Ecogeek on 2008 Cleantech

Ecogeek runs out a pretty good list of innovations from 2008. The only one we have not covered is the light antenna, which is an oversight that I am sure that I will soon get to. This will perhaps remind us that we live in exciting times, and for once that means that we are not dodging bullets.

I would add the not yet visible emergence of real nanotechnology from the labs of which EEStor is a sniff. We can do it, and we are working full out to master the art with our powerful computers.

Expect to see real three dimensional manipulation as part of a manufacturing protocol shortly.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2422/73/

7 Cleantech Stories of 2008 that will Change Everything

Written by Hank Green

Thursday, 01 January 2009

It can sometimes be a little unclear (especially first day of a new year) how the previous year changed the world. No one guessed in 1946 that the Magnetron Spencer Percy was developing for use in a RADAR system (and that subsequently melted a candy bar in his pocket) would one day become the microwave oven. But I like to think that we can make some pretty good guesses about which of this year's innovations are going to be with us, and changing our world, for a good long time.

Here's my list of the top ten clean tech innovations of 2008.

Light Antennas

You know how you can capture and produce radio waves with antennas? Well, what if you could built an antenna so small, it could capture and emit light? The first large array of these nano-antennas was produced this year, and the possibilities for them are endless. They may become efficient light sources, efficient solar panels, or simple ways to transfer energy we feel as heat into energy that we don't feel at all, making them a kind of passive climate control system.

President Barack Obama

Maybe not an innovation in the traditional sense, though, I like to think that it took some innovative thinking to get this man elected president. But President Obama's Administration has already grown to include clean technology advocates and researchers, and carries with it promises of green collar jobs, carbon markets, and restored protections for many of our imperiled ecosystems.

EEStor Begins to Emerge

The power storage company, EEstor, which we're still not 100% sure isn't full of crap did finally begin to tell us some things about their miraculous-sounding power storage technology. If true, vehicles could have batteries lighter than gas tanks, that could charge in five minutes and would never degrade. These ceramic "electrical energy storage units" have not yet seen the light of day (or independent verification) but they do already have contracts with Lockheed Martin and plans to deliver their first unit to an electric car company shortly.

The Gas Crunch

Hey...remember back when gas was freaking ridiculously expensive? Well, while the market may not (the Ford F-150 is, once again, America's most popular vehicle) the innovations that poured into the market to try and help consumers deal with high gas prices will not go away. Better hybrid systems, more efficient engines, massive investments in biofuels, the re-emergence of diesel in America were all direct implications of skyrocketing gas prices.

Solar at Grid Parity

The cost of delivering electrons to the grid has gone up a little bit in the past year, and the cost of delivering electrons to the grid using solar power has dropped dramatically. The first solar electrons costing roughly the same amount as natural gas electrons were produced this year. There's no reason to think that this trend will end, as natural gas gets more expensive, and solar systems get more efficient. In fact, one company is already promising solar power at the same price as coal!

Project Better Place Expands Wildly

While I'm still not 100% sure that Better Place, with it's many battery swapping stations, cell phone-like payment plans and "one sized battery fits all" platform makes the most sense, they have managed to get a lot of governments to bite. California, Hawaii, Australia and Denmark have all signed deals with Agassi's gigantically ambitious electric car program. It could all become extremely passe if EEStor's technology pans out. But otherwise it's one of the few solutions that will work now, instead of waiting for battery technology to catch up with our goals as car drivers.

Pickens Counterbalances Gore with a Real Vision

We've tired of Al Gore. The love affair was great while it lasted, but he's been attacked from too many angles to really latch onto his message anymore. But what about an ultra-conservative, Texas oil man? Now that's the kind of champion clean technology needs! And not only does he provide a different perspective, he provides a clear plan for how he wants to change our energy future. And while it might be a plan that would make him one of the richest people in the world, it's also actually a pretty good plan.

Cap and Trade

Today it is time to talk about cap and trade. I am sure now that it is going to be imposed as a priority program in the USA and very likely in both India and China. It can become the first international revenue/expenditure model in place that will help create common cause on a global scale.

It took the fear of global warming (wrong reason) to make this program possible. By monetizing the disposal of CO2, it becomes profitable to solve the problem. This means that it creates demand for solutions that is driven by something other than altruism. I have thought for years that any and all waste disposal problems were best monetized just like this so that the invisible hand of the market can do its magic. Otherwise that invisible hand is quite happy to send it downstream unto its neigbours.

We have reached an historical pass in which even the statist gimme crowd supports such an idea, although they would never admit that they are calling on Adam Smith. It is actually the right thing to do and it needs to be fully internationalized, while grandfathering and scheduling out the advantage players, including India and China.

I find it offensive that we have torn down obsolete super polluters and shipped them off to China. These are now twenty years older and long paid for and surely ready for disposal. Much better technologies are now available and need to be encouraged by fast write offs and loan support.

A really good start in the USA since the cash value of a ton of carbon may be about $40.00 would be to convert all agricultural subsidies into carbon credits upon the farm sequestering the appropriate ton of carbon in the farm’s soils. If Europe did the same, we will have killed two birds with one stone. The farmers will actually earn their subsidies. The subsidies will no longer be paid by the tax payer but by the carbon polluters. With any luck that will jump start the terra preta soil revolution in the USA.

It will also establish a new global agricultural regime that will be more easily directed into extending these same systems everywhere else. I would love to subsidize new terra preta soils in the Phillipines at the rate of $40 per acre per year per ton of carbon while converting tropical soils into lush croplands forever. That would swiftly put millions to work establishing family farms like the family farms that existed in the Amazon for thousands of years. And modern mechanization allows these operations to be economically sized and operated.

This will also swiftly end slash and burn agriculture.

I know that this can be done right. My misgivings come from the unlimited capacity of the stupid and ignorant to divert programs like this into their own dreams of self aggrandizement, making it all messy for everyone else.

We only need to look at the ease which the mortgage industry bought off Congress to prolong their death spiral to know how possible this is. Can we keep them honest or do we have to walk through a history of swindles before it is done right? I am not too trusting these days.

