Pickens' project failure demonstratesfutility of rushing "green energy"

The CBS News headline proclaimed “Pickens Plan for Huge Wind Farm Blows Away,” as Texas oilman and billionaire financier T. Boone Pickens latest venture to build a huge wind farm to demonstrate the viability of alternative energy has instead become a demonstration of why such ideas are not viable.

His plan was unveiled last year in the face of highest-ever oil and natural gas prices, when oil prices peaked at more than $145 a barrel and wholesale natural gas reached $47.61 per cubic meter, making his plan for a 4,000 megawatt wind power project in Pampa, Texas look very appealing. Had the project been completed, it would have produced electricity equivalent to four nuclear-power plants and would have powered 1.3 million homes. But, alas, it won’t be completed.

Mr. Pickens has a goal of reducing oil imports by 30 percent in ten years by replacing oil with natural gas in cars and trucks and using wind power to replace natural gas as a source of electricity. Among the reasons for the decision to abandon the wind project were "the collapse of the capital markets" and "the steep downturn of natural gas prices,” a spokesman for Mr. Pickens' company told The Washington Post.

Lower natural-gas prices, down to $27.86 last weekend, made the more expensive wind power less desirable as an alternative to gas-fired electric plants. Another problem is the lack of transmission lines to get power from the wind turbines into the electricity grid.

This project is the poster child for the futility of trying too hard to implement green energy. It is dramatic evidence that while the Congress and the Obama administration, the environmental lobby and the global warming/global cooling/climate change faction all want to move away from fossil fuels as fast as possible, the new technologies, the nation's electrical infrastructure and the existing energy system quite plainly are not ready for this transition.

“It was a little more complicated than we thought,” Mr. Pickens told The Dallas Morning News, a bit of understatement that supports a point made here more than a couple of times. His comment surprises a lot of folks who expected a savvy businessman like T. Boone Pickens not to make an error characteristic of rookies.

But shortsighted decisions like this one are part and parcel of the rabid green movement, which attempts to implement immature technologies at virtually any cost without having taken a long, sober look at the problems that must be conquered first. To his credit, and unlike so many others in the green energy lobby, Mr. Pickens recognized the futility of this plan, and sensibly abandoned the project.

Someday the United States will be ready for this transformation, and sensible people will wait until then to make the move. What the Congress, the administration, the environmentalist fringe and the greenies must do is adopt a position of thoughtful analysis, and move as quickly as possible, but as deliberately as necessary, to get to that point.

In watching Barack Obama work to enact his agenda one gets the idea that he either is unaware of the obstacles these measures face, or he just doesn’t care. But even if all the changes he wants to bring about are good ideas – and they definitely aren’t – it’s just not prudent, or possible, to do everything so quickly and all at the same time in this economic environment without making a series of critical and costly mistakes.

Fortunately, as time passes and more of the details of the President’s radical plans become known, resistance grows.

As the United States government tries to force-feed green energy to the American people and jam it into a market that is unprepared to accept it, our President is trying to get the world’s developing nations – among which are China and India, two of the fastest growing users of fossil fuels – to clean up their high-polluting factories. They are saying, however, “No way. It will wreck our economy.” Those nations understand what Mr. Obama apparently does not understand: That implementing an energy policy for ideological reasons, and against market forces, is foolish and dangerous.

As for Mr. Pickens’ goal of reducing oil imports, it doesn’t take building wind farms for which the supporting infrastructure is non-existent to accomplish that goal. All that is required is to ease government restrictions and remove obstacles to drilling where domestic oil and gas reserves lie, and allow American energy companies to do what they do best.

This simple solution would increase domestic oil and gas supplies and the oil and gas industry would continue efforts to clean up oil and gas emissions, it would allow the technologies for alternative energy sources to develop naturally along with the infrastructure to support them.

This approach not only has the advantage of making a lot of sense, but also has the support of the energy industry, which is the leading investor in developing new, less polluting ways to use existing fossil fuels, and also in developing alternative energy sources.

