The BPA Threat Is Another Lie

Just as Co2 Is Not A Pollutant, BPA (Bisphenal A) is Not harmful. To anyone…

As always, when it doesn’t make sense, Follow The Money.

The Greens Are Lying To You….Again

And of course the Main Stream Media just parrots everything they hear without even questioning it.

This ABC News video, “Combatting ‘Vampire Energy’” spotlights the alleged eco-friendliness of Asus’ new laptops made with bamboo. While soaking in the the video’s empty-headedness is worth the 5 minute-watch, the relevant portion begins at 3:55 — just in case you’ve already reached the saturation point on green vacuity and want to fast forward to the laptop part.

About the laptops, ABC’s Andrea Smith reports:

… What’s great about it is that it’s not plastic, so that, No. 1, it looks really cool. You’ll look like you’re totally eco-friendly and very chic… The No. 2 thing is that when you’re done with this and you need to recycle it, there is no plastic here to clog the landfill… It’s bamboo and it’s a self-regenerating plant and there’s lots of it.

So let’s consider the Asus bamboo laptop, Ms. Smith’s report, and, importantly, reality:

• There is still plenty of plastic used in the laptop. Only the case is bamboo. And what about the bamboo’s shiny urethane finish?  Despite the name, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have generally been viewed by the greens as  environmentally-incorrect.
• Bamboo doesn’t recycle so much as it decomposes — giving off greenhouse gases. The plastic in laptops can be and is often recycled for other uses. The plastic is actually a better “carbon sink” than the bamboo.
• Recycling doesn’t matter anyway — almost all laptops are thrown in the trash. Fortunately, there is no shortage of landfill space. In fact, the U.S. has more landfill capacity than ever before.
• Most bamboo comes from Vietnam and China. Not only are greenhouse gases emitted while farming bamboo, but transporting the bamboo or bamboo finished products to the U.S. involves even more greenhouse gas emissions.
• The Asus bamboo laptop costs $732.81 more than the comparable Asus plastic laptop on Amazon.com.
• Bamboo is not necessarily eco-friendly. Growing bamboo on a mass-scale requires lots of water, energy and fertilizer inputs. Without fertilizer, continual harvesting of bamboo will deplete the soil in a short-time.

The bottom line on Asus bamboo laptop?

You may look cool, chic and eco-friendly, as ABC’s Andrea Smith says, but the reality is you’re being fooled and ripped-off, while doing nothing for the environment.

So they slap some wood on the outside of a laptop, charge you more to clear your mind of guilt, and they are real proud of themselves without having actually done anything. Again.

Steve Milloy keeps you informed with his new site Green Hell Blog. As always you can find great information at his JunkScience web site.

Monday Quick Bites

What, me worry?

Some Solar Cycle Information. Two pieces from Watts Up With That?

The Double Quiet Sun
Usually, and that means in the past year, when you look at the false color MDI image from SOHO, you can look at the corresponding magnetogram and see some sort of disturbance going on, even it it is not visible as a sunspot, sunspeck, or plage area.
Not today.
Is That a Sunspot?
Yesterday I lamented that the sun was blank, not only on the SOHO MDI, but also the magnetogram. Within a couple of hours, one sunspeck appeared. I cited Murphy’s Law. As one commenter put it: ” I think if you check back for the last six months or so whenever you mention the lack of sunspots on here, one shows up.”.

And a couple from Green Hell Blog

New planetary burden: Meat-eating pets
Paul Greenberg opines today in the New York Times that dogs and cats should go vegan. Writing about his cat, Greenberg says,

California (of course) to limit car color choices More evidence of California Communism
Carbon Control News reported today that California regulators have proposed that car makers use so-called “cool” paints to reduce the interior temperature of cars, thereby reducing air conditioning use and, consequently, improving gas mileage.

And some picks from around the blogasphere.

Skeptics Global Warming
We’ve got an update on the Companies Lobbying to Raise Your Energy Taxes.

HE’S MY PRESIDENT, BUT I DON’T HAVE TO LIKE IT
If I hear one more person point out that Obama is the president and that it’s our duty to support him, I just might run amok. For one thing, I resent being reminded that he actually won the election and that it’s not all a bad dream from which I’ll awaken as soon as the alarm clock rings. For another, there was a very good reason that I voted for John McCain, and it certainly had nothing to do with my having great expectations of the man, and everything to do with my conviction that Obama was a left-wing ideologue.

The Challenge Ahead: More than a Third of Senate Now “Swing” Vote on Climate – A high hurdle: of the 36 Senators identified as swing votes, all but seven must be convinced to vote “Yes” in order to secure passage of any climate policy in the U.S. Senate. (Breakthrough Institute)
Think we should encourage Senators to hold the line? Have your say and register your vote here.

T-Boone: Nobody Opposes Me

Well, maybe nobody in the Obama administration. The Texas billionaire just got a free ride to exploit us taxpayers because Obama’s group of green weenies will hand him anthing he wants. But there has been opposition.

T. Boone Pickens said in an interview this morning on CNBC that,

… but know this… we’ve never had a person that stands up and says your plan is not good. Nobody has said that… I don’t know… there’s not many op-ed pieces or any thing…

But Steve Milloy has written six FoxNews.com columns critical of the Pickens Plan — one of which Pickens’ team responded to on FoxNews.com.

