Category Archives: climate change

Michelle Malkin(tent) And Energy Policy – Green means you’re a thief

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Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2010/12/michelle-malkin-dems-lame-duck-land-grab-wont-pass-without-fight#ixzz1BgnnDjMF

Michelle Malkin: Dems’ lame-duck land grab won’t pass without a fight

By: Michelle Malkin 12/15/10 8:05 PM
Examiner Columnist
Environmentalistshate sprawl — except when it comes to the size of their expansive pet legislation on Capitol Hill. In a last-ditch lame duck push, eco-lobbyists have been furiously pressuring Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to pass a monstrous 327-page omnibus government lands bill crammed with more than 120 separate measures to lock up vast swaths of wilderness areas.Despite the time crunch, Senate Democrats in search of 60 votes are working behind the scenes to buy off green Republicans. House Democrats would then need a two-thirds majority to fast-track the bill to the White House before the GOP takes over on Jan. 5.

Yes, the hurdles are high. But with Reid and company now vowing to work straight through Christmas into the new year (when politicians know Americans are preoccupied with the holidays), anything is possible. The Constitution is no obstacle to these power grabbers. Neither is a ticking clock.

The Democrats’ brazen serial abuse of the lame-duck session is as damning as the green job-killing agenda enshrined in the overstuffed public lands package.

Earlier this month, Reid assigned worker bees on three Senate committees — Energy and Natural Resources, Commerce, and Environment and Public Works — to draw up their public lands wish list. All behind closed doors, of course.

House Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., rightly dubbed it a “Frankenstein omnibus of bills” and pointed out that the legislation “includes dozens of bills that have never passed a single committee, either chamber of Congress, or even been the subject of a hearing.”

The sweeping bill bundles up scores of controversial proposals, including:

— A stalled land transfer and gravel mining ban in Reid’s home state of Nevada.

— The designation of the Devil’s Staircase Wilderness in Oregon as a federally protected wilderness where logging and road development would be prohibited.

— Multiple watershed and scenic river designations that limit economic activity and threaten private property rights.

— The creation of massive new national monument boundaries and wilderness areas along the southern border opposed by ranchers, farmers, local officials and citizens.

One New Mexico activist, Marita Noon, said the federal plans to usurp nearly a half-million acres in her state would result in an “illegal immigrant superhighway” off-limits to border security enforcement. Security analyst Dana Joel Gattuso pointed to a recent General Accounting Office report on how environmental permitting rules and land-use regulations have hampered policing efforts at all but three stations along the border

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I actually left out the energy part. It is near the bottom. If you can bear the the Washington Toiletpaper for even a moment, go see. More next week.

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Robert Samuelson And Energy Policy – It is just pork

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That is right, spending public money to make public transport via trains more effective and competitive is just government waste and fraud. Kinda like the 500 billion $$$ we spend on the military every year or the billion $$$ we just waste on the high tech wall for the Mexican Border.

From here:

http://reason.com/blog/2010/11/01/robert-samuelson-on-high-speedTo here:

To here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/31/AR2010103104260.html

 

 

Monday, November 1, 2010

Somehow, it’s become fashionable to think that high-speed trains connecting major cities will help “save the planet.” They won’t. They’re a perfect example of wasteful spending masquerading as a respectable social cause. They would further burden already overburdened governments and drain dollars from worthier programs – schools, defense, research.

Let’s suppose that the Obama administration gets its wish to build high-speed rail systems in 13 urban corridors. The administration has already committed $10.5 billion, and that’s just a token down payment. California wants about $19 billion for an 800-mile track from Anaheim to San Francisco. Constructing all 13 corridors could easily approach $200 billion. Most (or all) of that would have to come from government at some level. What would we get for this huge investment?

Not much. Here’s what we wouldn’t get: any meaningful reduction in traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, air travel, oil consumption or imports. Nada, zip. If you can do fourth-grade math, you can understand why.

