“How Obama and the Democrats will Destroy the U.S. Economy” by Alan Caruba

Please see:

“How Obama and the Democrats will Destroy the U.S. Economy” by Alan Caruba at:

http://www.stormwarning.bllogdrive.com/

Darwin Got it Wrong and It’s Not What You’re Thinking By Alan Caruba

Darwin Got it Wrong and It’s Not What You’re Thinking

By Alan Caruba

 

Charles Darwin got it wrong. This is not to disparage the man. Science is an ever evolving process and scientific theories are subject to being replaced by newer knowledge. Most certainly, Darwin (1809-1882) got everyone thinking about evolution, but the problem is that evolution is not a slow process. It happens very fast.

 

Indeed, Darwin’s friend, the famed biologist, Thomas Huxley, supported aspects of Darwin’s theory, but didn’t believe that evolution was gradual. Then, too, Darwin had to contend with those who believe that Noah built an ark and put two of all the creatures of the Earth on it. Religion is a great comfort, but it is no substitute for science.

 

I first became acquainted with Robert W. Felix through is book, Not by Fire, but by Ice, that pointed out that the Earth is on the cusp of a new ice age. Insofar as the Earth is now fully a decade into a new cycle of cooling, one that could last several decades or evolve into a new, full blown ice age, Felix not only got it right, but, in the course of writing his book, discovered an even more frightening scenario.

 

Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps: The True Origin of the Species is Felix’s new book (available from www.iceagenow.com) and, were it not for fans like myself and others, it is not likely to make it to the cover of leading news magazines or become a segment on “Sixty Minutes.” It will be largely ignored by the mainstream news media for the same reason they ignored his first book. Enthralled by the bogus “global warming” hoax, the mainstream media will find his new book equally appalling for its presentation of facts that run contrary to their ignorance.

 

Felix is far from alone in this view that new species are not the result of a long accretion of changes. The late paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) popularized that field of science with articles and books. Gould noted, “Gradualism is not a fact a fact of nature. Most new species appear with a bang, not a protracted crescendo.” Fossil records demonstrate that a species remains unchanged for millions of years before abruptly disappearing, “only to be replaced just as rapidly with a species that is, though clearly related, substantially different. Nature does take leaps.”

 

Felix’s great talent comes both in his ability to read and absorb the writings of scientists from different fields of study, and in his ability to explain complex issues to people like myself. I always remind readers that, while I am a science writer, I am not a scientist. Felix is a science writer and one who brings a great deal of passion to his quest to understand the history of the Earth and the life that appears to distinguish it from others in our galaxy.

 

While researching ice ages for his previous book, he became intrigued by a phenomenon that always coincides with them, magnetic reversals. In addition to mass extinctions of species that always accompanied magnetic reversals, Felix and others noticed that new species replaced them. For example, human beings are, in the long history of the Earth, 4.5 billion years, are “blindingly new”, having existed a mere 200,000 years.

 

“Mass extinctions,” writes Felix, “have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on this planet. Almost identical, each extinction was abrupt, each was extensive, and each was caused by some temporary, unexplainable event.”

 

Permit me to pause at this point and note the vanity and idiocy of those who demand that humans must conserve every species on Earth, no matter the cost involved. This nation has spent billions via the Endangered Species Act. In a similar fashion, the notion that humans are responsible for a non-existent “global warming” is the justification for measures that will wreck the economies of nations and cause untold losses of human life thanks to famines that should be avoided.

 

The next time you hear or read the word “environmentalist”, you should also hear and read “fascist” for the core of the environmental movement is the belief that human beings are “a cancer” on the Earth and should be reduced to a minimum.

 

The real threat to life on Earth are magnetic reversals, as revealed by magnetostratigraphy, the study of the magnetic properties of ancient layers of sediment (strata) now hardened into rock. Major reversals “appear to occur in sync with ice ages” and other measurements of time. “And it happens fast!” says Felix.

 

The Earth is at the end of a cyclical interglacial period. Such periods are about 11,500 years in length and it has been 11,500 years since the last ice age. That portends that another magnetic reversal is due as well.

 

Though decried as “deniers”, those of us who have been skeptical of the claims of Al Gore and the legion of global warming charlatans, the real deniers are those refuse to acknowledge the facts put forth and explained in Felix’s new book.

