Obama's Keystone Debacle

By Alan Caruba

Future historians may conclude that President Obama’s decision to reject a permit for the building of the XL Keystone pipeline was a key factor in his defeat for a second term in 2012.

One can only hope that, in the course of the campaign, Republicans will focus public attention on the deliberate “no energy” policies of the Obama administration that have thwarted the creation of jobs, the generation of electrical power for homes and businesses, as well as fueling our transportation needs.

The Obama administration policies also meant that billions in tax revenue have been lost. Tapping U.S. energy reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil would also be a major step toward greater national security, freeing the nation from dependence on foreign oil.

In a recent article posted on The Heritage Foundation’s website, Rob Bluey reported that “oil and natural gas production on federal lands is down by more than forty percent (40%) compared to ten years ago.”

“Under the Obama administration, 2010 had the lowest number of onshore leases issued since 1984. The Obama administration held only one offshore lease sale in 2011.”

Following the President’s announcement regarding Keystone, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, Thomas Pyle, said that “Tens of thousands of American jobs died today because of the president’s rejection of the Keystone EL pipeline permit. For more than two years, the administration has delayed, hoping to get past 2012 without having to reveal the president’s true anti-job, anti-energy agenda. Because of today’s announcement, Americans will continue to send $70 billion overseas every day to purchase foreign oil.”

The secret President Obama wants to keep from Americans is that the price of domestic oil is always cheaper than foreign oil. Oil industry expert, Seldon B. Graham, Jr. says that this price deferential is “never reported by the media. The media only reports Wall Street speculators’ guesses of oil prices six months in the future…the U.S. price is always lower than the OPEC price.”

In February 2011, a CNS News article reported that “A new study says drilling on Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf could make Alaska the eighth largest oil resource province in the world—ahead of Nigeria, Libya, Russia and Norway.”

In announcing the decision on the Keystone pipeline, the President boasted that, under his administration, “domestic oil and natural gas production is up”, but Bluey pointed out that “The vast majority of America’s new oil and gas production is happening on private lands in states like North Dakota, Alaska, and Texas.” Private, not public lands. One result is that North Dakota’s unemployment rate is 3.4 percent, the lowest in the nation.

Who favored the president’s decision?

An environmental organization, Green for All, hailed the decision. Its CEO, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, said, “This project would have helped Big Oil and their allies get richer at the expense of American workers and permanently damaged our environment.” How does it help to kill 20,000 jobs and an estimated 100,000 related to the pipeline?

The Sierra Club, another environmental organization, claimed that the pipeline would bring “toxic, highly corrosive tar sands crude from Alberta, Canada to refineries and ports in Texas.” If it was corrosive, it could not be transported by a pipeline, but ethanol which is mandated for use in gasoline is so corrosive it cannot be transported by pipeline and requires fleets of trucks instead. Echoing Green for all, the Sierra Club said, “Thank President Obama for standing up to Big Oil and rejecting the Keystone XL oil pipeline.”

Friends of the Earth, another environmental organization, branded Big Oil as “one of the most profitable and most unscrupulous industries on the planet.” Profits equal dividends for investors in oil companies. Profits equal jobs for thousands of Americans. Profits ensure that more oil can be discovered and extracted…except on federal lands and offshore because of present administration policies.

By contrast, James M. Taylor, a Senior Fellow for Environmental Policy of The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank, said, “The Obama administration has confirmed the fears of everyday Americans that it is more interested in paying off environmental extremists and other far-left groups than it is in laying the foundation for a growing economy.”

“The Obama administration’s decision to block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline demonstrates as poignantly as a slap in the face that President Obama is either completely out of touch with the American people or is callously indifferent about our ongoing economic woes,” said Taylor. “I suspect that in the November elections voters will severely punish President Obama for this foolish decision.”

I suspect Taylor is right!

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Wind Power Pipe Dream

By Alan Caruba

Imagine if you will America’s mountain ranges topped by row upon row of wind turbines and America’s deserts and plains covered by solar panels. How ugly is that?

A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Wildlife Slows Wind Power”, took note of the slaughter of birds and bats by these Cuisinarts of the countryside. The problem has reached such proportions that “New federal rules on how wind-power operators must manage threats to wildlife could create another challenge for the fast-growing industry as it seeks more footholds in the U.S. energy landscape.”

The wind-power industry is heavily subsidized by loan guarantees and mandates, and like solar power is turning out to be a vast pit of wasted funding that also raises the cost of electricity to communities whose utilities have been required to purchase its output.

