Our Best Hopes, Not Our Worst Fears

By Alan Caruba

I will be attending the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change March 2-4 and will be surrounded by perhaps 500 or more of the world’s leading skeptics of global warming. Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, scientists, economists, and policy makers will come together from many nations to share the facts that so clearly debunk this global hoax.

Generated out of the United Nations through its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the reports that underwrote the global warming hoax were from the beginning protested by many of the scientists and others invited to contribute to them.

It didn’t matter, though, because (1) the findings reported were based on flawed or deliberately false computer models and (2) the findings were preordained and determined by an inner circle of global warming propagandists for the purpose of creating a global crisis that would put more and more control of the world under the control of the UN.

The failure of its predecessor, the League of Nations, should have been a sufficient lesson to avoid the creation of the United Nations, but the world that followed the end of World War Two yearned for a way to avoid another one. What it got was a collection of the worst cynics who did the bidding of dictators most of the time while plotting to become themselves the greatest dictators in history. The United States was always the exception and, as often as not, the point of the sword when military action was required.

The world has always been a scary place. There are always people ready to commit the worst crimes against humanity in the name of some political, economic or religious doctrine. Despite that, more of humanity is freer now than it was at the beginning of the last century. It took a number of large, small, and Cold wars, but the outcome is brighter for millions because brave men and women made great sacrifices for freedom.

Always, too, there have been voices saying, “This is not our war” or “This war is a bad idea”, but freedom is a particularly American idea, even though it has been pursued by many people in many nations for many centuries. Born in the crucible of war, the American experiment has always been the standard, the lamp of liberty held high.

Part of being free is to be free of the lies and deceptions that are widely disseminated to convince people to give up their freedom for an illusionary security, for guarantees that government will take care of you from birth to the grave.

I was reminded of this while making preparations to attend a conference where scientific proof will be the measure of what is real or not. The conference is a confirmation of the freedom America provides to those for whom only the truth matters. This is a conference about what real science offers in the face of superstition and political subversion.

I was reminded, too, of something President Ronald Reagan once said: “Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty’s lamp guiding your steps and opportunity’s arm steadying your way.”

The election that lies ahead for Americans must be about our best hopes, not our worst fears about the hobgoblin of global warming and the illusion of “energy independence.” Its outcome must be based on truth-telling, not vague promises of change or naïve beliefs that the nation can be protected by making deals with thugs or by not engaging them on the battlefield as so many Americans did in the past to preserve a future based on freedom.

What Really Happens When There is No Wind

By Alan Caruba

Reuters reported on February 27th that, “A drop in wind generation on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers.”

Ironically called the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT said that a decline in wind energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the state. For the record, “Texas produces the most wind power of any state and the number of wind farms is expected to increase dramatically as new transmission lines are built to transfer power from the western half of the state to more populated areas in the north.”

Okay, let’s see if I have this right. The existing wind farms, composed of hundreds of wind turbines, were not enough to avoid a sudden decline in electrical power because the wind stopped blowing.

Now ask yourself if you want your home or business to be dependent on whether the wind is blowing or whether a lot clouds suddenly get between the solar panels and the sun? While you sit in the dark, you might say to yourself that this “clean energy” is helping to avoid global warming. Oh wait, I forgot, there was “colder weather” in Texas last Tuesday.

How much brain power must be applied to the fact that there is no global warming (now called ‘climate change’) and that the enormous investments in wind and solar power, currently providing a giant 1% of all the electricity used in America, are a huge waste of money?

Let me put it another way. As Robert Bryce notes in his brilliant new book, Gusher of Lies, “By 2010, the U.S. will be generating only about 50 billion kilowatt-hours per year from wind power. That’s a pittance compared to the 800 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity that are pumped out every year by America’s 104 nuclear power reactors.”

When you add in the 2,000 billion of kilowatt-hours generated just from coal-fired plants, the notion of wind power as a rational answer to America’s energy needs begins to look idiotic

But Texas, apparently, can’t build more wind farms fast enough. Recent plans to build some coal-fired plants were shot down. Environmentalists are mobilizing the nation’s youth to protest “dirty” coal as a source of electrical power.