 

Those who would have you dramatically alter your lifestyle, by ending the use of oil, natural gas, and coal for energy, by installing thousands of wind turbines and miles of solar panels, are willfully ignoring the signs that the Earth is poised to enter a new age in which life as we know it—including our own—will be dramatically changed and to a large extent even exterminated.

 

There is nothing humans can do about this.

 

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.

 

© Alan Caruba, November 2008

 

 

 

Turning Boom into Bust … by Alan Caruba

Turning Boom into Bust

By Alan Caruba

 

Energy is called “the master resource” because every other aspect of life operates off of it. Nations that are rich in energy resources such as oil, natural gas, and coal, grow wealthy.

 

There is also something called “the curse of oil” because, if the price per barrel drops, the fate of some nations goes with it. This is the case, for example, of the former Soviet Russia whose government collapsed when it could no longer secure hard currency when oil and gas prices fell. Venezuela is an economic basket case these days, having nationalized oil and most of its financial and business sectors.

 

The history of nationalized oil and gas-rich nations is that they tend not to invest in their energy industries. They do not engage in sufficient exploration. They do not expand their capacity to extract their natural resources or to refine it. We have seen otherwise oil-rich nations like Mexico encounter financial tremors as in the 1990s when the Clinton administration had to loan Mexico billions to keep it functioning.

 

America has adopted anti-energy policies because of incessant environmental propaganda about “dirty” coal, out of the fear of nuclear power, and the refusal to permit exploration of 85% of the continental shelf and, of course, Alaska’s ANWR area, a tiny fraction of that State’s landmass.

 

If Congress imposes a windfall profits tax on the American oil industry, it will quite simply wreck the economy. As my friend, Seldon B. Graham, Jr., a longtime oil industry attorney as well as a petroleum engineer, points out, “”President Jimmy Carter started the ethanol subsidy on November 9, 1978 and signed the oil windfall profits tax on April 2, 1980.”

 

In effect, Carter put in motion an anti-oil policy that has existed for over three decades. Why is that a bad thing? The ethanol policy has severely disrupted the price of food worldwide as corn is diverted into fuel. The justification for this is “energy independence” from the purchase of foreign oil, but U.S.-produced oil has always been cheaper than imported oil.

 

If, however, the government creates conditions under which it is simply too risky, too expensive or prohibited to explore for more oil reserves, obviously oil production declines. There has been a 59% decline in U.S. oil production since 1980, the year the windfall profits tax was imposed. It was later repealed, but U.S. oil companies have a responsibility to their investors to act prudently and that has driven them to explore for oil outside of the U.S. or, to put it another way, to find foreign oil.

 

When you add in the idiotic ethanol mandates, you compound the problem. Graham points out that, “After thirty years, U.S. ethanol production was only able to produce less than 3% of our oil demand last year.” Moreover, “ethanol cost taxpayers $3.3 billion in subsidies in 2007.” Environmental claims that ethanol is cleaner than oil are false. Not only do you get less energy and poor mileage when ethanol is blended with gasoline, it actually emits more carbon dioxide per mile. “It is absolutely impossible for ethanol to replace foreign oil,” says Graham.

 

The justification for a windfall profits tax on oil companies ignores, for example, that ExxonMobil, just one of the few remaining oil companies operating in the U.S., pays more than $100 billion in taxes on the average. 

 

Less than 11% of ExxonMobil’s profits come from marketing and refining in the United States and the company recently announced it was spinning off its retail outlets.  Yes, it made great profits in recent years, but it also had enormous, risk-filled expenses.

 

Imposing a windfall profits tax on oil companies will give them cause to consider moving their corporate headquarters to other more congenial nations. The city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has been engaged in a vast office building effort, perhaps anticipating the movement of corporate headquarters.

 

Americans greeted the expiration of the ban on offshore exploration and drilling with the expectation that American oil would begin to flow and thus lower their costs for this vital national asset. That will not happen if the President or a Democrat controlled Congress reinstates the ban and/or imposes a windfall profits tax.

 

The city of Houston has been enjoying a boom due to the increase in the cost of a barrel of oil. Even at $80 dollars a barrel, it is enough to have created “its strongest resurgence in more than 20 years” according to a 2007 New York Times article about Houston. “Some energy companies are expanding and putting up new buildings.” Others, like Schlumberger among the hundreds of service providers to the energy industry have established their headquarters in Houston.

 

Houston is home to the headquarters of ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and foreign owned companies like Citgo, BP and Royal Dutch Shell also maintain corporate offices there.

