IEA to Obama: Please Drill, Baby, Drill
by WILLIAM YEATMAN on MAY 19, 2011
The Wall Street Journal today reported on a statement by the International Energy Agency’s governing board, calling on oil producing countries to increase their output to “help avoid the negative global economic consequences which a further sharp market tightening [i.e., higher oil prices] could cause.”
Here’s the full IEA statement: (Cooler Heads)
Posted in Energy, Regulation
It appears they haven’t noticed wood is already a global commodity in the form of lumber, chips and fiber and it surely isn’t needed for fuel.
Analysis: Wood fuel poised to be next global commodity
Wood fuel, one of the oldest energy sources on the planet, could become the newest commodity market if it can overcome supply limits and green concerns as demand grows for renewable energy.
Supply constraints are starting to put wood fuel into competition with the paper industry, experts say, in an uneasy reminder of existing tension between the food industry and companies making biofuels from food crops. (Reuters)
Two Stupid Energy/Environment Policies That Starve Poor People
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Posted in Energy, Rubber room
Note that this would be one of the few cases where we could support CCS (more correctly “CCE” for Carbon Capture and Exchange), if done profitably in terms of both energy and finance.
Next Energy Revolution? Sequestering CO2 To Extract Methane Hydrate
Thursday, 19 May 2011 13:48 Jeff McMahon, Forbes
They’ve done it in a laboratory: Scientists have injected carbon dioxide into the kind of methane ice that underlies vast tracts of permafrost in the Arctic and lurks beneath the deep seafloor throughout the world. In that experiment, the carbon dioxide exchanged with the methane molecules. While the CO2 was sequestered inside the ice, the scientists extracted an energy source that may exist in nature in greater volume than all other fossil fuels combined.
Now DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, in partnership with Conoco Phillips, will try to repeat that success on the North Slope of Alaska. (GWPF)
Sean Corrigan: A Long Way from Reaching Our Peak
Thursday, 19 May 2011 09:00 Sean Corrigan, The Cobden Centre
Inspired, among others, by the typically apocalyptic, ecological maunderings of Jeremy Grantham (the renowned investor here providing us with classic evidence of the general non-transferability of specific expertise from one metier to another), the recent overwrought oil market has brought the Exhaustionists out in full force, each plaintively wailing of the dangers of Peak Oil (as well as Peak Copper, Peak Corn, etc.—though never, thankfully, Peek Freans).
As is always the case at such times, the name of M. King Hubbert has been given a great deal of air, as if the old rhetorical trick of argumentum ad verecundiam should be decisive in this matter.
Yes, to give this particular devil his due, he did accurately predict that US onshore oil production would top out in the late 60s/early70s, so assuring his prophethood for ever, especially since the validity of the estimate became recognised amid the traumas caused by the first Oil Shock.
His other glances in the crystal ball have, alas, not borne out quite so well, however. (GWPF)
Posted in Energy
Indirect Solar Forcing of Climate by Galactic Cosmic Rays: An Observational Estimate
May 19th, 2011 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
UPDATE (12:35 p.m. CDT 19 May 2011): revised corrections of CERES data for El Nino/La Nina effects.
While I have been skeptical of Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory up until now, it looks like the evidence is becoming too strong for me to ignore. The following results will surely be controversial, and the reader should remember that what follows is not peer reviewed, and is only a preliminary estimate.
I’ve made calculations based upon satellite observations of how the global radiative energy balance has varied over the last 10 years (between Solar Max and Solar Min) as a result of variations in cosmic ray activity. The results suggest that the total (direct + indirect) solar forcing is at least 3.5 times stronger than that due to changing solar irradiance alone.
If this is anywhere close to being correct, it supports the claim that the sun has a much larger potential role (and therefore humans a smaller role) in climate change than what the “scientific consensus” states.
