Enviro-Wackos Whining About Bats

FACES of Coal

Environmentalists are trying to have it both ways in West Virginia – no coal mining and no wind farms. West Virginians wonder whether or not they will have electricity if the environmentalists win both the coal and wind fights.
Environmentalists divided over wind turbines, endangered bats - washingtonpost.com
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
GREENBRIER COUNTY,
W.VA. -- Workers atop mountain ridges are putting together 389-foot windmills with massive blades that will turn Appalachian breezes into energy. Retiree David Cowan is fighting to stop them.

Another RINO That Needs To GO ASAP

The Seduction Of Lindsey Graham
Nancy Morgan
RightBias.com
October 17, 2009

This article was first published by American Thinker on October 16, 2009

According to most conservatives in South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has officially gone over to the dark side. Under the guise of 'bipartisanship,' Graham has signed on to one of the left's most ambitious plans to impose a socialist agenda in America - government control of the formerly free market through implementation of cap-and trade, the 1,400 plus page Waxman-Markey bill approved earlier this year by the House.

The main (scientifically unproven) premise of cap and trade is that the earth is melting and government must step in to save the world. Of course, it will be expensive, but hey, this is Mother Earth we're talking about. And its urgent and essential that the government immediately establish a $700 billion "market" for business to buy and sell "steadily declining number of permits for creating carbon emissions."

In a New York Times Op-Ed Graham co-authored with Sen. John Kerry (did you know he served in Viet Nam?) cutely entitled 'Yes We Can' (get it?) Sen Graham states "..we agree that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security."
Huh?

Reasons 7 Thru 10 of "10 Reasons to Oppose Cap and Tax"

7. It prevents market forces from working for the environment:

The market distortions imposed by a cap and trade system would be significant. Recently, major energy companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in technologies that capture and store carbon as well as lower carbon alternative energy sources. A cap and trade system however, sets up perverse incentives that will distract these and other companies from market-based solutions to curb carbon output. Resources instead will be funneled to the artificial market for carbon allowances that cap and trade sets up.

8. It threatens to put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage with other countries:

Though the E.U. and the United States may be buying into cap and trade, industrial giants like China and India are not. Remember the lost jobs we talked about in point #4? In addition to China and India, nearby Mexico (another country where cap and trade is not even a remote possibility) are more than willing to pick up the U.S. slack and bolster their already robust manufacturing sectors.

9. It opens the door to massive fraud and corruption:

As energy companies look to game the system, cap and trade would open the door wide for fraud and corruption that could devastate U.S. investors and the economy as a whole. This has been seen already in the UK, a country currently participating in cap and trade. In a recent article by the British-based Guardian newspaper they report: “Britain’s biggest polluting companies are abusing a European emission trading scheme (ETS) designed to tackle global warming by cashing in their carbon credits in order to bolster ailing balance sheets.”

In the United States we have seen what happens when companies engage in creative accounting measures to hide losses and the staggering domino effect it can have on Wall Street investors and the larger economy. If you need more proof of this threat, look no further than this report by The Competitive Enterprise Institute that discusses Enron’s support for a cap and trade scheme that would allow them to dominate this new, made-up market for carbon.

10. It threatens to bust the federal budget at a time when the United States can scarcely afford it:

Federal spending continues at a breakneck pace. The recent passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus bill along with even more taxpayer funded bailouts looming on the horizon add to U.S. budget woes and sink us deeper into recession. And as if times weren’t tough enough, the CBO reports that cap and trade would heap additional undue pressure on our fragile budget.

According to their report, government would face the same challenges with higher energy costs that consumers do. Additionally, the fall in production for U.S. industry would lead to a loss of federal government tax revenues. Further increasing spending while decreasing revenues makes cap and trade a tough sell in the current economic climate.

FreedomWorks 2 of 10 Reasons To Oppose Cap and Tax

Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly stated that Cap and Trade will be a priority for the 111th Congress. Embraced some years ago in Europe and a few other countries, cap and trade creates an artificial market for various industries to buy, sell, and trade allowances that permit a certain amount of carbon output. It has long been on the wish list for American liberals and extremist environmentalists.