Roosevelt and his brain trust did get a lot of things right back in the thirties. That is why I was so disturbed when Congress merrily took of the governors as a late action of the Clinton administration. To be followed by a smuck whose grasp of economic history was modest and clearly prone to been hoodwinked by folks he thought were on his side.

Obama and his brain trust have an opportunity to get this right, principally because the folks in office on both sides of the house have a lot to account for. But he better be prepared for an arm wrestle. Clinton ran into an unchastened house that was unprepared to give up anything and this immediately emasculated him for the entirety of his mandate.

So far Obama’s cabinet choices are fairly conservative and certainly careful. And he already knows what is top of the agenda as the auto industry has been given a stay of execution for three months to sort things out.

By the way, a subsistence farmer can be expected, using terra preta, to sequester one ton per year of carbon while upgrading one acre of soil per year. Therefore, removing 100,000,000 tons of carbon per year requires 100,000,000 families to be paid $40 for a total of $4 billion dollars. Maybe we can get Mohammed Younis to administer the program rather than the UN.


Connecting the Carbon Dots

By Nick Hodge Friday, December 19th, 2008
Pee-Wee Herman used to sing, "Connect the dots... laa la laa la laa," as he leapt into the magic screen.

No, I haven't been hanging out with Pee-Wee in movie theaters. But his advice on connecting the dots is applicable in the context of financial and political realms... and the trends and investment ideas that emerge.

Since the election in November, a series of dots have been emerging that indicate it's time to take a serious look at recently-established carbon ETFs and ETNs.

Connecting the Carbon Dots

In naming his climate change and energy team last week, Mr. Obama nominated Lisa Jackson to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

In her previous position, Jackson led the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, where she is credited with helping put New Jersey in a leadership role on the issue of climate change and with encouraging the state to adopt a moratorium on building new coal plants.

She also championed the reduction of emissions. And, in 2007, New Jersey became the third state, behind California and Hawaii, to pass a law that mandates steep emissions cuts over the next four decades.

New Jersey, under Jackson's direction, also helped establish the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first mandatory, market-based CO2 emissions reduction program in the United States.

A "market-based" program means it is possible to profit from reducing emissions.

And I suspect, under her leadership, the EPA will push through a similar measure that covers the entire country. You may know it as a cap-and-trade system.

Her new boss is certainly on board. The 'agenda' section of his website has the following three things to say about changing our carbon habits:

· Reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions 80 Percent by 2050

· Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050

· Make the U.S. a Leader on Climate Change.

Obama has already said he'll consider asking the EPA to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, which is something they should've been doing already, but Bush declined to do so after saying that such a plan would turn the EPA into the "de facto regulator of the economy."

In response, Jackson sent a forceful letter to the EPA saying that "the past eight years have demonstrated a shocking, yet consistent, irresponsibility on the part of the federal government to engage in any meaningful way... in implementing sustainable solutions to reduce emissions."

I think the policies she intends to carry out in her new position are clear.

Here we have an attack rant against cap and trade. He is right of course, if no carbon ever gets sequestered, and he is not about to investigate the possibilities. The object is to monetize the carbon waste stream. My object is to use that to monetize the two billion or so subsistence farmers so that their enterprise is recognized as capital.



The Cap And Trade Fraud - Global Warming Scams

by Jack Ward

The big buzz in the political world is 'cap and trade'. What is cap and trade and where did this idea come from?

The cap and trade concept came from the UN's Kyoto Protocols. Cap and trade is based on the flawed premise that anthropogenic activities (humans) are causing global warming by increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The American Physical Society (APS), which represents nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its previous position on climate change. APS editor, Jeffrey Marque said, "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the ICCP (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution." The UN IPCC computer modeling contains numerous exaggerations and extensive errors which led to the global warming hoax.

Virtually all human activities (work and play) results in the release of CO2. A cap and trade scheme would limit the release of CO2 that countries, corporations, and individuals could emit. Those that exceed this arbitrary carbon cap would be required to buy or trade a carbon credit from a country, corporation or individual that did not exceed the arbitrary cap. A carbon credit is a permit that allows a country, corporation, or an individual to emit a specified amount of carbon dioxide. These credits are bought and sold on carbon trading markets just like stocks. Contrary to stocks that have an actual value, the value of carbon credits is artificially created by governments for the sole purpose of generation income from a commodity that has no actual value. In a free market economy no one in their right mind would pay good money for a commodity that has no value without government coercion.

The buying, selling, and trading carbon credits will not remove one molecule of CO2 from the atmosphere. But, the purpose is not to eliminate CO2, it is to generate income for the government, redistribute wealth, and control the people. Yet Obama said, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers."

According to the Congressional Budget Office this new energy tax will cost businesses and individuals trillions of dollars. In addition, legislative analysts have predicted that millions of jobs will be lost if legislation implementing the cap and trade proposal is passed. Once these schemes are allowed, the government will be able to regulate and control all carbon emissions. This will give the government complete control over travel, lifestyle and what ever businesses and citizens consume and produce. This is the change Obama desires.

Cap and trade advocates chose the Hegelian Dialectic to sell this draconian plan. Georg Hegel's theory of the dialectic was used by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to sell their economic theory of Communism. The Hegelian Dialectic is used to guide thoughts and actions that lead to a predetermined solution. Here is how it's done:

* First, create a problem of monumental proportions.

* Second, stir up hysteria by every means possible.

* Third, when people hysterically demand a solution to the contrived problem, offer predetermined solutions that will take away rights, cost considerable money, and put more power in the hands of the power-grabbing bureaucrats.

Global warming zealots are using the Hegelian Dialectic to push their environmental agenda to the detriment of the American people. People are being brainwashed into believing the planet is being threatened by global warming. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, even claims that she was elected to 'save the planet'. Al Gore, the self appointed high priest of global warming, lectures everyone to reduce their energy consumption. But don't be fooled. Neither Peolsi nor Gore walks the walk. Both are multi-millionaires that live in energy gobbling mansions.