But the doctrinaire Left is in charge, driving full speed ahead, looking neither left nor right, nor much past the hood ornament up front.

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Technorati Tags: Energy, Liberalism, Government, Democrats

Every Real American needs to watch this

I hadn't seen this before a friend sent it to me this weekend.

Great story.

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Patriotism

Americans becoming fed up with government encroachment

A recent visit to Colonial Williamsburg had the predictable effect of rekindling interest in the founding of our country, and brought to mind the character of colonial life and important events in the prelude to the American Revolution.

One of the informational talks at a historical site described how the revolution began, arising slowly from mounting discontent with the degree of control imposed by King George and the British Parliament over the day-to-day lives of the colonists.

One of the best known of those is the issue of taxation without representation, and the colonists’ impatience with the various taxes imposed on them, which eventually prompted the civil disobedience at Boston Harbor in December of 1773 when colonists dressed as Indians dumped cases of tea overboard to protest the Tea Act.

But as most everyone knows the Boston Tea Party was not the actual start of the revolution; it did not fully materialize for more than two years, with the adoption of Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 by the Continental Congress. In the intervening period the relationship between Mother England and the Colonies continued to deteriorate until the night of April 18, 1775, when about 700 British Army regulars were given secret orders to capture and destroy military supplies that were reportedly stored by the Massachusetts militia at Concord. Armed conflict broke out the following day at Lexington and Concord.

The colonists knew that their cause was lost if they could not resist the British with arms, and were not about to be put in that position. When the King’s men attempted to steal their munitions, they fought back. The following day, Virginians at Williamsburg reacted similarly when the Brits robbed their magazine, though no shots were fired in Virginia.

As the fighting escalated into full-scale war, the colonists were not of one mind. There were three distinct factions: those opposed to British rule; those loyal to Britain, and those who were neutral. Estimates range from only one-third to as many as forty percent of the colonists actually opposed the Crown.

Today, we see similarities to the mid-eighteenth century. The federal government has been growing slowly but steadily for most of its existence, and especially since the 1930s. With the shocking expansion accompanying the Obama administration’s assumption of the White House, the federal government will spend nearly one of every four dollars in the economy, up from just less than one in every five last year.

And people are taking notice. Finally.

A rather spirited opposition is rising against the mounting encroachments of the federal government into the lives of the people. In response to various stimuli the government, among other things, has:

~ taken charge of banks and auto manufacturing,

~ created trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see,

~ stated its intention to implement a massive overhaul of the healthcare system that most certainly will nationalize healthcare,

~ passed legislation that will impose dire restrictions on the conventional sources of energy and dramatically raise costs to business thus increasing the costs of nearly everything to the people.

Many people see what is happening as returning to the state of things in 1775, watching as their freedoms are being taken away and they resent that they don’t have anything to say about it.

As in the 1770s the people are not of one mind. And like in that time, a small minority can effect great change.

We have already had Tea Parties to protest the injustices we see. Ted Cruz, Republican candidate for Texas Attorney General addressed the East Texas Tea Party on July 4 on just this subject:

“That’s the spirit that is under assault right now, today, in Washington. When government takes over everything, the people who lose are the people. Our freedoms are what are lost when everything is drawn into Washington, DC.

“I’m absolutely convinced the greatest legacy Barack Obama is going to leave in the Presidency is a new generation of leaders rising up, throughout the country, to stand up and defend our liberty. The men and women here will fight for our freedom. We will stand up. We will turn this around.

…

“I will end with the words of Thomas Jefferson: ‘If citizens fear their government, there is tyranny. But if government fears their citizens, there is liberty.’”

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Technorati Tags: Freedom, Politics, Government, Statists

Palin continues to confuse her enemies

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin continues to confound political observers. The woman whose sudden entrance onto the national political stage so badly confused the liberal machine last fall has just as suddenly announced her departure, unexpectedly announcing her resignation as Governor last Friday, less than three years into her term.

