Back to Basics

Being a US president on the primary ballot in a coal producing state and losing ten counties and 40 percent of the overall vote to a challenger who’s in a federal prison 1,200 miles away will prompt you to make some messaging tweaks.

From The Hill:

The Obama campaign added a section on “clean coal” to its website this week after House Republicans alleged that the president’s “all-of-the-above” energy plan neglected the fossil fuel.

“President Obama has set a 10-year goal to develop and deploy cost-effective clean coal technology,” the website now says.

“The Recovery Act invested substantially in carbon capture and sequestration research, including 22 projects across four different areas of carbon capture-and-storage research and development.”

As of Wednesday, the website did not include “clean coal” in a graphic outlining the president’s much-touted “all-of-the-above” energy plan. The graphic mentions oil, natural gas, biofuels, wind, solar and nuclear.

Asked about the change, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said “clean coal” has “been an essential part of the president’s all-of-the-above energy strategy.”

Environmentalists and others say there’s no such thing as “clean coal.” Drudge has a link to Joe Biden in 2007 saying that coal power and corn syrup are greater threats to humanity than terrorism. First the same sex marriage conflict, and now this? Who will be the one to evolve this time?

Unprecedented! As bills to extend seemingly perpetual wind energy subsidies were again introduced by industry lobbyists late last year, taxpayers finally decided they’d had enough.

Informed and inspired by a loose but growing national coalition of groups opposed to more giveaways with no scientifically proven net benefits, thousands of citizens called their senators and representatives – and rounded up enough Nay votes to run four different bills aground. For once, democracy worked.

A shocked American Wind Energy Association and its allies began even more aggressive recruiting of well-connected Democrat and Republican political operatives and cosponsors – and introducing more proposals like HR 3307 to extend the Production Tax Credit (PTC). Parallel efforts were launched in state legislatures, to maintain mandates, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, renewable energy credits, and other “temporary” ratepayer and taxpayer obligations.

This “emerging industry” is “vitally important” to our energy future, supporters insisted. It provides “clean energy” and “over 37,000” jobs that “states can’t afford to lose.” It helps prevent global warming.

None of these sales pitches holds up under objective scrutiny, and their growing awareness of this basic reality has finally made many in Congress inclined to eliminate this wasteful spending on wind power.

Entitlement advocates are petrified at that possibility. Crony corporatist lobbyists and politicians have built a small army to take on beleaguered taxpayers, rate payers and business owners who say America can no longer afford to spend more borrowed money, to prop up energy policies that drive up electricity costs, damage the environment, and primarily benefit foreign conglomerates and a privileged few.

To confront the growing onslaught of wind industry pressure and propaganda, citizens should understand the fundamental facts about wind energy. Here are some of the top reasons for opposing further handouts.

Energy 101. It is impossible to have wind turbines without fossil fuels, especially natural gas. Turbines average only 30% of their “rated capacity” – and less than 5% on the hottest and coldest days, when electricity is needed most. They produce excessive electricity when it is least needed, and electricity cannot be stored for later use. Hydrocarbon-fired backup generators must run constantly, to fill the gap and avoid brownouts, blackouts, and grid destabilization due to constant surges and falloffs in electricity to the grid. Wind turbines frequently draw electricity from the grid, to keep blades turning when the wind is not blowing, reduce strain on turbine gears, and prevent icing during periods of winter calm.

Energy 201. Despite tens of billions in subsidies, wind turbines still generate less than 3% of US electricity. Thankfully, conventional sources keep our country running – and America still has centuries of hydrocarbon resources. It’s time our government allowed us to develop and use those resources.

Economics 101. It is likewise impossible to have wind turbines without perpetual subsidies – mostly money borrowed from Chinese banks and future generations. Wind has never been able to compete economically with traditional energy, and there is no credible evidence that it will be able to in the foreseeable future, especially with abundant natural gas costing one-fourth what it did just a few years ago.

Somehow, this makes perfect sense. The poo-flinging White House wants to convert chicken manure to energy.

