The High Cost of Climate Lies
By Alan Caruba
An energy-rationing bill has been introduced to address “global warming.” The “Climate Security Act” would impose caps on how much carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions can be allowed and would institute an elaborate program to “trade” allowances among the industries and business affected.
Americans better hope that some members of Congress will ask if there truly is a threat of global warming and why a similar program in Europe has proven to be a resounding failure.
If you really wanted to undermine the nation’s economy, you could not devise a better way. It is the Kyoto Climate Change Protocol on steroids.
Little noted during all the headlines concerning Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize was the fact that it was shared with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among skeptical scientists I know, the emails were flying. Several had served as part of the vast array of scientists whose opinions on the various IPCC draft reports were requested and then ignored.
A lot of these expert reviewers are among the 2,000 scientists that the IPCC and Al Gore are always citing as being part of the “consensus” on global warming. The problem for both is that many really, really, really disagree that any planet-threatening global warming is occurring.
One of them is Dr. Vincent Gray, a New Zealand-based climate scientist who has been a part of the reviewing process since the IPCC came into being. He is one of those scientists who will not and cannot be shut up despite the din of the IPCC propaganda.
Briefly, Dr. Gray has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Cambridge University, England, and his long career has included stints in France, Canada, China, and New Zealand. He has published more than a hundred scientific papers on energy and materials, plus a dozen in climate science.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Economics, Environmental Issues, Global Warming at 11:12 PM EDT
1 Comment »
By Alan Caruba
Having written about the energy industry and issues now for a long time, I hope I can be forgiven for being enraged by the comments by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) in response to President Bush’s press conference Tuesday morning. There is simply no way to describe them other than false.
The Democrat Party has long made “Big Oil” their favorite punching bag, confident that the public has no idea what influences the price and supply of oil. Saying anything favorable to Big Oil is immediately deemed evidence that one is in their pay and whatever facts are offered are therefore invalid.
There are, however, some simple truths about Big Oil that cannot and should not be ignored. To do so leaves everyone at the mercy of energy policies that have created the situation in which the United States finds itself today.
Fact #1. The combined ownership of oil reserves by the independent, investor-owned oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Conoco-Phillips, BP, Chevron and others is barely 4% of the total known oil reserves in the world. By itself, ExxonMobil’s share is 1.08%.
Fact #2. Oil is a global commodity sold on mercantile exchanges for whatever price it can command. Speculation in oil prices is the primary reason they have been driven to utterly insane costs per barrel. It has nothing to do with actual supply and demand.
Fact #3. No nation on Earth is or can be “energy independent.” The geopolitics of oil is complex, but as nations such as China and India have seen their economies grow, their need for oil grows with it and thus they compete with long established industrialized nations for existing oil supplies. This competition has an impact on prices.
Fact #4. The OPEC nations, those in the Middle East and including Venezuela, control 77% of the world’s known oil reserves. Like Russia and Mexico, where the oil industry is controlled by the state, it is generally poorly managed. Several Big Oil companies that were induced to undertake exploration and development in Russia and Venezuela actually had their assets nationalized or stolen at prices well below their investment and value.
Fact #5. Energy is the master resource. All nations with any hope of growing their economies require it, mostly in the form of electricity, but also for oil’s role in transportation. The failure to have a national long-range energy policy that is based in reality can severely impact energy prices.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Arthur as Economics, Environmental Issues, Oil Production at 7:04 PM EDT
No Comments »
By Alan Caruba
Recently I emailed a gentleman who is highly regarded, nationally and internationally, as one of the top strategic, military and economic long-range thinkers of our times. He is the author of several bestselling books about the way globalization is impacting the lives of the Earth’s population.
In addition to having read his books and magazine articles, I occasionally visit his blog to read what he is thinking about currently. I noticed that he was casually referencing “global warming” in a post, so I emailed to let him know that there is no scientific proof or basis for the endless global warming claims. I cited all the usual data that disputes it and I provided the URLs of several websites that could provide him with even more.
His response was quite revealing. “It doesn’t matter one way or the other. All the same fixes are required for sheer pollution reasons on a global scale given population increase and consumption increase. You’re arguing the past.” He would later post that, so far as the data debunking global warming, he was “beyond caring.”
As I interpret this, no matter how utterly false the justifications are for the global warming hoax given by Al Gore, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others, leading to efforts to replace, slow or deter the use of energy sources such as coal, natural gas and oil, this particular influential intellectual was beyond caring because the world’s population was responsible for pollution and consuming too much of everything.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Economics, Environmental Issues, Global Warming at 9:44 PM EDT
No Comments »
By Thomas E. Brewton
Go to your room, sonny boy, and stay there!
Much counter-evidence to the man-made global warming hypothesis has come to light.
Since the Renaissance, considerable human energy and ingenuity in the Western world has been applied to improving and increasing food production and the results of manual labor. Aiding the resulting elevation of living standards was the rise of mathematics and the physical sciences. People came increasingly to understand the workings of the physical world and the God-given laws of science governing nature.