You can evaluate Mrs. Palin’s political effectiveness by looking at how people reacted to her. The barrage of gutter-level personal attacks after Sen. John McCain chose her as his running mate was swift and vicious. So badly flummoxed was the opposition that they stooped to personal attacks that targeted the Palin children, which successfully demonstrated the lack of class and civility of the attackers, and actually helped Gov. Palin.

This strategy found a new low when comic David Letterman suggested that Mrs. Palin’s 14 year-old daughter had had a sexual encounter with a baseball player during a game at Yankee Stadium. He then made disparaging remarks about the Governor’s appearance.

Is this the best the left can do?

This behavior epitomizes the undisciplined mind of fringe liberals, who are so hypnotically linked to their ideology that they cannot accept the idea that everyone doesn’t agree with them, and when people don’t agree with them, they lose control.

Gov. Palin’s enemies in Alaska pursued ethics charges against her that lacked merit, but were expensive to defend, and proved to be a substantial distraction. Politics can often be a dirty game.

The Democratic National Committee committed an unforced error with this reaction: "Either Sarah Palin is leaving the people of Alaska high and dry to pursue her long shot national political ambitions or she simply can't handle the job now that her popularity has dimmed and oil revenues are down. Either way – her decision to abandon her post and the people of Alaska who elected her continues a pattern of bizarre behavior that more than anything else may explain the decision she made today."

Even if every slam against Mrs. Palin in that statement was true, you’d think the DNC would be happy that its enemy is stepping down. Message to the DNC: Sometimes it’s better to just keep quiet.

What millions of Americans like about Mrs. Palin is her basic “normalness”: She is one of us. An attractive wife and mother, college educated, a church-goer, a person with a simple lifestyle, a woman who willingly gave birth to a Down syndrome child instead of aborting it … she could be our next door neighbor. And that is what freaked out the opposition so effectively. Her broad, “normal American” appeal presented an image contrary to everything the radicals believe in, and the only way they could neutralize that appeal was to attack her personally and try to belittle her. But that tactic failed.

Would Sarah Palin have been a good Vice President? Like everyone else, she has weaknesses, and despite her natural appeal didn’t always come across as someone that could run a country. She isn’t a polished and eloquent speaker, but then, consider Joe Biden’s frequent gaffs. She doesn’t have foreign policy experience, but then neither does Barack Obama. However, unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Sen. McCain, she does have executive experience as a mayor, the head of a state commission, and a governor. And she has proven that she will take on entrenched political factions and win.

So the jury is still out on that question. But the opposition must have been worried, given its frenzied attack strategy.

Suddenly stepping down as governor in mid-term, however, has everyone wondering what is going on, including her supporters. Even the most positive evaluations say this move is risky if Mrs. Palin hopes to have a future in politics. With the decision to walk away, she has branded herself a “quitter,” despite whatever good reasons she may have for stepping down. And, predictably, her enemies are having a field day playing guessing games.

She’s fed up with the pettiness of her opposition and with the nastiness of politics, and the toll her sudden prominence has taken on her children, who are supposed to be off limits from the normal sewer-tactics of the political game. In her statement last Friday, she said: “Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I’ve been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations – such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters’ questions. Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed.” But there are still hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills to pay. Who could blame her for wanting to escape that?

But maybe there is something ugly lying beneath the surface yet to be discovered, an actual scandal, instead of a made-up scandal. Right now, nobody knows for sure, and until something substantive actually comes to light, everyone would be well advised to keep quiet, behave themselves, and make an honest effort to be mature, responsible adults.

There is a strong feeling that those expectations are too high.

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Palin, Democrats

Random thoughts on a Thursday

Spencer Pratt: 9/11 Was an "Inside Job"

That headline appeared on the MSN Home Page when I opened it today, and was followed by this: “Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag Pratt shared some controversial views on a radio show earlier this week.