Meanwhile, the American Wind Energy Association just released a statement to the effect that they were thrilled that, by a vote of 236 to 182, the House of Representatives passed a bill that includes an extension of the renewable (wind and solar) energy production tax credit. Now they are hoping the Senate will do the same and that the President will sigh off on the deal. “Millions of Americans across the political spectrum (who) overwhelmingly support clean, home-grown wind and solar energy.”

No they don’t. Americans for the most part haven’t a clue where their electricity is generated or how. Instead, they depend on elected and appointed leaders to ensure that they will have electricity when they turn on the lights. The more Congress keeps mandating so-called “clean energy” the less prospect of that exists.

What happened in Texas is going to become routine wherever wind or solar power is part of the grid. America is headed toward being a Third World nation that cannot keep the lights on.

If you want to risk freezing because the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, you need that “dirty” coal generating plant, the kind that currently produces 52% of all the electricity the nation uses. You need gas-fired plants. The U.S. has pretty much used up all the viable locations for hydroelectric power, so that is no longer an option. It’s worth keeping in mind that modern technology has “cleaned up” those coal-fired plants to the point they are not a pollution problem.

While Congress passes laws giving big, fat tax credits to wind and solar companies as some of its members condemn “Big Oil” and “Big Coal”, you just might want to let your Representative or Senator know what a really bad idea “clean” energy is.

Green Scamming

By Alan Caruba

Let’s say you’re planning to contract with a lawn service to tend to your property this spring. To put it simply, you want to hire a firm to mow the lawn. Time was, you could hire a neighborhood kid to do it, but now none of them will consider this or shoveling snow as a means to put some extra change in their pocket.

So consider the news release I just received. “Clean Air Lawn Care is Eliminating its Carbon Footprint by Measuring, Reducing, and Offsetting Emissions.”

I submit to you that anyone who hires this firm because they are spending time maintaining an “emissions inventory” or purchasing “renewable energy credits and emissions offsets” might well consider hiring Al Gore to mow their lawn.

There is an impolite term for what this “environmentally friendly lawn service” is offering. Hiring them means you are going to be paying more for the privilege of knowing they are using “clean electric mowers, edgers and blowers” as well as “biodiesel powered trucks and mobile solar panels used to charge equipment in the field.”

Anyone who seriously thinks that the act of having one’s lawn mowed or hedges clipped has anything to do with saving the world from global warming deserves to pay as much as these guys can get.

This is a classic green scam, a marketing ploy to differentiate this lawn service firm from its competitors.

“The majority of Clean Air’s footprint results from the electricity used in lawn care equipment,” said the release. Assuming they are getting it from solar power, you are still paying for the solar gadgetry needed to accomplish this magic. If, on the other hand, they are just plugging the machinery into a socket at their headquarters at night, the odds are that the electricity was generated by coal, gas or nuclear power. On overcast days, filled with clouds, their solar power will not be worth spit.

And what does it matter where the electricity comes from so long as they come on time, mow your lawn, and move onto the next sucker? Do you really care that they are “purchasing green power in the form of Green-e certified renewable energy credits”? Does it matter that the cost of these “credits” is going to be factored into your bill along with the time and labor required to mow your lawn? It should.

I’m not saying don’t hire these guys. They probably can do as good a job as the next five lawn care service providers in their market area, but please spare me the greener-than-thou pitch.

Apply this standard to anyone else that comes along promising to save the planet while painting your house, resurfacing your driveway, putting in a new toilet, or any one of the myriad other household needs that will lighten your wallet.

Do not, under any circumstances, spend thousands installing solar panels on your roof. You will be long dead and your home sold several times before that little investment begins to pay off.

Dumb Governors

By Alan Caruba

Being a governor has always been a steppingstone to the presidency. It’s just a thought, but perhaps people are less and less confident in their governors these days because so many seem to be part of a succession of governors who have left their states ever deeper in debt?

One notes that neither former Governor Mitt Romney, nor Mike Huckabee, fared all that well in the Republican primaries and that two former governors who made it to the White House in recent times left it under a shadow. Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was and is a moron, while former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, though elected and re-elected, is now best remembered for turning the Oval Office into the Oral Office. Of the modern era of presidents, only Ronald Reagan, a former governor of California, restored any luster to the White House.

