NOVATOWNHALL

Three weeks ago the mortgage securities scandal was not even on the radar of popular culture. Now, it is issue number one and Congress is poised to pass quick legislation to address it. That fact right there should give everyone reason for pause.

By way of comparison, our energy crisis has been brewing in the open for decades, and even seven years after 9-11 Congress is still stalemated: We have no nuclear plants being built, no new oil refineries, no new areas opened for drilling, no new shale oil operations.

When Congress is poised to act quickly, to paraphrase the old maxim, we should all reach for our guns. What sort of lunacy might our federal government be about to introduce?

Case in point: Barney Frank is currently one of the leading legislative figures in the debate. In a sane world, Barney Frank would be sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on his head.

[via The Jawa Report]

Key quote by Barney Frank defending government sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

The more people in my judgment exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury - which I do not see, I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially, and withstand some of the disaster scenarios, and even if there were a problem the federal government doesn’t bail them out - but the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.

So the priority has been, above all else, affordable housing. Think about that. Then think of the zeros involved.

Events are progressing so quickly in Washington, D.C. right now that there has been no opportunity to explain the current financial crisis in context. Legislation that has not even been thought through is on the verge of being passed.

Yes, something needs to be done quickly - I understand that. Banks are going to fail. Bad, bad thing.

But here’s where the zeros come in: The basic fact that a movement which began in the 1990s to provide home loans to people who should not have received those loans was suicidal for our economy is being glossed over. When you’re dishing out $200,000+ loans to millions and millions of people who did not qualify for those loans, you are creating a liability figure with a LOT of zeros.

And now that exposure is being offloaded to American taxpayers. The dream of affordable housing has been revealed as taxpayers footing the bill for everyone in the U.S. who could not afford a house.

Maybe a bailout has to happen to secure our economy: I don’t have the expertise to know if that is the only solution. But as the details of the bailout are being debated and incorporated into the pending legislation, we need to keep in mind that at the root of the crisis are loans to a great many people who should not have gotten them, morons in the financial services industry who treated those loans as assets, and government officials who nurtured the hari-kiri economics. It needs to be reported far and wide that that’s why we are in this mess.

If we are about to pass new laws that will fundamentally change the U.S. economy for years to come, we need to be sure the American taxpayers who have played by the rules do not end up footing the bill for those who were chasing ghosts.

And let’s also be sure everyone knows the ghost-chasers, those who made this all happen, include the same Democrats who are now attempting to steer the hastily-crafted legislation.

UPDATE: Check below the fold for informative comment by Blog Fu.

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Mr. Perfect Timing:

“If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration”…

Talk about having one’s finger on the pulse of our nation. There are still energy outages and gas shortages throughout the South. The second-most-threatening crisis of the day is America’s inability to produce enough home-grown energy, and, as winter approaches, Gore is worried about the temperature.

As Glenn Beck observed tonight, the energy crisis is going to soon reach the point where Americans will suddenly rise up and “chase the hippies off into the mountains.”

The Oil Drilling Ban finaly expired today, despite Pelosi’ best efforts.  Nancy got a black eye.  Still in the final analysis, the Democrats managed to step back from the precipice on this one.

“this capitulation by Democrats following months of Republican pressure is a big victory for Americans struggling with record gasoline prices,” said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio.

Democrats had clung to the hope of only a partial repeal of the drilling moratorium, but the White House had promised a veto, Obey said.

Just last week, the House passed legislation to open waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to oil and gas drilling but only 50 or more miles out to sea and only if a state agrees to energy development off its shore.

Republicans called that effort a sham that would have left almost 90 percent of offshore reserves effectively off-limits.

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Global warming is forefront as an issue.  So is oil, alternative energy and fat people.  I still have the brick mark on my forehead where this one hit me.  It is just so easy to understand and resolve.

We start out with “We The People” to the understanding that our forefathers were in actuallity talking about “we the politicians”.  This is an undeniable truth.  If it were otherwise then we the people would be able to force our elected officials into doing what WE require-not what they deem is best.  If you doubt this understanding then I believe that you need to take this to the Supreme Court for an irreputible vauge decision.  Because we the politicians know what is best for us and they do make the rules, it is time for you slackers to get in lockstep and stop your whinning.  I have the solution that will work and it comes from my liberal ways and understanding of things.