These elitist Liberals want to re-create a serf / royalty society, with them representing the royalty class. You will know when this global warming hype is for real when Gore, Pelosi, and their ilk give up the amenities of the 'rich and famous' and live in 1600 sq. ft. houses, fly coach, and use mass transit. Until then, their hot air is the cause of global warming. Every aspect of your life will be adversely affected if our politicians are allowed to implement any of these fraudulent cap and trade schemes.

Jack Ward is an independent columnist

Benny Peiser on Poznan

To say that the players at Poznan are having sober second thoughts is an understatement. The science was supposed to be settled, yet now it is not. In the meantime CO2 has risen sharply while global temperatures flat lined and then recently dropped. I am still waiting for someone to come out with an explanation. We obviously will have to wait a while longer while a few more scientists can distance themselves from previous positions.

This article by Benny Peiser summarizes the reasons for the developing political collapse. The costs are been felt at the same time that the causation is evaporating. The true believers are still walking the walk to their shame as scientists. Eventually even the politicians will start jumping ship unless next spring delivers a convincing warm spell in the Arctic and global warming resumes. I look forward to been surprised.

Right now we are catching a very convincing cold winter with no surplus heat to spare anywhere. I would actually go so far as to predict that the global temperature drop of 0.7 degrees experienced last year will be added to this year by around 0.3 degrees. By the end of next year solar cycle 24 should be back in play and the temperature will then stabilize thereafter. Perhaps it will even get warm again.

None of this is good news for the believers who will need to keep up morale for at least another year. We are also not that far from catching weather like the late fifties when you could count on been hammered every winter just like now. In the meantime I will have to put on the winter boots tomorrow in Vancouver and expect repeats this year. Usually it is once slightly if at all.

DECEMBER 15, 2008, 4:57 P.M. ET

Cooling on Global Warming

Germany and the rest of Europe are getting more rational on climate change.

By BENNY PEISER From today's Wall Street Journal Europe

Participants at last week's United Nations climate conference in Poznan, Poland, were taken aback by a world seemingly turned upside-down. The traditional villains and heroes of the international climate narrative, the wicked U.S. and the noble European Union, had unexpectedly swapped roles. For once, it was the EU that was criticized for backpedalling on its CO2 targets while Europe's climate nemesis, the U.S., found itself commended for electing an environmental champion as president.

The wrangle over the EU's controversial climate package at a separate summit in Brussels wrong-footed the world's green bureaucracy. The EU climate deal was diluted beyond recognition. Instead of standing by plans to cut CO2 emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, the actual reductions might be as trivial as 4% if all exemptions are factored in.

The Brussels summit symbolizes a turning point. The watered-down climate deal epitomizes the onset of a cooling period in Europe's hitherto overheated climate debate. It may lead eventually to the complete abandonment of the unilateral climate agenda that has shaped Europe's green philosophy for nearly 20 years.

The reasons for the changing political atmosphere in Europe are manifold. First, the global economic crisis has demoted green policies nearer to the bottom of the political agenda. Saving the economy and creating jobs take priority now.

Second, disillusionment with the failed Kyoto Protocol has turned utopian thinking into sobriety. After all, most of the Kyoto signatories failed to reduce their CO2 emissions during the last 10 years. There are also growing doubts about the long-term viability of the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme. The price of carbon credits has collapsed as a result of the financial crisis. The drop in demand and the recession are likely to depress carbon prices for years to come. As a result, the effectiveness of the extremely volatile scheme is increasingly questioned.

Third, a number of countries have experienced a political backlash over their renewable energy schemes. Tens of billions of euros of taxpayers' money have been pumped into projects that depend on endless government handouts. Each of the 35,000 solar jobs in Germany, for instance, is subsidized to the tune of €130,000. According to estimates by the Rhine-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research, green subsidies will cost German electricity consumers nearly €27 billion in the next two years.

Perhaps even more important is the growing realization that the warming trend of the late 20th century has, for the last 10 years or so, essentially come to a temporary halt. The data collected by international meteorological offices confirm this. This most peculiar fact is rarely mentioned in policy debates, but it certainly provides decision makers with a vital respite to reconsider their climate policy options.

Above all, Europe's politicians have recognized that green taxes have turned into liabilities that may undermine economic stability and their chances of re-election. As German radio Deutsche Welle put it last week: "With the recession tightening its grip on the German economy, [Chancellor Angela] Merkel is betting that job reassurance is more important to the average worker than being a pioneer in tackling climate change."

Nowhere has the fundamental change of the political landscape been more pronounced and less expected than in Germany. For more than 20 years, Europe's economic powerhouse has been the major bastion of green politics.

In the 1990s, Angela Merkel steered and implemented Europe's Kyoto policy as Germany's first environment minister. Now serving as chancellor, she was hailed as Europe's climate savior after playing host to last year's G-8 summit in Heiligendamm. Only 18 months later, however, she no longer wears a halo. As a result of a concerted campaign by Germany's heavy industry, as well as growing opposition from within her Christian Democratic party, Mrs. Merkel has been forced to abandon her green principles and image.

The deepening economic crisis seems to transform the mood of the German public. Next year's general election looms large, and voters right now are worried about the economy and jobs, and not green issues.

In early December, more than 10,000 angry metal workers and trade unionists -- most of them from Germany -- protested outside the European Parliament in Brussels against the EU's climate policy, which they fear will increase unemployment.

For many international observers, the ease with which Mrs. Merkel overturned her celebrated climate policy has come as a shock. But she was almost the last member of her Christian Democratic party willing to accept that a change in strategy was necessary given the immense costs of the EU's original climate plans. In fact, her party demanded that Mrs. Merkel veto the climate package if German industry did not receive an exemption from the Emissions Trading Scheme's auctioning of carbon credits. The exemption was duly granted.

Perhaps the most critical factor for Mrs. Merkel's almost unchallenged about-face is the vanishing strength of the Social Democratic Party, whose members were once among the most forceful climate alarmists. Mrs. Merkel's junior coalition partner has lost much of its support in recent years. And amid growing fears of a deepening recession, there are also signs of a split within the party on climate and energy issues.