In the 19th century, however, scientific progress became infused with nonsensical political theory, the atheistic and materialistic socialism of the French Revolution. From this came the idea of progress toward conquest of nature. It was not sufficient merely to understand the processes of nature. Man had to become godlike and to control the forces of nature.
As C. S. Lewis warned us in The Abolition of Man,
At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual man, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’ – to their irrational impulses. Nature untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of man.
Our current-day obsession with the hypothesis of global warming as a man-made phenomenon, rather than a normal cycle of God’s nature, is one result.
Its impetus is to transfer all individual freedom to a single, universal control board whose chairman presumably would be Al Gore. The Kyoto Protocol, don’t forget, was a product of the UN and collectivist bodies like the EU.
Individuals are no longer to be free to make decisions about how to heat their homes, what automobiles to drive, even what foods to eat. Liberal-progressive-socialist councils will tell us what we are required to want and how we are required to conduct our daily lives.
Gore, the man who would be God, is unsatisfied with continuing an open scientific investigation of natural phenomena. He has, once and for all time, selected his hypothesis and strives mightily to achieve the earthly power to impose its sanctions upon us all.
Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.
His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/
Email comments to viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com
New Media Alliance Television (www.nmatv.com)
New Media Alliance Blogs (www.thenma.org/blogs)
www.therealitycheck.org
Posted by Walt as Environmental Issues, Global Warming at 11:21 PM EDT
No Comments »
By Alan Caruba
In early March, President Bush, addressing an International Renewable Energy Conference, was widely quoted saying that the United States has to “get off oil.” Earlier he had said that America was “addicted” to oil. These are such huge lies one wonders why he is telling them, unless perhaps he has quietly been investing in ethanol production.
For the record, “renewable” energy refers to solar and wind energy for electricity, and biofuels for transportation. None of these options can ever be expected to provide the electric energy America uses, nor will biofuels ever replace oil for transportation.
In one of the most brilliant analysis of America’s dependency on oil, “Gusher of Lies”, by Robert Bryce, the author spells out the realities of a world in which, not just the United States, but all nations are going to be importing oil for as long as crude can be pumped from places around the world that include the Middle East, Russia, Africa, South America, and the deep ocean waters.
The problem is not a lack of known reserves of oil. The problem is the way the lack of knowledge by the consuming public is being exploited.
Yes, the price of a barrel of oil has reached and surpassed $107, but that price is subject to a myriad of factors that have nothing to do with scarcity. As OPEC president, Chakib Khelil, told reporters recently, “There is sufficient supply. There’s plenty of oil there.” He’s telling the truth. One factor is the falling value of the U.S. dollar. Oil that is priced in Euros has not risen nearly as much.
“Energy independence,” says Bryce, “is hogwash. From nearly any standpoint—economic, military, political, or environmental—energy independence makes no sense. Worse yet, the inane obsession with the idea of energy independence is preventing the U.S. from having an honest and effective discussion about the energy challenges it now faces.”
Nowhere is this more obvious in the campaigns of the Democrat and Republican candidates. John McCain, the GOP nominee, is committed to the global warming hoax that is based on the lie that the use of all forms of energy is contributing “greenhouse gas” emissions at such a rate the Earth is warming dramatically. It isn’t. There isn’t a scintilla of scientific data to demonstrate this. It has warmed about one degree Fahrenheit—naturally—since the end of the mini-ice age in 1850.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Environmental Issues, Global Warming, Oil Production at 11:32 PM EDT
No Comments »
By Alan Caruba
“The tripling of oil prices since the summer of 2003 has unleashed forces that within the next two or three years will bring oil prices tumbling back down to below $50 a barrel.” So said John Cassidy, writing about “The Coming Oil Crash” in the January issue of Conde Nast Portfolio. Yes, the price of oil will come down, though no one knows exactly when. It has topped $100 a barrel and there are indications it could go higher.
There are vast forces at work regarding the price per barrel of oil and one of them is the speculation that has driven up the cost despite the fact that there are ample supplies. The problem is not lack of oil, but whether it can be shipped to a waiting world. The potential for conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere worries the marketplace.
Sebastian Abbot, an Associated Press reporter, points out that, “Hedge funds and other financial institutions have been buying and selling oil contracts in an attempt to generate profits.” Such trading has little to do with actual supply and demand and more to do with the kind of gambling that led to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. And what goes up will go down. The cost of a barrel of oil is also tied to the value of the U.S. dollar whose decline against other currencies adds to the cost at the pump.
It is likely, too, that the lack of production capacity in the world oil market plays its role in the profits being made these days, primarily by national, as opposed to publicly owned oil companies. Rarely noted are the huge risks and huge investments taken by publicly owned oil companies. This is in marked contrast to the national oil companies representing some 70% of the world’s known oil reserves that, with the exception of the Saudis and other Gulf states, are almost universally failing to make adequate investments in exploration or the upgrade of their facilities.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Economics, Environmental Issues, Oil Production at 7:45 PM EDT
No Comments »
By Alan Caruba
I can understand why people believe that global warming is real and that all the things Greens say are true. One cannot read a newspaper or magazine, turn on the television or radio, without getting the Green message.