It is another environmental pipe dream and one intended to enrich those who go into this dubious business.

Not only uneconomical, it utterly fails to produce sufficient electrical energy to meet the demand of America’s homes, businesses and industry. As the article noted, “The U.S. now has more than 43,000 megawatts of wind capacity, double the level three years ago, generating roughly 3% of the nation’s electricity.”

Three percent!

Try to imagine how many wind turbines it would require to produce anywhere near the nation’s needs. Now consider that the wind does not blow in a constant stream and often does not blow at all.

Consider also that the increase in wind power has occurred within the last three years, precisely the time in which the Obama administration has been in office, throwing taxpayer money at this pathetically inadequate means of generating electricity while doing all it can to shut down coal-fired plants currently responsible for fifty percent of all the electricity generated. Concurrent with this have been attacks on the coal mining industry.

In early 2011 a study sponsored by the John Muir trust of the wind turbines in California found that wind farms are much less efficient than claimed, producing below 20% of capacity more than half the time and below 10% of capacity for more than a third of the time. The report found that the suggested output was particularly low during the times of highest demand.

Unknown to most Americans is the fact that wind power generation requires 100% backup. To maintain electrical grid capacity, the ability to supply customer demand for continuous electricity, every wind farm must have a backup generating facility. Thus, it is coal-fired, gas-powered, nuclear and hydroelectric power generation that ensures a reliable supply of electricity to consumers.

This means that the backup facility must have twice the real rated capacity of the wind farm. The result is more capital is required to ensure this, along with operating and maintenance costs when a traditional power company is forced to include wind power in its inventory. This is a global phenomenon wherever wind power is part of the mix.

The noise generated by wind turbines is such that, especially in rural areas, lawsuits and complaints, also noting lost property value. Such lawsuits have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, among other states. Increasingly, direct physiological impacts that include rapid heartbeat, nausea and blurred vision have been attributed to the turbine’s ultra-low-frequency sound and vibrations.

An expert on the detrimental aspects of wind power, John Droz, Jr., has created a website for those interested in the facts. Droz notes that “wind energy was abandoned well over a hundred years ago as it was totally inconsistent with our burgeoning, more modern needs of power, even in the late 1800s.” It is an outmoded source of power comparable to plowing farmland using oxen.

Due to intensive lobbying based on the discredited notion that carbon dioxide emissions from traditional power generation plants (with the exception of nuclear power and natural gas) cause “global warming”, this bogus justification is the basis for the wind power industry. Another idiotic rationale is “energy diversity.”

The demand from wind (and solar) power executives for a federal “national renewable electricity standard” would inflict this ridiculous form of power generation upon consumers and it is entirely one of their self-interest. It ignores the nation’s growing population and the need for more electricity generation by means that have a long-established record of efficiency, low cost, and predictability.

Like so much that is based on environmental schemes, it should be abandoned at the earliest possible time.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Great Renewable Energy Scam Continues

By Alan Caruba

I recently received a news release from The Council of State Governments headlined “New Report: Renewable Energy Worth Investment for Southern States” that touted “job creation, environment and public health” as benefits. It was filled with lies.

I had never heard of the CSG before, but a visit to its website was notable for its lack of specific information about its funding, its affiliates, and its programs, though it does mention three Governors on its "leadership" page out of only four leaders. They were from Montana, Puerto Rico, and Alaska. Other than its Washington, DC office, it did not specifically identify its regional offices. It does have an extensive staff and it appears to be yet another lobbying organization, one of thousands in the nation’s capitol.

“Atlanta—Renewable energy has the long-term potential to leader to greater energy independence for the United States, but Southern states are looking to that sector for job creation, as well as environmental and public health reasons. Those states also believe renewable fuels have the potential to produce lower utility rates for consumers.” Not one southern governor was cited as supporting renewable energy.

The United States does have the capacity to become more energy independent because it is home to vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas. The policy of the Obama administration has been to attack existing coal-fired utilities and coal producers despite the fact that it accounts for fifty percent of all electricity generated. As for oil, literally billions of barrels remain untapped and unused because successive administrations have limited or banned access to it.

Renewable energy for the pupose of this discussion will be wind and solar power. They provides less than three percent of the electricity American consumers use daily. In December 2010, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, “The Wind Subsidy Bubble”, noted that the industry received a $3 billion grant from the Obama administration despite or because the American Wind Energy Association is on record saying that without the extension of the federal 1603 investment credit, the outlook for the wind industry was grim and had the potential for the loss of 20,000 jobs, one quarter of the industry’s total.