About half of Houston’s jobs, an estimated 1.1 million positions, are tied to the energy industry. The impact of a windfall profits tax would prove devastating to Houston.

 

Destroying the oil industry in America, a process that has been in place since the Carter administration, has left the nation vulnerable to foreign sources. The U.S. already imports some 70% of its oil. There has been a significant decline in the exploration and development of national reserves.

 

Unleashing the energy industries in America could dramatically improve our present financial troubles. Congress, having turned boom into bust, has a historical opportunity to reverse that trend.

 

Editor’s Note: “Why Your Gasoline Prices Are High” by Seldon B. Graham ($10.95) is available from Amazon.com.

 

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

 

© Alan Caruba, November 2008

 

San Francisco: the Epicenter of Stupid Ideas … by Alan Caruba

San Francisco: the Epicenter of Stupid Ideas

By Alan Caruba

 

In the 1980s I found myself traveling all over the United States in the employ of a corporation’s quarterly newsletter. I visited many cities and places, discovering the unfailing courtesy and good will of Americans everywhere I went. One of my favorite places was San Francisco. It is picturesque, sits beside a bay spanned by a marvel of engineering, and has great restaurants, hotels, and other attributes.

 

San Francisco is now the epicenter of spectacularly stupid and just plain bad ideas. Being stupid isn’t a crime, but enacting stupid ideas into law comes close to being a definition of criminal stupidity.

 

This is a city that has been at the forefront of gay marriage. Why anyone other than a homosexual would think there was any sense in two people of the same sex constituting a “marriage” defies the laws of nature. Webster’s dictionary defines marriage as “The legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife.” But not in San Francisco. The rest of the citizens of California have made it abundantly clear they oppose same-sex marriage.

 

On November 4, in addition to voting for the president and other legislators, the citizens of San Francisco will be asked to vote on Proposition H, otherwise known as the “San Francisco Clean Energy Act.”

 

It would amend the city and county charter “to require the city to transition from fossil fuels to clean, non-nuclear, sustainable energy production at affordable rates.”  With this vote, if successful, the city will abandon the use of any energy afforded by coal, natural gas, and, as noted, nuclear power.

 

Electricity is measured in kilowatts-hours.  America’s 104 commercial nuclear power reactors now provide about 20% of its electricity. More than 50% is produced primarily by 400-plus coal-fired “fossil fuel” producers of electricity, providing more than 2,000 billion kilowatt-hours of reliable energy. Hydroelectric and gas-powered plants constitute the rest of the mix.

 

Solar and wind power constitute about 1% of the electrical energy produced from these two inefficient, impractical, and spectacularly idiotic sources of power.

 

What the citizens of San Francisco and, for that matter, the rest of the nation, don’t understand is that even in the best locations, wind turbines produce power only about one third of the time. When they cease to produce sufficient electrical power, a back-up coal-fired or nuclear plant has to be in place to meet the immediate needs of energy consumers. Comparably, solar power depends on the sun shining. Occasionally clouds obscure the sun. At night, it is shining somewhere else on Earth.

 

Proposition H states that, “Nuclear (power) is prohibited from being included in the definition of clean energy.” Moreover, solar and wind power will be mandated to produce “at least 107 megawatts” by 2012, and 75% of San Francisco’s electrical power by 2030.

 

Who supports Proposition H? They include the Sierra Club, the San Francisco League of Conservation Voters, and the San Francisco Democrat Party. I hope they get used to working by candle light if the measure passes. For all those other things that require reliable electrical power, they should plan on finding some means to keep them going other than the electrical socket in the wall.

 

The advocates of this supreme act of madness had the audacity of promoting it by asking, “If you and five friends could save the world, would you do it? If San Francisco voters pass Prop H for a 100% clean energy future, we could save the world.” The justification for this is, of course, “global warming”; something that is not happening.

 

If Proposition H passes, one assumes that views of the city will be obscured by miles and miles of wind turbines and that the drive into the city will include miles and miles of solar panels lining the highways. I don’t plan on visiting in the future.

 

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

 

© Alan Caruba, October 2008

Environmentalism vs. Socialism (Updated … slightly)

By J. D. Longstreet

 

Nearly every sentient individual in the United States is arriving at the conclusion that Global Warming is a crock. (Some sooner than others.) Millions of Americans have reached this conclusion, already, and it just irks the living daylights out of the Socialist Left.

