All hail, Al Gore!!

Here's the kind of news that will have you shaking your head:

Anyone who opposes ethanol subsidies, as these columns have for decades, comes to appreciate the wisdom of St. Jude. But now that a modern-day patron saint—St. Al of Green—has come out against the fuel made from corn and your tax dollars, maybe this isn't such a lost cause.

Welcome to the college of converts, Mr. Vice President. "It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

No kidding, and Mr. Gore said he knows from experience: "One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President."

Mr. Gore's mea culpa underscores the degree to which ethanol has become a purely political machine: It serves no purpose other than re-electing incumbents and transferring wealth to farm states and ethanol producers. Nothing proves this better than the coincident trajectories of ethanol and Mr. Gore's career.

Oh, how nice. Mr. Gore now sees the light while the American taxpayer gets to foot the bill for years to come for another environmental pipe dream gone sour. Somehow I doubt that this new revelation by Gore will spur Greens to be a little more skeptical about adopting and advocating every earth saving idea that comes down the pike. Environmentalism is a religion that does not tolerate free thought or dissent.

Thank you, Greenpeace!!

This nasty Greenpeace video demonstrates the fear-mongering that pervades the environmental movement.

The chinese rare earth embargo?

I've been commenting on this likely episode for several months on liberal and "green" blogs but most Progressives are either dismissive or simply look for any excuse to avoid the harsh reality of this issue: the environmental movement is essentially trading one precious commodity (petroleum) for another precious one (Rare earth elements) that our economic competitors have a near monopoly on. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Beyond the pale

Another gem from Jeff Perren at Pajamas Media:

To win against mainstream environmentalists and their political enablers requires essentially the same approach as in the purely economic realm. What’s needed is, to paraphrase the crusading attorney in Terence Rattigan’s play The Winslow Boy: “Cold, clear logic. Buckets of it.”

"Parasitic human infants."

Can you imagine if this guy had been wearing a Tea Party shirt or had any remote conservative viewpoints? CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and MSNBC would have 24 hour coverage at the scene and endless panels of experts, pundits, and liberal activists denouncing anything and everything to do with conservatism. Blogs like Huffpo would have exploded. IMHO, the Maryland police should be commended for their quick actions.

Batteries in hybrid cars fail early!

From The Los Angeles Times:

When Honda Motor Co. rolled out its latest-generation Civic hybrid, it was sold as the automaker's green car of the future.

But five years into production, Honda has discovered that its high-tech batteries can die years early, a potentially expensive flaw that the automaker has been addressing with a software update that many owners claim has made the car less environmentally friendly.

Jason Marchesano of Overland Park, Kan. said the battery in his 2007 Civic hybrid started losing its ability to hold a charge last year. Rather than replace the battery, which was under warranty, Honda loaded a software program into the car's computer that he said made the car sluggish and slashed the vehicle's gas mileage.

When he complained again several weeks ago, Honda installed a second software update, cutting efficiency further. Today he gets just 33 miles per gallon, compared with 45 when the car was new.

"I've been sitting here scratching my head and asking, why did I get a hybrid?" said Marchesano, a computer consultant whose hybrid's gas mileage these days is scarcely better than the conventional Civic, which is rated about 30 mpg and costs several thousand dollars less.

Marchesano and other hybrid owners fear that Honda has decided to sacrifice their vehicles' performance in order to avoid the huge cost of replacing thousands of faulty batteries, which are still under eight- or 10-year warranties and cost as much as $3,000 each to replace.

Oh just wait until the Toyota Prius starts to show early battery wear. There will be congressional hearings on C-Span for weeks.

One of our cars is a Toyota Echo that we bought used for 8K. It gets about 35-36 MPG. Now compare that to a hybrid Toyota Prius that can cost 25-27K out-the-door. Do the math. Even with federal and state rebates/credits which would bring the price of the Toyota hybrid down to about 20K, gas would have to be at 4 bucks a gallon for more than EIGHT years before any real "savings" in gasoline costs were realized. The odds that gas prices are going to be at $4 for 8-10 years are long at best. And in 8-10 years, if you have to deal with waning battery power all of the savings on gas will essentially go up in a large puff of CO2. It is amazing that there are so many people that have been taken in by the advertising and the "green" culture that surrounds these very expensive vehicles.

Shortsighted environmentalism endangers humanity

With these two recent posts (here and here), Harrison Price over at Just Politics got me thinking about the damage that environmental groups are clearly responsible for and their knack to weasel out of complicity with skillful deflection when things go terribly wrong. Harrison reminds us of how enviro's in Alaska prevented an oil pipeline to be built overland to carry the oil that had to be shipped out by tanker; shipping oil by tanker is far more riskier than transporting it over pipelines--the Exxon Valdez disaster was ample proof of this.