(Roy W. Spencer)
Posted in Climate
Post-Climate Paralysis: Green Scares No Longer Work
Thursday, 19 May 2011 07:53 Elizabeth McGowan, SolveClimate News
Whether it’s paralysis, fatigue or an indication of the arrival of “post-climate times,” a major National Research Council mid-May report warning about the severe dangers of accumulating greenhouse gas emissions seems to have barely registered as a blip on the Richter scale of environmental urgency.
WASHINGTON—Ho hum. The average air temperature in the United States has leapt two degrees in the last five decades. Yawn. Coastal regions in the country are disappearing because of rising sea levels. Hit the snooze button. The already-arid Southwest is becoming drier. Snore.
Whether it’s paralysis, fatigue or an indication of the arrival of “post-climate times,” a major National Research Council mid-May report warning about the severe dangers of accumulating greenhouse gas emissions seems to have barely registered as a blip on the Richter scale of environmental urgency.
Perhaps that shouldn’t be so shocking. After all, Congress, the very entity that requested the report, is pretty much punting on the carbon issue. And the Obama administration is focusing on other energy solutions, having seemingly flushed once-optimal options such as cap and trade or a carbon tax. (GWPF)
Posted in Activists, Climate change, Rubber room
Government Scraps Funding For Green Quangos
Thursday, 19 May 2011 10:55 James Murray, Business Green
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has today quietly announced that the Carbon Trust and the Energy Saving Trust will no longer receive core grant funding from next April.
The two flagship government-backed green bodies will instead be required to bid for government funding through competitive tendering processes, as part of efforts to deliver better value for money and help tackle the deficit.
The announcement came as DECC published the results of its Delivery Review, which provides a series of recommendations on how to streamline the operations of the department.
The central recommendation states that “unless there is a clear case for placing delivery with a third party, delivery will be led by DECC to ensure accountability to ministers”.
Programmes and projects will then be contracted out to organisations such as the Carbon Trust and Energy Savings Trust only when it is “possible and appropriate” and maximum value for money can be assured. (GWPF)
Posted in Activists, Regulation
EPA Doles-Out Taxpayer Dollars to Environmentalist Activist Groups
In November 2009, a dozen protesters triggered a traffic jam in an intersection of Chicago’s financial sector by laying down in a circle in the middle of the road, locking their arms together inside pieces of pipe. They were protesting the city’s climate exchange, part of a scheme to regulate CO2 emissions through permits. Ironically, it was a case of a left-leaning plan being attacked by the far left.
After a few hours, the activists were arrested, including among their ranks members of groups like the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). According to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website, about six months later, the agency awarded LVEJO a $25,000 environmental justice grant, which was to be directed to “…work[ing] in coalition with their partners to implement 3 areas of Climate Change Mitigation…” The first “area” is to “…conduct a grassroots Clean Power Campaign in the Chicago Region to address coal power plant emissions…”
If EPA’s grant was an attempt get LVEJO to change its tactics, it doesn’t seem to have worked. After getting the grant, a half dozen activists from LVEJO and other groups were arrested after climbing the fence to a coal-fired power plant and unfurling a banner that read: “Close Chicago’s Toxic Coal Plant.” Even amid America’s deficit crisis, the EPA has enough walking-around money to fund green radicals harassing EPA-regulated businesses in President Barack Obama’s hometown — coincidentally, the same President who spoke of bankrupting new coal-fired power plants. (The Foundry)
And yes, I would call the “green economy” the illegitimate spawn of a great many misguided fathers.
Posted in Activists, Green jobs, Humor
Say hello to isocyanic acid, mutated bedbugs and giant space squids, revel in the rapture and giggle at Gaians’ failed predictions. (Daily Bayonet)
Posted in Activists, Climate change
Global Warming Activists Bully Scholastic Into Submission
Alana Goodman 05.18.2011 – 10:01 AM
For weeks, one of the Scholastic publishing company’s energy curriculum programs has been under attack by environmental zealots, like the Sierra Club, and liberal publications like the New York Times. Scholastic’s infraction was producing a 4th grade lesson packet with the American Coal Foundation, which gave a broad view of U.S. energy production, including coal, wind power, solar power, nuclear power, and natural gas.
