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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Rich Trzupek</title>
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	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
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		<title>EPA&#8217;s &#8216;Crucifixion&#8217; of Energy Sector Exposed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/epa-abuse-takes-center-stage/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=epa-abuse-takes-center-stage</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:44:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Al Armendariz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crucify]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental protection agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=130229</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A glimpse into the zealotry governing Obama's out-of-control agency.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/120110_obama_jackson_epa_ap_605.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-130231" title="120110_obama_jackson_epa_ap_605" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/120110_obama_jackson_epa_ap_605.gif" alt="" width="375" height="247" /></a>For those of us in industry who have watched the agency grow in power and arrogance over the decades, there wasn’t anything all that surprising about somebody suggesting that the EPA uses threats and intimidation against the regulated community. We all know, from long and bitter experience, that’s how the EPA works. What was remarkable is that it was an EPA official admitting it.</p>
<p>Al Armendariz, EPA Region 6 administrator, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/26/epa-official-apologizes-for-call-to-crucify-oil-companies-senator-investigating/">was caught on tape</a> urging the troops attending a 2010 meeting to be ruthless in their dogged pursuit of dirty rotten polluters (aka: anybody in the private sector). “You make examples out of people who are in this case not complying with the law &#8230; and you hit them as hard as you can,&#8221; he said. But it was the spectacularly inappropriate analogy Almenadariz utilized to underline the point that really caught the public’s attention:</p>
<p>&#8220;It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They&#8217;d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they&#8217;d find the first five guys they saw, and they&#8217;d crucify them. And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”</p>
<p>Yet, as spectacularly inappropriate as that analogy was, it was also dead-on accurate. When the EPA undertakes an <a href="http://www.epa.gov/compliance/data/planning/initiatives/index.html">enforcement initiative</a> against one industry sector or another, it goes for the jugular. We’ve seen it time and time again. The initial “crucifixions” take the form of crushing fines against a handful of supposed bad actors, which serves to send a singular message to the rest of the companies in a particular industry sector: resistance is futile. It doesn’t matter whether the administration in power is Republican or Democrat. It’s an EPA thing. Congress has handed the EPA a tremendous amount of power over the years and the Agency isn’t at all shy about wielding it.</p>
<p>Consider the Clean Air Act, for example. Under the Clean Air Act the EPA has the authority to levy fines of up to $25,000 per day for <em>each</em> violation. Those violations don’t have to (and frequently don’t) have anything to do with emitting more pollutants into the air than are allowed by applicable regulations. If the EPA finds that a company didn’t file the right paperwork at the right time, or failed to keep a required record in exactly the right form, or committed a host of other environmental sins that don’t have anything to do with protecting the environment, they can wield their $25,000 per day per violation cudgel to get what they want. And what they want is revenue, both as an end for its own sake, and as a tangible means to “prove” to enviro-activists and Congress that they are doing their job. As I detailed in my book <em>Regulators Gone Wild: How the EPA is Ruining American Industry</em>, the more complex regulations become, the more opportunity the EPA has to pick meaningless nits and jack up enforcement revenue.</p>
<p>It’s all about the price point, as is the case with any protection racket. If the target is a big corporation, you have to load up a lot of alleged violations such that the possible penalty is huge, and then hit them with a settlement offer that makes just a little more fiscal sense than the company deciding to lawyer-up.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s Energy Follies Continue</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obama%e2%80%99s-energy-follies-continue/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama%25e2%2580%2599s-energy-follies-continue</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:35:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[petroleum markets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[policy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=129668</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The administration continues to sabotage America's future. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Obama-Energy.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-129682" title="Obama Energy" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Obama-Energy.jpg" alt="" width="339" height="215" /></a>The Obama administration’s bizarre energy policy took another confused turn last week as the President asked Congress to spend $52 million for more oversight and investigation of petroleum markets. The crackdown would supposedly be aimed at “those who manipulate the market for private gain at the expense of millions of working families,” although neither Mr. Obama nor presidential press secretary Jay Carney could identify who these dastardly villains supposedly are, or if they even exist.</p>
<p>It was, even by this administration’s standards, a pathetically inept response to an issue that could be a big problem for the President come November: brutally high gasoline prices. Rather than addressing the well understood, free market supply and demand forces that keep driving up the price of crude, the administration resorted to class warfare once again, to the point of resurrecting the Enron boogeyman in a vain attempt to divert attention and decline responsibility for Obama’s spectacular failures with regard to energy issues. Even the <em>Washington Post</em> wasn’t buying it, taking the administration to task in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-gas-crackdown-will-do-little-to-lower-prices/2012/04/17/gIQABqj0OT_story.html">an April 17 editorial</a>:</p>
<p>&#8220;President Obama is fond of saying that there is no silver bullet to bringing down gasoline prices. On Tuesday, however, he went into the silver bullet business.&#8221;</p>
<p>Recent history shows that gas prices over time depend on a range of factors, predominantly supply and demand fundamentals, that the U.S. government can’t easily control. And even if bona fide Wall Street manipulation were a primary force moving prices, The Post’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/are-speculators-to-blame-for-our-gas-price-woes/2012/03/05/gIQAqMS8sR_blog.html">Brad Plumer points out</a>, the United States alone can’t police the world market.</p>
<p>Republican leaders <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/17/us-obama-oil-idUSBRE83G0O320120417">were even more direct</a>, dismissing the President’s proposal as nothing more than an election-year tactic:</p>
<p>&#8220;It probably polls pretty well, but I guarantee it won&#8217;t do a thing to lower prices at the pump,&#8221; said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.</p>
<p>&#8220;The president has all the tools available to him if he believes the oil market is being manipulated,&#8221; said John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.</p>
<p>This comes at a time when the Obama administration <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/04/09/gas-prices-grow-more-under-obama-than-carter">surpassed a dubious record</a> that was previously held by the Carter administration (to which the current regime is often compared): the greatest increase in nationwide gasoline prices during a president’s term. Gas prices rose by 103.77 percent during James Earl Carter’s term in office. As of two weeks ago, gas prices have risen by 103.79 percent since Barack Hussein Obama took the oath. By way of comparison, gas prices dropped 66 percent during the Reagan years, rose by about 30 percent when Clinton was in office and climbed roughly 20 percent under George W. Bush.</p>
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		<title>Obama Delivers a Death Blow to the Coal Industry</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obama-delivers-a-death-blow-to-coal-industry/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-delivers-a-death-blow-to-coal-industry</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obama-delivers-a-death-blow-to-coal-industry/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:40:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=127109</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president's mega-corporate cronies stand to make a handsome profit as a result.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/p011012ps-0288.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-127112" title="p011012ps-0288" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/p011012ps-0288.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>The coal industry and coal-fired power has been dealt a series of body blows by the Obama administration over the last four years. Yesterday, the EPA delivered the coup de grace to coal, in the form of a new rule that – unless overturned by Congress or a future administration – will ensure that no new, modern coal-fired power plants will be built in the United States.</p>
<p>The EPA released Subpart TTTT of New Source Performance Standards yesterday, a proposed rule that limits carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants. No coal-fired power plant can meet the emission limit (1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of power produced), but natural gas-fired power plants can. This will lead to some significant changes in the power energy once the rule goes final, sometime next year.</p>
<p>It is now estimated that around 50,000 to 80,000 megawatts of coal fired power will be retired from the grid over the next few years. Coal fired power is base load power (that is, power that has to be available all of the time) and neither solar nor wind can provide base load power anywhere but in the President’s green fantasies. Biomass (wood, energy crops, etc.) can provide base load power, but there’s not nearly enough of the fuel to replace so much coal. More nuclear power could easily shoulder the load, but there’s no way that we can permit and build enough nuclear plants in the time available. That leaves natural gas as the only fuel that can possibly be used to replace all of that coal.</p>
<p>Right now, natural gas is looking pretty good. Thanks to shale gas, we have abundant supplies (over one hundred years of proven reserves, even in the worst-case demand scenario) and prices are incredibly low. New, highly efficient combined-cycle gas-fired power plants are actually competitive with coal-fired power at today’s prices.</p>