High-speed inter-city trains (not commuter lines) travel at up to 250 miles per hour and are most competitive with planes and cars over distances of fewer than 500 miles. In a report on high-speed rail, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service examined the 12 corridors of 500 miles or fewer with the most daily air traffic in 2007. Los Angeles to San Francisco led the list with 13,838 passengers; altogether, daily air passengers in these 12 corridors totaled 52,934. If all of them switched to trains, the total number of daily airline passengers, about 2 million, would drop only 2.5 percent. Any fuel savings would be less than that; even trains need energy.

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More tomorrow.

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More Top Stories From The Energy World From 2010

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This one gets it pretty much right I think. I think the BP oil spew was maybe the story of the Decade. I also think that the third world led by China as an ever thirstier consumer of liquid carbon fuels has been over played. But first I found them at Peak Oil, that ever depressing, in a rogue sort of way, website. So have a Happy New Year folks:

http://peakoil.com/generalideas/robert-rapier-top-10-energy-related-stories-of-2010/

But it is a repost from this Blog so Happy New Year to you too.

http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2010/12/28/my-top-10-energy-related-stories-of-2010/

My Top 10 Energy Related Stories of 2010

Posted by Robert Rapier on Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Here are my choices for the Top 10 energy related stories of 2010. I can’t remember having such a difficult time squeezing this list down to 10 stories, because there were many important energy stories for 2010. It was hard to cut some of them from the Top 10; so hard that I almost did a Top 15. But I made some difficult choices, and offer my views on the 10 most important energy stories of 2010. Previously I listed a link to Platt’s survey of the Top 10 oil stories of 2010, but my list covers more than just oil.

Reviewing my list of Top 10 Energy Related Stories of 2009, I see that I made three predictions. Those predictions were:

  • China’s moves are going to continue to make waves
  • There will be more delays (and excuses) from those attempting to produce fuel from algae and cellulose
  • There will be little relief from oil prices.

Given that total energy demand from China surpassed that of the U.S. in 2010 (five years earlier than expected), the EPA twice rolled back cellulosic ethanol mandates (and there are still no functioning commercial plants), and we are closing the year with oil above $90 per barrel, I would say I nailed all of those.

For this year’s list, don’t get too hung up on the relative rankings. They are mostly subjective, but I think we would have fairly broad agreement on the top story.

1. Deepwater Horizon Accident

On April 20, 2010 the BP-owned Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 men working on the rig and injuring 17 others. Because of the depth of the rig, there was no easy way to cap it and it gushed oil until it was finally capped three months later on July 15th. In the interim, the leak released almost 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making it the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. In fact, not only was this my top energy story of the year, according to a poll of AP writers and editors it was the top news story period.

2. The Deepwater Horizon Fallout

While the accident itself was the biggest story, there was much fallout from the incident that will continue to be felt for years. Just three weeks before the incident, President Obama had proposed to open up vast new areas off the Atlantic coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the north coast of Alaska. Governor Schwarzeneggar was pushing for offshore oil drilling near Santa Barbara County. There was a great deal of momentum that promised to greatly expand the areas available for offshore production. In the wake of the disaster, the debate shifted sharply. President Obama canceled a planned August offshore drilling lease sale in the Western Gulf and off the coast of Virginia, citing that his “eyes had been opened” to the risks of offshore drilling. The administration also put a temporary deepwater drilling ban in place until additional safety reviews could take place. Governor Schwarzeneggar dropped his plans, citing the spill as evidence that offshore drilling still poses too great a risk.

But there were far-reaching impacts in other areas. BP began to sell off assets, raising $10 billion to pay claims of those impacted by the spill. BP CEO Tony Hayward — after a series of gaffes — stepped down from the helm of BP. Around the area affected by the spill, people lost jobs, particularly in the fishing and tourism industries. The long-term environmental impact remains uncertain, with some groups claiming the area has recovered, and others stating that it will be years before the full environmental impact can be determined.

3. China Becomes World’s Top Energy Consumer

For more than a century, the United States has been the world’s top consumer of energy. In 2010, China surpassed the U.S. in total energy consumption. If not for the Deepwater Horizon accident, this would have easily been my #1 story. As I said last year, I believe that China will be the single-biggest driver of oil prices over at least the next 5-10 years.