At the forefront of the left-wing opposition to the EU's climate policy has been EU Industry Commissioner Günter Verheugen. The German Social Democrat has been arguing throughout the year that the climate targets should only be accepted if "truly cost-effective solutions" could be found. Other prominent dissenters in his party include Hubertus Schmoldt, the head of the mining, chemical and energy industrial union, who has recently called for a two-year postponement of the climate package.

In part as a result of German -- as well as Italian and Polish -- objections, Europe's climate package did not survive in its original form. The inclusion of a revision clause, pushed by Italy, is particularly significant as it makes the EU's climate targets conditional on the outcome of international climate talks.

If the U.N.'s Copenhagen conference in 2009 fails to seal a post-Kyoto deal, it is as good as certain that some of the EU's targets will be further cut. By linking its decisions to those of the rest of the world, Europe has begun to act as a more rational player on the stage of international climate diplomacy.

Instead of yielding to the siren calls of climate alarmists, European governments would be well advised to focus their attention on developing pragmatic policies capable of safeguarding their industries, labor forces and environment at the same time.

The Moonbat Scenario

This article brings home something that the incoming administration needs to wake up to. You must not let your science policy be written by your speechwriters. Most folks attracted to the political world are simply not scientifically literate. They in fact join that vast pool of people who failed to arrive at anything close to college level competency in the sciences and who in fact escaped to the humanities where memory skills meant something and analytical skills were not overly organized.

The tragedy of our civilization is that our educators are grossly failing our children by their own failure to be properly scientifically literate. The Indians and the Chinese are not better at it than we are, they just understand how utterly important mathematical and scientific literacy is in understanding the world. Our educators sometimes pretend that it is not.

In any event, the reality is that our last few presidents were minimally scientifically literate at best. They solved this by getting a competent science advisor who was not a true believer in anything and knew how to steer the middle ground. The current president elect surely needs that as soon as possible before his true believer speech writers make a fool out of him. He does not need to get labeled like Jerry Brown did, some thirty years ago.

There are ways to placate the true believers while leaving all your options open. Particularly when Mother Nature is highly likely to be throwing cream pies in our face every time you talk about the subject and while that much touted consensus of scientific opinion is also busily distancing themselves just as quick as they can. They clearly understand what a .7 degree reversal in global temperatures after a two decade slow painful advance really means. It is time to leave Dodge. I am sure all the papers were written years ago and kept back until the weather changed.

I have never disputed the existence of a neat global warming trend through the nineties and holding up to 2007. My dispute came with the attempt to tie this to CO2 concentration when such an explanation was completely unnecessary in the first place. The sudden reversal throws that speculation out the window.

What we have instead is a remaining bubble of Global Warming belief that like the surplus heat that flowed into the Arctic last year, is about to abruptly dissipate in a very foul winter and an unwelcome return to far too normal conditions.

UK Paper: Obama Proposes 'Economic Suicide' for U.S. Based on 'Self-Deluding Lies' of Global Warming

'We have suddenly been plunged into a new age of superstition, where scientific evidence no longer counts'

UK TELEGRAPH

By Christopher Booker

November 29, 2008

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/30/do3010.xml

If the holder of the most powerful office in the world proposed a policy guaranteed to inflict untold damage on his own country and many others, on the basis of claims so demonstrably fallacious that they amount to a string of self-deluding lies, we might well be concerned. The relevance of this is not to President Bush, as some might imagine, but to a recent policy statement by President-elect Obama.

Tomorrow, delegates from 190 countries will meet in Poznan , Poland , to pave the way for next year's UN conference in Copenhagen at which the world will agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. They will see a video of Mr Obama, in only his second major policy commitment, pledging that America is now about to play the leading role in the fight to "save the planet" from global warming.

Mr Obama begins by saying that "the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear". "Sea levels," he claims, "are rising, coastlines are shrinking, we've seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."

Far from the science being "beyond dispute", we can only deduce from this that Mr Obama has believed all he was told by Al Gore's wondrously batty film An Inconvenient Truth without bothering to check the facts. Each of these four statements is so wildly at odds with the truth that on this score alone we should be seriously worried.

It is true that average sea levels are modestly rising, but no faster than they have been doing for three centuries. Gore's film may predict a rise this century of 20 feet, but even the UN's International Panel on Climate Change only predicts a rise of between four and 17 inches. The main focus of alarm here has been the fate of low-lying coral islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu .

Around each of these tiny countries, according to the international Commission on Sea Level Changes and other studies, sea levels in recent decades have actually fallen. The Indian Ocean was higher between 1900 and 1970 than it has been since. Satellite measurements show that since 1993 the sea level around Tuvalu has gone down by four inches.

Coastlines are not "shrinking" except where land is subsiding, as on the east coast of England , where it has been doing so for thousands of years. Gore became particularly muddled by this, pointing to how many times the Thames Barrier has had to be closed in recent years, unaware that this was more often to keep river water in during droughts than to stop the sea coming in.

Far from global warming having increased the number of droughts, the very opposite is the case. The most comprehensive study (Narisma et al, 2007) showed that, of the 20th century's 30 major drought episodes, 22 were in the first six decades, with only five between 1961 and 1980. The most recent two decades produced just three.

Mr Obama has again been taken in over hurricanes. Despite a recent press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming that 2008's North Atlantic hurricane season "set records", even its own release later admits that it only tied as "the fifth most active" since 1944. NOAA's own graphs show hurricane activity higher in the 1950s than recently. A recent Florida State University study of tropical cyclone activity across the world (see the Watts Up With That? website) shows a steady reduction over the past four years.

Alarming though it may be that the next US President should have fallen for all this claptrap, much more worrying is what he proposes to do on the basis of such grotesque misinformation. For a start he plans to introduce a "federal cap and trade system", a massive "carbon tax", designed to reduce America 's CO2 emissions "to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 per cent by 2050". Such a target, which would put America ahead of any other country in the world, could only be achieved by closing down a large part of the US economy.

Mr Obama floats off still further from reality when he proposes spending $15 billion a year to encourage "clean energy" sources, such as thousands more wind turbines. He is clearly unaware that wind energy is so hopelessly ineffective that the 10,000 turbines America already has, representing "18 gigawatts of installed capacity", only generate 4.5GW of power, less than that supplied by a single giant coal-fired power station.