“In a Monday appearance on Alex Jones' radio show, Infowars, the couple revealed they feel 9/11 was an ‘inside job,’ say the idea that global warming exists is ‘mind boggling’ and lament the ‘end of humanity.’”

I’ll have to confess that my reaction was less than charitable: “Who is Spencer Pratt; who is Heidi Montag Pratt; and why should anyone give a tinker’s damn what they think?”

I decided that despite my general feeling of not caring to know the answer to that question I would go to the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia, to see what I could learn, and found this: “Spencer William Pratt (born August 14, 1983) is an American television personality known for his role as the antagonistic husband of Heidi Montag on MTV's The Hills. He is the older brother of Stephanie Pratt, who also appears on The Hills.”

Well, I feel much better now. Just knowing that Spencer and Heidi are involved with MTV confirms my initial reaction of not giving a tinker’s damn, and also explains why I’d never heard of either of them. Or their show.

Then I found an email containing a story that I had read a while back, but had forgotten about that does a great job of explaining the fallacies of liberal-think/socialism.

An economics professor at a local college made the statement to one of his classes that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked, and that in a society where no one would be poor and no one would be rich, life would be wonderful.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade; no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little for the first test had studied even less this time, and the ones who studied hard for the first test decided they wanted a free ride, too, so they also studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the third test rolled around, predictably, the average was lower, still.

The scores never increased, but the bickering, blame and name-calling did, and the resulting hard feelings meant that no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To the students’ great surprise the experiment in socialistic grading resulted in all the students failing the class. The professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because, like sharing grades, when the rewards are great, the effort to succeed is great, but when the rewards are taken away, no one will want t try to be successful.

That’s a pretty effective explanation of how socialism works and why it is evil.

(Thanks to John B. for the reminder.)

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Technorati Tags: Liberalism, Politics, Socialism

Democrats ram largest-ever tax bill through House

The House of Representatives passed the 1,200-plus page Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade tax bill by a narrow margin as the last piece of business on Friday before heading home for the Fourth of July recess. Once again House members had to vote on a bill they hadn’t read, since co-sponsor Henry Waxman (D-CA) added a 300-page amendment just after 3 o’clock Friday morning.

Fearing the vote on the controversial American Clean Energy and Security Act – the largest tax increase in American history – would not go their way, Democrats called one lawmaker in from rehab to help out. According to The Hill, “In a clear sign that Democrats need every vote they can get on climate change legislation, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) has returned from medical treatment for alcoholism to vote on the bill. Kennedy, who has missed every vote since going into rehab on June 12, was seen on the House floor talking to his Democratic colleagues.”

Among the 219 “Aye” votes were Mr. Kennedy and eight Republicans, all of whom did a disservice to their constituents. Among the 212 “No” votes were 44 Democrats who deserve recognition for seeing this measure as the disaster-in-waiting that it is.

With the final margin a very thin seven votes, the eight Republicans essentially passed the bill that The Heritage Foundation called “nothing more than an energy tax in disguise” that will raise the cost of electricity.

Even President Barack Obama acknowledges that the $65 billion tax will cause electricity costs to rise: “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” the President told the San Francisco Chronicle in January. Electric utilities, he said, “will have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will have to pass that money on to consumers.”

In addition to electricity costs cap-and trade will also increase the cost of everything that electricity and fossil fuels are used for, and those higher costs will produce job losses, an increase in the federal debt, and a weaker economy. “The reality is when all the tax impacts have been added up, the average per-family-of-four costs rise by $2,979 per year,” Heritage estimates. “In the year 2035 alone, the cost is $4,609. And the costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035 are $71,493.”

Democrats counter that according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Waxman-Markey would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. But critics point out that the CBO analysis looked only at the day-to-day costs of the program, and not at the entire set of economic consequences of energy restriction. A CBO footnote acknowledges as much: "The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap.”