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Personally I do not see Matt Simmons’ death as a huge energy story, but this guy knew him so I can understand the inclusion. More next week.

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Cancun And Trains – I keep trying to focus on the residential market

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But stuff just keeps coming up that is too wild or too woolly to not at least post it.  I mean why in the world would you turn down money for high speed rail? The upgrades and new crossings and crossing guards are worth it.

http://www.forconstructionpros.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=25&id=18770

Calif., Fla. Big Winners as U.S. Redistributes Rejected Grants

Jason Plautz, E&E reporter, E&E News PM

California and Florida were big winners as the Obama administration announced the redistribution today of more than $1 billion in high-speed rail grants abandoned by incoming governors in Wisconsin and Ohio.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood officially killed projects in those states after a monthlong dispute with the two Republican governors-elect, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich.

Both Republicans campaigned against the rail projects, saying they would leave their states on the hook for operating costs and take away road-repair money. And both requested permission to redistribute the funds to other transportation projects.

But the Obama administration insisted the states’ stimulus grants be spent on high-speed rail, sparking protests by Wisconsin manufacturers that had been banking on the rail project and jockeying among states seeking fresh cash.

The administration has now reshuffled $1.195 billion — $810 million from Wisconsin and $385 million from Ohio — and is sending it to 14 states. The biggest grant, $624 million, will go to California, while $342.3 million will go to Florida and $161.5 million to Washington state.

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Then there is all the mucking around in an alleged Climate Change Conference. Here is what the Climate Change disbelievers have to say. But really for all they are accomplishing couldn’t they teleconference?

http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/10/hypocrisy-alive-and-well-at-cancun-climate-conference/

Hypocrisy alive and well at Cancun climate conference
By Amanda Carey – The Daily Caller

From November 29 to December 10, delegates from 194 countries gathered in sunny Cancun, Mexico to “lay the ghost of Copenhagen to rest,” as one dignitary put it. After last year’s chaotic, disastrous and worthless climate change conference in Copenhagen, the goal this year was simple: avoid further embarrassment.

The focus has been on hashing out details for a global climate fund, extending the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012, and establishing an official agreement among developed countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 percent by 2020.

But in the middle of all the global-warming demagoguery and calls for developed nations to shell out $100 billion per year by 2020 in climate reparations to help less-developed countries cope with the unfair burden of climate change, one thing has very obviously not changed: the hypocrisy.

Yes, hypocrisy was present in Cancun just as it was in Copenhagen in 2009, Ponzan in 2008, Bali in 2007, and the many other climate change summit cities before them. As hundreds of officials travel in gas-guzzling jets and carbon-dioxide emitting cars to the conference site and stay in luxurious, high electricity-consuming resorts, the carbon footprint of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is ironic, to say the least.

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More next week

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The Atlantic Energy Article – Why are both of these articles so bad

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What is up with these major news sources. Both the Christian Science Monitor and the Atlantic ditch alternative energies and go for coal or something more esoteric. They make it sound like alternative energies will be a failure.

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Dirty Coal, Clean Future

To environmentalists, “clean coal” is an insulting oxymoron. But for now, the only way to meet the world’s energy needs, and to arrest climate change before it produces irreversible cataclysm, is to use coal—dirty, sooty, toxic coal—in more-sustainable ways. The good news is that new technologies are making this possible. China is now the leader in this area, the Google and Intel of the energy world. If we are serious about global warming, America needs to work with China to build a greener future on a foundation of coal. Otherwise, the clean-energy revolution will leave us behind, with grave costs for the world’s climate and our economy.