 

When you place environmentalism along side Socialism, and consider them, they are so much alike it is frightening. Both want to control society, especially a capitalist society. Socialism, it would seem, has a new home… the environmental movement.

 

REAL scientist will tell you the climate is warming, slightly, simply because the sun is warming.  Whoops, there goes the global warming hoax.

 

The Kyoto Treaty would have creamed the economy of the US. Why, even Bill Clinton knew that. The Congress had the good sense to turn it down, flat…even while Clinton was still in the oval office.

 

Now, if you know anything, at all, about running a business, you know the cost of doing business is passed on to the consumers of the products that business produces.

 

So, when the “Greenies” scream that Big Business will not pay the price to upgrade their equipment to meet the extremely high standards for clean air they endorse, just know that that claim is a crock, too. If you know business, you know business will not bear that cost. The consumers will. When the consumer refuses to pay that increased cost, production is cut back.  When production is cut back, jobs are cut back.  It is a vicious cycle and, Dear Reader; it is a cycle that would take us back to the Great Depression in just a few short years.

 

In the past few weeks we have seen evidence of just how fragile the economy really is. If the “Greenies” had the sense God gave a gnat, they’d know their demands would crash the US economy… unless, of course, that is exactly what they want.

 

So, look again at the environmentalist movement and compare it with the Socialists.  Then decide for yourself if you really want to support a movement bent on the destruction of he US. 

 

It would be near impossible to decide which is the more dangerous to the US… Environmentalism, or Islamofacism.  Both, it would seem, want our destruction. 

 

J. D. Longstreet

Let’s Go Nuclear … by Alan Caruba

Let’s Go Nuclear

By Alan Caruba

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How do you know when a Green—hardcore environmentalist—is lying to you? When his lips are moving. Okay, it’s a cliché used in other cases as well, but it is especially true when the latest absurd claim comes flying at you courtesy of the mainstream media.

 Take nuclear energy as an example. A new survey by Bisconti Research, taken since one conducted in April, revealed “a record-high 74% of Americans favor nuclear energy, with only 24% opposed.” That’s a big change in just five months and no doubt has a lot to do with the growing public realization that America will have an energy crisis on its hands if it does not permit new plants to be built.

 

“The unprecedented levels of support for nuclear energy found in this survey,” said Ann Bisconti, “can be attributed to growing concerns about energy and focus on energy alternatives.” There are few real alternatives. At present, coal-fired plants generate just over 50% of electricity and nuclear represents about 20%. The rest is made up by hydroelectric, and some natural gas. The much touted “clean” energy sources, solar and wind, only 1%.

 

The Greens have a long history of being opposed to nuclear energy, claiming it is too dangerous and there’s no place to put the spent rods. However, they have also been shouting about the need for “clean” energy that does not emit “greenhouse gases.” Nuclear does not do that. It emits water vapor in the form of steam and water vapor is a key element of the Earth’s atmosphere.

 

Moreover, there hasn’t been an accident since the problem encountered by Three Mile Island in 1979. Even then, no one was harmed. The technology since then has ensured that the nuclear energy industry is astonishingly safe.

 

There’s a billion dollar facility, Yucca Mountain, waiting to receive nuclear waste, but the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, (D-NV) refuses to allow it to begin operation. The facility recently received clearance from the Environmental Protection Agency for meeting a stringent radiation protection standard. You would get more radiation from a CAT scan than Yucca Mountain.

 

So, while Greens tout wind and solar, two of the least effective and reliable ways to provide for the nation’s energy needs, they continue to bad mouth nuclear as a viable alternative. Its popularity is such that developing nations all over the world are seeking to build their own nuclear plants. India, for example, is embarked on an ambitious program.

 

Greens also are actively opposing nuclear energy. Friends of the Earth, a leading environment organization, is engaged in program to denigrate nuclear energy, calling Yucca Mountain “a false solution that would run trains full of toxic nuclear waste through neighborhoods like yours.” This ignores the fact that all manner of toxic materials move around the nation every day for manufacturing and other purposes. And they do it safely.

 

So what do the Greens want? It’s more like what they don’t want. They don’t want more electricity for Americans no matter what generates it.

 

They are opposed to all expansion and development even as the population continues to grow. That’s why you will find Greens trying to stop any form of development, whether it’s more land use for housing or more energy for electricity to light and heat it. That’s why they are against any exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas and against coal.