But this also reminded me of hurricane Katrina. While the media focused on characterizing G.W. Bush as an uncaring bumbling jerk, little was brought to light about why the city of New Orleans flooded as easily as it did. Well, to make a long story short, environmentalists blocked the building of emergency floodgates that would have prevented a Katrina-like storm surge from causing the horrible damage. (Read the L.A. Times article on this here.) But somehow, the environmentalist groups that were responsible for putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in harm's way got little notice. This is a testament to the power of their emotional message while having powerful friends in politics and media.

Obama's Katrina?

This piece by Charles Krauthammer on the BP oil spill is too good to go unmentioned:

Here's my question: Why were we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?

Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama's tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So we go deep, ultra deep -- to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico...

...Federal officials who rage against BP would like to deflect attention from their own role in this disaster. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department's laxity in environmental permitting and safety oversight renders it among the many bearing responsibility, expresses outrage at BP's inability to stop the leak, and even threatens to "push them out of the way."

"To replace them with what?" asked the estimable, admirably candid Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander. No one has the assets and expertise of BP. The federal government can fight wars, conduct a census and hand out billions in earmarks, but it has not a clue how to cap a one-mile-deep out-of-control oil well.

More from Power Hungry...

More from Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" --Chapter 12. The most salient point in this chapter could be summed up easily:

1) “Every megawatt of wind power that is added to a given electricity system must be backed up with a megawatt of gas-fired generation.” That’s right. If your city or county or state decides to add wind mills to it electricity generation, it then needs to either add a back up or it needs to currently have enough energy capacity in the existing system to kick in when the wind doesn’t blow. And those “back-up” forms of generation must always be manned 24/7 just in case they are needed. Think about that for a minute. If you are a public utility and you are mandated to generate some of your power from wind, you know that this means more employment, more overtime pay for you workers, more capital equipment expenditure—all at the expense of taxpayers and customers that have to pay higher prices. This is a pretty sweet deal for utilities. Additionally, you have “green wash” cover by politicians, environmentalists, and the poor deluded average citizen that believes that something good is being done for the environment while shelling out more for electricity.

More to come.

Power Hungry--The truth about "green" energy exposed continued

More from Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" . Chapter 11 deals primarily with T. Boone Pickens and his attempt to sell Americans on his plan. Of course, and no surprise to me, the Pickens plan was just an elaborate way of separating taxpayers from their money. However, there was one piece of information that I found interesting in chapter 11 concerning wind farms and that gets very little press:

1) Oil companies and power utilities have been fined heavily for killing birds. Many of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).

2) Despite the fact that wind mills are very effective bird Cuisinarts, they seem to have been exempted from MBTA.

3) “Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy estimates that between 75,000 and 275,000 birds per year are being killed by U.S. turbines.” This includes golden eagles.

4) Wind turbines also threaten bats.

At the end of this chapter, I concluded that the environmental movement and wind farm advocates consider birds to be an acceptable collateral damage on the road to the renewable energy utopia. Funny that they don’t hold wind power as accountable as other forms of energy generation when it comes to preserving nature.

Power Hungry--The truth about "green" energy exposed

A couple of days ago, I downloaded Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" to my kindle and I am about 1/3 of the way through it. The book is a trove of information on alternative energy and how unrealistic it is as a quick fix replacement for the much derided fossil fuels we depend on. I'm going to post some of the more salient points from some of the chapters as a reference for myself and others who may be interested in the information.

Chapter 10 dealt with Denmark and its wind-power generation. Here are some quotes and notes to ponder:

1) "Despite massive subsidies for the wind industry and years of hype about the wonders of the Denmark's energy policies, the Danes now have some of the world's most expensive motor fuel. And in 2007, their carbon dioxide emissions were at about the same level as they were two decades ago."

2) Denmark is an oil exporter because it has been very aggressive with its off-shore oil drilling in the North Sea. "Between 1981 and 2007, the country's oil production jumped from less than 15,000 barrels per day to nearly 314,000 barrels per day--an increase of 2,000 percent."

3) Despite its wind power generation, Denmark continues to import coal for electricity generation: Wind power will always need a back-up when the wind doesn't blow. Denmark also supplements their wind power with hydropower from Sweden when the doldrums come for an extended stay.

4) Denmark boasts near-zero energy consumption between 1981-2007 but this is achieved primarily due to near zero population growth and high energy taxes.

5) Electricity rates in Denmark are the highest in Europe. Danes shell out $.38 per kilowatt hour while the French pay $.17 per kilowatt hour. Americans pay $.10 per kilowatt hour.

6) "The Danes are among the most oil-reliant people on earth. In 2007, Denmark got about 51 percent of its primary energy from oil. That's far higher than the percentage in the U.S. (40%) and significantly higher than the world average of 35.6...Denmark is also more coal dependent than the U.S., getting about 26% of its primary energy from coal while America gets about 24% of its primary energy from the carbon-heavy fuel."