Now it looks as if these environmentalists have successfully bullied Scholastic into dropping the original lesson plan, and replacing it with a “Celebrate Earth Day” online lesson, based on the book The Down-to-Earth-Guide to Global Warming. The guide was written by the co-producer of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, Laurie David.
The lesson is filled with alarmism and environmental propaganda, hinting to kids that polar bears and walruses will die if their parents don’t buy hybrid cars or promote ethanol-based fuel. It even pushes elementary school students to become tiny global warming activists. One section of the website asks kids to send this letter to their mayor:
Dear Mayor _____________________________________,
Global warming is real and its here to stay – unless we do something to stop it. There’s an amazing agreement that more than 400 of your fellow mayors have signed. It’s called the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. It’s a 12-step program that sets reasonable goals for you city to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to below what the levels were in 1990. Please join these other mayors in being leads in the fight to stop global warming.
The kids of the world are depending on you.
Sincerely,
__________________________________, Age _______
It’s one thing to learn about climate change theory in school. It’s quite another to use children as political pawns in a partisan fight to establish carbon-cap programs. Was it unwise for Scholastic to team up with the American Coal Foundation to create an energy lesson plan? Maybe. But at least that plan wasn’t aimed at building an army of elementary-aged lobbyists. Such a politicized lesson—especially one created by a co-producer of the widely discredited film An Inconvenient Truth—is inappropriate for the classroom. (Commentary Magazine)
Posted in Activists, Climate change, Propaganda
Sierra Club in Legal War to Stop All Expansion of Coal Power Plants
With 230 years of reserves, no nation more “energy independent” in coal than United States
By TOM GANTERT | May 15, 2011
The Grand Rapids Press recently reported that the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit over a permit issued to a coal plant in Holland, Mich. The lawsuit claims that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality ignored state regulations when it approved the Holland plant’s air pollution permit. What the article didn’t mention was that the Sierra Club files lawsuits against every coal plant in the United States that is issued permits either to expand or build.
“They are very proud of this strategy,” said Carol Raulston, senior vice president for communications for the National Mining Association.
Ann Woiwode, director of the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club, verified that her organization does file a lawsuit on every permit issued to a coal plant. She said that is part of a bigger strategy to oppose coal as an energy source.
“Yes, we are challenging permits when they are issued,” Woiwode said. “We are working to move away from coal. … We need to recognize that coal is a costly, dirty fuel.” (Michigan Capital Confidential)
Posted in Activists, Energy, Enviros, Misanthropy
Poland to develop shale gas despite environment risk
Poland reaffirmed its commitment to developing its shale gas reserves on Wednesday despite French plans to ban drilling, but officials and industry experts said tough regulatory and environmental challenges lie ahead. (Reuters)
… it won’t quieten anti fracking hysteria much. Why not? Because most of the anti fracking noise (and funding, I suspect) comes from the anti energy misanthropists out to suppress human activity by any means possible and “water contamination” is just a convenient scare for them. Nonetheless, the improved flow and reduced wastage makes this a great innovation.
A new technique for natural gas extraction eliminates fears about contaminated water and stops opponents in their tracks. (Ronald Bailey, Reason)
Sen. Alexander: Forget ‘Big Oil,’ cut tax breaks for ‘Big Wind’
By Andrew Restuccia
A day after the Senate rejected legislation to slash subsidies for “Big Oil,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said it’s time to consider eliminating tax breaks for “Big Wind.”
“My colleagues want to talk about ‘Big Oil’ all week. I think we ought to be talking about ‘Big Wind,’” Alexander said during a Senate Appropriations hearing on the Energy Department’s budget. (E2 Wire)
Posted in Corporate welfare, Energy
On Green Hell Blog On JunkScience.com On Corporate Energy Subsidies
