have no electricity grid. Now it's happening here. What I wonder about is if it is getting time to "go feudal" again. It worked in Africa with cell phones. It is much harder to protect large society projects than smaller (albeit less efficient) personal ones. Cell phones work in Africa because the telecom companies only have to protect their few towers. The average person only has to protect the phone in their pocket, not their house 24/7. Likewise, it may be time to try and inefficiently generate some of our own power with solar and wind. It may be time to make sure that fireplace works. It may be better to own a clockwork winding radio than a nice big stereo. I'm not prepared to try to live "off the grid", but that may be the future social model here in America and around the world. It's a sort of "technological feudalism," where the largest institutions have to be devolved down to individuals, because there is insufficient social cohesion to permit the maintenance of large projects. Certainly this would be the solution in a place like Iraq, where individual production resources would deny insugents large targets of opportunity. I'm afraid we might go the same way here. If we get the massive power shortages we foresee due to lack of new power plants, or if we can't get enough consensus to deal with our water and fuel resources, we may need more "personalized" systems. It will be more expensive and less efficient, but it might be all we can depend on. I bet anybody with wind-up radios, a few solar cells, a fireplace, guns, a CB radio, and a water distillation kit, was a lot more comfortable in New Orleans than the unprepared.

----------------------------
Response by Jared D.:

London to Triple Daily Traffic Charge on Polluting Cars, SUVs
By Brian Lysaght
Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- London Mayor Ken Livingstone will triple the city's daily congestion charge to 25 pounds ($49) for the most-polluting cars and sport utility vehicles, in a bid to improve air quality. Owners of vehicles that emit more than 225 grams (0.5 pounds) of carbon dioxide a kilometer -- the so-called `G band' rating used for calculating U.K. vehicle tax -- will pay the increased fee to enter central London's congestion zone. The charge will be waived for owners of the least-polluting vehicles, Livingstone said at a news conference today.

The mayor introduced the charge in 2003 to reduce traffic, improve air quality and raise cash for public transportation. Milan, Stockholm and Singapore have similar systems, and New York is considering one.

In London, congestion is increasing even though the charge has reduced the number of drivers entering the zone. The city's transportation department reported ``a sharp increase in congestion'' inside the zone in a report last year. It said the trend reflects traffic-management changes to allocate more road space for buses and bicycles, as well as roadwork by utility Thames Water, which began a program last year to upgrade Victorian-era pipes.

The vehicles that will qualify for the 25-pound charge include: Ford Mondeo cars with V6 gasoline engines; BMW 335i convertibles and 540i and 730i sedans; and Land Rover Discovery and Range Rover sport utilities, according to the U.K. Department for Transport Web site.

Livingstone has criticized drivers of ``Chelsea tractors,'' as sport utilities are called locally, saying the vehicles are
wasteful and impractical in London. He has said he wants to provide incentives for them to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. The least polluting vehicles, which emit less than 120 grams of carbon dioxide a kilometer and won't pay the charge, include the Toyota Prius gasoline-electric powered car and Vauxhall Corsa and Peugeot 107 models.

Since the charge was introduced, Livingstone increased the price to 8 pounds a day from 5 pounds and expanded the area covered to take in west London. He has introduced other traffic-management plans as well. On Feb. 4, the city imposed a 200 pound-a-day charge on the most polluting commercial trucks. The city also plans to introduce a fleet of 6,000 street-rental bicycles starting in 2010, a project similar to that under way in Paris, and to improve bike routes in the city, Livingstone said yesterday.

-----------------

« Close It