By James Fallows

Image credit: Bryan Christie

Through the past four years I’ve often suggested that China’s vaunted achievements are less impressive, or at least more complicated, seen up close. Yes, Chinese factories make nearly all of the world’s consumer electronic equipment. But the brand names, designs, and most of the profits usually belong to companies and people outside China. Yes, China’s accumulated trade surpluses have made it the creditor for America and much of the world. But the huge share of its own wealth that China has sunk into foreign economies ties its fate to theirs. Yes, more and more Chinese people are very rich. But hundreds of millions of Chinese people are still very poor. Yes, Chinese factories lead the world in output of windmills and solar-power panels. But China’s environmental situation is still so dire as to pose the main threat not just to the country’s public health and political stability but also to its own economic expansion.

This report will have a different tone. I have been learning about an area of Chinese achievement that is objectively good for the world as a whole, including the United States. Surprising enough! And China’s achievement dramatically highlights a structural advantage of its approach and a weakness of America’s. It involves the shared global effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, of which China and the United States are respectively the No. 1 and No. 2 producers, together creating more than 40 percent of the world’s total output. That shared effort is real, and important. The significant Chinese developments involve more than the “clean tech” boom that Americans have already heard so much about. Instead a different, less publicized, and much less appealing-sounding effort may matter even more in determining whether the United States and China can cooperate to reduce emissions. This involves not clean tech but the dirtiest of today’s main energy sources—coal.

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I know. Kinda leaves you hanging doesn’t it. Go there and read more.

More tomorrow.

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Anyone Who Does Not Compost Is Part Of The Problem

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No one and I repeat NO ONE should be throwing out food. Everyone can compost. If you can’t use the resulting dirt (everyone should have house plants if they value their health) then you can just throw it outside. It doesn’t matter if you live in an apartment in a urban center or a house in the country, the message is stop throwing food in the garbage. The problem starts at the store though. Please stop overbuying food…especially meat.

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http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/07/opinion/la-oe-bloom-food-waste-20101107

Help the planet: Stop wasting food

Producing it and then getting rid of leftovers require a lot of fossil fuel. Just taking a few simple steps can ease the problem.

Op-Ed

November 07, 2010|By Jonathan Bloom

Let me guess: You’re concerned about the environment. You recycle, buy the right light bulbs, drink from a reusable water bottle (preferably one made of metal) and wish you could afford a hybrid. You try to remember your reusable shopping bags when you go to the market and feel guilty when you don’t.

But there’s something you could be doing that would make a much bigger difference, and it’s not one of those really hard things like carpooling to work or installing solar panels on your roof.

All you need to do is minimize your food waste. If you buy it and bring it home, eat it. That alone is one of the easiest ways to aid the environment.

About 40% of the food produced in the United States isn’t consumed. Every day Americans waste enough food to fill the Rose Bowl. And our national food waste habit is on the upswing: We waste 50% more food today than we did in 1974.

Squandering so much of what we grow doesn’t just waste food; it also wastes the fossil fuel that went into growing, processing, transporting and refrigerating it. A recent study estimated conservatively that 2% of all U.S. energy consumption went to producing food that was never eaten. To give you a sense of perspective, every year, through uneaten food, we waste 70 times the amount of oil that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico during the three months of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

That waste of resources continues after we throw away food. There is the energy required to haul the discarded food to the landfill. And once there, food decomposes and creates methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent a heat trapper than carbon dioxide. Landfills are the second-largest human-related source of methane emissions, and rotting food causes the majority of methane there. It’s climate change coming directly from your kitchen.

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America should be ashamed. More tomorrow.

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The Earth Is 50% Over Its Human Capacity – We have tapped our planet out

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This is the start of part 3 of a 3 part essay on overpopulation and the finite resources that exist on this planet. The only one we have. Science fiction is nonsense. The Mars Mission is never going to happen because we have not solved the fundamental issues. Cosmic radiation is powerful and lethal. We have never found a way to block it. It causes cancer while you are on this planet where we are generally protected by 150,000 ft. of atmosphere, an ozone layer and a powerful magnetic field. Until we can duplicate that we ain’t going nowhere. Then there is the issue of speed. After Mars and Venus, even going full throttle (what ever that is) there is nothing near to us that wouldn’t require years of travel to get to.