 

They are against the timber industry, too, and the production and consumption of meat, claiming that raising livestock contributes to global warming.

 

There is no global warming. The Earth is in a new cooling cycle, but that doesn’t slow the deluge of lies.

 

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

 

© Alan Caruba, October 2008

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The Last Election

The Last Election.

By  J. D. Longstreet

 

We are fast approaching the general election, in November, here in the United States. For those of you outside the US, this is “The Big One”. This is the election we hold every four years to decide the direction the United States will take for the next four years, at the very least. Every time one of these elections rolls around we bill it as the most important election… ever. And that is true. Every last one of these elections is, in fact, the most important election in the United States… EVER.

But this 2008 election could be the election that shuts down the greatest experiment in democracy ever to be tried in the history of this planet.

Why?

Because, this time around, Americans are deciding whether they wish to remain free, or, if they really wish to enslave themselves, and their neighbors, in the morass of soul rotting socialism. All indicators, at the moment, say that Americans are prepared to give up freedom, next month, for the false promise(s) of socialism.

Now, understand this: for those of us who pay attention to history and to world events… we have come to KNOW, deep down, where we live,  that socialism equals slavery. You can parse it anyway you like… but in the end… we believe socialism and slavery are the same thing… at least the results of both are the same.

So… why are the masses trailing after the candidate many of us closely associate with socialism begging for anything from him, a glance,  a raised eyebrow, a wave of the hand, maybe a touch… anything? The bottom line is: ignorance.

We have at least two generations of Americans who have been taught in America’s public education system that socialism is a good thing. It is a fair thing. It is an equitable thing. Of course it is none of those, but, you see, in their ignorance they believe it is… and they want it! They’re looking for handouts; they’re looking for freebies from the government. That alone demonstrates their utter lack of knowledge about government, what it is and how it works. They don’t understand, or they don’t care, that the US government has no money of it’s own. Which, of course, means that money must be taken from someone else to give to those with their hands out. The source of the money the government hands out is the American taxpayer. That’s you and me, our neighbors, little business and big business.

In the socialist movement, in America today, there is a partition dividing the two classes within the movement. On one side of the partition are the pawns. They are the “needy” ones.  The voters who want something from the government, such as socialized healthcare.  The leftist candidate, and those clinging to him, as well as a large block of voters from the right side of the political spectrum make up the bulk of that division. On the opposite side of the partition are the “super elite” running this scam on the ignorant American voters amongst the vast American electorate, both left and right. The reach and influence of this “super elite” is so vast that it includes controlling political candidates so naïve they actually believe THEY (The candidates) are in control and will be in control should they actually win their respective elections. In fact, it is the “super elite” pulling the strings. The “super elite” are the manipulators. They are often referred to as “The Shadow Government”.

 

Read the following quote carefully:  “It is becoming increasingly apparent to American citizens that government is no longer being conducted in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, or, within states, according to state constitutions. While people have recognized for more than 150 years that the rich and powerful often corrupt individual officials, or exert undue influence to get legislation passed that favors their interests, most Americans still cling to the naive belief that such corruption is exceptional, and that most of the institutions of society, the courts, the press, and law enforcement agencies, still largely comply with the Constitution and the law in important matters. They expect that these corrupting forces are disunited and in competition with one another, so that they tend to balance one another.

 

Mounting evidence makes it clear that the situation is far worse than most people think, that during the last several decades the U.S. Constitution has been effectively overthrown, and that it is now observed only as a façade to deceive and placate the masses. What has replaced it is what many call the Shadow Government.”  (From: “The Shadow Government”.  You’ll find it at:

 

http://www.constitution.org/shad4816.htm 

 

Take a step back and look at the candidates we have running for President of the US today. How often have you asked yourself… “Is this the best my party could offer for the extremely important office of President of the United States?”  I have certainly asked it of myself, and I’d venture a guess that you have, as well, both republican and democrat.  Is it not obvious to you that something is amiss?  We KNOW there are men and women far more qualified for president than those on the tickets of the Democratic and Republican parties. If you are honest with yourself, do you not, just a tiny bit, suspect a set-up?  HAVE we been set up?

 

And why socialism?  Simple really.  Democracy, even the kind of democracy we have in this representative republic, just gets in the way of the super elite, “the shadow government”.  I am convinced they want it gone.  In it’s place they will install “Central Planning”. Central planning is at the core of any socialist government.  So… for the “powers that be” to be able to exercise unrestrained control they need socialism in America.