<p>Replacing all of that coal with natural gas should soothe global warming alarmists as well. (I say “should” because everyone knows that the environmental doom industry cannot and will not ever admit that it is satisfied with any level of reductions until we’re living in caves.) Natural gas generates much less carbon dioxide per unit of energy as compared to coal and, as noted above, natural gas-fired power plants can be much more efficient. The combination of these two effects means that carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, which have been declining for the last five years in any case, will drop even more precipitously in the future.</p>
<p>So, one might be tempted to ask: what’s the big deal? If natural gas is cheap and if burning natural gas might cause at least a few hysterical enviro-types to lower the volume of their incessant shrieking just a tad, it’s all good – right? Well, not quite.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s Solar Alchemy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obama%e2%80%99s-solar-alchemy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama%25e2%2580%2599s-solar-alchemy</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Mar 2012 04:24:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biofuels]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fossil fuels]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[green energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Solar power]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[windmills]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=126601</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president's futile campaign to turn alternative energy failure into green gold. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Obama-takes-energy-plan-on-road-DT165FAQ-x-large.gif"><img class="size-full wp-image-126603 alignleft" title="Obama-takes-energy-plan-on-road-DT165FAQ-x-large" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Obama-takes-energy-plan-on-road-DT165FAQ-x-large.gif" alt="" width="375" height="251" /></a>The President, speaking at the world’s largest solar power plant of its kind in Boulder City, Nevada on Wednesday, <a href="http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/21/obama-goes-after-solar-opponents-in-nevada/">said that solar energy represents the future</a> and chided Republicans for being backward rubes, unwilling to embrace the exciting “new” discoveries that he assures us are just around the corner.  There was all kinds of irony in the performance, including the remarkable inefficiency of solar energy that the massive Copper Mountain Solar 1 plant represents and the Obama administration’s inability or unwillingness to grasp the basic scientific principles that govern energy generation.</p>
<p>Let’s start with efficiency. It was widely reported in the press that the 58 megawatt Copper Mountain Solar 1 plant and expansion powers 17,000 homes. This figure was arrived at by using the generally accepted formula of 1 megawatt powering 300 homes. Multiply 58 by 300 and you get 17,400 homes. However, that’s capacity – what the plant is <em>capable</em> of generating in other words – not what it actually generates. To figure that out, we need to dive down into Department of Energy data.</p>
<p>According to the DOE’s <a href="http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&amp;s=mcrfpus1&amp;f=a">Energy Information Administration</a>, the state of Nevada is host to three solar plants: Copper Mountain’s 58 megawatt plant, 14 megawatts at Nellis Air Force Base and a 1 megawatt unit operated by Barrick Goldstrike Mines, for a grand total of 73 megawatts. Using our 300 homes per megawatt figure, all of the solar plants in Nevada <em>could</em> power nearly 22,000 homes.</p>
<p>How much power did solar plants in Nevada actually deliver? According to EIA data, solar plants in the state of Nevada delivered an average of 33 megawatts in any given hour in 2011 – less than 50% of capacity! Or, to put it another way, if 22,000 Nevada households were solely dependent on solar power last year, they wouldn’t have had any electricity at all for about half of the year. As points of comparison, an efficient coal-fired power plant typically generates 70 to 85 percent of the power it is capable of producing, on an annual basis, while nuclear plants operate at about 95 percent of capacity.</p>
<p>By operating at less than 50% of capacity in 2011, the solar industry in Nevada pretty much mirrored the national average for this unreliable energy source. According to the EIA, there were 166 solar and photovoltaic power plants hooked to the power grid in 2011, with the capacity to generate 421 megawatts. (By way of comparison, total US electric generation capacity is about 1,000,000 megawatts.) In reality, these 166 facilities generated an average of 207 megawatts in any given hour, a tad over 49% of their capacity. In any private industry, making a huge capital investment for an asset that sits idle more than 50% of the time would be grounds for dismissal, if not criminal prosecution for misuse of company funds. But, in Obama’s mind, this is progress.</p>
<p>The President doesn’t seem to understand that all forms of energy (except for nuclear energy and geo-thermal power) are ultimately solar. It was energy from the sun that allowed ancient flora and fauna to grow, which ultimately decayed to give us coal, oil and natural gas. It is fluctuations in solar energy that drive the winds. The sun is the engine behind the water cycle that we utilize to generate hydroelectric power. There are no secrets here, no magical discoveries await that will redefine how we look at the way energy is created. The vast majority of what we use is ultimately solar in origin.</p>
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		<title>A Victory Against Obama&#8217;s Green Tyranny</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/a-victory-against-obamas-green-tyranny/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-victory-against-obamas-green-tyranny</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:35:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lawsuit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mike and Chantell Sackett]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wetlands]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=126512</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Unanimous vote in the Supreme Court against EPA overreach -- but still a long way to go until justice is done.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/539w.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-126518" title="539w" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/539w.gif" alt="" width="375" height="249" /></a>It took five years, but Mike and Chantell Sackett have finally <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/21/supreme-court-sides-with-idaho-property-owners-over-epa/?test=latestnews">won the right</a> to have their day in court. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Idaho couple in their battle with the EPA, saying that the Sacketts were entitled to due process under the Clean Water Act, no matter what the EPA might think.</p>
<p>The case, which became a national symbol of EPA-overreach, centered on the EPA’s claim that the small parcel of lakefront property upon which the Sacketts intended to build a vacation home would disturb a wetland. Under EPA rules, the couple could not commence construction until the agency and the Army Corps of Engineers either issued a wetlands permit or decided that a permit wasn’t needed.</p>
<p>The Sacketts disputed the claim that wetlands existed on their property at all and they did not believe that they should have to go through the long, expensive and arduous EPA permitting process. Instead, they wanted to take the EPA to court without awaiting a permitting decision. The EPA maintained that permit applicants must wait until the agency makes formal decisions on permit applications before anyone can resort to judicial action.</p>
<p>The EPA’s position is essentially that it should be allowed to evaluate all of the evidence and relevant data before anyone questions the agency’s preliminary judgment. On the other side, many permit applicants (like the Sacketts) complain that the process itself amounts to a penalty. By holding up permit decisions for a year or more and by often requiring applicants to develop heaps of expensive data, obtaining even a favorable decision can be enormously expensive. In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito summed up the frustration that many property owners feel when dealing with wetlands regulation:</p>
<p>&#8220;The reach of <a href="http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/laws/cwa.html">the Clean Water Act</a> is notoriously unclear. Any piece of land that is wet at least part of the year is in danger of being classified by EPA employees as wetlands covered by the act, and according to the federal government, if property owners begin to construct a home on a lot that the agency thinks possesses the requisite wetness, the property owners are at the agency&#8217;s mercy,&#8221; Alito wrote.</p>
<p>Regulated wetlands are characterized not just by the wetness, but by the type of soil and the sorts of plants growing in the soil. In addition, the wetland must be connected to “waters of the United States” (navigable waterways) in order to be a “jurisdictional wetland” (one over which the EPA and Army Corps have regulatory authority). Using this criteria, overly-conservative and often inexperienced EPA employees sometimes making shocking decisions about qualifies as a jurisdictional wetland.</p>
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		<title>Debunking Obama&#8217;s Energy Policy Lies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/debunking-obamas-energy-policy-lies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=debunking-obamas-energy-policy-lies</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Mar 2012 04:35:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drilling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gas prices]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[production]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=125412</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As gas prices rise, so does the president's misdirection. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/0311-obama-gas-prices_full_600.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-125417" title="0311-obama-gas-prices_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/0311-obama-gas-prices_full_600.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>As U.S. gas prices steadily rise to alarming levels, Republican presidential hopefuls have pointed to the Obama administration’s dysfunctional energy policies as a significant influence in the distressing trend. It’s an issue that endangers the president’s re-election prospects and Team Obama is now in full defensive mode, simultaneously claiming that it is “all in” with respect to energy sources of all sorts, while it says that it has also made important inroads toward increasing domestic oil production and reducing dependence of foreign oil.</p>
<p>In order to support these claims, the administration turned to the tactic that has become a staple among global warming alarmists: pick a couple of convenient data points that support your position, claim they are representative of an overall trend and let the ever-gullible, technologically ignorant mainstream media regurgitate the message. For example, Obama has tried to mollify critics by saying that <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/03/12/usa-energy-obama-idUKL2E8EC0VI20120312">domestic production of crude oil is up</a> to the highest levels that we’ve seen over the past eight years. While that is technically true, it’s a meaningless factoid, for the president doesn’t seem to understand – or refuses to acknowledge – that market forces have raised the value of crude oil enough that domestic production has marginally increased over the already pitiful rates of 2004.</p>