So the ramifications of this multipart essay are important. It does come from a Peak Oil perspective so it has all the doom and gloom, survivalist type trademarks, but if you put that aside it is still important.

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http://www.swans.com/library/art16/ga290.html

The Economy Is Not Coming Back
Part III: The Reasons it Shouldn’t

by Gilles d’Aymery

Fundraising Drive: If rants appeal to you, dear readers, then turn your attention to MSNBC, Fox News, Antiwar.com, other news aggregators, and the myriad noisy outputs that emphasize either the status quo or some reactionary future. If not, and you wish to keep thinking about real matters like, say, working to change the socioeconomic system, and you consider that culture is an intrisic component of society, then Swans is directed to you. If a few original thoughts (and original work not found anywhere else) are your call, then Swans is for you. Understand the difference. Whether a donation of $5, $75, or $100, they all are welcome, but again — if our approach is worthy of your interest — you need to up the ante. $180 in the past cycle were much appreciated. Still it won’t be enough to keep Swans going in its current form. Please, friends and comrades, help us. We need another $1,700+ to keep providing you with real content. Do Donate now!

Many thanks to Brandon Haleamau, Dimitri Oram, and Philip Fornaci for their generous contributions.

Read the first part of this essay, “A Short History of the Maelstrom.”
Read the second part of this essay, “The Reasons it Won’t [come back].”

“This meeting is part of the world’s efforts to address a very simple fact — we are destroying life on Earth.”

—Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program, Nagoya, Japan, October 18, 2010

“We are nearing a tipping point, or the point of no return for biodiversity loss. Unless proactive steps are taken for biodiversity, there is a risk that we will surpass that point in the next 10 years.”

—Ryu Matsumoto, Japanese Environment Minister, Nagoya, Japan, October 18, 2010 (1)

(Swans – November 15, 2010) The first part of this long essay presented an abridged history of the road to the current deep socioeconomic crisis that some observers had predicted, even though no one could pinpoint the exact timing of the implosion. The second part submitted that there are objective factors that explain why the economy is not going “to come back” any time soon. But, more importantly, profound and intensifying environmental and ecological crises militate in favor of not having the economy revert to the shape and form it had. Some of these crises are the object of this third part. In short, to return to business as usual will lead to collective suicide, which Mother Nature will trigger in the not so distant future.

According to the WWF (2) 2010 Living Planet Report, “human demand outstrips nature’s supply.” “In 2007,” the report states, “humanity’s Footprint exceeded the Earth’s biocapacity by 50%.” The Global Footprint Network (GFN) has calculated that on August 21, 2010, the world reached Earth Overshoot Day — that is, “the day of the year in which human demand on the biosphere exceeds what it can regenerate.” As GFN president Mathis Wackernagel stated: “If you spent your entire annual income in nine months, you would probably be extremely concerned. The situation is no less dire when it comes to our ecological budget. Climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water and food shortages are all clear signs: We can no longer finance our consumption on credit. Nature is foreclosing.” Though these environmental organizations are promoting policies that are essentially based on demographic and increasingly economic Malthusianism — independent researcher Michael Barker has written in-depth analyses, particularly in regard to the WWF, in these pages (3) — they do acknowledge the gravity of the situation. As the WWF report states, “An overshoot of 50% means it would take 1.5 years for the Earth to regenerate the renewable resources that people used in 2007 and absorb CO2 waste. … CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are far more than ecosystems can absorb.” In other words, the world, or to be more precise, some parts of the world, over-produces and over-consumes natural resources that are being depleted at an exponential rate. That’s the main reason for not having US (and other rich nations’) households “spend again at pre-crisis levels.” (4) The socioeconomic paradigm built on capital accumulation, perpetual material growth, and financial profits for the infinitesimal few must be not just overhauled but buried, and replaced by an equitable new arrangement that takes into account all natural ecosystems.