Governors are on my mind because the National Governors Association just finished their winter meeting in Washington, D.C. and managed to ignore the crisis most common to their states, budgets that are so over-extended that some wrenching news awaits citizens from California to New Jersey. Indeed, the exodus of people from both California and New Jersey is turning into a stampede as they stream into Nevada and Arizona in the West and head toward the Carolinas in the East.

California faces a $14 billion deficit this year while New Jersey has a $3 billion deficit. Both can boast of having some of the highest tax burdens in the nation.

So what did the National Governors Association devote their meeting to? “Reinforcing the role of states in advancing a clean energy future for America.” Clean energy is code for throwing money, subsidies and tax credits, at the least efficient forms of energy, wind and solar, while ignoring the need to encourage the improvement and expansion of the nation’s electrical grid that enables everything to function or encouraging the building of new refineries to insure a supply of gasoline and other petroleum fuels. There’s a need, too, for more nuclear plants and more coal or gas-fired plants to generate electricity.

Instead the states keep mandating that a portion of all electrical power must come from wind and solar sources that would not exist if they were not subsidized with tax and rate-payers dollars. Both require backup reserves of power providers that rely on coal, gas, or nuclear because the wind does not blow all the time and the sun does not shine at night.

“From the discussions we’ve had these past three days, it’s clear that governors are leading the way to ‘Americanize’ this country’s energy future,” said NGA Chair, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Someone better explain to Gov. Pawlenty and the other 49 governors that America runs on imported oil and will for the foreseeable future. We buy it from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and anywhere else that will sell it to us. The same holds true for natural gas.

The most American form of power available is coal. We have about two or three hundred years of estimated reserves, but in states like Texas and Kansas, the building of much needed coal-fired plants to provide electricity was thwarted. Meanwhile, China is building a new coal-fired plant every week. Some plants are gas-fired and, when a major energy company recently announced it wanted to build a billion-dollar storage facility for liquefied gas way off the coast of New Jersey, the first response was to tell them to go away.

“We’re on the verge of an energy revolution in this country,” said NGA Vice Chair Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell. “And it’s clear that charting our own energy future will require every available resource at America’s disposal, from clean coal and nuclear to biofuels and renewables.”

Biofuels are a pipedream, as are so-called renewables (wind and solar). If we start building nuclear plants to generate electricity right now, we may avoid a future of brownouts and blackouts. Clean coal is a joke. Coal is dirty, but coal is cheap, plentiful and a powerful source of energy. Coal-fired plants that currently provide 52% of America's electricity would keep the lights on for the next few centuries. Because of clean-air regulations, America actually imports some forms of coal rather than being able to use its own.

None of the goals the governors have in mind will generate any kind of national "energy security" because no nation on earth can be energy independent. Even Iran has to import gasoline. Brazil that is always touted for its ethanol production actually earns much of its wealth from its abundant sources of oil. All ethanol does is reduce the amount of actual mileage a tank of this additive provides. It amounts to burning a valuable source of food for fuel that, in turn, just drives up the cost of food.

If I know this, why don’t our nation’s governors? It’s not like it’s a secret or that any of the experts in their state universities couldn’t tell them this.

With some exceptions, we have governors who apparently don’t have a clue about the realities of energy these days and for the future. Instead, they invite speakers to tell them of the wonders of ethanol made from wood chips, electricity from hundreds of huge wind turbines no one wants to live near or some comparable fantasy.

None of this bodes well for the future of America. We expect our elected leaders to have some understanding of the true dynamics of how energy is produced and where the millions of gallons of gas and diesel we use for transportation comes from.

Meanwhile, as the governor’s meeting concluded, the U.S. National Climatic Data Center announced that snow cover over North America is greater now than any time since 1966. The average temperature in January “was –0.3 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

Do you think they know this?

Call It Quits, Andy Rooney!

By Alan Caruba

One of the great mysteries of television is why someone at CBS hasn’t sat down with Andy Rooney and told him to clean out his desk. He is, after all, an irrelevant old man who shows up at the end of every edition of “Sixty Minutes” to rant about things of no significance whatever.