More to come.

The Louisana oil spill and liberal dreams

This WSJ piece on off-shore drilling and the Louisiana accident is right on the mark:

As the oil in the Gulf of Mexico moves toward the Louisiana and Florida coasts, the left is already demanding that President Obama reverse his baby steps toward more offshore drilling. The Administration has partly obliged, declaring a moratorium pending an investigation. The President has raised the political temperature himself, declaring yesterday that the spill is a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster."

The harm will be considerable, which is why it is fortunate that such spills are so rare. The most recent spill of this magnitude was the Exxon Valdez tanker accident in 1989. The largest before that was the Santa Barbara offshore oil well leak in 1969.

The infrequency of big spills is extraordinary considering the size of the offshore oil industry that provides Americans with affordable energy. According to the Interior Department's most recent data, in 2002 the Outer Continental Shelf had 4,000 oil and gas facilities, 80,000 workers in offshore and support activities, and 33,000 miles of pipeline. Between 1985 and 2001, these offshore facilities produced seven billion barrels of oil. The spill rate was a minuscule 0.001%.

According to the National Academy of Sciences—which in 2002 completed the third version of its "Oil in the Sea" report—only 1% of oil discharges in North Americas are related to petroleum extraction. Some 62% of oil in U.S. waters is due to natural seepage from the ocean floor, putting 47 million gallons of crude oil into North American water every year. The Gulf leak is estimated to have leaked between two million and three million gallons in two weeks.

...As for a drilling moratorium, it is no guarantee against oil spills. It may even lead to more of them. Political fantasies about ending our oil addiction notwithstanding, the U.S. economy will need oil and other fossil fuels for decades to come. If we don't drill for it at home, the oil will have to arrive by tanker and barges. Tankers are responsible for more spills than offshore wells, and those spills tend to be bigger and closer to shore—which usually means more environmental harm.

Comment: The wailing at liberal blogs regarding this horrible accident has, of course, reached its expected perfervid pitch. And I see the usual cavil arguments about a de-regulated oil industry prompted by George W. Bush prevented the use of an acoustic switch which would have prevented all of this mess. All of this is of course unfounded. Some countries do mandate the use of an acoustic switch (Norway, Brazil) and some do not (U.K.). U.S. regulators decided against the use of the switches because of cost and reliability issues. I tried to point out to one guy that all the acoustic switch does is set off the more central blowout preventer remotely and that subs had tried to activate the blowout preventer manually with no success which means that the acoustic switch may not have mattered one way or another. The blowout preventer is malfunctioning. He was not impressed with my argument but instead deleted my post. Classy.

I also made the following observation at other blogs when liberal bloggers were quick to jump on the "drill, baby, drill" crowd and their point on how safe off-shore drilling is: When an airliner tragically crashes and kills everyone aboard, does anyone suggest that society should revert back to ocean liners to get from, let’s say, Boston to London? No. When there is a pile up of cars where passengers are killed, does anyone suggest that society revert to the alternative of horse and buggy? No. Accidents happen even in a perfect world and no reasonable person is going to revert to a lower standard of living because of the threat of the odd incident. So why is oil held to a different standard than other technologies?

Oil is utilized in some form in every stage of production for a constellation of goods. How are you going to make medical devices, medicine, fertilizer, parts for vehicles, etc. without petroleum? Our economy would come to a standstill without it.

There are almost 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico that have been operating for years without an accident of this magnitude. This event is a clear outlier in an industry that has done a remarkable job with safety.

The usual argument I read at some liberal blogs is that we need to reduce our consumption of oil so that we don't have to drill as much. I find it astonishing that anyone could believe that this is possible with a growing population and a growing (I hope) economy. Even Denmark which is held up as a wind-mill utopia by liberals has INCREASED its off-shore drilling aggressively and its IMPORT OF COAL in order to meet rising demands. Additionally the Danes have to live with some of the most expensive gas and electricity prices in the world. And that's with very little population growth (just slightly above zero) compared to the U.S. Between 1998 and 2008, the Danish population grew by just 200,000 people. During the same time period, the U.S. population grew by 33 million people. So, I find it shocking that anyone would believe that we could "conserve" our way to less oil consumption.

Trust me, if the U.S. stops its off-shore drilling, countries like Denmark, Norway, Brazil, the U.K., China and others, are going to continue to expand and to be aggressive with their off-shore programs and we will have to depend on them to supply us and the rest of the world.

Feeling sorry for Big Oil

Rothbard explains why an oil spill, which occurred some time ago, brought out the hysteria in the press and the environmentalists too. It's not any different from what we are witnessing today.

So you want to build a wind farm?