<p>The fact is that United States&#8217; domestic crude oil production topped out at about 3.5 billion barrels per year in the 1970s, according to <a href="http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&amp;s=mcrfpus1&amp;f=a">Department of Energy statistics</a> (see graph below). Since then domestic production has steadily declined, as both Congress and presidential administrations of both parties have sacrificed energy independence in favor of appeasing environmental radicals. By 2004 – the year that the administration cites as the benchmark – domestic production had dropped more than forty percent, to about 2 billion barrels per year. Since then, domestic production has basically leveled out in the 1.8 billion to 2 billion barrel per year range, nowhere close to what we could actually produce if somebody in power had the wisdom and courage to tell leftist environmentalists to find something else to complain about. So yes, 2012 domestic production is creeping a bit higher than the already pitiful 2004 figures, simply because oil prices are high enough to bring more marginal wells back into production, but the Obama administration had nothing to do with that dubious achievement.</p>
<p><a class="highslide" onclick="return vz.expand(this)" href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/aaPicture-11.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-125514" title="aaPicture-11" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/aaPicture-11.gif" alt="" width="700" height="294" /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>The president also attempted to dabble in the unfamiliar realm of free market economics, asserting that the only way to reduce gasoline prices was to reduce demand and thus the United States <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/03/08/obama-pushes-shift-from-oil-new-energy-technologies/h4T7DW7eiKaoGn5ZODxkWL/story.html">must consume less petroleum products</a>. This we have been doing. Overall consumption of crude oil in the United States has dropped almost ten percent since the peak year of 2005. Interestingly, that reduction – along with reductions in burning coal to produce power – have also resulted in significant drops in greenhouse gas emission in the United States since 2005, something that the president strangely fails to mention. (The Obama administration’s EPA recently released its annual greenhouse gas inventory report, in which it picked 1990 as the benchmark year in order to claim an overall rise in United States’ greenhouse gas emissions, while it pretty much ignored the overall reductions that have been achieved relative to 2005).</p>
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		<title>Eco-Radical Defrauds Conservative Institute</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/eco-radical-defrauds-conservative-institute/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=eco-radical-defrauds-conservative-institute</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/eco-radical-defrauds-conservative-institute/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:25:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[donors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heartland institute]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peter Gleick]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=123886</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Another scandal reveals the deceptive core of the global warming alarmist movement. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/glick.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-123929" title="glick" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/glick.gif" alt="" width="375" height="247" /></a>What started as a spirited debate over global warming has turned into another scandal that has further discredited the motives and actions of the people who maintain that humans are having a devastating effect on the world’s climate. Dr. Peter Gleick, president and co-founder of the <a href="http://pacinst.org/about_us/financial_information/financial_info.html">Pacific Institute</a>, an environmental research and advocacy organization based in Oakland, California, has admitted to fraudulently obtaining confidential documents from the Heartland Institute.</p>
<p>Heartland, based in Chicago, is a free-market think tank that tackles a variety of important public policy issues, such as health care, education and climate change. (Readers will note that the author serves as an advisor to Heartland on environmental affairs, which is an unpaid, voluntary position.) Early this year, <a href="http://heartland.org/james-m-taylor">Heartland Senior Fellow James M. Taylor</a> got into an entertaining public debate with Dr. Gleick over the “reality” of anthropogenic global warming at Forbes.com. Both Taylor and Gleick argued their positions passionately. Unable to counter Taylor’s positions effectively, an increasingly frustrated Gleick <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/25/what-triggered-dr-peter-gleick-to-do-identify-fraud-on-jan-27th/">turned to the tactic</a> that so many alarmists eventually use: impugning the motives of the people who disagree with him. He wrote: I wonder, however, if Taylor would publish the list of who really DOES fund the Heartland Institute. It seems to be a secret — no information is listed on their website about actual contributors of that $7 million budget that they use to deny the reality of climate change (and previously, the health effects of tobacco — their other focus).</p>
<p>In the past, Heartland used to release its donor list, but stopped doing so after radical opponents used that information to try to harass funders. In Taylor’s words:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Heartland Institute used to [release the names of donors], while similarly appealing to other groups to do the same. However, environmental activists and other extremist groups used the information to launch a campaign of personal harassment against Heartland Institute donors while simultaneously refusing to release the names of their own donors. It is funny how Gleick rants against the alleged harassment of Katharine Hayhoe yet remains silent about the harassment of people who disagree with him.</p></blockquote>
<p>Taylor had thus inadvertently signaled Gleick how to hurt Heartland: release the names of the people who support the organization. Accordingly (by his own admission) Gleick called the Heartland Institute, identifying himself as a Heartland board member whose e-mail address had changed. A Heartland staffer then sent Gleick confidential documents based on the doctor’s false identification. Those documents were subsequently posted on the Internet at DeSmogBlog, a popular alarmist website. Other alarmist sympathizers on the web and in the mainstream media then picked up the story.</p>
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		<title>Sabotaging America: The Obama Energy Agenda</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/sabotaging-america-the-obama-energy-agenda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sabotaging-america-the-obama-energy-agenda</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/sabotaging-america-the-obama-energy-agenda/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Feb 2012 04:16:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fossil fuels]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gas prices]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama Administration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OIL]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=123574</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Steps the president could take to ease gas price worries.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Gaspump.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-123578" title="Gaspump" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Gaspump.gif" alt="" width="375" height="255" /></a>The Obama administration&#8217;s lack of any coherent, realistic energy policy is providing Republican candidates with a good deal of ammunition, as gas prices and oil prices continue to rise. The issue has put the president on the defensive as the specter of five dollar per gallon gas this summer gives Team Obama heartburn.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the easiest thing in the world (to) make phony election-year promises about lower gas prices,&#8221; Obama said, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/46501296">speaking at the University of Miami yesterday</a>. “What&#8217;s harder is to make a serious, sustained commitment to tackle a problem that may not be solved in one year or one term or even one decade.&#8221;</p>
<p>Indeed. Clearly, making a serious, sustained commitment to a sound energy policy is well beyond this administration’s capabilities. Rather than investing in proven, affordable and plentiful sources of domestic energy, Obama has thrown billions of tax dollars away in misguided efforts to find pixie dust solutions to America’s energy needs.</p>
<p>From wind, to solar, to bio-fuels, the president has abandoned the free market to cast his lot in with the most extreme of environmental utopians and we’re all paying the price for his folly. This president, who asserts that America’s future depends on science and technology, has yet to even come to grips with the basic laws of thermodynamics. That level of scientific ignorance doesn’t bode well for consumers, or for Obama’s re-election prospects.</p>
<p>The president has tried to blame rising gas prices on factors that are beyond his control, such as <a href="http://images.angelpub.com/2010/04/3828/oil-demand.png">increased demand from China</a> and India, increasing tension with Iran and speculation in oil futures. While it’s accurate to say that America can do little to influence those factors, it’s entirely disingenuous to ignore the fact that we could have – and should have – taken action to mitigate those market effects.</p>
<p>We have seen crude demand in China and India rise steadily for over a decade now. That it continues to do so as those economies continue to grow shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all the president of the United States. The same holds true for the effect of the Iranian nuclear crisis. And, given all of the uncertainty and demand-side pressure, it’s clear that the free market is going to respond by hedging its bets in the form of rising oil future prices. The president sees the latter in terms of greedy speculation, but Obama has long-since abandoned any pretense of understanding – or caring – about the way that a healthy free market actually works.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Enviro-Fat Cat Welfare Program</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obamas-green-fat-cat-welfare-program/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-green-fat-cat-welfare-program</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obamas-green-fat-cat-welfare-program/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:22:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al gore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crony capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Department of Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=122988</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A great deal if you happen to be one of the president's campaign bundlers.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/patriotic_millionaires_call_for_their_tax_cuts_to_expire-460x307.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-122993" title="patriotic_millionaires_call_for_their_tax_cuts_to_expire-460x307" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/patriotic_millionaires_call_for_their_tax_cuts_to_expire-460x307.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a></p>
