Why Is Big Oil Being Punished For Its Success?
By MERRILL MATTHEWS
There is a widely recognized economic principle that when you subsidize something you get more of it, and when you tax it you get less.
So what has been President Obama’s guiding economic principle? Impose more taxes on profitable companies and subsidize those — like green energy companies — that can’t make a dime.
And people wonder why the economy is struggling. (IBD)
Posted in Development, Energy, Regulation
Energy: It won’t matter which light bulbs we use as the administration’s implementation of cross-state pollution rules shuts down coal plants across the country. Where will the jobs be when the lights go out?
It’s called the Cross-State Pollution Rule, announced last month, and its implementation over the next 18 months will likely result in the loss of a fifth of the nation’s electricity-generating capacity.
The result will be likely power shortages, skyrocketing rates and inevitable brownouts and rolling blackouts.
Based on Bush-era EPA proposals that the federal courts threw out in 2008, this latest example of legislation is designed to usurp state powers to regulate their in-state emissions by making it a federal issue on the grounds pollution crosses state lines. (IBD)
Posted in Energy, EPA, Misanthropy, Regulation
They think Homo erectus first used biofuel almost 2 million years ago and that’s about where the greenies want to take our energy supply.
Robert Bryce: Obama’s Biofuels Insanity
Monday, 22 August 2011 08:36 Robert Bryce
Barack Obama’s biofuels insanity continues. And it continues without any regard for history, basic arithmetic, or the recent spike in food prices. Last month, the Farm Foundation a centrist non-profit group based in Illinois, released a study which named biofuels as one of the key factors that is driving up grain prices. That study, done by three agricultural economists from Purdue University, is the seventeenth report that has exposed the link between increasing biofuel production and higher food prices.
And yet – and yet — on Tuesday, the White House put out a press release announcing that the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Navy will “invest up to $510 million during the next three years” to develop “advanced drop-in aviation and marine biofuels to power military and commercial transportation.”
The Obama administration’s mindless devotion to biofuels beggars basic arithmetic, a point that Energy Secretary Steve Chu refused to acknowledge when I spoke with him briefly during a cocktail party in Colorado in late June. Chu claimed that biofuels could still provide a significant hedge against oil prices. When I argued that he had not done the math, Chu responded by telling me that I just wasn’t putting enough faith in technology. (GWPF)
Posted in Agriculture, Biofuel, Crazy carbon schemes, Energy, Rubber room
Canada Under Attack by Environmental Extremists
Mike Brownfiel
It seems that Canada, America’s friendly neighbor to the north (and beloved by the left for its universal health care system) has a new enemy to the south—environmental activists. Its crime? Wanting to use its natural resources. (The Foundry)
Weepy Bill McKibben spent the weekend cooling his heels in a DC slammer after being arrested in Washington at his planned two-week long civil disobedience campaign.
The sit-in is an anti-energy effort by misguided hippies who would prefer America buys the oil it needs from despots and stone-age thugocracies than those polite folks north of the border. The Keystone XL pipeline the protestors want to stop will be used to transport oilsands product to the lower 48. (Daily Bayonet)
US Chamber assails NY Times over oil pipeline
By Ben Geman
A New York Times editorial opposing a major proposed oil sands pipeline from Canada isn’t sitting well with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is pressing the Obama administration to approve the controversial Keystone XL project.
The powerful business group, on its blog Monday, accuses the Times of casting its lot with “anti-growth” green activists that are pushing the White House to block TransCanada’s planned 1,700-mile line from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries. (E2 Wire)
Posted in Development, Energy, Enviros
Get Ready For The Green Civil War
Monday, 22 August 2011 14:19 Shikha Dalmia, Reason Online
Get ready for the great environmental civil wars. So far the environmental community has been fighting industry, developers, utilities and other villainous purveyors of human stuff. But going forward its big battles might be with itself. (GWPF)
James Hansen Smacks Renewable Energy (“The Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy”–and Lovins as dreamer)
Robert Bradley Jr.
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”
Climate and energy alarmists war with reality. And now and again, the incentives line up for a particular alarmist to blow the whistle on some aspect of the governmental ‘cure’ to their problem. The incendiary Joe Romm, for example, trots out free-market-type arguments against carbon sequestration and nuclear (both too expensive). (MasterResource)
Analysis: German rail to run on sun, wind to keep clients happy
It won’t be easy to run a national railway on renewable energy like wind, hydro and solar power but that is what Germany’s Deutsche Bahn aims to do for one simple reason: it’s what consumers want.
Deutsche Bahn says it wants to raise the percentage of wind, hydro and solar energy to power its trains from 20 percent now to 28 percent in 2014 and become carbon-free by 2050. (Reuters)
‘Bulletproof’ skin: researcher creates silk that helps stop bullets
A bio-art project to create bulletproof skin has given a US researcher even more hope his genetically engineered spider silk can be used to help surgeons heal large wounds and create artificial tendons and ligaments. (SMH)
Posted in Biotech, Health care
Unfortunately the title question in this piece is a loser out of the gates. The simple fact is newspapers have a commercial interest in sensationalism and our society will purchase according to titillation – newspapers provide what the greatest number of consumers will buy. Consequently the populace is fed an endless diet if absurd scares, everything from global warming to asteroid strikes and ‘threats’ from every mundane and useful item anyone can name. Depressing, isn’t it?
Riot control: How can we stop newspapers distorting science?
Recent news stories reported a study that supposedly linked rioting to low levels of a brain chemical. The scientists behind the research put the record straight (Guardian)
Posted in Propaganda, Silly scares
On Green Hell Blog On JunkScience.com On Corporate Energy Subsidies