First, everyone gets a house.  One floor of at least 2000 sq.ft (for a family of four) is considered the subsistance floor.  There will be exercycles mounted with alternator units to run the household.  100 sq ft will be dedicated to the storage batteries with a reserve of 5 hours (we don’t want you getting lazy).  The batteries and exercycles will power YOUR unit (unless there is an emergency of which time all energy will go to power the grid).  So now if you want heat above 60 degrees or air conditioning below 85 degrees, get off your fatass and get to work.  It is now on you.  Did I say fatass?  Oh but not for long.  Since you can’t control your eating habits and you want your refrigerator to keep your food chilled, you will HAVE to work for it.  And the pounds will melt away.  The batteries will be made of an ecofriendly substance so that at the end of their lifespan, they may either be buried in the yard (if you have one) or eaten.  And if eaten, the carb levels must be low and the protien levels must be high but without causing GAS!  This is most important!  No gas!

The rest of the floor will be covered with plants.  No pets.  Some of you (especially Asians) will think about eating your pets and that creates pounds and gas.  We can’t abide by that. You may choose what plants you want but don’t be foolish because these plants are what you will subsist on as far as intake.  They will also scrub off your co2 emissions and give you life maintaining oxygen.  We will supply water at a nominal price to bath (water must be used 3 times then poured onto plants), drink and water plants.  You can grow plants according to NORML  but you cannot give/sell those plants to others.  After all, what would happen if we had an emergency and need everyone on the grid, hum?

I know.  Some of you only have single floor homes.  Too bad.  You should have thought of the country’s needs long before you bought, you self-centered individual.

The only thing that can be nuclear is the Alka-Seltzer in your water glass.  Wind is okay and sun is also.  Matter of fact the sun is your new best friend.  It will handle your transportation needs.  Commercial planes will go by the wayside.  They don’t work on solar (but if you invented a way, we will think about bringing them back and giving you unlimited flights-excluding blackout periods of course-for one full year) and we don’t want anymore pollution in the atmosphere.  After all, “if man was meant to fly…”.  Military aircraft will use only ethonal and when the land on aircraft carriers, they will no longer be able to dump fuel to lighten the plane.  We’re sorry if you crash and die but we don’t want the environment polluted and we don’t want to waste good fuel.  And if we lose a plane, well, we don’t like the military anyway.  It gives the rest of the world the impression that we are a hostile people.

Farming will be for the soul purpose of plant growth for fuel-no food stock.  What the fatcats (they are the ONLY ones to remain obese) don’t use in their vehicles, we will sell to support our backrupt country.  Not even the grid will use fuel.  That is why we have citizens.  Professional sports will disappear and professional atheletes will use that energy for the grid.  They will be the only ones compensated for the making of energy-all others will either live or die by it.  Oh, and there will be open borders so that we can support the grids industry (read fatcats vacation homes, personal homes and concubine abodes as well as the lighting for the “general good”) because there will enevitibly be an increase of heartattack related deaths but once we get those whimps out of the way, the grid should stabilize and everyone will be skinny but healthy.

Anything not covered will be figured out later.  “Ask not what your country can do for you..” are the greastest words ever spoken and we mean to have you abide by them.  This has been thoughtout to the end of my nose so it is a proven way to proceed.  We will have a happy, healthy and energy producing country in spite of what you may think or feel.  It is what is necessary.  Get on board and start enjoying life again!

George Bush said ‘Drill!‘ and the price of crude dropped over nine dollars in a single day, and it continues to fall.   The market knows that the U.S. has huge, untapped energy reserves. The United States has more than three times the amount of Oil the Saudi Arabians do. Due to a masochistic energy policy brought on by environmental extremists we are now importing 70% of our oil from people who hate us, and indirectly funding our foes in the war against Islamic Extremism. The more energy independent we become, the less money we will be putting into the pockets of those who wish to kill us and end our way of life.