<p>Last week <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/16/us-sustainablecapitalism-idUSTRE81F1D020120216">Al Gore called capitalism “unsustainable.”</a> It was a silly pronouncement, but considering the way that the Obama administration is manipulating the economy to benefit its “green energy” buddies, the ex-vice president may have stumbled across a greater truth: Obama’s crony-capitalism is clearly unsustainable.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/16/us-sustainablecapitalism-idUSTRE81F1D020120216">a blockbuster story</a> published last week, <em>Washington Post</em> reporters <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/carol-d-leonnig/2011/02/25/ABOF4CJ_page.html">Carol D. Leonnig</a> and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/joe-stephens/2011/03/02/ABd6xmP_page.html">Joe Stephens</a> outlined more of the details of the incestuous relationship that the administration and green energy companies share. With $80 billion of stimulus money set aside for so-called clean energy projects there was a huge temptation to cross ethical boundaries separating the private and public sectors and it appears that few people involved in the business were able to resist that kind of temptation.</p>
<p>For example, the <em>Post</em> story explains how venture capitalist Sanjay Wagle served on an Energy Department panel that decided which companies would receive a chunk of the $80 billion pie, even though Wagle’s former firm – Vantage Point Venture Partners – received $2.4 billion of those funds over the past three years. According to the <em>Post</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Wagle’s former employer had invested in several companies that received federal money: Brightsource, which won a $1.6 billion federal loan for a solar-generating plant; Tesla Motors, which won a $465 million loan to build electric cars; and biofuels firm Mascoma, which in 2011 received $80 million for a Michigan ethanol plant.</p></blockquote>
<p>Overall, the <em>Post</em> investigation unearthed $3.9 billion in federal grants, and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers. It’s easy to conclude that’s just the tip of a very big iceberg.</p>
<p>Ironically, these latest troubling revelations come just as the poster-child of the president’s failed energy policy is falling apart. The wind lobby was unable to convince Congress to <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-02-17/business/ct-biz-0217-wind-ptc--20120217_1_tax-credit-wind-power-wind-projects">extend production tax credits</a> for wind power generation. Without that revenue, wind power cannot compete in the free market as even industry advocates themselves admit. Like failed solar power companies such as Solyndra and Ener1, the wind industry faces tough times ahead, despite billions upon billions of government subsidies.</p>
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		<title>An Administration&#8217;s Green Fiascos Pile Up</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/green-disasters-pile-up/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=green-disasters-pile-up</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:43:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Solyndra]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=121184</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The bankrupt ideology that's bankrupting the taxpayer. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/obamaat.Solyndra.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-121187" title="obamaat.Solyndra" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/obamaat.Solyndra.gif" alt="" width="375" height="259" /></a></p>
<p>The Obama administration has spent three years and billions of tax dollars in efforts to jump start a “green energy” industry in the United States. The president says that “sustainable,” clean energy sources are the wave of the future, vital to America’s future security and the well-being of the entire planet. And yet, after all this time and all that money, all the administration has to show for those efforts are a series of spectacular failures that would make a less arrogant leader blush.</p>
<p>The Solyndra fiasco is the highest-profile of the president’s many green failures, but it’s hardly the only one. Barely a week goes by but that we learn of yet another government-funded “clean energy” boondoggle. Let’s consider a few examples.</p>
<p>Late last year, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/31/us-beaconpower-bankruptcy-idUSTRE79T39320111031">Beacon Power Company</a> filed for bankruptcy protection. Beacon had previously received a $39 million government-guaranteed loan in order to fund research aimed at producing energy storage devices on an industrial scale. These kinds of “super batteries” are necessary solely to cover for the deficiencies and unreliability of solar and wind power.</p>
<p>Last Thursday, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-31/ener1-parent-of-u-s-subsidized-battery-unit-seeks-bankruptcy.html">Ener1 Inc. filed for bankruptcy</a> protection. Ener1 develops lithium storage batteries for electric cars manufactured by a company called Think Holdings, AS, which in turn has a manufacturing company located in Elkhart, Indiana. Ener1 received over $130 million in stimulus funds, and a $480 million loan from the Energy Department, promising to deliver 1,400 jobs to Indiana, while Think Holdings would generate a further 415 jobs. To date, Enre1 has created 275 jobs, while Think Holdings is down to 2 people who guard a plant at which about 100 electric vehicles – most of them unfinished – sit idly in storage.</p>
<p>A year ago, Vice President Joe Biden hailed Ener1 as one of “100 Recovery Act projects changing America.” “A year and a half ago, this administration made a judgment,” he said at the time. “We decided it’s not sufficient to create new jobs—we have to create whole new industries.” Unfortunately for Ener1, the free market did not share the Vice President’s enthusiasm. Demand for expensive, short ranged, small electric cars has not materialized, and thus Ener1 has no market for its product.</p>
<p>Even the much-ballyhooed Chevy Volt <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/global-exchange/financial-times/chevy-volt-shock-to-the-system/article2315484/">has turned into a disaster</a>. Fire hazards aside, there is simply no demand for the vehicle beyond some arms of government, a few corporations with cash to waste and rich, tree-hugging celebrities who can afford the luxury of pretentiousness. Chevrolet hoped to sell 10,000 Volts in 2011. Actual sales amounted to 7,671 units. GM has temporarily laid off 1,200 workers on the Volt production line and is considering slowing down production. A recent study concluded that real cost of Volt – when you consider all of the government subsidies involved in developing and building the car – is about $250,000 per unit. To borrow one of the environmental movement’s favorite terms, it’s hard to see how production of the Volt could ever be sustainable in the free market.</p>
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		<title>Killing Keystone</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/killing-keystone/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=killing-keystone</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/killing-keystone/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:45:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keystone Pipeline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Texas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TransCanada]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=119829</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lies from the president as elite radicals nix jobs for struggling blue-collar workers.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/download.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-119832" title="download" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/download.gif" alt="" width="375" height="246" /></a></p>
<p>More than three years after an initial permit application was filed and following the submission of hundreds and hundreds of pages of additional documents, President Obama <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/18/industry-source-state-department-will-reject-keystone-pipeline-reroute/">announced that he was rejecting TransCanada’s proposal</a> to construct the Keystone XL pipeline because his administration supposedly wasn’t given sufficient time to review the project.  Newt Gingrich called the decision “stunningly stupid” and it’s hard to argue with the former speaker on this one.</p>
<p>The president tried to duck responsibility for the decision, pointing the finger at Republicans in Congress who attached a pipeline provision to the short-term payroll tax cut extension approved last year that required Obama to approve Keystone XL by February 21 or explain why he was killing the project. This is yet another example of the President’s “the buck stops there” approach to leadership.</p>
<p>&#8220;This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,&#8221; Obama said. &#8220;I&#8217;m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my administration&#8217;s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil.&#8221;</p>
<p>The president would have us believe that the State Department had but sixty days to review the project and they couldn’t possibly come to a decision in that short a time. In fact, the State Department has been reviewing the proposed project for over three years. In setting a deadline for the decision, congressional Republicans were not imposing an arbitrary, unreasonable deadline. They were rather attempting to force an end to the dithering and waffling that has gone on for far too long.</p>
<p>The amount of documentation that has been filed and reviewed since <a href="http://transcanada.com/index.html">TransCanada</a> first filed its permit application in September 2008 is staggering. The company has submitted thousands of pages of data, plans, maps, studies and all of the other bureaucratic flotsam and jetsam that government requires these days. In response, the State Department has generated thousands of pages of its own, including a Final Environmental Impact Statement that spans eight massive volumes. The president’s claim that his administration didn’t have “the information necessary to approve the project” defies credulity. The administration has a mountain of information, and it’s <a href="http://www.keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/clientsite/keystonexl.nsf?Open">all available on the Internet</a>.</p>
<p>What was really wanting here was time to respond to all of the complaints and pseudo-concerns that obstructionist groups like the Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council have raised in their attempts to kill the project. As part of our dysfunctional regulatory system, well-heeled environmental groups can (and do) file a practically endless number of comments when permit applications are being reviewed. Typically, the vast majority of such comments are without merit, but that’s not the point as far as the environmental groups are concerned. Their aim is to gum up the works of the system, in the hopes that developers will tire of the process and give up, as well as to establish the basis of the lawsuits that inevitably follow any regulatory decision that runs contrary to their wishes.</p>
