News

Maybe peering over the edge of a cliff will attune these bozos in Washington to mortality.  I wouldn’t count on it, though. AEA (12/31/12) reports: “With our nation’s economic future in their hands, Senate leaders are negotiating behind closed doors in the latest round of political brinkmanship to avert the so-called fiscal cliff. Early reports indicate that some leaders are insisting on an inclusion of the wind production tax credit into any final package, and precisely at the moment they are attempting to raise taxes on small business owners and American families who must pay for it. Billion dollar giveaways to special interests are among the leading drivers of our present fiscal strain, and yet Senate leaders are planning to increase corporate welfare to the most intermittent and unreliable energy sources in our national electricity portfolio.”

Having a second email account isn’t illegal or even immoral.  But conducting government business on that account is a strict no-no. They tell you that in the first hour of orientation when you join up. Is the United States Attorney for DC investigating?  Because he should be. Mail Online (12/27/12) reports: “A Washington attorney suing the Environmental Protection Agency for refusing to disclose information about the creation and use of the ‘secondary’ email accounts, says the agency’s chief is resigning in part because of the Justice Department’s decision to publicize thousands of secret alias emails she was responsible for.”

Mary Nichols was a catastrophe when she was the AA for Air and Radiation during the Clinton Administration.  It’s doubtful that a few years in the Jerry Brown Administration have improved her. SFGate (12/28/12) reports: “The woman who led California through the development and implementation of some groundbreaking environmental policies could soon be headed to Washington, D.C. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson announced her resignation this week, and already people are speculating about who will next head the agency. One name on nearly every pundit’s short list: California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols.”

That’s right, the shale boom is so big you can see it from space. I wonder how long it will take until our politicians and bureaucrats can see the huge potential. Scientific American (12/28/12) reports: “This image is originally from NASA’s Earth at Night series that I’ve been following. The Eagle Ford Shale shows up as bands of lights below San Antonio, stretching from where the “Tex meets the Mex” to Interstate 10. What we’re seeing on the shale is not city or town lights that have sprung up because of the fracking activity. More than likely, we’re seeing well flares that are picked up by the imaging sensors aboard the Soumi NPP satellite, which detects both city lights and gas flares using a “day-night band”. You can also see flaring from offshore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, spreading out like silt from the Mississippi River, and some more flaring out in West Texas.”

At least we live in country where our defense capabilities are not jeopardized by silly rules, right…? The Telegraph (12/29/12) reports: “The fighting capability of the [British] Army’s new generation of armoured vehicles could be limited by European rules on greenhouse gas emissions… To avoid breaching the EU rules, the 3,000 vehicles must be specially designed to limit the damage to the environment in the battlefield.”

Tanton knows where the bodies are buried. He’s been following Big Wind’s racket in California for 40 years. Forbes (12/21/12) reports: “But it could be getting a lot worse for wind. A fascinating new report by George Taylor and Tom Tanton at the American Tradition Institute called ‘The Hidden Costs of Wind Electricity’ asserts that the cost of wind power is significantly understated by the EIA’s numbers. In fact, says Taylor, generating electricity from wind costs triple what it does from natural gas… That’s because the numbers from the EIA and wind boosters fail to take into account a host of infrastructure and transmission costs.”

I suppose it wouldn’t be surprising if a beetle were to spell the downfall of the U.S. by burrowing into our rotten shell of a republic.  At least that’s the way things seem to be going these days. Heritage (12/21/12) reports: “While it is likely a silly argument that this beetle’s preferred habitat is dotted with pipelines, it’s as reasonable as the idea that the greens seek to stop the Keystone Pipeline for the beetle. It is not about the beetle or even really about the effect of the pipeline on habitat. It is about what would flow through the pipeline—energy. From the radical greens’ view, what is worst about this energy isn’t even that it would be a source of CO2. What is worst is that it would be affordable and reliable.”