He talks blithely of allowing only "clean" coal-fired power plants, using "carbon capture" - burying the CO2 in holes in the ground - which would double the price of electricity, but the technology for which hasn't even yet been developed. He then babbles on about "generating five million new green jobs". This will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by running around on treadmills, to replace all those "dirty" coal-fired power stations which currently supply the US with half its electricity.

If this sounds like an elaborate economic suicide note, for what is still the earth's richest nation, it is still not enough for many environmentalists. Positively foaming at the mouth in The Guardian last week, George Monbiot claimed that the plight of the planet is now so grave that even "sensible programmes of the kind Obama proposes are now irrelevant". The only way to avert the "collapse of human civilisation", according to the Great Moonbat, would be "the complete decarbonisation of the global economy soon after 2050".

For 300 years science helped to turn Western civilisation into the richest and most comfortable the world has ever seen. Now it seems we have suddenly been plunged into a new age of superstition, where scientific evidence no longer counts for anything. The fact that America will soon be ruled by a man wholly under the spell of this post-scientific hysteria may leave us in wondering despair.

Ghost of Herbert Hoover

There is a lot of froth about president elect Barack Obama facing the conditions faced by Roosevelt in 1932. It is time to restore the precepts of the New Deal and have a new ‘New Deal’ or so they say.

In fact the conditions faced today are those faced by Herbert Hoover in the winter of 1930 and his actions it is agreed stopped nothing and led to an exhausted economic bottom in 1932 when Roosevelt took over.

The Global money supply in the form of US credit instruments has collapsed. Trillions have simply disappeared. Every creditor is now looking for a new lender to replace the deal that just collapsed. And the underwriting method of reselling has blown up in everyone’s face because every new deal has an underwriter hole to fill.

A couple of trillion has been printed to stabilize the Global banking system. This has not been inflationary for the simple reason that it is merely replacing money invested in loans and lost over the past several years. When the banks cannot get their money back from the borrowers then the government must step in and fill the gap. And recall that it was government policy and serious regulatory blindness that was the cause of this train wreck.

Today we hear that the Chinese government is putting nearly a trillion of their reserves into their economy. This is very good news because they have just been handed a pause in their economic development in which they can monetize and grow the internal economy. If the world does not need Chinese goods for a year or two, then the Chinese certainly do.

This is a great time to introduce a proper pension system that reflects the cost of living and to establish western style social nets to stabilize the labor market. They have a good chance to come through this with a stronger and better regulated economy. The same holds true for India.

That leaves us with the huge consumption economies of the West. Wrong decisions now can accelerate this collapse and could easily wipe out half of the Globe’s purchasing power. We have already lost a lot and we could double that loss if the example of Herbert Hoover is followed. The problem is that the next round of losses will be borne by industry and their dependent workers.

We are now seeing how big a problem we have with the entire US auto industry looking for help. After all, they are in the finance business.

After they are patched up, it will be the turn of the workers who are also going to get hit very hard. Sorry folks, but we can expect unemployment numbers to hit two million over the next few months.

Right now the rush is on to keep the economies turning over. Once that is stabilized, and the banking system has discovered exactly where they stand in about another nine months, we can expect credit to begin increasing. That will allow the economy to start a slow rebuild back to good health over the next five years.

Increased taxes will make it worse. Protection will be disastrous. The best policy is to lend low cost money to the economic engines were needed because the banks cannot do so for a while. And otherwise stimulate social programs and perhaps reorganize the medical system which is the countries biggest single business problem.

To put this in perspective: Canada uses ten percent of its GNP to deliver satisfactory health care to the entire population. And if you have money it is possible to queue jump but is obviously not admitted.

The USA uses 15% of its GNP to supply health care to two thirds of its population while abandoning the other third at great economic cost in terms of lost tax revenue.

The point that I am making is that even a worse system than created by Canada is likely going to save the US GNP a third of their health budget and increase life expectancy. And it will not stop the rich from paying for special treatment.

The bulk of that extra healthcare money has and is been siphoned of by the financial gamers who brought you sub prime mortgages and securitization. I have understood for sometime that the systemic corruption is built into the system and have never yelled. Considering the disaster Wall Street delivered, it is time to confront the health care industry.

I do not think that the economy can be turned around before the fall, but then it could be recovering very quickly once consumers find that they will be surviving and their confidence returns. If you have cash invest wisely because we are entering one of the get wealth creation eras of human history.

In a way, the energy market vacuumed out global liquidity and now that the pricing has fallen back and governments have topped up the reserves of the banking industry, we can restore credit in general. All the high risk loans have been drained out of the system providing a much less vulnerable banking system. A wave of massive investment in energy resources is now fully underway and will hopefully restructure the industry. Expect LNG conversion to be a priority since it has already been implemented by Schwarzenegger in California.

Massive investment in energy will stimulate the US economy and lead us out of this rat hole.

So forget about the New Deal for a while even though there is plenty to do. The merchants of financial excess are all dead and will not be back for a long time. The US economy is shifting direction and it is best to nudge it in the optimal direction.

Can McCain still Win?

I try to stay away from commenting on this highly charged presidential campaign, but we have now entered the final countdown and a couple of observations are worth making, particularly since the press is currently riding Obama triumphalism.

The numbers that are on the board now are perhaps 49% for Obama and 43% for McCain. Obama has realistically peaked, particularly since Colin Powell has endorsed him, while McCain will surely grow. I would expect that if nothing changes much these numbers would tend to converge to a more natural 1% percent separation, as has occurred in most of the past two man races. It seems that only very rarely can a given candidate convince more that fifty percent of the population to support him. The best he can hope for is to convince some of the fifty percent supporting his rival to stay home. I may sound cynical, but do the numbers.

All things been equal, Obama’s support will actually be tending to fade, although his massive media advertising may well hold it steady, and McCain’s support should be rising while the economic fears begin to fade and market volatility dies down. The question right now is whether Colin Powell is worth a last bounce for Obama

The other thing now going for McCain is that as the economic fears quiet, the voters may be prepared to support a maverick slate. They very naturally migrated to the umbrella of Obama for the simple reason he truly represents business as usual in Washington. To think otherwise is ludicrous, regardless of the claims to the contrary. The voters instinctually understand that with Obama, the only thing that will really change is the name on the door.