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		<title>Canadian Oil Project Drifts Closer to China</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/canadian-oil-project-drifts-closer-to-china/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=canadian-oil-project-drifts-closer-to-china</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/canadian-oil-project-drifts-closer-to-china/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:20:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[canada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Harper]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keystone XLL pipeline from Canada]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=119494</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Harper government puts Obama and the eco-radicals on notice. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-6.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-119538" title="Picture-6" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-6.gif" alt="" width="375" height="249" /></a></p>
<p>Last week Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper demonstrated that he’s more than willing to do that which his counterpart in the White House is unable or unwilling to do: <a href="http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/01/09/terence-corcoran-a-war-on-green-radicals/">display a little backbone</a> when dealing with radical environmentalists and their pet causes. Harper’s administration both commenced hearings on an alternative pipeline that would be used to ship Canadian crude to China, as well as putting the “green movement” on notice that extremism masquerading as environmentalism will no longer be tolerated in the Great White North.</p>
<p>Clearly Canada would prefer to ship crude recovered from massive reserves in Alberta to Texas via the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Unfortunately, the combination of green fear-mongering and President Obama’s predictable dithering has put approval of Keystone XL in doubt. Per his deal with Congress the President has until February 21 to approve the pipeline project or to explain his refusal to do so. Yet, even if the President does approve the project and risk annoying those among his supporters who worship planet earth even more than they do him, there is no guarantee that construction of Keystone XL would start anytime soon.</p>
<p>As Harper is aware, the United States is as litigious a society as there is on earth and – thanks to the many misguided decisions made in the pursuit of environmental purity by both parties – the massive statutory and regulatory infrastructures that have been constructed in the name of protecting mother earth practically guarantee that environmental groups could tie up an approval of Keystone XL in the courts for years.  It would be silly to put all one’s eggs in one basket in any case, but given the dysfunctional manner with which America addresses environmental issues and energy issues, Harper would be worse than foolish to assume that Canada’s best energy customer will continue to be so.</p>
<p>So, the Harper government opened hearings on the Northern Gateway pipeline, an alternative route that would send crude from Alberta to Kimat, British Columbian, where it would be loaded onto tankers and <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/15/super-canadian-prime-minister-meeting-with-china-about-selling-their-oil/">shipped to energy-starved China</a>. To be sure that the pipeline <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/01/10/bc-northern-gateway-enbridge-kitimat.html?cmp=rss">faces opposition and its own bureaucratic obstacles</a> as well, but with hundreds of billions of revenue at risk it is clearly well worth the effort to move forward on both tracks. Keystone XL is surely the preferred – and sensible – way to get Alberta’s crude to market, but Northern Gateway will do just fine if the United States is too stupid to approve a project that is so clearly in our national interest.</p>
<p>For not only would Keystone XL generate tens of thousands of new jobs, both in terms of construction jobs and in terms of a myriad of employment opportunities down the supply chain, it would also take a huge bite out of overseas oil imports. At full capacity, Keystone XL would provide about ten percent of America’s crude oil demand, without the slightest risk of a foreign tyrant cutting off production or closing a supply route.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Enviro-Racketeering</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obamas-enviro-racketeering/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-enviro-racketeering</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obamas-enviro-racketeering/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:20:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cellulosic ethanol]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lisa jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OIL]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=118986</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Struggling job producers slapped with fines -- for a green fuel that doesn't exist. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/eyeconic_071111_pump-oil_stone_1122.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-118990" title="eyeconic_071111_pump-oil_stone_1122" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/eyeconic_071111_pump-oil_stone_1122.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a></p>
<p>As I have noted on more than one occasion, in recent years the United States EPA has been acting more and more like a revenue-generating arm of the government than an agency that’s actually interested in protecting human health and the environment. A <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/business/energy-environment/companies-face-fines-for-not-using-unavailable-biofuel.html?_r=1">recent story</a> published in the <em>New York Times </em>amply illustrates the point: fuel suppliers are being fined for failing to add a “green fuel” &#8211; cellulosic ethanol &#8211; that doesn’t actually exist into their gasoline blends.</p>
<p>Cellulosic ethanol has long been a particularly prized panacea among environmental groups. As any moonshiner knows, conventional ethanol has long been produced by fermenting naturally grown sugars. These sugars are readily available and relatively easy to get at in corn for example, which is why ethanol production plants commonly use corn as their feedstock.  However, even Al Gore eventually realized that it was rather idiotic to take millions of acres of farmland out of food and feed production in order to “grow” a fuel that (in many gases) actually ends up on the deficit side of the energy ledger. Cellulosic ethanol theoretically addresses those concerns.</p>
<p>There are sugars theoretically available in cellulose, a naturally-occurring polymer found in all sorts of plant life. If you can figure out how to get at those sugars, then you can make ethanol out of things that don’t have a lot of intrinsic value and that don’t compete with food and feed crops, like tree trimmings and corn cobs. Unfortunately, getting at those particular sugars is (for a lot of reasons that would bore the heck out of the average reader) extremely difficult. Like the Chevy Volt, the concept of cellulosic ethanol is very attractive, but the reality is expensive and impractical.</p>
<p>Expense and practicality are hardly matters of concern to environmentalists though. Environmentalists prefer the pixie dust approach to dealing with energy policy: if they believe hard enough, their wishes will come true. They wanted cellulosic ethanol and once Democrats took control of Congress after the 2006 elections, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid duly granted their wish. The <a href="http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=IssueItems.Detail&amp;IssueItem_ID=f10ca3dd-fabd-4900-aa9d-c19de47df2da&amp;Month=12&amp;Year=2007">Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007</a> mandated the use of certain minimum quantities of cellulosic ethanol that started at 100 million gallons in 2009 and ends at 16 billion gallons is 2022. (Annual US gasoline sales are about 130 billion gallons, by way of comparison). In 2011, oil companies were mandated to sell at least 250 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol.</p>
<p>This was a problem for oil companies, because there are no plants currently producing cellulosic ethanol. And so, using her authority under the Clean Air Act, USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson duly issued penalty demands of $6.8 million to oil companies for not using a non-existent fuel.  If the rallying cry in 1776 was “No Taxation Without Representation!”, perhaps the equivalent in 2011 ought to be “No Penalty Without Reality!”</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s EPA Terrorizes Couple Over Their Dream Home</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obamas-epa-on-trial/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-epa-on-trial</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obamas-epa-on-trial/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:25:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental protection agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mike and Chantell Sackett]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=118031</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A harrowing tale that illustrates just how out of control the environmentalist agency is.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/cr_mega_554_lisa-jackson-epa-RTXRL55_Comp.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-118037" title="cr_mega_554_lisa-jackson-epa-RTXRL55_Comp" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/cr_mega_554_lisa-jackson-epa-RTXRL55_Comp.gif" alt="" width="375" height="262" /></a></p>
<p>The Supreme Court agreed to hear the sadly representative case of an Idaho couple dragged through the ringer by our aggressive, money-hungry, bullying EPA. It’s essentially a due process case, intended to settle the narrow question of whether or not individuals should have immediate access to the judicial system when the EPA takes action against them. But there’s more here, because the saga of Mike and Chantell Sackett is a harrowing tale that illustrates just how out of control this agency is.</p>
<p>You can read all about the Sacketts’ fight at the <a href="http://www.pacificlegal.org/page.aspx?pid=616">Pacific Legal Foundation website</a>. In brief, the story is this: Six years ago, the couple bought a 0.63 acre parcel alongside a lake, intending to build a house. They started construction, and – like any number of individuals (as opposed to developers) building homes – they didn’t do a formal wetlands delineation before starting to move earth and dump gravel. (A “wetlands delineation” is the investigative process by which experts decide whether there is a wetland on site on not.)</p>
<p>At this point, I need to veer off of the main story for a moment to describe what a wetland is as far as regulators are concerned. Not surprisingly, the regulatory definition of a wetland has little to do with the common sense definition.</p>