“According to an analysis by Chris Horner, an energy expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the stimulus bill’s subsidies for renewable energy cost taxpayers about $475,000 for every job created.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an environmental lawyer and president of the environmental group, Water-keeper Alliance, in a July Wall Street Journal commentary, argued against a huge wind power project, Cape Wind. “The price of Cape Wind power comes in at well over $1 billion above market averages” based on information filed by Cape Wind regarding its contract with National Grid, the utility company that has agreed to buy half its power. “The fact is this project makes no sense for ratepayers and taxpayers. Vastly cheaper forms of energy, and not just wind, are now available.”

It may come as a surprise that environment groups who one might think would favor electricity generation from the wind and sun have rejected specific projects such as Brightsource Energy’s massive Invanpah Solar Generating System in the Mojave Desert that would cover 5.6 square miles of desert to produce 370 megawatts of energy, about the same as a small coal-fired plant. “It would destroy the entire Mojave Desert ecosystem said the southern California group called the Wildlands Conservancy.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, of roughly 300 projects delayed or killed over the last few years, 65 were for renewables. The assault on the “dirty” energy, coal, continues unabated by environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club.

Wind and solar projects are hugely expensive, require massive taxpayer subsidies, while producing few real jobs. They are astonishingly stupid and unreliable way to generate electricity when one considers that wind power, for example, requires a constant backup supply of electricity from traditional generating facilities.

To add insult to injury, virtually all of the components of wind and solar energy production are manufactured in China where U.S. companies have exported the jobs involved, focusing on assembling the parts instead.

The Institute for Energy Research found that electricity prices are almost 40% higher in states with mandates for their use.

In July, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pulled out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium that would have required renewable energy use for the provision of electricity. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Corbett has been aggressively de-emphasizing renewable energy use and energy conservation. He has shut down the state department of environmental protection’s office of energy and technology development.

Support for “green energy” and “green jobs” by the Obama administration is just one more way to further bankrupt the nation. If its attacks on traditional generating facilities continue, America will become a third-world nation with rolling blackouts and brownouts.

Like everything else with the word “green” attached to it, renewable energy is just another massive scam like the all the lies that kept global warming going until that enormous and costly hoax was finally discredited.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama's News Conference: Blah, Blah, Blah

By Alan Caruba

5/27/10 - The President, after a lapse of 309 days, held a news conference Thursday. It came shortly after news that earlier in the day the director of the Mineral Management Service, Elizabeth Birnbaum, had either resigned or been fired. Obama professed to not know the circumstances. Yeah. Sure.

What we do know is that Obama’s method of dealing with a news conference is to talk each question to death. In addition, he makes sure that we all know that, no matter what the problem under discussion, it was all George W. Bush’s fault.

Watching Obama’s head swivel back and forth between the TelePromters as he read his opening prepared statement for the first fifteen minutes or so was mildly comical and it occurred to me that he has become a real life parody of a Saturday Night Live parody, the latter of which is at least entertaining.

The press conference was devoted largely to blaming oil company, British Petroleum, for the mess while, at the same time, saying that “BP is acting at our direction.” This is known as having it both ways. Somehow, knowing that the federal government is in charge is not all that reassuring. And, of course, the real problem began “under the previous administration.”

The president then used one of his snore-inducing answers to segue to the usual blather about a “clean energy” economy. This is pure fiction. America and the rest of the advanced nations of the world depend entirely on oil, natural gas, and coal. Long after all of us and our grandchildren are dead these hydrocarbons will still be used.

By then, however, Obama’s nonsense about clean energy jobs will have been long forgotten. They don’t exist now and they will not until the last drop of oil is extracted, the last cubic meter of natural gas, and the last lump of coal is dug from the ground. Wind and solar energy is largely a huge fraud based on the even bigger fraud of “climate change.”

And of course the President took the opportunity to push the legislation before the Senate that would put the federal government in charge of who gets energy, how much they get, and how much they will pay for it. Using the bogus claim that carbon dioxide is a threat to human life the EPA is currently trying to gain control all energy use. Cap-and-Trade, a huge tax, would destroy what little hope is left for the economy to recover.

The highlight of the conference for me was when the insane old crone, Helen Thomas, asked about Afghanistan after Obama had seemingly exhausted the subject (and the audience) on the topic of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster.