Yes, really:

A White House Business Council roundtable headed by U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan S. Adelstein was held here Friday at Cambridge International.

Improving economic conditions and creating jobs in the “Green Economy” industries involved in renewable energy solutions was the subject of Friday morning’s discussion among 25 representatives of regional businesses and government agencies.

Following the roundtable discussion, Adelstein spoke with the press, saying the gathering in Cambridge was one of 100 roundtables held throughout the country, all facilitated by key administrators in various federal agencies.

“The president has made a top priority of increasing the number of green jobs in the country,” Adelstein said. And it is already happening, he said, with 2 million green
jobs created in the U.S. during the past three years.

Many of those jobs were the result of the Obama Administration’s allocation of $80 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act towards clean energy projects, Adelstein said.

Another goal of the renewable energy jobs initiative is to slow the effects of global warming. Adelstein said reversing global warming is not likely but, “you can arrest it” by decreasing use of energy sources that cause greenhouse gases.

Burning chicken litter and manure to create electricity was a leading topic of discussion during the roundtable, Adelstein said, an idea that has been proposed by poultry companies in Maryland in the past, and been passed on in this state because of environmental concerns.

After what I believe was the “umpteenth” time I’ve heard yet another GOP establishment-type (means they’re on the distinctly liberal side of the Republican leadership) I thought it was finally time to address the problem. Last week on Fox News, Ed Rollins (Republican campaign consultant and former campaign manager for presidential candidate “she’s-out-of-control” Michelle Bachmann — Note: with statements like that about Bachmann one wonders if Rollins was working all along to unseat her candidacy) said again that “Obama is a nice man.” As Obama continues to berate Speaker of the House John Boehner, Boehner has also repeatedly said Obama is a “nice guy.” And now Republican assumed 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney also says — repeatedly and ad nauseam — that “Obama’s a nice guy.” Really? In fact, Romney says it so often that one wonders if he plans to take the proverbial dive for Obama in 2012 as McCain strongly appeared to do in 2008.

However, the truth is that Obama is not only the worst “president” of the United States of America (ineligible or not) but, he is arguably the most corrupt, mean-spirited, ungracious and arrogant twaddle-talking, America and American-people-hating resident of our White House whom we have ever had to suffer. What “nice man” would force you to buy something you don’t want and then takeover your personal health care? What “nice man” would take away all of your energy resources (Obama is actively and systematically — as he promised — shutting down virtually ALL US coal plants and is now daily demeaning oil producers…his next target) and leave you with virtually no way to heat and cool your homes or cook? Grass and sod huts for We-the-Serfs is coming soon if the Marxists remain in power. And, what “nice guy” formulates a plan (with his wholly-owned Congress) to monitor American citizens’ (who oppose him and his subjugation plans) private calls and emails in order to make a case against anyone who openly disagrees with him (see CISPA)? What “nice man” would willingly and enthusiastically destroy the US economy in order to make his true masters even wealthier via the decimation of the American people?

Further, what “nice man” or “nice guy” would work with his Marxist-Congress to do away with the US Constitution beginning with its Bill of Rights? Yet, that is precisely what he, Duchess Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats and leftist Republicans are attempting. While the Constitution requires ¾ of the States’ ratification of ANY new Amendment, Pelosi is bound and determined to bypass them and the people of this country and have Congress simply shove one more blatantly unconstitutional bill through — against the will of the governed…or now “ruled” as it were. While Obama issues one unconstitutional and slave-making Executive Order after another and is now openly working to end ALL energy (save the non-working and non-viable “green” energy companies — which are merely slush funds and Obama money-laundering ventures) and liberties in the USA, Congress is also bypassing the Constitution and issuing one Orwellian illegal bill after another.

On April 18th I received an email from the Sierra Club announcing that “We’re endorsing President Obama for reelection. We’ve made too much progress over the past four years to give it all back to Big Polluters.”