The need for energy in the long term will require a shift in technology.   We need to move away from our dependence on fossil fuels.  The most viable short-and-mid-term avenue currently is nuclear power. The other commonly discussed alternatives are wind and solar power.  These have yet to demonstrate economic viability, but should be pursued none the less.  Government funding of research for these and other ideas such as Algae_Fuels is a must.  With our economy growing, and our population expanding we will need more energy.  Conservation alone will not be able to cover the increase in energy needs. Therefore, until the future alternatives are found, we must make full use of our natural resources.

We are the only nation in the world with access to known oil deposits on our own land or off our shores that essentially refuses to tap those resources.

Giving our own people access to these resources should not be a political football.  However the Democrat party is seeking to further politicize the energy debate by couching it as a class warfare issue and giveaways to the wealthy.

Currently it is easier for the Chinese to drill in the Gulf of Mexico than it is for any American Oil company; this is ridiculous.

While Washington dithers over exploiting oil and gas reserves off the coast of Florida, China has seized the opportunity to gobble up these deposits, which run throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and along the U.S. Gulf coast.

…

There are new reports out circulating that Chinese firms are planning to slant drill off the Cuban coast near the Florida Straits, tapping into U.S. oil reserves that are estimated at 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels. This compares with 4 billion to 10 billion barrels believed to be beneath the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge

Nancy Pelosi is more worried about Exxon being able to drill than she is about the Chinese pirating our very own oil reserves.  From an article in the Herald Tribune …

“We have chosen to lock up our resources and stand by to be spectators while these two come in and benefit from things right in our own backyard”

The Cuban regime at least is prospering from our policies.  Neat trick, someone finally figured out how to bring a profit to Castro’s Caribbean gulag.

Obama’s idea to fix our energy woes is to, ‘Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions‘.  Great!! The patient is bleeding, Dr Barak’s brilliant idea is to apply leaches.  The Democrats in both houses of Congress have proposed a windfall profits tax, considering what a raging success this was under James Carter, I am surprised they are even considering it.  With help like this we should be on our way to the guilt-free third-world economy the left has always wanted.

The Democrat party is currently against drilling in ANWR, the Atlantic Coast, the Pacific Coast the Gulf Coast, the Rocky Mountains and Montana.  So what is left?  With the other alternatives even more economically unsound than $140/barrel oil, we need to tap into this reservoir now, while we still have an economy to save.  Waiting for the alternatives which are at least 30 years away from becoming available will sentence our children and grandchildren to contending with a crippled economy.

Any economy is dependent upon energy.  Currently our energy comes primarily in the form of fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas).  These fuels have made modern life possible. Without them we would still be huddling in the winter around wood fires, in cramped quarters.  In the summer we will perspire copiously and experience mosquito bites in our bedrooms as we try to sleep.  This life style romantically is also known as medieval.  The lifespan of an individual is 30 to 40 years under this technological regimen.  For those who wish to return to this level of existence please vote Democrat.  Their policies are putting us on a trajectory back to the past.

Our energy policy over the past 30 plus years has been abysmal. We have gone from having a robust electrical grid that had margin in the system to allow it to meet summer peaks in demand, to a strained system with rolling brown-outs in California. We have been in a state of paralysis due to competing economic, ideological and political interests, and the NIMBY mindset. Having oil from overseas coming in at $27 per barrel also made it easy to do nothing.

In a previous post I began to lay out some of the energy issues confronting our country, and how nuclear power is the most logical choice as an alternative to oil. In this article I expand on the feasibility of deploying nuclear power, its current availability, and some of the safety concerns. The hopelessness of attempting to use other alternatives such as wind, given the current state of that technology, is also touched upon.

Oil is now over $140 per barrel; much of it going to countries whose regimes are openly hostile. The economy is being impacted negatively by the price of oil and its corresponding $500B per year drag on the economy. It will only get worse. Not planning for this day to come is an epic failure on the part of our political leadership from both parties. For the past three decades, this threat has been on the horizon. The collective lack of vision, cowardice, and pandering to partisan supporters has brought us to this predicament. The failure is tragic, because it was ever so preventable.