 

Government control of the financial markets is must for central planning to be successful.  Last week we gave the US government effective control of our financial markets.  Do you see a pattern emerging here?  (And I haven’t even mentioned the ongoing efforts toward a North American Union.)

 

I think it is fair, even timely, to ask:  Is this the last election?  Honestly, I don’t have the answer to that. Too much is yet unknown.  But enough is known and enough is suspected that American voters, of a right, ought to be extremely concerned over the direction in which we are been herded like sheep. I, for one, resent it and I, for one, want my country back.

 

J.D. Longstreet

 

 

 

 

 

The Ethanol Election Issue by Alan Caruba

The Ethanol Election Issue

By Alan Caruba

 

The issue of the nation’s financial and economic security is likely to dominate the November 4 election. Earlier in the campaign cycle we might have assumed that foreign affairs and energy would be uppermost on the minds of voters, but we’re told that, ultimately, voters vote their pocketbooks.

 

One place they most notice a major problem, however, is at the gas pump where prices continue to remain over $3.50 a gallon. It is doubtful anyone really thinks about the part of that cost that can be attributed to the government mandate that each gallon include ethanol. Other costs include the government mandated different blends of gasoline required in different regions or sections of the nation. The refinery costs of that are built into the price as well. Then, of course, there are the federal and state gasoline taxes that add considerably to the cost.

 

The consumer is constantly being told that the cost is determined by the global marketplace for oil and, to an extent this is true. However, left largely unsaid is the role the government plays in its refusal to permit exploration and extraction of oil reserves that are either known or which potentially exist on the mainland and off the continental shelf of the nation.

 

The mere mention of offshore drilling by Sen. John McCain was sufficient to drive down the global price per barrel for a while. It lifted his campaign prospects. Largely unexamined, however, have been Sen. Barack Obama’s long-held positions on ethanol production.

 

Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute and Director of Global Food Issues, recently took note of the disparities between the candidate’s positions on ethanol. “Obama wants more ethanol, while McCain thinks we should probably have less,” noting that “both say man-made global warming is a serious threat, and both say they want the best for the nation’s farmers.”

 

Both candidates are wrong on many counts, not the least is their belief that global warming is either man-made or actually happening. It is not. Ironically, the wailing about man-made greenhouse gas emissions completely ignores the fact that ethanol actually contributes more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere while, at the same time, decreasing the mileage per gallon of gasoline.

 

Avery says that “global food and feed demand will double over the next 40 years” and that is leading to the clearing of forests to grow more corn, both as a gasoline additive and as food. Forests absorb carbon dioxide. They are often called “carbon sinks.” In addition, the more ethanol plants there are, the higher the price of corn rises due to demand.

 

Robert Bryce, the author of “Gusher of Lies”, one of the best books on global energy issues you will ever read, is also a co-editor of Energy Tribune, a leading monthly. In the October edition, he takes aim at ethanol calling it a scam and “pure, unadulterated lunacy.”

 

Bryce writes, “Barack Obama doesn’t want to talk about corn ethanol. And it’s no wonder. In early August, his campaign Web site purged several sections of his energy plan that talked about corn ethanol.

 

Before the purge, Obama was touting corn ethanol as a pivotal element in his push for ‘energy independence.’ His site declared that Obama ‘will require 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be included in the fuel supply by 2022 and will increase that to at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol by 2030.”

 

By August, however, Obama had come up with a new set of talking points on energy and “All mentions of corn ethanol were removed,” wrote Bryce. “The word ‘ethanol’ only appears once.”

 

Do not be fooled. Obama is a major proponent of ethanol. Bryce reports that, “In January 2007, Obama and two other senators, Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa and Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana, introduced legislation called the ‘American Fuels Act of 2007.’ It aimed at promoting the use of ethanol and provided mandates for the use of more biodiesel.”

 

Obama’s national campaign co-chair is Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader and longtime ethanol booster. Daschle serves on the boards of three key ethanol companies. Obama represents Illinois, a state that trails only Iowa and Nebraska in ethanol production capacity.

 

If you have any hope of seeing the price of gasoline reduced or the cost of food decrease, that will not happen if Obama is elected. At the very least, McCain has signaled that he is no fan of ethanol.

 

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

 

© Alan Caruba, October 2008

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Who Are You Calling Stupid?… by Alan caruba

Who Are You Calling Stupid?