Now, I am old, too, but at least I try to pay attention to what is actually happening in the world and provide some kind of comment that might prove helpful. Rooney spent his few minutes of fame blathering about news stories and their headlines that didn’t interest him. That’s right, he talked about things he didn’t care about.

I don’t normally watch “Sixty Minutes.” I had the show on as background “white noise” because I was reading a book and the baby in the apartment next to mind was wailing away as only babies can do. The phone rang and I had the pleasure of chatting with one of the most brilliant minds in America, a resident of Falcon, Missouri, who finds the current political scene too joyful for words as Hillary and Bill Clinton finally use up whatever little credibility they ever had.

As I hung up the phone, there was the craggy visage of Andy Rooney, leaning forward and snarling at the TV camera, i.e., the viewers, to pass a few minutes asking inane questions such as what platinum is used for. That question was occasioned by the fact that its price, along with gold and other minerals, is going through the roof. So, Andy, it must be used for something! You could Google the answer.

Hear my plea, CBS-TV! Designate some intern to hand Rooney his walking papers. He stopped being entertaining or informative sometime shortly after Watergate. Nobody that dense should be allowed on television.

Idiotic Solutions to Non-Problems

By Alan Caruba

Since there is no threat from greenhouse emissions, especially carbon dioxide, the notion that The New York Times would devote space to a “solution” to CO2 that lacks even a modicum of common sense simply reaffirms this newspaper’s obsession with "global warming."

Viscount Monckton, a British scientist, has famously said that when confronted with a non-problem, the best thing to do is nothing.

On February 19, reporter Kenneth Chang, reported that “Scientists Would Turn Greenhouse Gas Into Gasoline.” This immediately raises the question of why this hasn’t already been done. The answer is (1) it would require an enormous amount of energy—the equivalent of the entire output of a nuclear plant and (2) that a CO2 conversion plant would cost at least $5 billion to build and would not be economically viable unless gasoline was selling for close to $5 a gallon.

According to the article, two scientists, F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kuble, Jr., have proposed the CO2 conversion concept they have dubbed “Green Freedom.” Apparently scientists are now taking classes in public relations.

As the article explained, “The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.”

According to Wikipedia, “Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol, carbinol, wood alcohol, wood naphtha or wood spirits, is a chemical compound with chemical formula CH3OH (often abbreviated MeOH). It is the simplest alcohol, and is a light, volatile, colorless, flammable, poisonous, liquid with a distinctive odor that is somewhat milder and sweeter than ethanol.” (emphasis added)

In other words, it is moonshine. If it didn’t have the side effect of killing you, people would drink it

“Although they have not yet built a synthetic fuel factory, or even a small prototype, the scientists say it is all based on existing technology.” Vacationing on Mars is also based on existing technology. Buy your ticket today or maybe some carbon credits.

Until Planet Earth runs out of oil, the need for this “Green Freedom” energy source is totally unnecessary and, at this point, an idiotic exercise by two scientists who thirst for fame (and grants!) like the most common Hollywood starlet.

Thus we have an idiotic solution to a non-problem. Carbon Dioxide is essential to the existance of every bit of vegetation on Earth. It is not a pollutant and, at 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere, it represents zero risk of turning the planet into a dust bowl devoid of all life.

Since we are assailed daily with this kind of global warming related story, it is understandable why people think there's a problem. The problem is the fear mongers who keep telling people we’re running out of oil and that atmospheric CO2 is a danger.

Losing Our Electoral Minds

By Alan Caruba

It’s a good thing that national elections don’t come around any more frequently than every four years. The sight of so many Americans totally losing their minds must be shocking to foreigners.

The system that winnows out various aspirants for the highest office in the land seems to make no sense at all, despite the fact that it has worked now for a very long time. Almost from the beginning, the nation divided itself into political parties. After that, they engaged in the most vicious slander of the opposition in the interest of acquiring the power to influence our future.