Currently the United States has 104 Nuclear Power Plants. These power plants provide us with 97.4GW of electricity, which is ~19% of all electrical power generation in the country. These power plants are operating in 31 states, in 65 locations. There are 27 shutdown reactors, many of which can be brought back on line with some overhaul. In 1972 the United States had 42 commercial reactors, the number of reactors rose steadily to 96 by 1985. The number of reactors peaked at 112 in 1990, with a peak in percentage electrical production of 21% occurring in 2001. The French currently get 78% of their electrical power from nuclear reactors.

For us to achieve the same level of independence from fossil fuels we would need to build over 250 new reactors. McCain proposes 45 new reactors, which can be charitably characterized as a ‘good start‘. Obama proposes no new nuclear power generation, this defies charitable characterization. According to Westinghouse, the time it takes to bring a modern class reactor on line is 3 to 5 years.

The AP1000 design saves money and time with an accelerated construction time period of approximately 36 months, from the pouring of first concrete to the loading of fuel.

The 5 year number is intentionally pessimistic so as to account for site preparation etc. Furthermore, if we start building 45 let alone 250 such plants the construction time is likely to decrease. When compared to the most optimistic estimates as to when the other zero emission powers sources will come on line this 3 to 5 year wait appears wildly optimistic; for other alternative energy sources such as solar, wind or bio-diesel will start to produce electricity on this scale in some 30 years, maybe. Can we afford to bank our nations future on such whimsy?

The peak number of plants we had under construction was 5 per year from 1980 to 1985. The nuclear industry outside the U.S. has not been idle, there are many modern designs to choose from, all of which are far safer than the infamous TMI design (whose safety systems were successful in stopping the problem from escalating). If we where to bring 5 or more new reactors on line for the next 20 to 40 years we could retire the use of fossil fuels. Such a pace is not beyond the industry’s capacity, and, if commitment is made to pursue this known technology, the rate of plant construction can be greatly increased over time.

Our need for energy will increase over the coming years. According to the DOE, the number of households will increase by over 25% by 2030. This increase will require the production of electricity in the US to accelerate. Considering that US production has stagnated over the past decades, this is a worrisome prospect. We are on our way to a having third world energy grid if we do not take decisive action now.

FORECASTS INDICATE that the U.S. will need about 335 billion W of new generating capacity by 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy, Science & Technology.

That is a huge increase in needed capacity. To ensure we meet this need, we must turn to a source that can cover the current shortfall and expand on an industrial scale to meet the growing future needs. Conservation alone will not meet our needs; wind power, typified by 2MW wind mills that require 1200 such wind mills to generate as much electricity as a single modern 1GW nuclear plant, will never meet our needs.

To match nuclear power, wind power would need to build 240,000 2MW windmills. At three months per windmill, it will be a century before wind power could meet our needs in 2025. When the forecast calls then for an increase of some 50 new nuclear reactors just to maintain the current 20% of electrical production, how many more fossil fuel based plants does this then indicate? If we choose to ignore the current inadequacy of other alternative power how much economic misery will this bring?

Generation III and IV Nuclear reactor designs are far and away safer than their predecessors and are thereby building on a very solid foundation. The generation II reactors have an excellent safety record.

Generation III systems were developed in the 1990s and feature enhanced safety systems. They are more economical to build, operate, and maintain than the previous generation …

… a vast amount of effort is going into enhancing the safety of advanced generation III+ reactor designs that are now evolving and the revolutionary generation IV technologies. They all incorporate what is known as passive safety systems.

The current coal fired plants put more Thorium and other radioactive debris into the atmosphere as part of their typical operation than will be generated and contained by a nuclear power plant. Japan is in the most seismically active regions of the world, and they have made the decision to develop this for power. Europe has also made the decision to press ahead despite the fact that they are far more densely populated than we are.

