Source:  SPPI

by Willie Soon and Barun Mitra

Beware of anti-energy policies claiming to prevent climate change

Energy sustainability is not about resource availability and pollution. Capitalism and human ingenuity have already addressed “sustainability” in these regards, if the statistics are to be believed.

The real sustainability challenge and threat concerns government intervention in the name of “sustainability,” because it is political and bureaucratic intervention that reduces the availability, reliability and affordability of energy. The real sustainability challenge is also about overcoming the forces of nature, via with ever stronger energy infrastructure around the world. That is a job for capitalism, not central planning.

Consider these worldwide examples…. (more…)

Source:  SPPI

by Paul Driessen

Proposed EPA rules will do more harm than good for human health, especially for minorities

Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his policies would cause electricity rates to “skyrocket” and “bankrupt” any company trying to build a coal-fired generating plant. This is one promise he and his über-regulators are keeping.

President Obama energetically promotes wind and solar projects that require millions of acres of land and billions of dollars in subsidies, to generate expensive, intermittent electricity and create jobs that cost taxpayers upwards of $220,000 apiece – most of them in China.

His Interior Department is locking up more coal and petroleum prospects, via “wild lands” and other designations, and dragging its feet on issuing leases and drilling permits. Meanwhile, his Environmental Protection Agency is challenging shale gas drilling and fracking, and imposing draconian carbon dioxide emission rules, now that Congress and voters have rejected cap-tax-and-trade. That’s for starters. (more…)

Source:  Newsvine (Excerpt)

OPINION

ISLAMISM

It is claimed the Muslim Brotherhood is Islamist, which alarms Israel and some western pundits. This charge is especially relevant in the wake of the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda Islamists against the United States. An Egyptian, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is is a prominent leader of al-Qaeda and closely associated with Osama bin Laden.

In 1998 al-Zawahiri merged Egyptian Islamic Jihad into al-Qaeda. Egyptian Islamic Jihad is not affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Zawahiri reportedly said, “[W]e are different from the Muslim Brotherhood because sometimes they do not oppose the government”.**

Given this history, it is understandable the West pauses when considering the prospect of an Islamist role in the current popular unrest in Egypt. Is there reason for pause? (more…)

Source:  Uncoverage

Islamic Countries

Why isn’t anyone asking these questions?

So we and the U.K. will agree to arm Al Qaeda rebels in Libya, even though they have already stolen missiles from Muammar Gaddafi while we were helping them?

And the rebels are setting up their own central bank and oil company even though Muammar Gaddafi is still alive and in charge?

And we are also going to let Al Qaeda have access to Libyan oil so that we can buy it from them?

So, we will give a multi-million or multi-billion dollar oil business to rebels who admit they are Al Qaeda, or rather, [according to NATO chief] to “flickers” of Al Qaeda?

Meanwhile, Iran will have nuclear weapons ready in two years, and is heralding the death of Israel and the return of the “12^th Imam?”

As Gaddafi himself put it in a statement Tuesday:  “How come you attack those who fight Al Qaeda?”

What can go wrong?

Source:  IBD

Green Corruption: The Environmental Protection Agency is giving funds to charitable organizations to attack GOP members of Congress. Did you know telling the truth about climate change causes childhood asthma?

We have heard the litany of horrors that climate change is said to bring about — retreating glaciers, rising sea levels, drought and flooding, disease and famine.

Now we are told that fighting the EPA’s power grab to regulate greenhouse gases will lead to an increase in childhood asthma.

The American Lung Association, considered one of America’s most credible and worthy charities, has placed four billboards in Michigan’s 6th Congressional District — including one outside the office of Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee — that feature a sickly looking girl with an oxygen mask and read, “Rep. Fred Upton, protect our kids’ health. Don’t weaken the Clean Air Act.” (more…)

Source:  World Net Daily

Earlier this month, WND broke the sensational story in which Art Robinson – the noted scientist who challenged Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio for Oregon’s 4th District congressional seat in November – alleged some extraordinarily nasty post-election political retribution was underway against his children.

DeFazio, one of Congress’s most influential leftist progressives, having co-founded and chaired the House Progressive Caucus, won with 54.5 percent of the vote, compared to 43.6 percent for Robinson, a solid Reagan conservative – largely because, during the home stretch, DeFazio and his supporters launched a vicious media smear campaign against Robinson consisting of multiple outrageous lies (“Robinson’s a racist,” “Robinson’s in the pocket of ‘big oil,’” etc. – even, believe it or not, “Robinson wants to irradiate your drinking water.”)

Immediately after the election, however, Robinson announced that he would challenge DeFazio again in 2012. And that, according to Robinson, is when the ultraliberal Oregon political machine went into high gear, intending to grind not only Robinson up within those gears – but three of his children as well, all students in the nuclear engineering Ph.D. program at Oregon State University. (more…)

Source: SPPI

Two Northrop B-2As and a McDonnell Douglas KC-10A Extender. Credits - U.S. Air Force Museum Archives

It has been reported that the no-fly zone over Libya costs the US taxpayers 3.2million lbs. of jet fuel per day, and that is not including the fuel burned by the refueling tankers that are almost constantly in the air.