Since switching their message in the 1970s that an Ice Age was coming to the complete fiction of a massive, dramatic global warming due to greenhouse gases, the Greens have been able to influence policy at the international and national level. They have been utterly relentless, a modern version of the Mongols on horseback who swept out of the East to conquer everything before them until the reached the gates of Europe. These days the Greens have long since conquered Europe.
One thing alone stands against the Greens. The SCIENCE does not support them. Their sense of moral superiority, their contempt for all things modern, their resistance to all forms of energy except the weakest—wind and solar, and at the very heart of the Greens’ message is a contempt and hatred for the human race.
Humans have come to dominate life on Earth because we know how to adapt to the planet. We know how to use its minerals, the riches of its plant life, the domestication of its animals, and its reserves of energy in the form of coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear fission, to fuel the creation of great cities, farms and ranches, and everything that passes for modern civilization.
Long ago humans conquered the continents of the Earth and its great oceans to spread everywhere. Humans now fly between continents in hours. Everywhere on the face of the Earth humans now communicate with one another via the Internet.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Environmental Issues, Global Warming at 12:11 AM EST
No Comments »
By Alan Caruba
The provision of electrical power nationwide has become the chosen battleground for environmental groups laboring night and day to insure there will not be enough of it to meet our needs.
The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that overall energy demand will grow by 45% between now and 2030.
The effort to insure Americans will not have enough electricity is deadly serious. Take, for example, the exultant news release (Jan 17) from the Rainforest Action Network, “Proposed Coal Plants Losing Steam” celebrating “59 coal plants cancelled or shelved in 2007.”
Since coal-fired utilities provide over 50 percent of the electricity generated in America, the need for additional plants would seem obvious. A May 2007 Business Week article about coal noted that, “Today, making electricity from coal can cost half as much as using cleaner-burning natural gas.” Half as much at the plant translates to half as much in the monthly energy bill to homeowners and others.
The Greens, however, using the utterly bogus “global warming” hoax and asserting the false notion that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will transform the climate of the earth, are successfully denying Americans electrical power.
There is no global warming and CO2 constitutes about 0.038% if the earth’s atmosphere. In past eras there was a lot more CO2 and the result was the lush vegetation that kept a lot of dinosaurs munching away for several million years.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Economics, Environmental Issues, Global Warming at 12:32 AM EST
No Comments »
By Alan Caruba
A little news item in an April 15 edition of my daily newspaper was headlined “Saudi Arabia proposes to boost oil production.” The increase was intended to “meet domestic and international demand while insuring ‘fair’ world prices”, said King Abdullah. Indeed, OPEC, the oil cartel, had twice cut production, “contributing,” said the news item, “to relative stability that has kept benchmark crude between $50 and $60 a barrel—down from the record highs of more than $78 a barrel last summer. Current prices are around 40% above 2004 levels.”
The world is not about to run out of oil, but the price is likely to remain where the Saudis and other oil producing nations want it, knowing that too high a price retards the billions that must be invested to find new reserves and then extract, transport and refine it. They know that the world is growing hungrier for oil as nations like China and India industrialize and become major economic centers.
The oil we use today is the result of careful decisions made a decade or two ago by the world’s greatest masters of risk, the oil companies whom we trust to keep the world’s economic engine running. If the price was less in the past, it is because fewer nations were competing for it and that it could be extracted from places less costly than deep oceans.
These days when I hear our politicians talk of “energy independence” while often refusing to allow our own reserves of oil and natural gas to be tapped, I am mindful that they are deceiving us.
This was clarified in an excellent policy analysis published recently by the Cato Institute. The authors are Eugene Gholz, an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and Daryl G. Press, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth University. It had six pages of footnotes as an indication of how thoroughly researched it was.
It’s title was “Energy Alarmism: The Myths That Make Americans Worry About Oil.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Environmental Issues, Oil Production at 2:15 AM EST
No Comments »
By Alan Caruba
I wonder if the folks at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment think that electricity is made by fairies who live in the garden or that an army of elves produce it?
On October 19, a Washington Post article was headlined “Power Plant Rejected Over Carbon Dioxide for First Time.” Let’s hope it is the last time or those of us around the nation who depend on coal to produce over 50% of the electricity we use are in big trouble.
Roderick L. Bremby, Secretary of the Kansas DHE, said, “it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing.” So the KDHE killed a proposal by Sunflower Electric Power, a rural electrical cooperative, to build a pair of big, 700-megawatt, coal-fired plants in Halcomb.
Someone needs to tell Secretary Bremby that greenhouse gases consist of 95% water vapor in the earth’s atmosphere. Or that not a single blade of wheat or corn would grow in Kansas were it not for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Someone needs to tell Secretary Bremby and his fellow global warming simpletons that, between 1970 and 2004, the population of the United States grew by 40%, its Gross Domestic Product by 18%, and electricity consumption by 115%. During that same time period, the aggregate air pollution of the U.S. was cut in half due to advances in pollution control technologies.
The United States Department of Energy predicts that overall electricity demand will grow by 45% between now and 2030.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Environmental Issues, Global Warming at 11:30 PM EST
No Comments »