Among the Sierra Club’s many projects to plunge the nation back to the golden days of reading by candle light and transportation by horse has been “Beyond Oil.” It praised the President for implementing “the toughest fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks in history.” Never mind that this has driven up the cost of cars and trucks or that the price of gasoline at the pump is headed toward historic highs.

The Center for Automotive Research has warned that overly stringent standards could add $10,000 to the cost of a new car, thereby decreasing sales, reducing production, and thereby destroying as many as 220,000 jobs. A 2002 National Academy of Sciences study concluded that CAFÉ’s downsizing effect makes cars less safe and contributed to as many as 2,600 deaths per year.

The enemy for the Sierra Club and others like Friends of the Earth has long been coal and oil, but coincidently on the same day, the U.S. Department of the Interior, no friend to either energy source, released its “Global Estimate for Undiscovered, Technically Recoverable Conventional Oil and Gas Resources.”  It is an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey.

U.S. has Largest Energy Reserves on Earth

The estimate, however, excluded data on the U.S. resources. In March 2011, however, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report that revealed that America’s combined energy reserves are the largest on Earth. We sit atop an estimated 163 billion barrels of oil, domestic and offshore. The U.S. accounts for more than 28% of the world’s coal reserves, at least 262 billion tons. Natural gas? We have, conservatively, an estimated 2,047 trillion cubic feet.

The worldwide estimates for recoverable oil are in the billions of barrels but thanks to Obama’s Interior Department fewer leases to explore and extract it on federal owned lands have been issued and some have been reversed. When you add in the fiasco caused by two moratoriums on drilling the Gulf of Mexico, both ruled illegal by the courts, the true intent of the administration is well known and established.

In the wake of Earth Day with all its usual lies about “peak oil”, the “Global Estimate” concluded that the world “holds an estimated 585 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable conventional oil.” In addition, it estimated that were is “5,606 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable conventional natural gas” and “167 barrels” of comparable natural gas liquids.”

For reasons known only to those who set energy policy in the U.S., according to the Institute for Energy Research, “fossil fuel (coal, oil, and natural gas) production on Federal and Indian lands is the lowest in the nine (9) years” that the U.S. Energy Information Administration has issued such reports. It is six percent less than in Fiscal year 2010.

Americans are being deliberately starved of the energy sources we have in abundance.

We are being robbed in the form of higher prices for electricity produced in the most expensive fashion, wind and solar, instead of affordable coal. Not only are gasoline prices up, but the government continues to demand more mileage per gallon of gas.

Regular readers here know all about the Obama administration’s vision for algae. Truth be known, this entire blog is powered by algae — that and electricity generated by burning coal. However, the greens in government who are handing out taxpayer money, forward thinkers that they are, like to avoid putting all of their egg whites in one biodegradable basket. Enter spinach:

The EPA awarded a $90,000 grant over the weekend to Vanderbilt University students “who designed a biohybrid solar panel that substitutes a protein from spinach for expensive silicon wafers that are energy intensive to produce, and is capable of producing electricity.”
[...]
They won the grant despite “nagging doubts about how the slight power from the panel would convince the judges,” one Vanderbilt professor explained.

When I was a kid my mother would make me eat spinach and then try to harness the power of my projectile vomiting to run the sewing machine, but could never quite master the technology. If only there were “green” grants back then we might have been able to develop it further — or at least gotten rich off taxpayers for producing nothing of any particular use in the real world. A win-win either way.

The Vanderbilt students only got $90,000? They should have focused on designing and manufacturing an energy efficient $50 light bulb and they might have been awarded $10 million.

Possibly coming soon to an Obama spinach-promoting green energy speech in the near future: “Popeye discovered the value of spinach as fuel a long time ago. It’s how he weaned himself from his dependence on Oyl.”

::Steven Chu rimshot::

The eco-Dumbledores in the current administration have magical powers when it comes to increasing prices, but when it comes to lowering them they act as if they have fewer options than Dobby in a big & tall shop.

From CNS News:

“Not even Harry Potter” can bring down rising gas prices and nobody knows when they will stop rising, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday.