And with Democrats now in control of Congress and the White House, pssage of this monstrosity is almost a certainy. In fact, in the 2010 White House budget, President Barack Obama calls for a sweeping cap and trade program that would raise $646 billion in new revenues.

Here are FreedomWorks’ Top 10 reasons why they shouldn’t…

1. It will raise energy costs: While different nuanced approaches continue to surface, any analysis of any cap and trade scheme comes to the same conclusion; energy costs will go up. The latest serious attempt to enact cap and trade in the United States, America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 sponsored by Sens.Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), serves as a good example. An analysis of this legislation cited during a Senate hearing held by the Committee on Environment and Public Works estimated the costs to the average American household would be between $800 and $1,300 by 2015, and then increasing to $1,500 to $2,500 by 2050.

2. It doesn’t help the environment: If energy costs are going to go up for Americans, shouldn’t there be significant environmental benefit and progress towards reversing climate change?

You would think so. But even if the most aggressive of cap and trade schemes were properly adhered to, scientists that both advocate and oppose a cap and trade program widely agree that the maximum drop to the earth’s temperature would be no more than 0.07 degrees Celsius by the year 2050.

To give some sense of just how negligible this decrease would be, we cannot even estimate the absolute mean surface temperature of the earth within 0.07. What’s worse is that cap and trade actually provides incentives to emit more carbon, not less.

An article by the Christian Science Monitor explains: “By turning carbon emissions into commodities that can be bought and sold, cap-and-trade policies could remove the stigma from producing such emissions.”

In other words, if industries understand they are working within a legal framework when they output carbon, the public pressure for them to cut down is weakened.

Evidence of this can be seen in Europe where most countries have seen carbon emissions go up, even though the European Union has had a cap and trade regime in place since 2005.

Celebrate Human Achievment Hour Tonight

We'll be celebrating Human Acheievment Hour tonight, along with thousnads of other freedom loving Americans.

Michelle has a great post up about this.

I'm actually considering purchasing some more 500 watt halogen work lights and setting up a landing strip. Oh wait, I need a Control Tower if I'm going to that. Darn.

I'm going to have every cotton-picking light bulb I own plugged into something and burning bright.

Beware of Politicans Who Give You What You Ask For

You may be getting something else entirely.

From the DCExaminer Editorial Page:

Beware the capitulators. Republicans are chortling over the fact that their “drill, drill, drill” campaign seems to have forced Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi to backtrack and agree to relax the ban on offshore drilling.

Beware what is contained in the Trojan horse the Illinois senator and the congresswoman from San Francisco are offering as a peace token to the Republicans and to Americans who are appalled that the Congress continues to prevent the development of our oil resources, while crude oil and gasoline prices, although softening in recent weeks, remain high enough to contribute to the forces that are pulling the economy perilously close to recession.

Obama and Pelosi have no answer to a few simple questions: If they are now convinced that it is a good idea to develop our own resources of oil, why do they oppose a bill that would do that, and only that? Instead of making this now-agreed measure one ornament on a Christmas tree to subsidies, why not pass it on its own, and ASAP?

And if it is now good policy to give some states the power to approve drilling off their coasts, why not Pelosi’s California?

We know that she has acknowledged carrying the heavy burden of saving the planet -- dwellers on this planet who have not had the opportunity of voting for or against her might not be delighted with this news -- but as speaker of the House she surely also has the burden of preventing the steady flow of trillions of dollars to oil-producing countries that wish us ill.

But these are only the most obvious of the reasons to be suspicious of the Obama-Pelosi-Democratic climb down. More important is their insistence that any drilling be done in an environmentally sensitive manner. Now, that sounds reasonable enough. After all, who favors drilling in an environmentally insensitive manner? The problem comes when that generalization is put to the test of actual practice.