<p>First of all, a wetland need not actually be wet. It is rather primarily defined by hydrography (i.e. water flow patterns), soil classification and the type of vegetation present. In my career, I have seen it determined that a couple of tire ruts with a few cattails growing in them are “wetlands.”</p>
<p>For a wetland to be regulated, it must also be connected to “waters of the United States,” which are basically any navigable river, lake or other body of water. Thus, in my tire rut example, the ruts were determined to be part of waters of the United States because they drained into a ditch, which ran into a creek, which ran into a small river, which eventually drained into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which drains into the Des Plaines River, which drains into the Illinois River, which <em>is</em> a navigable water way. So there you go.</p>
<p>When most people think of wetlands protection, they think of big swamps and fens teaming with aquatic birds and beavers engaged in wholly unregulated construction projects. That happens, but much more often wetland protection is about tire ruts, tiny pools or a smattering of cat tails on the edge of a pond. It’s regulation for regulation’s sake, in other words, for delving into such minutia does nothing to improve the world.  The EPA, <a href="http://www.usace.army.mil/CECW/Pages/ww_reg_permit.aspx">Army Corps of Engineers</a> and Congress are all at fault here: Congress for granting the Agency and Corps such broad authority and the two regulatory bodies for wielding it so grandiosely.</p>
<p>Back to the Sacketts. The couple got sucked into this surreal world. The EPA ordered them to stop construction and to return the 0.63 acre site to its original condition. If they didn’t, the EPA said it could fine the couple up to $37,500 per day for non-compliance. In fact, the Agency can take such unjustifiably punitive action, for such is the power that Congress has surrendered to it. Unfortunately, it’s not at all unusual to see the EPA use its remarkable ability to levy ridiculous fines as a club in just this way.</p>
<p>Here we come to a rather interesting nuance of the underlying law. The EPA maintains that, under <a href="http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/laws/cwa.html">the Clean Water Act</a> there can be no judicial appeal of its ruling that the Sacketts&#8217; property contains a wetland until and unless the EPA actually takes action – in the form of a fine or permit denial, for example. So, simply by doing nothing, the EPA can effectively kill this (or any) project. If the couple defies the Agency’s cease and desist order, they know that they are potentially subject to huge fines. Once the penalty demand comes in they can appeal the EPA’s decision to a court, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that they would win. Thus, the Sacketts face the uncomfortable choice of building and playing Russian Roulette with their life savings, or not building and abandoning both their dream and their property.</p>
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		<title>The Keystone Conundrum</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/the-keystone-conundrum/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-keystone-conundrum</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/the-keystone-conundrum/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Dec 2011 04:08:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Budget Deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[envirnonmentalists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keystone XL Pipeline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=116542</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is Congress starting to come to its senses about energy and environmental policy?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/pipeline.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-116576" title="pipeline" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/pipeline.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a></p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether the House and the Senate can <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/18/house-gop-plans-alternative-to-senate-passed-payroll-tax-cut/">resolve their differences</a> on the latest budget bill, but the Senate version promises to back the Obama administration into an uncomfortable corner with regard to the proposed Keystone XL pipleline. As part of Saturday’s 89 – 10 vote to extend payroll tax cuts for another two months, the Senate gave the president a sixty-day deadline to make a decision on the Keystone project. The White House had rejected the idea including outright approval of the project in the bill, but said that the two-month deadline was acceptable.</p>
<p>Assuming that the House and Senate can agree on a compromise bill, it’s likely that the Keystone provision will survive and that will be interesting. Obama has been loath to pick a side on the pipeline issue. On the one hand, if he kills the project, the president opens himself to criticism for denying Americans access to a plentiful source of North American crude and for losing this opportunity to create a plethora of jobs without spending any tax dollars. Yet, if he allows the project to move forward, Obama is sure to <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70582.html">annoy the environmental activists</a> who form part of his base.</p>
<p>It’s hard to believe that environmentalists have any other places to go in the coming election and it’s almost as unlikely that they would choose to stay home out of pure petulance over the pipeline. Nonetheless, the Obama team has always been ultra-cautious when it comes to its perceived base and this is another example of the phenomenon.</p>
<p>Pressed to make a decision on the pipeline, the president instead kicked this particular can down the road last month. The administration decided to study an alternative route for the pipeline, which would conveniently have delayed any decision until after the 2012 election. It was the best of two political worlds in a lot of ways. By postponing the decision, Obama could tell environmentalists that he was duly evaluating every bit of data before coming to a decision, while he could simultaneously claim not to have shut down the project out of hand.</p>
<p>By imposing a sixty-day deadline, the Senate bill would force the president to pick a side, something he clearly hates to do. If the budget bill goes through, as it seems destined to, the administration will be forced to decide who it is willing to offend. Environmentalists will be offended if Obama approves Keystone XL, while trade unions will be equally upset if he decided to kill it.</p>
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		<title>The Keystone Evasion</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/obamas-keystone-evasion/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-keystone-evasion</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/obamas-keystone-evasion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:33:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[canada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keystone XL Pipeline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tar sands oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Unemployment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=112486</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[White House delays American jobs for blatant political reasons.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/r-BARACK-OBAMA-KEYSTONE-XL-large570.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-112487" title="r-BARACK-OBAMA-KEYSTONE-XL-large570" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/r-BARACK-OBAMA-KEYSTONE-XL-large570.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a></p>
<p>As a senator, Barack Obama was addicted to this particular word: “present.” Time and again Senator Obama employed his favorite word to avoid taking a position on the great issues of the day. Once he was elected president, voting “present” seemed to no longer be an option. Or so we thought.</p>
<p>The president’s decision not to make a decision on the construction of the <a href="http://www.transcanada.com/keystone.html">Keystone XL pipeline</a> is, in all effects, another present vote. Caught between two opposing points of view, Obama understood that taking one side or another was fraught with political consequences. So, he did what he does best: the president kicked the can down the road.</p>
<p>On the one hand, this administration’s singular inability to do anything to fight unemployment is a huge liability as we roll into the next election cycle. Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would ultimately bring about 800,000 barrels per day of Canadian oil down to U.S. refineries, would create hundreds of thousands of permanent jobs, and would secure an important source of non-OPEC oil.</p>
<p>If Obama had come out squarely against Keystone XL, he would have left himself open to charges – entirely justified – that he refused to take an action that would have immediate and measurable effect on both the economy and the unemployment situation. Moreover, it would also anger the unions that would stand to benefit from the massive construction project, unions which are important to the president both in terms of campaign contributions and votes.</p>
<p>It would have been idiotic to openly kill the project this close to an election. Think about it. Construction of Keystone XL would result in <a href="http://www.api.org/Newsroom/upload/API-US_Supply_Economic_Forecast.pdf">hundreds of billions of dollars</a> pouring into the economy, much of it in the form of wages, and the government wouldn’t have to shell out even one of our tax dollars to make it happen. How can anybody possibly be against it?</p>
<p>But, on the other hand, the so-called “green vote” is also important to this president. It’s hard to see why. I mean – seriously – is a hard-core enviro-activist going to vote for the Republican candidate? They should, since Republican administrations have been responsible for more draconian environmental statutes than any Democratic administration, but that’s not the way the tree-hugging crowd sees it – reality being something of an alien concept among the greenies.</p>
<p>The enviros despise Keystone XL, for a couple of reasons. They’re certain that oil from the pipeline will leak into shallow aquifers in Nebraska, which will contaminate the water that farmers in the state use to grow government-subsidized corn crops which is turned into government-mandated ethanol at government-subsidized plants.</p>
<p>This would, of course, be a disaster – for the government at least – and it must be admitted that pipelines do leak now and again. On the other hand, a gigantic pile of government laws and regulations ensure that when anyone contaminates soil or groundwater the guilty parties are held financially liable and <a href="http://www.transcanada.com/protecting_environment.html">forced to pay for a thorough clean up</a>.</p>
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		<title>California&#8217;s Green Power Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/californias-green-power-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=californias-green-power-crisis</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Oct 2011 04:13:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Renewable Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Solar power]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wind]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=109838</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the Golden State's energy model has failed.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wind-turbine-failure.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-109850" title="wind-turbine-failure" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wind-turbine-failure.gif" alt="" width="375" height="259" /></a></p>