“No one has the ability – not even Harry Potter – to simply wave a magic wand and say that we’re going to have gas prices at $2 or $2.50 or $3. It just doesn’t work that way,” said Salazar, whose department controls oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

The comments came after a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on energy issues.

Salazar said prices are set by “global economics.” On that point, here’s David Harsanyi at Human Events:

This is true. Then again, erecting roadblocks to domestic production is part of the global economic picture. And Ken Salazar has done exemplary work in that regard.

Indeed. Or in language more fitting to Mr. Salazar’s theme, his department serves as Bludgers in U.S. economy’s game of Quidditch.

Video from the Daily Caller:

The debt has increased over $5 trillion since Obama took office (cleaning up Bush’s mess was expensive), so we’ll see in November how this “double down” talk goes over, especially when he’s talking about doubling down in a graveyard of taxpayer money that’s littered with bankruptcy after bankruptcy.

This is President Obama in Michigan yesterday:

I want clean energy to happen here in the United States. I want advanced batteries made here in the Unites States. I want electric cars made here in the United States. I want solar and wind power made here in the United States. We’ve been subsidizing oil companies with taxpayer giveaways for about a hundred years now. It’s time to double down on clean energy that’s never been more promising.

And with great examples like this and this and this and this and this and this and these, how could anybody not get caught up in the promise?

Video by way of HAP:

2008′s speeches are going to be a tougher sell in 2012.

This country will never fully embrace algae as long as people can afford gasoline, and Joe Kennedy v3.0 is running on a platform of doing something about that.

From the Daily Caller:

As gas prices continue to soar around the country, Joe Kennedy III, the Democratic candidate for Rep. Barney Frank’s seat, wrote an online letter to supporters calling for an end to “cheap oil.”

“Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama — they’ve all talked about the same thing: the need to wean ourselves off our debilitating dependence on foreign oil,” Kennedy wrote.

“The cycle that allows cheap oil to trump tough choices has to stop,” he continued. “Forty years is enough.”

Presumably the “tough choices” Kennedy is referring to, as evidenced by the lack of any reference to increasing domestic production as a replacement for oil imported from foreign countries, is the switch to cleaner forms of energy. That’s interesting coming from somebody whose family fought tooth and nail to put a halt to Cape Wind.

Last month we talked about the company that won the “L Prize” in the 60 watt replacement bulb category. This particular prize, awarded by the Department of Energy, is where taxpayers gave $10 million to the company that could develop a money and energy saving product that, as it turns out, is going to initially sell for around $50 per bulb. Somehow this all saves the taxpaying public money.

The winning bulb will be available on Earth Day:

How much would you pay for an amazing, state-of-the-art light bulb? Shoppers will be asking themselves that very question at Home Depot and other outlets starting Sunday — Earth Day — when the bulb that won a $10 million government contest goes on sale.

The bulb is the most energy-efficient yet, lasts about 20 years and is supposed to give off a pleasing, natural-looking light. But what separates it from the pack most is the price: $60.

That price reflects the cost of the components, especially the top-notch chips, or diodes, that give off the light, and is the price commercial customers will pay. But the manufacturer, Netherlands-based Philips, is discounting it right away to $50 for consumers, and working on deals with electric utilities to discount it even further, by as much as $20 to $30.

This means the bulb will cost anywhere from $20 to $60, depending on where it’s found. Online, consumers will be paying $50 for each bulb, because utilities don’t subsidize online sales.

According to the Department of Energy and Philips, at four hours of use per day, the award-winning bulb will last 20 years — a claim I’ll believe after somebody uses one for 20 years. The DOE also said their $38.6 billion “green” loan programs would “create or save” over 60,000 jobs when the actual number is a fraction of that, so pardon my skepticism about the alleged life span of DOE promoted light bulbs. If Al Gore refers to me as a “green bulb denier,” so be it.

What helped Philips win the $10 million L Prize? The best bulb? Definitely — but it was hard not to have the best bulb in this category given the fact that no other company submitted a product for DOE review.