Fossil fuels

Fossil fuels have been feeding the materialistic economic paradigm, whether under capitalism or socialism, since the early 1800s. Their use increased moderately between 1850 and 1950, thereafter shooting up like a rocket. (5)

According to the US Energy Information Administration, “in 2007 primary sources of energy consisted of petroleum 36.0%, coal 27.4%, natural gas 23.0%, amounting to an 86.4% share for fossil fuels in primary energy consumption in the world.” Today, worldwide transportation depends on oil for 90 percent of its needs. There is not one sector of the economy that is independent of fossil fuels. From 1990 to 2008 the global consumption of fossil fuels has increased as follows: oil: 25 percent, with a stabilization since the beginning of the economic crisis; coal: 48 percent; and natural gas: 54 percent. (6)

With these few facts in mind, where does the world stand in regard to fossil fuels?

Petroleum

Since the beginning of the current latent depression, as oil consumption has flattened or slightly decreased, the topic of peak oil has by and large disappeared in the mainstream media. Were it not for the Blogosphere (7) that keeps bringing facts of oil depletion to the fore, one would believe that everything is fine and dandy — and, anyway, the alarmists are deemed radicals (right or left) and as such are discounted. However, what to make of Charles Maxwell, a senior energy analyst at Weeden & Co. — certainly not a “radical” — who has written and talked extensively about The Gathering Storm? (8)

Or what about Robert Hirsch? Swans readers may recall Hirsch’s 2005 report “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management” that was highlighted on January 29, 2007, in the dossier, “Energy Resources And Our Future,” by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. In that report, Hirsch, an oilman par excellence, showed the dire challenges the world faces and how to possibly mitigate them. What happened to that report is best explained by Hirsch himself, which he did in a potent interview (in English) with the French Le Monde on September 16, 2010 (the report was shelved by both the Bush and Obama administrations).

Still, Hirsch remains adamant. In The Impending World Energy Mess, co-authored with Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling (Apogee Prime, October 2010), Hirsch makes the case that oil production is on the decline; that no quick fixes are available; and that societal priorities will have to change drastically.

The research done by the British Chatham House, the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security, the German military analysis, and other US military reports, like the “2010 Joint Operating Environment” (pdf) shows that oil-consuming countries are bracing themselves for the decline of oil and the risks of conflicts it will engender. But for a few scientists supported and financed by energy conglomerates and pro-growth lobbies, the scientific community has by and large reached the conclusion that the decline of oil was not reversible — a conclusion reached as early as 1998 by the Paris-based International Energy Agency though this crucial information was left out of its annual World Energy Outlook report under pressure from powerful players. (9) Keep in mind that peak oil does not mean the end of oil, as some doomsayers claim. It denotes the end of cheap oil on the one hand and on the other the physical (and economic) inability to find new reserves proportionately to the oil being consumed.

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Reading the whole 3 parts at one sitting can cross your eyes. I put up the parts that got me going as an energy guy. You can read the rest on your own at the site. Also the organization is asking for donations…I am not a regular reader of their stuff so whether they are worthy or not is up to you to decide.

More tomorrow.

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Cap And Trade Rises From The Ashes – It made it into the Senate

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It’s Jam Band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ16hEpB_Sk

Conventional post election wisdom has the Cap and Trade legislation being declared dead. But, it is sitting in a Senate that the Democrats control. Will they bust it lose during the end of the year session. Who knows, but I think the issue will not go away so sooner or later something will have to be done. I mean Russia caught on fire. How much more does it take than that.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/4/clean-coal-is-as-dead-as-cap-and-trade/

MILLOY: Clean coal is as dead as ‘cap-and-trade’

Mitch McConnell had better study up on the election results

By Steve Milloy-The Washington Times

While we shouldn’t expect our left-wing elitist president to understand Tuesday’s electoral rejection of his “progressive” prescriptions for America, we should expect Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, to get it.

But Mr. McConnell seems to have missed the message, at least when it comes to “cap-and-trade” – odd for a coal-state politician. The day after the election, Mr. McConnell said, “The president says he’s for nuclear power. Most of my members are for nuclear power. The president says he’s for clean coal technology. Most of my members are for clean coal technology. There are areas that we can make progress on for the country.”