Those of us who have in the past been involved in proceedings to which environmental groups are parties know that their first goal is to have any project strangled at birth -- whether a drilling project, a new nuclear or coal plant, a wind farm, a transmission line.

To achieve that goal, they often do not need to prevail. All they have to do is delay, delay, delay, dragging out some hearings and appeals for decades, while costs rise and the sponsors lose interest.

There is not enough space here to review cases in which threats to a tiny fish (the snail darter) and the spotted owl provided ammunition for those opposing or seeking to delay a dam and logging in the Northwest, respectively.

More recently, of the 151 coal-fired power plants in the planning stages in 2007, 59 were either refused licenses or quietly abandoned in the face of opposition, and another 50 are being contested in the courts by environmental groups. And we have enough coal to power our electric plants for more years than anyone can count.

The goal of many greens was clearly stated by David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel of the Sierra Club. The Los Angeles Times reports that he said, “We hope to clog up the system,” using what the press characterizes as “any bureaucratic or legal means necessary.”

None of this is to say that environmental costs should be ignored when considering granting a go-ahead to various energy projects. But it is clear that there are few if any projects that will not bring the environmental lawyers into the nation’s hearing rooms and courts.

Environmentalists say they are enthusiastic about renewable energy. But “the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move through the economy,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

The utilities willing to spend $1 billion to build the needed 240 miles of transmission line are projecting a completion date of 2014 at the earliest because of the length of permitting hearings and subsequent appeals.

And that’s for 240 miserable little miles of wire. Imagine how long it would take to get through the process of winning approval for drilling offshore.

The pity is not that environmental considerations are given weight -- they should be-- but that the process by which the balance between energy needs and environmental preservation is struck is tilted to favor those who know that delay can drive up costs and kill even the most environmentally sensitive projects.

Thomas Sowell on Special Interests

From Patriot Post:

“Senator Obama has also said many times that he is against ‘special interests.’ But, like most politicians who say that, he means that he is against other politicians’ special interests. His own special interests are never called special interests. Neither are the environmental extremists who support the Democrats called special interests. But the green zealots who have for decades blocked the country from using oil within our own borders—more oil than in Saudi Arabia, by the way—are also among the special interests with a big voicein the Democratic Party. They are also a major factor in shutting down the democratic voting process—in this case, in the House of Representatives, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow a vote on drilling for oil in places where the green zealots don’t want drilling. The Congressional Democrats could of course vote to continue forbidding drilling in those places. But voters paying $4 a gallon for gas are not likely to agree with the green zealots—and recent polls show that they do not. Rather than lose votes in the November elections by voting with the green zealots, or lose the money that the green zealots contribute to the Democratic Party coffers, Nancy Pelosi simply shut down the House of Representatives, so that there could be no votes, and turned off the lights so that C-SPAN could not broadcast Republicans’ speeches protesting what happened.
After all, what is democracy compared to support from the green zealots?” —Thomas Sowell

I'm So Disappointed

SWACGirl has more here.

This morning I rolled into the Chesterfield Power Station at Dutch Gap and beheld a sight I had not seen since the DHS raid on the St Francis Medical Center job site back in 2004.
At the intersection of Coxendale and Old Stage Roads were parked 25 Chesterfield County Police cars, lights flashing, with several large white SUV's close by.
Uh oh, I thought, ICE is back for another round of illegal worker sweeps. Then I remembered that most of the workers, having completed this new 1750 mega-watt, clean-coal fired power plant had left for Cliffside and Shelby to begin the conversion of those facilities to clean-coal and continue the process that will give us clean electrical power for decades.
As I rolled up to the gate, the Wackenhut guard stepped out and I rolled down my window and asked if we were expecting protesters.
"Yes we are" was the answer.
My heart skipped a beat. Hot damn!!! I get to video the best example of idiocy in action, as people who scream for clean power, protesting at the first location in the Commonwealth to give them exactly what they've been asking for.
I checked my video camera for battery power, made sure the disk was clean, found a shady spot, and set up the tripod. and waited. and waited. and waited.
Alas, it was not to be. After verifying with Dominion Security that they had no idea what time the idiots were going to arrive and that they had no permit to protest on county property, I checked a few websites and discovered that Mountain Justice had the North Anna facility on their schedule for today, but not Chesterfield.
Darn. Oh well, better luck next time. You just can't depend on anyone anymore, not even enviro wackjobs protesting what they ask for.
About 1330 I had a conversation with a Dominion Security officer and told him the idiots were not going to show up.
"We scared 'em" he said.
"Well," I said, that may be true, but according to their website, they didn't have this location on their calendar for today."
"What website?" he asked. I told him the name of the site. I love it when that happens.