No man with a good idea will fail to share it over a year long primary race. That is why we know that this man does not represent change. There were no ideas that were not parroted straight from the Democrat playbook. And he is very much an actor saying his lines while dodging every test with sophistry and legalese. That is what he was trained in.

The problem McCain faces, is that he is a true maverick and his choice of running mate gives him an Energy Czar who has already tamed the dragon in the one area that he needs a strong maverick lieutenant. When Americans are afraid, they will not support a real change agent. Yet on the files that he is visibly strongest which is security and foreign affairs, he is head and shoulders above Obama, and that is mostly because of both experience and direct training in the military. The military trained him, as they trained his father and grandfather for high command.

Therefore a break on those files even at this late hour could accelerate his climb back into contention. Remember that the Pallin bounce showed that he could hit fifty percent and that the attack ads against her have now run their course allowing a return of her natural base to the voting booth.

It is curious. For the first time since Kennedy, America has a choice between a battle tested leader who did not dodge the draft and yet one more machine politician. Unlike Kennedy, they are not the same person. And we are really at war. Both in the Middle East and against time to get our energy house in order. Fine words will not produce a tank of affordable gasoline for the man in the street. energy will be front and center for the next four years because we have to replace millions of barrels of oil for the US economy to keep it running smoothly.

Regardless, a shift of three points by both parties in their natural direction can completely reverse this electoral outcome. Both are quite capable of occuring, however unlikely it may seem. A few second thoughts about Obama will quickly lose him three to four points, while a slight surge for McCain will give him three to four points. It is almost out of reach but just almost.

That is why the Obama attack ads will be unrelenting over the next two weeks.

Orson Scott Card on Congressional Subprime History

It saddens me that it takes a card carrying democrat who is also obviously a patriot to bell the cat on the congressional history behind the financial meltdown. I have always enjoyed his writing in science fiction and have had little exposure to his columns.

So long as we accept as journalists those who are strangers to modern economic thinking and the formalism of scientific thought, we will endure the fashionistas. And today they are blindly running Obama into the Whitehouse. Of course, they also gave us George Bush. Hell, he was prettier too. McCain was always a vastly better choice, but I guess we will never know for sure. Al that scaring sort of made him an ugly prick. At least Lincoln never had to deal with satisfying a television camera.

I thank Orson for piecing together the history of this debacle. Had I been still directly active in the security business, I would have been yelling loudly as many were. Now we all pay the price, not least the poor folks who were given a couple of years pretending that they could afford to live where they were.

I found this originally on Jerry Pournelle’s website.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?"

( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina

Global Warming Dogma

I find it interesting that in the face of a couple of solid years of the media promoting global warming dogma, that poll respondents are so terribly unmotivated. It is not outright rejection but surely represents a healthier level of skepticism than I would have comfortably anticipated.

We have already seen a political leader in Canada impale himself on the issue. This suggests that political leadership will need to be very circumspect regarding the support of any initiative tied directly to global warming no matter how shrill the true believers are.

Support exists for programs that help wean us away from Arab and Hugo oil, simply because it is good common sense. We are spending massively on offshore oil with little going the other way. Whereas money spent in North America stays in North America. We see the reality of that with the tar sands which is a boon to capital spending in the US rust belt.

The tragedy of buying oil from the Middle East was that the only thing they really seemed to want to buy from us was our guns. It took China to buy up all our old worn out factories.

It is clear to everyone that if we produce all our own energy, that a lot of our geopolitical problems will wane. We will still have rogue regimes to deal with but they will be financially weakened so long as they avoid modernization. North Korea is an excellent example. Their options are utterly circumscribed by their poverty and their nuclear program is a Potemkin village as a result.

I have learned a long time ago to not underestimate the common sense of the electorate. They are saying that we need to take better care of our environment, but it must be done at a profit. That is what they will support. There is no panic to do it at an economic or social loss.

After saying that, I have little faith in either Obama or McCain getting this right. Neither have the hands on economic experience that I would like to see. I do have faith that American business will get it right in spite of who is in office. In fact they are doing it right now while everyone is distracted by the financial crisis.

Believe it or not, by January, the global financial system will be stabilized and chastened and in the throes of establishing a global regulatory framework based on full disclosure in lending. Lack of any disclosure got us here.

The best advice that we can give the new president then is to do nothing while it all begins to work again. I do not trust either of them with a new economic idea at this time.

The good news is that there is clearly no electoral support for a radical reshaping of the tax regime to impact on global warming and certainly no mandate is been given for such.



Poll: Global Warming On Back Burner

By DAVID FUNKHOUSER The Hartford Courant

October 21, 2008

Just a sliver of voters say global warming is the most important issue they are weighing in deciding whom to support for president. Nonetheless, the issue appears to be playing a role in how voters make up their minds and could be key for undecided voters, according to a new poll out Monday.

The survey, conducted by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities, also found Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain among registered voters by a margin of 9 percentage points, a result consistent with other recent polls.

With the economy in turmoil, that global warming even registered as an important issue with undecided voters came as a surprise, said Anthony Leiserowitz, one of the researchers and a professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

The poll, taken Oct. 7-14, surveyed 2,189 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Asked how important a candidate's views on global warming are in making up their minds, nearly two out of three undecided voters — 62 percent — said it is "one of several important issues."

Just 1 percent said it was the "single most important issue," and 37 percent said it is "not an important issue."

Another surprise, Leiserowitz said, was how skeptical many of McCain's own supporters are of their candidate on the issue.

Just under half of those who said they will vote for McCain also said they did not trust him "as a source of information on global warming." Of those leaning toward voting for him, 64 percent distrusted him on the issue.

Both of the candidates have proposed programs to address global warming, and McCain has been out front on the issue among Republicans.

"Many of those who don't trust [McCain] on this issue are less likely to say it's happening or it's real," Leiserowitz surmised. "This suggests to me that on this issue, they're holding their nose" to vote for McCain.

