By Alan CarubaIt has taken less than two weeks in office for Barack Obama to confirm that his delusions of grandeur, evidence of which we saw throughout his campaign, are real. I am tempted to refer to him from now on as King Obama, not President Obama.
His executive orders, coming fast and furious, are revealing. Let me begin by pointing out as I seem to do on a daily basis of late that there is no global warming. The Earth is fully a decade into a cooling cycle. This may account for why it snowed a few days ago in the United Arab Emirates for the first time in recorded history.
Secondly, just because the greatest moron to ever hold the office of Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, thinks that “greenhouse gases emissions from vehicles” have anything to do with a non-existent global warming is not a justification for imposing so-called “efficiency standards” on automakers to reduce them.
King…er…President Obama, via executive order, has endorsed efforts in several states to restrict tailpipe emissions and require higher fuel efficiency standards. I have a suggestion. Eliminate blending ethanol with gasoline. Ethanol reduces the mileage of every gallon of gas. Get rid of it and you improve efficiency.
What could be more inefficient than to allow the states to introduce their own emissions standards? As it is the EPA has for years required dozens of different gasoline blending standards depending on what part of the nation it’s sold. That plus the ethanol requirement has been an unseen tax that everyone pays along with the state and federal taxes on gasoline.
All this is being sold to the public as a way to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. I have another suggestion. Why not allow U.S. oil companies to drill for oil in---oh, I don’t know—ANWR? Or maybe off the continental shelf of the nation?
Did you know that the U.S. Geological Service released a report in April 2008 in which it estimated that there are from 3 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in the North Dakota and Montana Bakken formation? The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudoe Bay.
The U.S. does not lack for oil reserves. It lacks a President and a Congress that will permit it to be drilled, extracted, refined and sold without having to import a comparable amount from foreign producers.
According to Speaker Pelosi, though, “This morning, President Obama signaled that our country can no longer afford to wait to combat the climate crisis and our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.”
I repeat: there is no global warming. There is a climate crisis, however. The Earth is beginning to cool and, indeed, could be on the cusp of a new ice age. At the very least, we could be entering another one of the Earth’s previous mini-ice ages such as occurred from 1300 to 1850.
We can reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but neither the United States nor any other nation can ever be “energy independent.” Talk of energy independence is a deliberate lie that ignores the global marketplace for energy sources such as oil, coal, and natural gas.
Lastly, we are in a recession. The rest of the world is in a recession with us. Congress cannot “spend” us out of recession. That was tried during the Great Depression of the 1930s and it not only failed, it prolonged it well beyond the normal time such economic crises take to recover.
Obama is not a king. He is an elected President and, if these first two weeks are any indication, he and his Democrat controlled Congress are going to make every mistake made by FDR and his Congress.
By 2010, Americans will have an opportunity to return Congress to the control of a sobered Republican Party that can and should return to its principles of smaller government, fiscal prudence, and a strong defense policy.
7 comments:
I do "hope" the republican party "sobers up" but I will not hold my breath..
Here in Ohio, we're looking at not one, but two Winter storms bearing down on us. We've had daytime temperatures in the teens for the better part of three weeks now, and last week, the night time temperatures were well below zero almost every night. Cars are breaking down, pipes are freezing, and furnaces are crapping out. We heat with wood, and I've blown through most of the two-year (I thought) stockpile of firewood I had on hand. The lake we live on has been frozen since late October, making this one of the coldest Winters we've seen. Global what?
Meanwhile, in Columbus, the big news today was that the firefighters' union agreed to forgo their 4% pay raise this year, as long as the city agreed not to lay any of them off, and give them their raise immediately if the city got any of the federal bailout funds. The other city unions REJECTED the agreement, and demanded their raises, and one of them even filed a grievance against the mayor. Apparently, he told them if they didn't accept the pay freeze, he would have to lay people off, and THAT, my friends, is a threat, and we can't have that now can we? I don't see anyone sobering up yet.
Personally, I feel the need to start drinking ....
I'm on your side, Alan, but I would remind you of this factoid: the US consumes between 7-8 billion barrels of oil per year. Thus, the Bakken fields offer "only" about half a years worth of oil. Yes, the Bakkens hold a lot of energy, but we need at least two of them per year.
My response to all of these appeals for a Manhattan project to convert the entire energy grid to "renewable sources" (ha!) is to try something much more feasible: turn loose the oil companies to find the REAL holy grail: convert shale to real live oil.
It's an old oil axiom that shale is 10 years away, and it's always been that way. There's a HUGE amount of shale in the US, but it continues to remain an unviable energy source. Why not focus the country's engineering efforts to unlock this mystery. That would lead to REAL energy independence for centuries to come.
I hear the media claim that there is a looming struggle by the far left to try and pull Obama to the left. So far it looks like he is pulling everyone into "his house", which is built on the far left already.
The "science" continuously referred to by the IPCC for the "agenda" is dutifully reported by the press as fact. Never mind that the data they claim is watertight in reality has more holes than the colander in your kitchen!
Somehow, I believe, all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't convince "the one" to give up this socialism vehicle that the Global Warming/Climate change offers him!
The American auto industry is now doomed (if it wasn't before). Obama stated that he was "helping them prepare for the future".
I suppose this means they probably should find and purchase their burial plots.
Union members can learn from this; be careful what you wish or vote for! Let's hope the UAW has a plan B!
I am not suggesting the US will get all its oil from Bakken, ANWR or anywhere else, but to not drill our own reserves makes no sense at all. As it is, we import most of our oil from Canada and Mexico these days, not the Middle East.
I agree, Alan — every little bit helps. Many people hear large numbers like "4 billion barrels of oil" and find that to be enormously large. It is. However, our annual consumption of about 7-8 billion barrels is even larger. I was merely trying to create some sort of simple, visual pie chart so that we can all come to grips with how big "big" is. Most people have no idea how much oil the country consumes annually. You could drain the Bakken fields in 6 months, ANWR in about two years. After that, what? (Yeah, yeah, yeah ... there ARE other sources of oil. I'm just sayin'...)
When one looks at our annual needs, then compares it to accepted, known world oil reserves, you realize that yes, our oil reserves won't last for a century. Known US oil reserves seem to be about 50 billion barrels, or about 6-7 years worth of our needs. Czar Obama and his minions keep talking about "energy independence," right?
That is, unless some alternative fuels can be developed. I don't believe for a minute that wind and solar are the answer. They are laughably inadequate. But shale? That stuff is everywhere, but it's all locked up in the rocks in which it is contained. Let's find a way to extract it, after which our supply of oil is essentially infinite AND domestic.
Let's put all of these silly "green trillions" into converting shale to oil rather than chasing the pixie dust of solar and wind energies.
Doug, I am not so sure of your figures as regards oil. My impression is that there is lots of oil yet to be discovered. New discoveries occur all the time, but much of it is miles down in the ocean. There is said to be a lot of oil in the Arctic as well. I don't think the world is running out of oil for a very long time to come...and oil is a global commodity.
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