We are approaching a crossroads where we need to make some hard choices. Nothing is guaranteed in life, that is why the founders sought to protect our right to pursue happiness, note they did not guarantee happiness, just its pursuit; to continue to be paralyzed by ignorance, fear and the hope that the problem will just go away will lead to an economic collapse. Along the way to this collapse, by not choosing, we then do nothing and watch our wealth continue to line the pockets of those who hate us via the oil we will then buy and use.

The alternative is that we, like other first world nations, begin the long overdue path to becoming free of these parasites. Considering that the during last oil embargo we imported 30% of our oil, imagine the impact of such an embargo now — we import 60% of our oil today. At the very least, nuclear power can buy us the time to develop a power source that would satisfy even the most militant environmentalist.

That’s right.  It even hits those that distribute to the public hard in the wallet.  This is his answer.  Although I don’t think that it is cost effective yet and the distance to time ratio is a little lop-sided, the view is incredible! Like minds think alike and this is where the idea showed first fruition!

The Democrats have told us that ANWR is off limits because the size of the 16 billion barrel deposit is too small to risk the absolute purity of the barren, frozen waste up there. Considering that existing pipelines have NOT changed the caribou migration patterns nor have they had any appreciable effect on the herd size one can only wonder what the fuss is all about. The track record of these pipelines is excellent; yet the the claim of the environmental activists is that the opening of ANWR would destroy the wilderness. The likes of Green Peace, and other environmental activists along with OPEC lobbyists have found the Democrats in congress eager to do their bidding and keep ANWR closed.

When one takes into account the shale oil reserves in the Rockies, the United States has more than three times the amount of oil than the Saudi Arabians.

The United States has an oil reserve at least three times that of Saudi Arabia locked in oil-shale deposits beneath federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, according to a study released yesterday.

One would imagine that this resource is big enough to bother with. Though the study was recently released the US has known of this reserve for some time.

The vast extent of U.S. oil shale resources, amounting to more than 2 trillion barrels, has been known for a century. In 1912, the President, by Executive Order, established the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves.

This resource is enough oil to last us to the next Century. The only trouble with this potential resource is that the Democrat controlled congress does not want to make it accessible to development. They and their masters in the Green lobby would prefer to see us paying $4 dollars or more at the pump.

We need a new energy source now. Windmills are for Don Quixote to tilt at, and are not meant for industrial energy production. The Indian and Chinese economies are growing fast. This economic growth has greatly improved the lot of the average Indian and Chinaman, but, these same folks are now competing with us for ALL the worlds resources. The time has come to increase the size of the pie. With Al Gore increasing his electric bill by 10%, we need to act fast.

Shell Oil Corp has a new idea for the extraction of oil from shale that potentially has a lower environmental impact than traditional methods. This new method is called the en situ extraction process. Since this is a new approach, there are risks in both development costs and schedule. As the method is new, the claim that this will be a more ecologically friendly approach remains to be proven.

The other trouble with this potential bonanza of energy is that our Democrat lead congress has recently voted to stop development of this resource.

The Senate Appropriations Committee today narrowly defeated Sen. Wayne Allard’s attempt to end a moratorium related to oil shale development in Colorado.

Apparently the need for oil is not great enough yet. We need to suffer, when the people start giving up their cars, living without heat or air conditioning then our betters in Green Peace and the Democrat party might be satisfied.

We have an energy crisis in the making; the world wide demand for oil is growing. Actually it has doubled every 20 years for the past 80. We are sending money to dictators and religious fanatics who hate us, in short we are financing our enemies. This is hubris on a grand scale. The Democrats in congress are in the pockets of special interest groups like ELF, PETA, The Sierra Club and Green Peace.

The only domestic sources of energy currently available for expansion are coal and natural gas. Coal is not an energy source known for being ecologically friendly, so why are we being forced into a corner to use it? Natural gas production cannot make up the need for more energy alone and foreign oil is getting more and more expensive.

Shale oil was not economically viable when oil was below $35 a barrel; at $100 a barrel we need to invest in this resource and clear the way for this to get to market. It will take time, so the longer we wait the worse our economic situation will get.