On the same issue

, 15 percent of Obama's supporters distrusted him, and 36 percent of those leaning toward voting for him distrusted him on global warming.

Overall, forty-eight percent of voters said they will vote or are leaning toward voting for Obama, while 39 percent say they will vote for or are leaning toward McCain, the poll said. Nine percent were undecided.

Oil Price Choke Point

I think this article by columnist Dick Morris, more than all the other hand wringing going on, has got it. The great transition out of the fossil fuel paradigm is underway. The political support is now in place to have the US economy and thereafter the global economy completely retooled away from any reliance on oil in particular and eventually natural gas and coal.

I expected it to take much higher prices to reach this trigger point, but it appears that we are here. The massive financial resources of the modern global economy will now be harnessed to shift us out of the fossil fuel energy trap.

Of course, if the Brussard fusion energy system works out, the transition will even be abrupt. The transition will appear to be abrupt anyway. The automakers are today cranking out electrics and hybrids. The next generation is next year. It is amazing to me that even manufacturers appear to have gotten on to internet time.

On top of all that, those who have actually read through this blog over the past year will have seen us discover several nifty strategies that are even happening now and many others if successful, that will be a major part of the energy equation within twenty years at most.

To begin with, conversion of the diesel truck fleet over to LNG is a must because this releases a major portion of our oil demand. LNG is not going into anything other than capacity shortage for a very long time. It is still a fossil fuel, but it is a good quick fix for the developing squeeze on global oil supplies. The last oil crisis pushed oil out of the home heating business. This one needs to shift the haulage industry out.

The conversion of the automotive fleet into less oil dependency is underway. My guess is that it will be able to cut demand there by about half over the next five years.

Several millions of barrels per day of demand can be fairly cut without any special action taken and in a simple response to the current price regime. And that is what we need to give us the five years we need to mobilize the alternatives.

What I have found always delightful, is the way that a generally free liberal economy is able to do when facing a clear cut challenge. It is amazing how swiftly decisions can be made and implemented in the face of sudden death. Now try to imagine any bureaucracy performing like that.

I had a revealing conversation yesterday. A Canadian businessman who has made his life for the past decade in Hong Kong told me that about two years ago the Chinese government veered away from attempting to involve the state and is now supporting the same style throughout China. It was very much a case of recognizing that China needed more of what Hong Kong has. This also suggests that within a generation we will see Taiwan climb back aboard as it will not matter anymore. I also now expect electoral systems to start working their way vigorously through the body politic. There is just too much heat to contain and that will blow it off. I also suspect that the political leaders of China are ready to transition to a fully democratic system as the middle class is now emergent and very conservative.

In any case, as I have said before, the oil price regime has shifted from the twenty year $30 mark to the plus $100 mark. This is a four fold increase in the cost structure and is now sitting at the upper range. We cannot afford this. The rest of the globe cannot afford this. What is more, we now know that we cannot depend solely on the oil industry. During the seventies oil shock brought on by the initial declines in US production, there was always the Middle East. All those reserves are no longer enough to satisfy projected global energy demand.

A lot of alternative energy strategies become feasible when cheap oil is $100 per barrel. We will soon see that price again because right now, consumers of oil are rapidly adjusting and demand is dropping. So unless we get a serious supply shock of a couple of millions of barrels per day, we will retreat from the $140 range. The long side speculators will get creamed and we will have a serious oversold market very quickly. The range may even open up to $60 to $140 before stabilizing at the $100 mark.

For those who like history, the seventies oil crisis peaked at $40 and crashed to $12. That was still four times the sixties bench mark of less than $3 and the real market shook out around $20 for the next twenty years. As I said, an accident could take us to $200, but it is now more likely we will see $60 first.

McCain Scores Big With Offshore Oil Drilling Proposal

Thursday, June 19, 2008 2:06 PMBy: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

John McCain has drawn first blood in the political debate following Barack Obama's victory in the primaries. His call yesterday for offshore oil drilling — and Bush's decision to press the issue in Congress — puts the Democrats in the position of advocating the wear-your-sweater policies that made Jimmy Carter unpopular.

With gas prices nearing $5, all of the previous shibboleths need to be discarded. Where once voters in swing states like Florida opposed offshore drilling, the high gas prices are prompting them to reconsider. McCain's argument that even hurricane Katrina did not cause any oil spills from the offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico certainly will go far to allay the fears of the average voter.

For decades, Americans have dragged their feet when it comes to switching their cars, leaving their SUVs at home, and backing alternative energy development and new oil drilling. But the recent shock of a massive surge in oil and gasoline prices has awakened the nation from its complaisance. The soaring prices are the equivalent of Pearl Harbor in jolting us out of our trance when it comes to energy.

Suddenly, everything is on the table. Offshore drilling, Alaska drilling, nuclear power, wind, solar, flex-fuel cars, plug-in cars are all increasingly attractive options and John McCain seems alive to the need to go there while Obama is strangely passive. During the Democratic primary, he opposed a gas tax holiday and continues to be against offshore and Alaska drilling and squishy on nuclear power.

That leaves turning down your thermostat and walking to work as the Democratic policies.

McCain has also been ratcheting up his attacks on oil speculators. With the total value of trades in oil futures soaring from $13 billion in 2003 to $260 billion today, it is increasingly clear that it is not the supply and demand for oil which is, alone, driving up the price, but it is the supply and demand for oil futures which is stoking the upward movement.

The Saudis have made a fatal mistake in not forcing down the price of oil.

We could have gone for decades as their hostage, letting their control over our oil supplies choke us while enriching them. But they got greedy and let the price skyrocket. The sudden shock which has sent America reeling is just the stimulus we need for a massive movement away from imported oil and toward new types of cars.

The political will for major change in our energy policy is now here and those, like Obama, who don't get it need to rethink their positions. To quote FDR, “this great nation calls for action and action now” on the energy issue.

What has been a back-burner problem now has moved onto center stage and McCain has put himself in the forefront.

The Democratic ambivalence stems from liberal concerns about climate change. The party basically doesn't believe in carbon-based energy and, therefore, opposes oil exploration.

