Crippling Our Economy for the Sake of Green Myths

 

John Stossel: Going "green" | Washington Examiner

Awesome Article on Fallacies of Green Thinking. Some Highlights:

Al Gore's group, Repower America, claims we can replace all our dirty energy with clean, carbon-free renewables. Gore says we can do it within 10 years...

"It's simply not possible," says Robert Bryce, author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy." "Nine out of 10 units of power that we consume are produced by hydrocarbons -- coal, oil and natural gas. Any transition away from those sources is going to be a decades-long, maybe even a century-long process. ... The world consumes 200 billion barrels of hydrocarbons per day. We would have to find the energy equivalent of 23 Saudi Arabias."...

How about wind power?

"Wind does not replace oil. This is one of the great fallacies, and it's one that the wind energy business continues to promote," Bryce said....

The media rave about Denmark, which gets some power from wind. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says, "If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark. "Friedman doesn't fundamentally understand what he's talking about," Bryce said. Bryce's book shows that Denmark uses eight times more coal and 25 times more oil than wind.(emphasis added)

"One nuclear power plant in Texas covers about 19 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Manhattan. To produce the same amount of power from wind turbines would require an area the size of Rhode Island. This is energy sprawl." To produce the same amount of energy with ethanol, another "green" fuel, it would take 24 Rhode Islands to grow enough corn. (emphasis added)

Thank goodness we now have an administration that makes decisions based on science, not superstition or ideology!

An Environment Catastrophe In the Gulf But ANWAR is Safe

Monday, May 31, 2010

Oil spill culprits run deep | obama, oil, deep - Opinion - The Orange County Register

Here's my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place? Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama's tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Krauthammer implies there is a downside to banning offshore drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the Alaskan wilderness. Doesn't he know that leftist policies have no downsides? The Left has repealed the laws of nature, they can:

- hobble the economy by cutting off energy resources and LOWER unemployment (thanks to all those windmill and solar panel jobs - ask Spain how that's working out for them)
- raise taxes to confiscatory levels on the most productive in our society without sapping their incentives to create wealth for the society
- give everyone in the nation access to free healthcare but not create massive shortages and rationing
- SPEND their way out of a debt crisis

Come on, Krauthammer, your thinking is so 19th century!

Don't Flush MY Money Down The Greek Toilet

This is from a free email newsletter by John Mauldin.  An incredible resource on economics and finance:

Should the US Bail Out European Banks?

The obvious answer to the above question, at least on this side of the Atlantic, is no. But that is the plan being foisted on US tax-payers by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF wants to create a $250 billion dollar bailout fund for Greece, Portugal, et al that the US will contribute roughly 20% to. This fund will loan money and that IMG debt will be subordinate (junior!) to regular Greek debt, so when Greece does default, and they will, the IMF is the last in line to get paid.
Where will the money go? It will buy mostly Greek rollover debt from European banks getting out of their Greek debt. It is a back door bailout for German and French banks. The US Senate voted 94-0 that the US should not fund any such debt if the Treasury cannot certify the probability of getting repayment. If the Obama administration allows this funding to go through, the hue and cry will be large. It is bad enough that we have to pay for Freddie and Fannie (already $400 billion and counting!). Not meaning to be churlish, but the French and Germans can bail out their own banks.

Don't let them tell you we are bailing out the Greeks - we are once again bailing out the big bankers (didn't Pres Obama refer to them as "Fat Cats?") but this time FRENCH and GERMAN FAT CATS.  And the sad fact is that this bailout has no chance of saving the Greeks - it's just money down the toilet.