We CAN Drill Our Way Out

Update: Welcome aboard to everyone coming over from The Schnitt Show!
Thanks for stopping by the site. Please click our UCV banner and stay awhile. Look around. Leave a comment. Have a beer, oops, drank those. Sorry.
Cargosquid.


Cross-posted at DCProtestWarrior.

The statement today by Senator Dick "The Turban" Durbin that "we can't drill our way out of this..." is partially true. If we don't have the refinery capacity to produce the gasoline from the crude oil, that statement is true. I don't care how much crude oil you pull out of the ground, if you can't refine it into gasoline, you may as well leave it in the ground. We have not seen a new refinery built in 30+ years. You can thank the Turban and his enviro-nazi wackos for that. The propensity for the extreme left to dictate economic policy that puts mainstream Amercians in a budget busting situation by increasing the price of everything we use is well documented. Looking back, you'd think they'd planned it that way.
Dr. Thomas Sowell has a piece today that puts this in perspective. Here are a few observations from one of the smartest men I've ever read:

If corporate "greed" is the explanation for high gasoline prices, why are the government's taxes not an even bigger sign of "greed" on the part of politicians-- since taxes add more to the price of gasoline than oil company profits do?
Whatever the merits or demerits of Senator John McCain's proposal to temporarily suspend the federal taxes on gasoline, it would certainly lower the price more than confiscating all the oil companies' profits. But it would not be as emotionally satisfying.
Senator Barack Obama clearly understands people's emotional needs and how to meet them. He wants to raise taxes on oil companies. How that will get us more oil or lower the price of gasoline is a problem that can be left for economists to puzzle over. A politician's problem is how to get more votes-- and one of the most effective ways of doing that is to be a hero who will save us from the villains.
While economists are talking supply and demand, politicians are talking compassion, "change" and being on the side of the angels-- and against drilling for our own oil.
Has any economist ever attracted the kinds of cheering crowds that Barack Obama has-- or even the crowds attracted by Hillary Clinton or John McCain?
If you want cheering crowds, don't bother to study economics. It will only hold you back. Tell people what they want to hear-- and they don't want to hear about supply and demand.
No, supply and demand is not too "complex." It is just not very emotionally satisfying

Thanks liberals.....

I will now hold onto my car for much longer. Even if it only gets 19 mpg. And the aluminum industry is ecstatic. I love it. Lighter, less safe cars.....high electricity use to make aluminum, older cars on the road, AND, there is no cost savings in buying the new car. It takes alot of gas savings to make up a $6k difference. It was the CAFE rules that caused the invention of the "SUV." The government has NO business in mandating this. Let the market settle it out. If Americans want smaller, lighter cars, they WILL BUY THEM! If not, they won't.

If high mileage is so important, why does the gov't restrict the importation of diesels that get 70 mpg from Europe?

Screw CAFE! This makes me want to by a Hummer.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said Sunday the new fuel efficiency requirements imposed by Congress last month would add $6,000 to the price of an average GM vehicle by the end of the next decade.

That's a more precise estimate than the one Lutz gave at the New York Auto Show in April.

"We've done even more research and it's going to be in the range of $4,000 to $10,000 with an average of about $6,000," Lutz said. "This is going to be a net average of cost of $6,000 per vehicle which will have to be passed onto the consumer. The good news is it won't come all at once, because 35 mpg doesn't kick in all at once."