That's why Obama pushes the windfall profits tax on oil companies — a step that tells them “you drill, you find oil, and we'll take away your profits.” But Americans have their priorities in order: more oil, more drilling and alternative energy sources, flex-fuel cars, plug-in vehicles and nuclear power.

With his willingness to respond to the gas price crisis with bold measures, McCain shows himself to be a pragmatist while Obama comes off as an ideologue to puts climate change ahead of making it possible for the average American to get to work.

Of course, the high price of gas makes it inevitable that the U.S. will lead the world in fighting climate change.

With $5 gas, Americans will switch en masse to cars that burn less gasoline. Already we have cut our oil consumption by 500,000 barrels a day in the past year (about a 3 percent cut).
The move away from oil will be exponential from here on out, dooming radical Islam and reversing climate change at the same time. But while we are getting new cars, we need more oil and McCain has flanked Obama on this issue. Big time.

EPA Demonstrates Common Sense

It is good to see the EPA demonstrating common sense, hard as that is to believe. Particularly after watching Al Gore push tortured analogies decrying the opponents of the global warming ideology. I am getting disturbed that some of this bone headed thinking will work itself into the global economic system.

The worst idea that I heard recently was that the developed world, after shipping our polluting industries offshore, should turn around and slap on a carbon tax on all imports. We really need to turn the current financial panic into a true depression.

I have rarely seen such a lack of economic leadership in the political world. Both Democratic candidates sound hopeless on the issue, although perhaps you can trust Hillary to actually do nothing as her husband had the good sense to do in a different time and place. Of course, if you live in Pennsylvania, you may think she means it about NAFTA, and if you live anywhere else, you sure as hell hope she doesn’t. Obama however, seems to be a follower of ideas that may betray him and he has not come out with a strong convincing economic position. Unfortunately, we can say the same thing about John McCain. He however, appears most likely to recognize and follow good advice. I am personally impressed by his support of the Iraqi surge and he is certainly the best option for wriggling out of there.

We have been blessed for the past forty years, to have had strong voices who have positively influenced economic policy and have benefited with a full twenty five years of solid economic expansion that reinvigorated both Europe and Japan and ignited the emergence of both China and India as viable economic powers.

Yet we always hear the voices of the economically ignorant who desperately want to promote state power in the naïve belief that this can work. How many Katrinas do we need? Human greed will trump good intentions every time.

That is the elephant at the party in China today. And it is starting to rumble. The only escape hatch for the Chinese political leadership with their loot is in fact to start a program of free elections, starting at the local level and quickly moving to the higher stages in two year steps. It could have been done slower, but I do not think that they have that much time left. Heaven no longer needs them.

The truth is that global warming was likely never tied to CO2 production as we have investigated this past year. But CO2 production without paying attention to CO2 offsets is just bad husbandry unless you think throwing night soil out the window is a sustainable practice. CO2 management is not about not burning fossil fuels – they will all one day be burned – it is about using good husbandry to maximize CO2 sequestration in the soils every way we can.

It struck me today that terra preta soil culture will permit the maximization of soil nutrient content. This means that no food crop should be ever nutrient deficient which is the holy grail of organic farmers. At this point, this is only my hypothesis, supported by a scattering of evidence. I suspect that it is both possible and sustainable.

Recall that in 10,000 years, that agricultural man has never had a way to create fertile soil easily if in fact at all in many circumstances. Corn culture terra preta does just that in just a few years. The resultant soil is a nutrient sponge.

EPA Signals Caution on Global Warming

By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government made clear on Thursday it will not be rushed into deciding whether to regulate emissions linked to global warming, as the Supreme Court directed nearly a year ago.

Such action "could affect many (emission) sources beyond just cars and trucks" and needs to be examined broadly as to other impacts, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency wrote lawmakers.

Stephen Johnson said he has decided to begin the process by seeking public comment on the implications of regulating carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, on other agency rules that cover everything from power plants and factories to schools and small businesses.

That process could take months and led some of his critics to suggest he was shunting the sensitive issue to the next administration.

"This is the latest quack from a lame-duck EPA intent on running out the clock ... without doing a thing to combat global warming," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. He is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

The Supreme Court said in April 2007 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is a pollutant subject to the Clean Air Act. The court directed the EPA to determine if CO2 emissions, linked to global warming, endanger public health and welfare.

If that is the case, the court said, the EPA must regulate the emissions.

The ruling, in a lawsuit by Massachusetts against the EPA, dealt only with pollution from cars and trucks.

Johnson said Thursday that if CO2 is found to endangered public health and welfare, the agency probably would have to curtail such emissions from other sources as well. That could affect a range of air pollution, from cement factories, refineries and power plants to cars, aircraft, schools and off-road vehicles.

"Rather than rushing to judgment on a single issue, this approach allows us to examine all the potential effects of a decision with the benefit of the public insight," Johnson wrote the leaders of the House and Senate environment committees.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, noted that Johnson has had nearly a year to respond to the court but "now, instead of action, we get more foot-dragging."

"Time is not on our side when it comes to avoiding dangerous climate change. This letter makes it clear that Mr. Johnson and the Bush administration are not on our side, either," Boxer, D-Calif., said in a statement.

Senior EPA employees have told congressional investigators in the House about a tentative finding from early December that CO2 posed a danger because of its climate impact. They said a draft regulation was distributed to the Transportation Department and the White House.

The EPA officials, in interviews with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said those findings were put on hold abruptly. Johnson has said that enacting tougher automobile mileage requirements in December meant that the issue had to be re-examined.

Johnson said a requirement for greater use of renewable fuels such as ethanol changed the landscape when it comes to CO2 regulation.

"It does not change EPA's obligation to provide a response to the Supreme Court decision," Johnson wrote Congress.

Environmentalists said Johnson's approach seemed to signal no meaningful action on climate change.

"EPA has offered a laundry list of reasons not to regulate," said Vickie Patton, a lawyer for Environmental Defense.

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an advocacy group, added, "This means any real action is going to come in the next administration."

But lawyer Chet Thompson, a former EPA deputy general counsel, said Johnson's approach was "very responsible given the numerous issues raised" and ramifications of regulating carbon dioxide.