By Alan Caruba

 

If you read as much of the blather turned out by media folk like the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman and others, you begin to see certain themes emerge.

 

They don’t like humanity much.

 

One of their great concerns is population growth and, in concert with the use of various sources of energy, all the problems that come from too many people competing for food, water, and that parking space you want.

 

Their disdain for oil, the primary energy source of transportation, plus the source from which plastic is derived, along a thousand other uses, infuses everything they write. They don’t like natural gas or coal either. These misnamed “fossil fuels” transformed and improved life for everyone over the last century and earlier. The Earth is not running out of any of them.

 

Lastly, they are desperately clinging to the “global warming” lie despite the fact that most people have concluded it was and is a hoax. Most people are right. The Earth is already into a decade-old cooling cycle.

 

Thomas Friedman, whom we are constantly reminded won a Pulitzer Prize, thus crowning him among the smartest people on Earth, has a new book out. It is about the Earth and its title is “Hot, Flat, and Crowded.”  He’s wrong on at least two of his assertions.

 

The Earth is crowded. There are more than six billion people. In time, there will be less. That is a fundamental law of demography, why populations grow and decline

 

The great problem that wordsmiths like Friedman encounter is that they fall in love with their own words, particularly if they lead to great fame and great wealth. After a while, they begin to believe their fanciful notions of how the world works and where it’s headed. Given enough time and rope, and they are frequently found to be astonishingly wrong. In the meantime, however, you can be pretty sure he thinks you’re stupid.

 

The September 14, Sunday edition of The New York Times was a study in what might be called journalistic cognitive dissonance; on the front page the lead story was “Storm Damage is Extensive and Millions Lose Power.” It requires no genius to figure out that, without electrical power, everything grinds to a stop. More than half of the electrical power in the United States is generated by burning coal. It’s cheap. It’s abundant.

 

On the September 14 editorial page, Friedman, was explaining why we have to stop using oil as an energy source for transportation and replace coal and nuclear with wind turbines and solar panels to produce electricity. Friedman is convinced that perfectly good ways of producing power are stupid, are doomed, and should be replaced as soon as possible.

 

The title of Friedman’s column was, “Making America Stupid”, and it is a pretty good description of the entire environmental movement whose main objective often seems to be the thwarting of any new energy, i.e., power, sources in America. Visit any “Green” website and you will find they are spending millions to stop the building of coal-fired plants, filled with dark fears about nuclear power, and advocate nonsense.

 

It helps, if you are a New York Times editor, to be unable to make the connection between your page one story and the babbling of Thomas Friedman who is inside the same issue calling for “innovating a whole new industry of clean power” for America after the grudging admission that “Of course, we’re going to need oil for many years.” You think????

 

Friedman’s column lambastes the bad old Republicans for wanting to “focus our country on breathing life into a 19^th-century technology—“fossil fuels”—rather than giving birth to a 21^st-century technology—renewable energy.”

 

That fabulous renewable energy, wind and solar power and biofuels, would surely have been embraced by now if it could deliver the power efficiently and reliably. It cannot. The wind does not blow all the time and the sun does not shine all the time.

 

In Texas, there are lots of wind turbines, but they like all the rest in the nation provide barely one percent of our electricity needs. And they exist only because they are heavily subsidized with federal and state funding. Without government mandates, they would not exist. The same goes for solar power. And ethanol.

 

This is what happens when government intrudes itself into areas that should be left to intelligent people. During the Carter administration, the Department of Energy was established in 1977 for the purpose—we were told—of reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Thirty-one years later the budget for DOE is $24.2 billion a year. It has 16,000 employees and some 100,000 contract employees. Are we energy independent yet? This is the same Jimmy Carter who had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House. They’re gone now.

 

Friedman pauses in his criticism of Sen. McCain and the Republican solutions to our energy needs (“Drill, baby, drill!”) to make fun of their proposal for more nuclear plants, but Freidman wants to carpet America with solar panels and ruin the landscape will thousands of wind turbines. No thank you!

 

Gregg Easterbrook wrote a review of Friedman’s new book for Slate.com. He pointed out a lack of footnotes or source notes. Instead of citing any documentation, Friedman would have you simply accept his opinions as fact.

 

Easterbrook also took note of something that Friedman has in common with Al Gore; a very large home. Like Gore, he is constantly in flight somewhere around the world on commercial and private jets. While Friedman urges everyone to “lead as environmentally sustainable a life as you can,“ Easterbook notes that he “is lord of a manor and racing through more resources in his daily life than 10,000 rural Africans.”