Aside from the canard of President Obama sincerely supporting nuclear power and the fact that Republicans ought to avoid the loaded and already co-opted-by-the-left word “progress,” so-called “clean coal” is a form of Obama-think – a discredited cap-and-trade concept that was more trap than sincere policy.

Some in the coal industry and some coal-burning electric utilities had been talked into supporting cap-and-trade, provided that taxpayers and ratepayers forked over billions (if not trillions) of dollars for so-called “carbon capture and sequestration” (CCS) – that is, burying utility carbon-dioxide emissions deep underground and hoping they stay there safely.

But to the extent that any so-called environmentalists paid any lip service to clean coal and CCS, it was only to lure coal and utility suckers into cap-and-trade. Does anyone really believe, after all, that the greens would allow utilities to inject underground billions of tons of highly pressurized carbon dioxide all over the nation? They fought tooth-and-nail, after all, to prevent the storage of sealed casks of spent nuclear fuel one mile underground in the Nevada desert.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm-pFqdqcZY&feature=related

Which would they prefer, a tax on carbon? This guys lists all the reasons for cap and trade mechanisms to be set up by the Federal Government and heavily policed by the Federal Government. Nonetheless he likes carbon taxes because they supply more stability. But his belief that it won’t be passed on to the customer is asinine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSJdjb6K5i4&feature=fvw

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http://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/cap-and-trade-legislation/810

Cap and Trade Legislation is Fatally Flawed

My First Ever Mea Culpa

By Nick Hodge
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

We may never see cap and trade in this country.

Those are words I never thought I’d write.

In fact, I’ve been touting the benefits of a cap and trade market since 2007. But new ideas, unraveling facts, and recent events have changed my thinking.

So today, I’m publishing my first ever mea culpa.

Cap and Trade Legislation is Fatally Flawed

My First Ever Mea Culpa

By Nick Hodge
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

We may never see cap and trade in this country.

Those are words I never thought I’d write.

In fact, I’ve been touting the benefits of a cap and trade market since 2007. But new ideas, unraveling facts, and recent events have changed my thinking.

So today, I’m publishing my first ever mea culpa.

Carbon Should Still be Priced

To be clear, I’m not saying that carbon shouldn’t have a price. By all means, it should.

What I’m saying is that cap and trade isn’t the way to implement it.

At the end of the day, carbon dioxide is a harmful waste product that needs to be handled. Companies don’t get free passes for treating and disposing of other waste streams their businesses generate. Why should carbon be any different?

Not charging companies for emitting carbon is giving them free reign over something they cannot and will not ever own: the atmosphere.

We don’t let companies freely dump waste into rivers or lakes… We don’t allow companies to dump waste in forests… So why, then, are we still letting companies dump a known pollutant into the atmosphere unchecked?

This is why everyone speaks of how cheap coal is. It’s not really that cheap, we just don’t include the price of carbon in its costs.

Carbon isn’t a business externality — meaning, companies that produce it can shift the cost to society — and it can no longer be treated as such.

The Trouble with Cap and Trade

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You can go to the article for the rest. I personally support a carbon tax. But I have always said that Cap and Trade is what we get because high finance wants it that way. More Monday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdAhR-c–20&feature=related

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India To Burn More Hydrocarbons – That should clear the air

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101101/sc_afp/indiaenergyoilpolitics

India predicts 40% leap in demand for fossil fuels

by Penny MacRae Penny Macrae – Mon Nov 1, 7:12 am ET

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Premier Manmohan Singh told India’s energy firms on Monday to scour the globe for fuel supplies as he warned the country’s demand for fossil fuels is set to soar 40 percent over the next decade.

The country of more than 1.1 billion people already imports nearly 80 percent of its crude oil to fuel an economy that is expected to grow 8.5 percent this year and at least nine percent next year.

Demand for hydrocarbons — petroleum, coal, natural gas — “over the next 10 years will increase by over 40 percent,” Singh told an energy conference in New Delhi.