From The Boston Globe:

The nine-year regulatory battle over the nation’s first proposed offshore wind farm is expected to end this week, when US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar plans to issue a final federal decision on whether to permit 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound.

But some opponents of the wind farm are making it clear that if Salazar approves the project, they will go to court to try to overturn his ruling.

The Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe, on Martha’s Vineyard, issued a statement yesterday saying they will sue if Salazar approves the project in the 560-square mile sound. The group is one of two Wampanoag tribes that say the proposed turbines, which would be more than 400 feet tall, would disturb spiritual sun greetings and threaten ancestral artifacts on a seabed that was once exposed land.

The Aquinnah tribe said it has hired a lawyer experienced in tribal historic preservation efforts to “fully prepare for administrative and judicial relief should the project move forward.’’ The statement said the tribe has identified more than 14 “legal shortcomings’’ by the Minerals Management Service under the National Historic Preservation Act and may also allege violations of other federal laws.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the main opposition group to the proposed wind farm, has also indicated it will probably sue if the project is permitted.

Advocates for wind energy are closely watching the progress of the Cape Wind project. A flurry of wind farms have been proposed along the East Coast over the past several years, and as technology improves, more are expected.

Supporters say approval of the Nantucket Sound project would pave the way for the United States to catch up to European countries that already have offshore wind farms, and even to surpass them eventually.

But wind energy advocates are also worried that if Salazar denies the project over the concerns of the tribes, other Native American groups — or owners of historic properties — will be emboldened in their efforts to quash proposed wind farms elsewhere.

All I can say is---Go Wampanoag Tribe! Don't trust government! They have screwed you for hundreds of years and they will screw you now for a deranged cause!

Wind farms are the great pie-in-the-sky "clean" energy that environmentalists and their political enablers love to trumpet whenever they find an appropriate situation that may be susceptible to their argument. In this case, it's a great swath of land that can be easily exploited, in their opinion, at the expense of a lowly Indian tribe in the "Blue" state of Massachusetts. The truth about wind farms is that they take up a LOT of land to produce a comparable amount of power that a nuclear power plant could. So imagine massive amounts of land being carpeted by these ugly beasts. Of course, those that are well connected and politically powerful--like a Kennedy--will always be able to stop any plans to block their beautiful view with ugly wind mills. But in Massachusetts, a lowly band of Indians are acceptable fodder.

Around The Horn...Newsworthy Links And Posts!

1) Good luck in trying to tax the rich to close the deficit.

2) Nearly half of U.S. homes escape taxes.

3) Mortgage rates jump higher as Fed stops buying mortgage-backed securities.

4) Another liberal crusade and another evil chemical that they need to save us from.

5) Milton Friedman on hope.

6) Is the Tea Party like the KKK?

A very small nuclear power plant

Here's what to do with all that nuclear waste.

John Stossel on alternate energy subsidies

Is Boone Pickens "rent seeking?" I say yes.

The IPCC error campaign continues

The IPCC's beleaguered climate report faces the prospect of still more errors, as Dutch authorities point out factual inaccuracies about the Netherlands.

Dutch environment ministry spokesman Trimo Vallaart has asked the U.N.'s climate change panel to rethink its assertion that more than half of the Netherlands is below seal level. Dutch authorities explain that, in fact, only 26 percent of the country is below sea level.

...correcting the error had been "on the agenda several times" but had never actually happened. Vallaart told the AFP that he regretted the fact that proper procedure was not followed, adding that it should not be left to politicians to check the IPCC's numbers.

The party of NO!

Speaking of being obstructionists, environmental groups are masters of the block.

The Green Utopia

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

It's an environmental catch-22. California needs to meet its aggressive goals for renewable-energy production, but solar and wind farms require lots of space. The farms' land gobbling can conflict with one of Californians' most cherished values: the preservation of pristine wilderness and animal habitat. As the state gets serious about increasing its renewable-energy portfolio, there's going to be tension.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is learning that the hard way. As the author of the 1994 California Desert Protection Act (which established the wildly popular Joshua Tree National Park), she was the natural author for the California Desert Protection Act of 2010. The bill would place nearly 1 million acres of the Mojave Desert off limits for development.

It would also fund a new renewable-energy permitting office and seek to expedite permitting for renewable-energy projects on lands deemed more suitable for development, but those changes seem like small potatoes when compared to the vast amount of land that will suddenly be off limits. The Bureau of Land Management is currently evaluating about 120 solar and wind projects in the region, and a handful of those would have to be tossed out under Feinstein's bill. The developers are crying foul.

VH: The "green" utopia is going to be a lot more elusive and expensive than what environmentalist's have sold to the gullible California public. The state of California is already one of the most expensive places to live and to do business. What do you think is going to happen when more land is set aside from being developed and there are less and less corridors to carry power from one point to the next? Cha-ching.