<p>Among the many difficulties that the state of California has been facing, one in particular is looming larger and larger: the power problem. The state is slowly coming to grips with the fact that its preferred sources of electric power – wind and solar – are neither cheap nor reliable. Yet, California is committed by law to increasing the use of wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy. The economics don’t come close to supporting this model. And so – quite predictably – the folks who operate the wind mills and solar plants want Californians to pay even more for the power, despite the fact that residents of the state pay some of the highest rates in the nation.</p>
<p>According to Department of Energy data, Californians paid <a href="http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/california.html">an average of 14.74 cents per kilowatt-hour</a> in 2010, compared to the national average of 11.51 cents per kilowatt-hour. Prices have risen by almost fifty percent over the course of the last decade, and <a href="http://c0688662.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/downloads_pdf_White_Paper_Calif_Elec_Prices.pdf">a study by Bloom Energy</a> suggests that prices will continue to rise by five to seven percent per year for the foreseeable future. Overall, <a href="http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/e_profiles_sum.html">only five other states</a> in the nation have higher electricity costs than California. Energy is getting more and more expensive just at the time the cash-strapped state can least afford it.</p>
<p>How did California arrive at this crisis point? It started when the legislature decided to adopt a Renewable Portfolio Standard, or “RPS,” for the state. Like most RPS programs (thirty-three states currently have them) California’s mandates the use of more and more renewable power to generate electricity each year. The intent, of course, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with fossil fuel combustion.</p>
<p>California’s RPS is especially aggressive, with a requirement that thirty-three percent of the electricity sold in the state originate from renewable sources of energy by the year 2020. Other states that have adopted RPS require lower renewable percentages (twenty to twenty-five percent is typical) and the final compliance dates are farther out. That doesn’t mean that the other RPS states won’t face the same kind of problems that California is dealing with, it just means that the day of reckoning won’t arrive quite as quickly as it has in the Golden State.</p>
<p>The leftist myth is that wind power and solar power are “free,” because you don’t have to pay for the energy sources. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/science/earth/11solar.html">reality is quite different</a>. While the energy source doesn’t cost anything, all of the other things that factor into the cost of this kind of power are expensive. First there’s the installed cost of the plant. According to Department of Energy figures, the installed cost of a wind turbine is about on par with building a new coal plant, on a dollars-per-kilowatt generated basis. The installed cost of solar is about four times that of a coal plant, and almost ten times that of a natural gas-fired plant. So, before a single electron goes anywhere, the operator has debt-service to factor into his pricing.</p>
<p>Then there’s the cost of the infrastructure needed to get the power to market. This means new transmissions lines, switchyards and all of the other pieces needed whenever power plants are built. But, the infrastructure is especially expensive because the footprints of wind farms are so large, as compared to a conventional fossil-fuel plant. The large footprint (and relative inaccessibility of wind turbines) also drives up maintenance costs. Add everything up and wind and solar power cannot compete with conventional sources of power in the free market.</p>
<p>The wind and solar industries have heretofore thrived thanks to government subsidies and Renewable Energy Tax Credits. The taxpayer effectively generates roughly one-third of the gross revenue that wind and solar power plants receive, far more than any other portion of the energy sector. Absent that level of government support, wind and solar power plants could not survive given the price-structure that naturally arises in a competitive market. There is a real danger that an assertive Republican-led House will not approve another extension of Renewable Energy Tax Credits in the coming year. Without that program, the wind and solar industries in California will die on the vine, no matter what the state’s RPS demands are. Thus the wind and solar lobbies are pushing legislators hard to approve legislation that will force consumers to pay a premium for their particular forms of power. They can see the writing on the wall: the D.C. gravy train is drying up, so it’s time for Plan B.</p>
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		<title>Solargate Spreads</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/solargate-spreads/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=solargate-spreads</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/solargate-spreads/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:55:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[loan]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[solar power plants]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=107124</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The brewing scandal involving the solar panel industry may run much deeper than the failed Solyndra company.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/IMG_1784.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107126" title="IMG_1784" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/IMG_1784.gif" alt="" width="375" height="247" /></a></p>
<p>New revelations suggest that the brewing scandal involving the solar panel industry may run much deeper than the failed Solyndra company. <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/29/more-solar-companies-led-by-democratic-donors-received-federal-loan-guarantees/">According to a report</a> published by <em>The Daily Caller</em>, officials at at least four other solar companies that received billions in loan guarantees have donated large sums of money to prominent Democrats like President Obama, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Barbara Boxer. In addition, tumbling stock prices suggest that some, if not all, of the companies in question may be heading for financial trouble.</p>
<p>Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer based in Fremont, California that received $535 million in federal loans, was touted by the Obama administration as an example of the kind of cutting edge, green technology leader that America needs to invest in. The company subsequently declared bankruptcy and, when called upon to testify before a Congressional committee, Solyndra <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/solyndra-executives-take-the-fifth-before-us-house-subcommittee/2011/09/23/gIQABg4lrK_story.html">executives repeatedly invoked the 5th Amendment</a> rather than answer questions about the fiasco. Now, it appears that the scandal is spreading. According to <em>The Daily Caller’s</em> John Rossomando:</p>
<blockquote><p>Companies like First Solar, SolarReserve, SunPower Corporation and Abengoa SA have already, collectively, received billions in loans through Obama administration stimulus programs to build solar power plants in the southwestern United States. Yet each, with the exception of the privately held SolarReserve, has seen its stock price hammered at the same time it was lobbying the Obama administration and Congress for billions in loan guarantees.</p></blockquote>
<p>For example, according to <em>The Daily Caller,</em> Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser raised over $50,000 for President Obama in 2008. Kaiser has ties to both SolarReserve and Solyndra. Lee Bailey, a SolarReserve board member and U.S. Renewables Group investor, has donated $21,850 since 2008 to Democratic candidates, including President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and California Sen. Barbara Boxer. SolarReserve also paid more than $100,000 of lobbying fees to the Podesta Group. The Podesta Group is run by Tony Podesta, brother of Obama transition team head Leon Podesta. In the same vein, SunPower, spent almost $300,000 in lobbying fees with a close confidante of Harry Reid’s, as well as making hefty campaign donations to influential Democrats.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the value of these companies appears to be dropping precipitously. The price of both SolarReserve and SunPower stock has dropped more than sixty per cent in just a few months, and Abengoa SA stock dropped over thirty five per cent in six months. (First Solar is privately held, so financial data is not available.) Nonetheless, not only have they received billions in federal loan guarantees, the Department of Energy just authorized a billion more.</p>
<p>The administration and “green energy” advocates tout solar as a vitally important source of green energy and claim that DOE seed money pouring into companies like these will pay off in the long run. There is certainly some demand for solar panels in the residential and commercial markets, but it’s hard to see how any US company will be able to compete with solar panels built in China given all of that nation’s manufacturing advantages in commodity markets. Solyndra tried to compete in that market and failed miserably, if predictably.</p>
<p>But, as dubious an investment in the residential and commercial market is, investment in the power market is even shakier. Solar power does not, will not and cannot play any significant role in electrical generation for a couple of very good reasons. First, the <a href="http://www.jcmiras.net/surge/p130.htm">installed cost of a solar plant</a> is more than double that of an equivalently-sized coal plant, and more than ten times the cost of a gas turbine plant. And then, because the sun doesn’t shine all of the time, solar plants spend most of their time not running. The metric used to determine availability is called the &#8220;capacity factor.&#8221; This is a measure of how much power a plant actually produces, as compared to the amount of power the plant could produce if it were running at peak capacity every hour of the year. A typical nuclear plant runs at an annual capacity factor of around ninety percent. Coal plants usually operate in the sixty to seventy-five percent range. Most solar plants operate at capacity factors of less than twenty five percent.</p>
<p>There’s no free market incentive to build power plants that are much more expensive to build and operate far less than other technologies. Without the grants, loans, subsidies and tax breaks, no one would choose to use solar energy to enter the power market. Yet, that is the very market that First Solar, SolarReserve, SunPower Corporation and Abengoa SA are going after, and Obama’s <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SOLAR_ENERGY_LOANS?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2011-09-28-19-59-35">Department of Energy is pouring billions and billions</a> into the companies to make it possible.</p>