 

There’s a reason why we don’t have more coal-fired and nuclear plants generating the electricity we need.

 

There’s a reason our electric power grid is not being upgraded to meet our future needs.

 

There’s a reason oil companies won’t spend billions to build new refineries.

 

There’s a reason food costs more when corn is converted into fuel instead of food.

 

The reason is more than thirty years of government regulations and general interference with the power and energy industries that must answer to their investors while coping with “environmental” laws that slow or render impossible the provision of our energy needs.

 

A real energy policy is based on access to our nation’s vast deposits of affordable coal and the ability of the oil and gas industry to extract the vast reserves of oil and natural gas that exist.

 

Friedman thinks it’s stupid to drill for oil and natural gas, and mine our coal. He thinks it’s smart to throw money at windmills and solar panels. He thinks you’re stupid enough to agree with him.

 

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

 

© Alan Caruba, September 2008

 

 

 

 

 

A Spotless Sun … by Alan Caruba

 

 

 

 

 A Spotless Sun…   …   By Alan Caruba

 There’s a wonderful irony in the fact that, back in the 1970s, the Greens were issuing warnings and even writing books about the coming Ice Age. They would abandon this issue, based in well-known and accepted solar science, in favor of a vast international hoax alleging man-made global warming.

 

As the global warming hoax begins to lose its power to influence public opinion and policy, the Greens are not likely to be heeded for a long time to come because they were right about an Ice Age and lying through their teeth about global warming.

 

Scientists and laymen who follow the Ice Age cycles have been warning that, if not a full-fledged Ice Age, at the very least a Little Ice Age comparable to one that lasted from 1300 to around 1850 is on its way

 

Amidst all the media coverage of Hurricane Gustav and the Republican Convention, a report in DailyTech.com was not likely to get much attention, but it forecast a very cold world in the years to come. The Earth has already started to cool and scientists date the change from 1998.

 

Headlined, “Drop in solar activity has potential effect for climate on Earth”, the news is that, for the first time in 100 years, “an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.” The author, Michael Asher, noted that “The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity—which determines the number of sunspots—is an influencing factor for climate on Earth.”

 

My friend, Robert W. Felix, wrote an excellent book on this titled “Not by Fire, but by Ice” ($15.00, Sugarhouse Publishing, softcover, second edition) which can be purchased from his website at IceAgeNow.com.

 

“We’re beginning to realize that Earth is a violent and dangerous place to live,” wrote Felix. “We’re beginning to realize that mass extinctions have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on Earth.”

 

Felix has a new book soon to be published that addresses magnetic reversals, another cyclical factor affecting life on Earth. “During the last 4.5 million years, at least six out of nine radiolarian extinctions occurred at magnetic reversals.” They appear to be a factor in the sudden emergence of new species so Darwin’s theory is likely to be reexamined.

 

As the DailyTech report notes, “In the past 1000 years, three previous such events, the Dalton, Maunder, and Sporer Minimums,” of reduced sunspot activity, “have all led to rapid cooling,” adding that, “For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.”

 

An article by William Livingston and Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, “Sunspots May Vanish by 2015”, predicts that sunspots will disappear completely. “Such an event would not be unprecedented, since during a famous episode from 1645-1715, known as the Maunder Minimum…” That solar cycle “was shown to correspond with the reduced average global temperatures on the Earth.” In other words, it’s going to get COLD.

 

The Little Ice Age had an effect on history as you might imagine. The French Revolution is attributed to it insofar as the cost of bread rose as wheat crops failed. Riots followed. Similarly, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia met with defeat thanks to a winter that killed thousands of his troops. In America, it was reflected in the travails of Valley Forge.

 

Over at IceAgeNow.com, Felix posts the latest news from around the world that tells of anomalous events ranging from freak early snow storms to expanding glaciers. Soon enough, those living in the northern hemisphere will become more aware as winters lengthen and become more severe. After that, the scenarios grow quite serious.

 

Even the venerable Old Farmers Almanac is making news these days forecasting a far cooler winter and suggesting that the Earth is already in a cooling cycle.

 

No doubt some diehard Greens like Al Gore will continue to spout nonsense that the cold weather is due to global warming, but it has to do with the Sun that’s gone quiet. It’s not myth. It’s reality.

 

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.