Later questions dealt with the Arizona law and the White House criticism of it and border security. Obama used them to push amnesty for illegal aliens without actually saying amnesty. Meanwhile, more and more states are fashioning their own version of the Arizona bill in lieu of the federal government’s failure to stop illegal aliens. Amnesty is a strictly Democrat “answer” to the problem.

Responding to a question about the oil spill, the President earlier had said, “I intend to use the full force of the government to protect our fellow citizens” on the southern state borders affected by the spill. One could only wish that he had the same resolve regarding the thousands of illegal Mexicans and “others” that continue to pour across.

The issue of a possible White House bribe to a candidate to drop out of the Pennsylvania primary race got danced away with the usual assurances from what we were told was going to be the most transparent White House ever.

I feared for my sanity after an hour and stopped watching and listening.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The US Government is Pushing Climate Change like a Drug

By Alan Caruba

We all know that heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines are addictive drugs that do a great deal of harm to those addicted to them, but the U.S. government has been pushing global warming, now called climate change, to addict Americans to the belief that the Earth is threatened when it is not.

Climate change is what has been going on for the 4.5 billion of years of Earth’s existence. It has nothing to do with human behavior, energy use, or carbon dioxide, the bogyman of greenhouse gases.

So why is the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering, preparing to release “three new reports examining how the nation can combat the effects of global warming”?

Why does one of the reports focus “on the science that supports human-induced climate change and the others review options for limiting the magnitude and adapting to the impacts of global warming” when there is NO global warming?

The Earth has been a distinct and well-documented cooling cycle for over a decade at this point in time!

Moreover, the U.S. government has wasted some $50 billion on climate change research over the course of the last two or three decades. Do we really need three new reports—--particularly when they are going to repeat that same debunked “science” that has underwritten the greatest fraud of the modern era?

May 19 is the day when the president of the National Academy of Sciences, Ralph J. Cicerone, will deliver the opening statement and members of the several panels will commit an act of scientific charlatanism by repeating the lies that have been driving the global warming fraud for way too long.

Fortunately, if you want the truth, you can attend the speakers and panels of the 4th International Conference on Climate Change that will occur May 16-18 in Chicago. It is sponsored by The Heartland Institute

Could these three new reports have anything to do with the fact that a so-called climate bill, the Cap-and-Trade Act (since renamed) has been introduced in the Senate, having been pushed through the House in the same way as Obamacare? The bill is an economy-killer.

The Renewable Energy Scam

Could this have something to do with the U.S. Army hosting “the inaugural Renewable Energy Rodeo and Symposium” on June 8-9m at Fort Bliss? And would somebody please tell me what fighting of our nation’s wars has to do with renewable energy? Answer: It doesn’t. But when you are in the process of corrupting science while promoting the most bogus forms of energy other than oil, natural gas, and coal, using every element of the federal government to advance your agenda is obvious.

Meanwhile, the International City/County Management Association has received a $5 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy to “head a team that will work with local government leaders and stakeholders to accelerate wider adoption of solar energy. IMCA will work with the American Planning Association, the National Association of Regional Councils, and industry experts on this new project.”

The key words here are “industry experts” because, if the U.S. government was not wasting your money on solar energy, the most inefficient method of generating electricity other than wind, those in these industries would be looking for jobs waiting on tables or working a Zamboni ice smoothing machine.

Quite possibly, too, you are unaware that the National Governors Association, rather than focusing on the fact that most States are broke, will instead devote themselves to “initiatives to improve energy efficiency, promote alternative (solar and wind) energy sources, and (to) lower greenhouse gas emissions.”

What Americans are being subjected to is a campaign to enrich wind and solar energy producers and the sellers of “carbon credits” while at the same time being told that climate change is the most pressing issue facing the nation. It is a totally invented issue.

This is criminality on a massive scale because it is criminal to impoverish Americans by advocating energy schemes that ignore our dependence on the traditional sources of energy. Indeed, the entire industrialized and modern world depends on these sources.

It is criminal to advocate a bogus “climate change” whose true intent is to enrich utilities, some select large industries, and others with worthless “carbon credits” to be sold on exchanges controlled by Wall Street firms and environmental titans like Al Gore. In Europe such exchanges have generated massive fraud.

While this occurs—if it does occur—Americans will pay more for electrical energy and see a significant rise in the cost of gasoline. Manufacturing will seek friendlier nations in which to set up shop and thousands more jobs will be exported.

We must rid ourselves of the Obama administration and the Democrats in control of Congress before they achieve their goal of destroying America.

© Alan Caruba, 2010