The price of gas should force us to invest in alternative energy sources on economic grounds alone. The fact that much of the world’s readily available oil supply is in the hands of would be dictators like Chavez, or established dictators like the Saudi’s or outright religious lunatics like the Mullahs of Iran should force us to invest in alternative sources of energy, on security grounds alone. The fact that the much of the Western World (Britain, Germany, France Japan) already have adopted nuclear energy as that alternative should give us pause as to why we have not. That a ‘carbon-free’ source of energy would improve air quality by reducing emission particulates, ozone and carbon monoxide is established fact. The impact of carbon dioxide emission leading to Global Warming, while not a proven fact, is something to consider. If we reduce our carbon footprint, without buying carbon credits, Al Gore will go broke; such a laudable goal is worthy of a Manhattan Project.

Nuclear power is the only alternative that is anywhere near cost effective. The rest of the current crop of alternatives are economic losers. Research and development will be required on a massive scale for many of these ideas. Solar and geothermal power are untested in the market on an industrial scale. Wind power has been tried in CA and required huge capital expenditure for little energy, and is economically uncompetitive; even with $100+ per barrel oil, it will require a technological breakthrough to become viable. These lines of development effort have all three of the economic millstones around their necks: high-cost, high-risk and indeterminate schedule. All of these economic millstones make the alternative energy schemes attractive to the Democrats and their friends in ELF, Green Peace and the Sierra Club.

Nuclear power is a proven source of power that is used world wide. Nuclear power has been used for years. Proven nuclear power plant designs exist. In short, in comparison to the other alternatives nuclear power is low cost, low risk, and critically, has a determinant schedule. In a market that has not been politically skewed, as ours is, this power source would not be confined to less than ten percent of the energy production. This skewing is the result of lobbying by the likes of Green Peace and pandering by the likes of the Democrats.

In France and Japan nuclear energy accounts for the majority of the electrical energy production. Britain, Germany and Scandinavia are not far behind. All of these countries (and regions) are far more heavily populated than the United States. Why are we waiting? These countries’ nuclear programs, along with our current aging nuclear power plants, have provided us with proven, safe, and reliable field-tested designs. These countries are not as heavily impacted by the current energy crisis as we are because they have a nuclear cushion. Why are we allowing our economy to be wreaked?

What are we waiting for? We only lack the political will to overcome and defeat the Sierra Club, Green Peace and ELF and other members of the environmentalist/anti-humanist lobby. We also need to over come the coal and oil lobbies that work behind the scenes with the enviro-whackos. This is the irony, the self anointed champions of the environment are actually harming it due to their ignorance and fear. Ignorance and fear have lead to many stupid and evil outcomes in the past, this is one problem that has an ‘on-the-shelf’ solution, need we wait for things to get worse?

It appears that some in the U.S. enviro-whackos-r-us crowd are beginning to see the light. The first part of the equation is there is no scientific proof that we cause global warming. The second part is that wind power, solar power etc is too inefficient to meet our energy needs. What we need is a return to the energy source of that we abandoned in the 70’s, nuclear power. Patrick Moore says:

there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power

A nuclear power plant creates less nuclear waste than a coal burning power plant. The amount carbon 14 released directly into the atmosphere far and away exceeds the amount of nuclear material created by a nuclear plant. Then there are the other pollutants created by burning of fossil fuels such as coal.

Life has not been good to Al Gore, first he gets stuck as vice-vice president, third in line after Hillary Clinton while ol’ Bubba is frisking interns, then he loses the election despite the media being in the tank for him, a more or less peaceful world and a good domestic economy. Now Gore is proving to be one of the more famous snake oil salesmen in history. If the oceans would just hurry up and rise already. In the mean time food is getting scarce due to the emerging bio-fuels fiasco:

One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.

“I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said.

This means of energy production is turning out to be grossly inefficient, and does not reduce the CO2 emissions. In fact considering the amount of energy needed to created a gallon of biofuel, it more than likely will become a net increase.

This form of energy does have a plus side I am sure in the eyes of the left wing enviro-whackos, it will starve out all those pesky poor people and finally cause that long needed population draw down. Not to worry though, because the middles class will become poor paying for food due to this plan. We will still have poor people, the future of the Democrat party is ensured.