I wonder how much CO2 that is putting up there?

War causes global warming. 

Source:  http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/article/drilling-ken-salazar

By Michelle Malkin

After two years of practicing unrepentant contempt for science, jobs, law and truth, why should Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s words mean anything anymore? While President Obama promotes offshore drilling overseas thousands of miles away in Brazil, Salazar now promises to revitalize America’s oil and gas industry. It’s like Jack “Dr. Death” Kevorkian promoting himself as a lifesaving CPR specialist.

This week, Salazar announced that the administration has just approved the first deepwater oil and gas exploration plan since last spring’s BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Mind you: This is not a granting of permits, but a green light for Shell Offshore to seek drilling permits for three new exploratory wells off the Louisiana coast. Shell first submitted and received approval for its original exploration plan in 1985 — 26 red tape-wrapped years ago. (more…)

Source:  GateWay Pundit

Thanks to Barack Obama’s failed energy policies, seven deepwater rigs were moved from the Gulf of Mexico in the last year. At least one of the rigs was relocated to Brazil.
Barack Obama loves Brazilian energy production.

Barack Obama praised the emerging Brazilian oil industry yesterday.
Reuters reported:

The agreements were signed on the first day of U.S. President Barack Obama’s two-day visit to Brazil, where he met with Brazilian counterpart Dilma Rousseff and a host of local and U.S. business executives.

Following is a summary of the agreements that were signed:

ENERGY

The United States seeks to be “a strategic energy partner” to Brazil, which recently discovered major new offshore oil reserves. Obama said the United States wants to be one of Brazil’s “best customers” when the oil starts flowing.

Both nations also will increase cooperation on producing biofuels with a specific separate agreement to team up on developing biofuels for aviation. (more…)

Source:  SPPI

by Dennis Ambler

Dr Richard Somerville seems to have made a lot of noise in the Congressional hearings. This is one summary of his appearance.

“The most effective minority witness, IMO, was Dr. Richard Somerville, whose testimony updates the continual — and predictable — refrain that ‘climate change is even worse than we previously predicted.’ Much of Somerville’s testimony is drawn from a report he co-authored called the Copenhagen Diagnosis.”

Dr Somerville is an active promoter of the climate change agenda and is a member of the Advisory Board at the Aspen Global Change Institute. He is its former chairman and was IPCC AR4 WG1 Co-ordinating Lead Author for the Historical Overview of Climate Change Science. The Aspen Institute is particularly well funded and the Global Change Institute seperately receives “generous funding” from government and several foundations. (more…)

Source:  Off the Grid Radio

No government in history, once detached from the gold or precious metals standard for their currency, has ever lasted past the 40-year mark before morphing into inflationary panic and disaster.

We last associated our currency with gold in 1971. Forty years later, we’re living in a time where our government has to borrow or create out of thin air 3.65 TRILLION dollars over the next 12 months just to pay the interest on the short-term Treasury bill debt and cover the 1.65 Trillion deficit in this administration’s budget.

But what’s a trillion dollars here or there, right? Well, if you think of it in terms of time, like our guest on Off the Grid Radio this week suggests, it might make it easier to grasp.

And more horrifying to contemplate.

If we transitioned from dollars to seconds, here’s what it would look like.

• 1 million seconds = 12 days
• 1 billion seconds = 32 years
• 1 trillion seconds = 32,000 years

Now can you see how we can no longer sustain the financial strain of an economic system the politicians love (because it gives them power to do as they please)?

Source: Global Warming Org

Earlier this week, the House Energy & Commerce Committee held its third hearing on the Energy Tax Prevention Act, a bill to stop EPA from determining national policy on climate change through the Clean Air Act, a statute enacted in 1970, years before global warming was even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. The hearing, requested by ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), was entitled Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations.

Although Democrats are now the minority party in the House, they got more witnesses (4) than did the majority (3). I don’t know how Rep. Waxman pulled that off. Did he ever let Republicans have more witnesses when he was in the chair? No. Would he return the favor if Dems regain control of the House? Doubtful.

The most effective minority witness, IMO, was Dr. Richard Sommerville, whose testimony updates the continual — and predictable — refrain that ‘climate change is even worse than we previously predicted.’ Much of Somerville’s testimony is drawn from a report he co-authored called the Copenhagen Diagnosis. (more…)

Source:  Red State

Oil, gas, and coal are the energy sources of the past, present, and future

By prussiansunsets

While Obama continues his implacable war on fossil fuels and campaigns for impotent and unreliable energy sources, he incessantly condemns oil as ‘the energy of the past’.  He is obviously referring to his self-fulfilling dream of eradicating oil from our economy; not the proven reality of our oil reserves.  According to the latest research by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), America has more proven reserves and undiscovered resources of gas, oil, and coal than any other country in the world.  Contrast that to the billions of dollars in special interest subsidies that have failed to ameliorate ineffectual ‘alternative fuels’ and it becomes quite obvious where the energy source of the future lies. (more…)