“India needs adequate supplies of energy at affordable prices to meet the demand of its rapidly growing economy,” he said, as rising Indian incomes spur industrial demand and more people buy energy-guzzling cars and appliances.

Singh’s call comes as India is locked in a race with emerging market rival China for fuel supplies to feed their booming economies in which analysts say Beijing has taken a strong lead.

India faces “immense competition from China which has been far quicker to react when an asset becomes available,” Kalpana Jain, senior director of global consultancy Deloitte, told AFP.

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More tomorrow

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Drill Baby Drill – ANWR yields dry holes

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I said all along that the idea that there were huge new oil fields in Alaska was both dangerous and wrong. Dangerous, because if there was oil there, drilling could destroy the ecosphere. Wrong, because like the North Sea, the oil companies always claim there is “oil next door” and then drill dry holes. I have often thought they use this technique to drain capital from smaller investors.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/27/alaska.oil.reserves/index.html

Alaska’s untapped oil reserves estimate lowered by about 90 percent

By the CNN Wire Staff
October 27, 2010 1:35 a.m. EDT

(CNN) — The U.S. Geological Survey says a revised estimate for the amount of conventional, undiscovered oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a fraction of a previous estimate.

The group estimates about 896 million barrels of such oil are in the reserve, about 90 percent less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels.

The new estimate is mainly due to the incorporation of new data from recent exploration drilling revealing gas occurrence rather than oil in much of the area, the geological survey said.

“These new findings underscore the challenge of predicting whether oil or gas will be found in frontier areas,” USGS Director Dr. Marcia McNutt said in a statement. “It is important to re-evaluate the petroleum potential of an area as new data becomes available.”

The organization also estimates 8 trillion cubic feet less gas than a 2002 estimate of 61 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, conventional, non-associated gas — meaning gas found in discrete accumulations with little to no crude oil in the reservoir.

“Recent activity in the NPRA, including 3-D seismic surveys, federal lease sales administered by the Bureau of Land Management and drilling of more than 30 exploration wells in the area provides geological information that is more indicative of gas than oil,” the geological survey said.

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Of course the nutcases still believe this and will until their dieing days.

http://www.pushhamburger.com/hidden.htm

Huge Alaska Oil Reserves Go Unused

After 30 years, an insider finally acknowledges the United States
has all the oil and gas it needs.

By Marie Gunther

The United States has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia but this happy though shocking information has been covered up for years.

The wells have been drilled, it’s merely a matter of turning on the faucets to supply America’s needs for 200 years.

These astounding revelations have been confirmed by a 30-year veteran oil exe cutive with leukemia who has decided to speak out.

In 1980, Lindsey Williams wrote a book, The Energy Non-Crisis, based upon his eye witness accounts during the construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. As a chaplain assigned to executive status and the advisory board of Atlantic Richfield & Co. (ARCO), he was privy to detailed information.

“All of our energy problems could have been solved in the ’70s with the huge discovery of oil under Gull Island, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska,” Williams said. “There is more pure grade oil there than in all of Sau di Arabia. Gull Island contains as much oil and natural gas as Americans could use in 200 years.”

Oddly though, immediately after this massive discovery, the federal government ordered the rigs to be capped and oil production shut down.

Developing Alaskan oil would make the United States completely independent of oil imports, Williams said in his book.

Why is the government covering up such good news? Why does it want to be dependent on imported oil? Do international financiers who are heavily invested in the oil industry want to keep the supply limited and prices up?

Will the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), investigate what could be a criminal cover-up? Will the appropriate House committees in quire? Or the Justice Department? Since the cover-up has extended through four presidential administrations, only public outrage can force action.

“Everything you hear on the evening news and out of Washington is garbage,” said Jim Lawler, an oil production manager with ARCO. “Eight wells have already been drilled in the areas environmentalists are claiming we must not go in. We have already been in and out. There was no damage done. All we need to do is start production.”

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More tomorrow

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