What should give anyone pause is the way some of the most incompetent, if not crazed, men have made their way to the Oval Office. John Quincy Adams felt terribly insecure, having had to live in the shadow of his badgering, but brilliant father. Andrew Jackson, who adorns our $20 bill, had fought many duels and, by most accounts, was a compete egomaniac. In more modern times, we are still living with the succession of bad judgments made by Jimmy Carter, an ex-President who is an unfailing embarrassment to the nation.

Carter’s predecessor, Richard M. Nixon was a total paranoid. He was so obsessed with his “enemies” that he was ultimately forced to resign in the wake of the Watergate Scandal. Bill Clinton was and is a feckless, immoral fool who one hopes has now managed to destroy his wife’s insane ambition to succeed him. The train wreck of her campaign is a tribute to that tiny voice in the back of voter’s minds that she is a terribly unpleasant person and that returning him as First Philanderer to the White House would be an egregiously bad idea.

This brings us to what can only be called a celebrity phenomenon, Barack Hussein Obama. Strongly influenced in his youth by a Communist fellow traveler who he acknowledges without referencing his political orientation, Obama has got to be the strangest aspirant for the White House in the history of the nation. A mulatto son of a white mother and a black father who deserted the family early on, he proudly bears a Muslim name while attending an Afro-centric Christian church. Any one of these aspects of his life might automatically exclude him from serious consideration, but let’s add the obvious fact that he has zero evidence of any kind of a legislative record. A rookie Senator from Illinois, Obama is famous for reluctantly voting on anything in his days in the Illinois legislature and has little accomplishment to point to in the U.S. Senate.

Yet this is a man who makes some members of his audience swoon and faint in ways that Frank Sinatra or Elvis did. He offers some rhetoric about change and hope, but it is difficult at best to know what he would do in office, except to retain and act upon the most leftist bona fides of anyone in that hallowed debating chamber.

Finally, we have yet another liberal, one who keeps proclaiming his conservative bona fides, Sen. John McCain. He’s not keen on shutting the southern border to the vast influx of illegal aliens or for encouraging those already here to return home. He’s consistently teamed with the most liberal Senators to co-sponsor bills that make conservatives cringe. He believes that the Earth is actually undergoing a global warming when there is zero science to support this UN-inspired hoax.

It’s not just the political silly season. It’s a completely senseless season because the choices the two-party system has served up are absurd. The Republican voters have apparently settled on the least worst of those who initially contended for the nomination. The Democrats have tilted away from Lady Macbeth toward a total unknown with excellent oratorical skills and a pie-in-the-sky message that is dangerously naïve.

Yes, the nation is tired of being a superpower. It’s tired of being the only one around that really believes there is a war between two civilizations, the West and Islam. Americans keep electing children to office who spend money without any accountability or regard for the debt piling up. We want to believe in the Socialist fairytales that say we can all have health care without really having to pay for it, old age security despite the fact there are fewer workers paying into a system while others, having lived far longer than expected, continue to receive their checks.

Or the biggest fantasy of all, that we can be “energy independent” without ever exploring and extracting resources we have, permitting a new refinery to be built, allowing coal-fired, gas-fired or nuclear-powered electricity plants to be built. Our wonderful economy and lifestyles are totally dependent on importing the most global of all commodities, oil and natural gas. Happily, we have ample coal. It is the cheapest energy source around and yet there are people who think it’s going to destroy the atmosphere. It won’t. It can’t.

Presidents since Jimmy Carter and earlier have been warning that we are running out of energy resources and have been telling us we must become independent. The U.S. peaked in oil production in the 1970s. We now import what we need. So does the rest of the world. Even some oil producing nations have to import gasoline for lack of refining capacity.

And every four years we elect someone to manage the affairs of the nation and, these days, the world. Occasionally we get lucky. We get a Jefferson, a Lincoln, a Teddy Roosevelt, a FDR to lead us through a world war, a Reagan to restore our faith in our political system and ourselves. We have had, for the most part, men that were up to the task, but we have had some clinkers.

Obama is the Pied Piper of Chicago. He’s filling stadiums with huge crowds. Rock musicians do this routinely, but they aren’t expected to manage the United States of America for the next four years. We need more than rhetoric. We need a keen sense of reality.