In the meantime this is turning out to be an embarrassment for Gore, the swami of the environmental movement, he has a Nobel peace prise and an Oscar to prove it.

Mr. Senauer said climate change advocates, such as Vice President Gore, need to distance themselves from ethanol to avoid tarnishing the effort against global warming.

but

In an interview last year, Mr. Gore expressed his support for corn-based ethanol

Ooops! Guess he should have thought this one through first a bit. First time for everything, this would have been a good place to start.

Considering the impact this is having we need to look at Japan and other first world countries to see what passes for energy policy outside the U.S., being we do not have an energy policy. Japan seek to get 60% of their power from nuclear energy by 2030. Part the the drive to increase nuclear power is to decrease CO2 emissions. Something the one would expect the enviro-whackos to applaud, but no, they obviously would prefer to see us living in yurts, and all that implies.

Has anyone seen this on MSM? Or Fox, or some such? This is a big deal.

Western North Dakota has large oil reserves. By some estimates, it has more oil than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A federal government geologist estimated a formation called the Bakken shale holds 400 billion barrels of oil.

Just curious as this is a far bigger find than the Brazilian abiotic field. I am wondering when, if ever, this could lead to a decrease of the price at the pump.

Potentially really important news (hat tip to Instapundit, who needs a “hat tip” from NVTH like Microsoft needs a bumper sticker on my truck).

Lost in the big news last week — the race for the Democratic nomination, the reeling U.S. economy, the ongoing life/death saga that is “Dancing with the Stars” — came word that a new deep-water exploration area off the coast of Brazil could contain as much as 33 billion barrels of oil…

In 1999, Gold published “The Deep Hot Biosphere,” a paper that postulated that coal and oil are produced not by the decomposition of fossils, but in fact are “abiogenic” — the product of tectonic forces; i.e., deeply embedded hydrocarbons being brought up and through the earth’s mantle and transformed into their present states by bacteria living in the earth’s crust.

If “fossil fuels” are in fact produced from within the Earth, and not as the result of the decomposition of ancient jungles, and “peak oil” is a flawed concept, it really would change everything.

Methane has been discovered on a moon of Jupiter, which was likely not ancient dinosaur and newt habitat, so the theory has plausibility.

Much more here.

We all know how expensive gasoline is these days.  We have also heard about the oil companies’ making enormous profits.  According to ExxonMobil’s 2007 Annual Report, the company’s return on average capital employed was over 30% for 2005, 2006, and 2007.  That is staggering.

Now, I am not begrudging the oil companies’ making a profit — whatever the market will bear.  I am not accusing them of collusion to keep prices up.  The problem is not the companies, but the market.  In a normal market, when returns are that high, a company will lower its prices to sell more of their product.  In the long run, this lowers prices to the consumer and increases the profits to the company.

The reason the oil companies are not lowering their prices is that they simply have no more gasoline to sell.  Their refineries are running at capacity.  Normally, a company whose plants are running at capacity would build more plants.  Unfortunately, because of short-sighted government officials and rampant NIMBYism, no new refineries have been built in the United States for years, and none will be for years to come.

The best the oil companies can do it to increase productivity at existing plants, and that will simply not be enough to meet the increasing demand.  Might I recommend a Dividend Reinvestment Plan?

Mystical environmentalism is the disease. Stories like this one will be the cure:

According to my source, architect Mayne has stated that federal office workers do not get enough exercise. To address this, he installed elevators in the building that only stop at every third floor. This requires employees to walk up or down one or two flights of metal stairs.

Persons with physical disabilities who cannot use stairs can use a separate elevator that stops at every floor. The foreseeable result is that employees seeking to avoid stairs use the disabled access elevator, leaving this car crammed with people and making the ride to the top extremely slow…

That’s just a teaser - read and chuckle.

UPDATE: There will be a conference on this very topic on Monday in Williamsburg.

Heh heh heh.

..The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time.

Following this story could make what was looking like a grim year rather enjoyable. Although, as we’ve seen, it sure does freak out some of our visitors.