Prior to the vote Friday, Michigan Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter told the House that “passing this abominable energy tax on working families in a recession shows this job-killing, budget-busting government doesn’t understand how much real Americans are hurting for work. This is the hubris of big government: the delusion that our families’ economic future rests in the manicured hands of Congress rather than in the hard-working hands of the American people. I disagree and I urge the rejection of this bill.”

Undaunted by the dire predictions of analysts, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blundered forward with the vote, and won, if you can call heaping monumental additional costs on your constituents and other Americans “winning.” Some Democrats aren’t happy about this bill and even environmental groups are opposed to it because, despite all of the additional costs and other harm the amended version will heap on Americans, organizations like Greenpeace believe the form of the bill that was passed is too weak.

The good news is that the bill will have a much harder time in the Senate, and may not even be brought up for a vote.

Cap-and-trade is a scheme to push the U.S. toward “green,” renewable energy despite compelling evidence against mankind contributing significantly to global warming, or global cooling, whichever it is this week. As time passes, the manmade climate change theory is increasingly out of favor with both scientists and regular Americans.

Hardly anyone supports continuing to pour pollutants into the air when there are clean alternatives. The problem is that green alternatives are not viable alternatives; wind, solar and the other clean technologies aren’t well enough developed yet to replace coal, oil and natural gas as major energy sources, and they are more expensive than conventional energy. Trying to force their development by making conventional energy so expensive that no one can afford it is cruel, and trying to put green energy in place before it is ready is foolish.

July 4th is a few days away. There is no better time to look at over-reaching government efforts like cap-and-trade and healthcare reform and consider them in the context of why we celebrate the 4th of July. Everyone who understands the fundamental concepts of freedom that are behind the Declaration of Independence will reject both ideas.

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Technorati Tags: Energy, Politics, Economy, Democrats

API survey shows Americans don’t have a clear picture on energy issues

The American Petroleum Institute has just released the results of its third annual “Energy IQ” survey, and it reflects that Americans’ knowledge about energy issues is lacking. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, comes as President Obama and Congress are pursuing aggressive energy and climate policies that threaten the nation’s economy, and which will determine America’s economic competitiveness for years to come.

Some high points from the survey:

• When asked about the role fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal will play in meeting global energy demand, only 10 percent of respondents answered correctly that fossil fuels will meet 85 percent of this demand. This is the second consecutive year this number has dropped even though EIA figures for future U.S. reliance on fossil fuels have risen by five percent since 2008.

• According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), 12 percent of the oil consumed last year in the U.S. came from the Persian Gulf countries. Only 7 percent of respondents chose correctly, while more than 40 percent believed that over 30 percent of our oil supply came from the Persian Gulf.

• Fifty-three percent of respondents believed that Saudi Arabia was the largest U.S. supplier of imported crude oil. In fact, according to the DOE, Canada is our largest supplier.

The survey showed that Americans have a poor understanding about the financial implications of the oil and natural gas industry:

• Only 15 percent of respondents knew that six million Americans are employed directly or indirectly by the oil and natural gas industry.

• Only 9 percent of respondents knew that oil companies pay more than 40 percent in income taxes as a share of their income. The majority thought that it was less than 30 percent, and one-third of all respondents believed companies pay less than 15 percent.

• Similarly, when asked how much the oil and natural gas industry paid in taxes over the past three years, only 10 percent of respondents answered correctly—$242 billion. One quarter of respondents believed that the U.S. oil and natural gas industry contributed less than $100 billion.

• More than 40 percent of respondents believed that the oil and natural gas industry earn more than 20 cents per every dollar of sales. In fact, the industry earns just below 6 cents on every dollar.

The survey also found that other misconceptions exist about U.S. oil company stock ownership and industry investment in alternative fuels.

Take the survey and see how much you know.

See the results of the survey.

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Technorati Tags: Energy, Politics, Economy, Government