<p>To provide a little perspective on just how paltry a contribution solar power makes to electric generation, consider that the entire United States’ <a href="http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p2.html">electric generation fleet</a> totals a little over 1.1 million megawatts of capacity. Of this, about 640 megawatts, or 0.05%, is currently solar. Over the next five years, the Department of Energy projects that over <a href="http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p4.html">75,000 megawatts of new capacity</a> of all sorts will come on line, a figure that includes 2,883 megawatts of solar power. That will move solar’s potential contribution up to a whopping 0.3% of the total.</p>
<p>Solar power combines enormous construction costs and pitiful reliability in a way that no other power source does, and the numbers reflect that simple truth. The fact is that solar power can do virtually nothing to replace reliable fossil and nuclear plants. The only thing that solar power has been able to achieve is to separate taxpayers from billions of their hard-earned dollars. As the Solargate scandal spreads, more and more Americans are wondering why that has been allowed to happen.</p>
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		<title>Alberta-Texas Pipeline a Ray of Hope</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/alberta-texas-pipeline-a-ray-of-hope/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=alberta-texas-pipeline-a-ray-of-hope</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Sep 2011 04:36:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[canadian tar sands]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[texas pipeline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[water]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=106982</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[But the environmental Left is as determined as ever to kill it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Picture-8.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106994" title="Picture-8" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Picture-8.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a></p>
<p>One month after passing <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/plan-for-canada-to-texas-oil-pipeline-moves-forward-after-environmental-review/2011/08/26/gIQA3iaJgJ_story.html">an initial environmental review</a>, the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/us/rancor-grows-over-planned-oil-pipeline-from-canada.html?_r=1&amp;pagewanted=all">crossed another significant hurdle</a>, as a series of State Department hearings in states affected by the project drew to a close. Like any recent project involving any sort of fossil fuel use, the Keystone XL pipeline drew the usual crowd of protesters and fear-mongers. Yet, recognizing the importance of the project in both economic terms and in terms of energy independence, Keystone XL has garnered <a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/09/28/why-do-not-want-canadas-oil/">a surprising amount of public support</a> as well.</p>
<p>The pipeline, running from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast, would have the capacity to bring an additional 700,000 barrels of crude oil pumped out of Canadian tar sands. The United States imports roughly 10 million barrels of crude per day, so completion of Keystone XL has the potential to displace a fair amount of the crude that we currently import from overseas. In a world where China and India are gobbling up as much crude supply as they can through long-term contracts, it obviously makes sense to ensure our own energy security through projects like this. Yet, the environmental Left has been doing everything it can to muddy the waters of a decision that should be crystal clear when it comes to this new pipeline.</p>
<p>The State Department hearings reflected much of the poisonous influence that the environmental Left and their partners in the mainstream media have had on many otherwise reasonable, hardworking Americans. The environmental Left’s core messages are: 1) there is no level of acceptable risk, 2) there are no environmental missteps, only environmental disasters, and 3) anyone who disagrees with message one or two is lying and, most likely, in collusion with evil corporate polluters.</p>
<p>Consider, for example, how the concerns of one farmer in Nebraska <a href="http://www.canada.com/business/Nebraskan+pipeline+opponents+defy+warrior+stereotype/5472527/story.html">were reported by Canadian wire service</a> <em>Postmedia News</em>. Farmers Scott and Bruce Boettcher, who drove four and a half hours to attend the hearing, are highlighted in the story:</p>
<blockquote><p>Their lifetime of experience has made them highly skeptical of studies — by both TransCanada and the State Department — that conclude environmental damage from an oil spill would be limited and localized. The water is not static — it moves, Bruce says, and oil spilled into it will move, too.</p>
<p>&#8220;Them scientists are not telling the truth about that ground,&#8221; he told Postmedia News during a break in the Lincoln hearings.</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, the highly sophisticated models that are used to determine the extent and severity of oil spills do indeed take into account the fact that water moves. We know, from decades of experience, how any kind of groundwater contamination will act and how severe the potential damage is. And, after all those decades of experience, we’ve gotten very, very good at both limiting the size of the inevitable (if very occasional) spill and remediating any environmental effects.</p>
<p>Yet, environmental groups and their media allies latch onto any story – no matter how convoluted – that will play to the tired old narrative that America is dangerously polluted and each new project brings us a step closer to environmental catastrophe. In addition to supposedly poisoning ground water in Nebraska, the environmental Left asserts that crude taken from Canadian oil sands is more greenhouse gas-intensive than other forms of crude and that emissions of other pollutants will increase as well if this “dirty” crude is allowed to enter the United States.</p>
<p>Both claims are silly. When you add everything up, oil sands crude is middle of the pack when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, and the fact that the crude is “dirtier” only means that refineries have to do more to remove contaminants, not that the release of more contaminants into the environment will be allowed. In any case, somebody – somewhere – is going to refine this supply of crude. Growth in Asia guarantees that there will be no shortage of demand for a long time. So the real question is: do we want to make a deal with our neighbor to help stabilize our own energy picture, or do we want them to sell it to somebody else? Either way, the wells in Alberta will keep pumping.</p>
<p>Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hinted that she is inclined to rule favorably on the project. With an election year fast approaching, it would appear to be in the administration&#8217;s best interest to push Keystone XL through, if only to raise a little political capital among the millions of Americans who remain distressed by the economy, gas prices and unemployment.</p>
<p>The political advantages were made clear during the recent hearings. While hearings of this type usually only bring out the critics, many supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline stepped up to the microphones to urge the administration to move forward. The administration is expected to announce its decision by the end of the year. Whatever the decision, it is sure to be challenged in court by the parties who disagree with it, but that small ray of sunshine peeking through the gloom of our cloudy energy future suggests that the process – as cumbersome and time consuming as it may be – is moving forward at long last.</p>
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		<title>A Lesson in Good Science for Global Warming Faithful</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/a-lesson-in-good-science-for-global-warming-faithful/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-lesson-in-good-science-for-global-warming-faithful</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:35:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=106790</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ground-breaking research demonstrates why the notion of "settled science" has no place in rational inquiry.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/einstein-4.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106858" title="einstein-4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/einstein-4.gif" alt="" width="375" height="251" /></a></p>
<p>Last week a team of scientists working at CERN, the European scientific research organization, <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20110594-264/physics-shocker-neutrinos-clocked-faster-than-light/">published a research paper</a> that has rocked the scientific community. According to their data, gathered as part of a research projected named “OPERA,” neutrinos generated at the CERN research facility located on the Swiss-French border were found to travel faster than the speed of light.</p>
<p>Not a lot faster, mind you. The data shows that the particles made the 454 mile trip from the CERN facility to the INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy 61 billionths of a second faster than light in vacuum. That’s all of two thousandths of a percent difference, but in the weird world of sub-atomic physics, it’s quite a remarkable result.</p>
<p>Einsteinen physics set the universal speed limit at the speed of light over one hundred years ago. It quickly became one of the bedrocks of modern physics, a universally accepted fact as seemingly unshakable as the Newtonian relationship between gravity and mass. Anything that challenges that tenet will necessarily make physicists take another look at relativity theory.</p>
<p>The scientific method demands that the results must be independently verified, so it will likely be a while before we can definitively confirm or deny the finding. Still, the CERN scientists took many months to carefully check and recheck their data before publishing a result that was sure to upset the apple carts of so many physicists.</p>
<p>&#8220;After many months of studies and cross checks we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement. While OPERA researchers will continue their studies, we are also looking forward to independent measurements to fully assess the nature of this observation,&#8221; said Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for OPERA and a <a href="http://www.lhep.unibe.ch/pages/people.php?id=4&amp;lang=en">professor a the University of Bern</a>.</p>
<p>Could this finding have unexpected consequences in other fields, most notably in the field of climatology? Advocates of the theory that burning fossil fuels is causing catastrophic global warming have long claimed that there is consensus among scientists about that relationship. Many scientists would challenge that claim, including this one, for the complexity of climate science and the multitude of intertwined forces that affect the climate requires measured, necessarily nuanced, explanations of the role that greenhouse gases play in the system. Instead, many global warming proponents like to deal in absolutes and they thus pretend that the effect of greenhouse gases on the climate far outweighs all others. This is effectively the “consensus” they claim exists in the scientific community.</p>
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