The Cato Institute’s Jerry Taylor has been critical of the Pickens Plan here and here.

Reece Epstein and David Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research have a lengthy critique here.

Here’s a Wall Street Journal article about Pickens’ critics, who include FedEX CEO Fred Smith and former Kansas governor Bill Graves, who now heads the American Trucking Association.

There are plenty more who have stood up against the Pickens Plan. Yet Pickens denies their existence in his effort to “swiftboat” America into his make-Boone-richer-scheme.

Visit the new Green Hell Blog from JunkScience.com

Oval Office Hypocrisy

So this is how it’s going to be? Do as I say, and screw you. And just a little note for Mr. Axelrod: Obama is NOT from Hawaii, he’s from Chicago. You know, where they are as tough as flint.

From my email.

By Steven Milloy, JunkScience.com
January 29, 2009

The New York Times reported this morning that,

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Could this be the same Barack Obama who said last May that,

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say “OK”… That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.”

And could this be the same Barack Obama who is looking to sign a stimulus bill that would spend billions of dollars installing millions “smart meters” that would enable your power company to prevent you from being as comfortable as Bambi on hot and cold days?

While Bambi is warm-and-toasty in the Oval Office, is he considering the plight of Michigan’s Marvin Schur, a 93-year World War II veteran, who was recently found frozen to death courtesy of a malfunctioning electricity “limiter” device installed by his power company?

Change has come to Washington. Elitism is dead. Long live elitism.

Christopher Monckton Has Some Facts For “The One”

I’m sure by now everyone is familiar with Algore’s talking points as recited by the MessiUH before the Beverly Hills bash.

From “The One” Regurgitates

The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley has some real facts for “The One” to ponder. Of course he probably can’t be bothered with facts when he has such great advice from the Goracle and the Guvernator.

A Science-based Response
Few challenges facing America and the world are less urgent than combating the non-problem of “global warming”. On all measures, there has been no increase in global mean surface temperatures since 1995; and, according to the University of Alabama at Huntsville, near-surface temperatures in 2008 will be lower than in 1980, 28 years ago, the first complete year of satellite observations. On all measures, global temperatures have been falling for seven full years since late 2001. The January-to-January fall in temperatures between 2007 and 2008 was the greatest since global temperature records were first compiled in 1880, 128 years ago. The rate of new Arctic sea-ice formation in mid-October 2008 was among the fastest since satellite records began almost 30 years ago. There has been no decline whatsoever in the total global extent of sea ice since satellite records began. New records for the extent of northern-hemisphere snow cover were observed by the satellites in the winter of 2001 and again in 2007. This year, many ski resorts are opening early as Arctic weather strikes. Many temperature stations in the northern hemisphere recorded record low temperatures in October/November 2008.
These facts are inconsistent with the notion that “global warming” is occurring, still less that it is dangerous. The Sun continues to show very few sunspots. Many solar physicists now predict at least half a century of global cooling, which would be a far greater and more destructive problem than a little warming.
Obama is not correct to say, “The science is not in dispute.” Across all disciplines, some 31,000 scientists approached by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in 2007/8 signed a declaration to the effect that “global warming” is not a global crisis and that humankind has very little influence over the climate. A survey of climatologists and scientists in related fields by Van Storch (2005/6) established that a considerable proportion of respondents did not believe the alarmist notions disseminated by Al Gore or the UN climate-change panel. The office of Senator James Inhofe maintains a list of more than 500 scientists in climate and related fields who have made public statements questioning at least one aspect of what has falsely been presented as a scientific “consensus”.

The rest is at American Thinker. It’s filled with facts, not regurgitated talking points.

H/T JunkScience

Swans Extend Vacation: Global Warming to Blame!

A few hundred swans are a week late returning from their summer vacation, so it must be the fault of Gorebull Worming. Never mind the fact that it (GW) is not happening, the Brits are in a tizzy.

Hundreds of swans due to return to an English nature reserve for the winter are staying put in Siberia because climate change has made the region a warm haven, it emerged today.

Around 300 Bewick’s Swans were expected at Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre on October 21, but experts say the Arctic weather is now so warm there is no need to rush back.

In other years the swans have been one or two days late in flying in from their breeding grounds, but the week-long delay is unheard of, Slimbridge revealed.

Staff at Slimbridge have named their favourite swans that return year-after-year. ‘Casino’, pictured is the oldest, while ‘Crinkly’ is the most well known

The RSPB said it feared the Bewick’s swans could lose their ‘collective memory’ of where wetlands like Slimbridge are – and be unable to find them again if their Eastern holiday destinations suddenly grow colder.

Slimbridge spokesman Andrew Parker said: ‘It is unusual for this time of year. It has been a lot warmer for a lot longer, not just here but where they have been. They have simply stayed put for longer and there hasn’t been the necessity to come back.

‘It is being put down to climate change – a lot of people don’t necessarily believe in it, but that’s what it is. It is the first year this has occurred, so we will have to see what develops over the coming years.’

Any change in the behavior of anything on this planet is now the fault of “climate change”, aka global warming. It does seem though that the Brits get the vapors a  bit easier than the rest.

The Rest

h/t JunkScience

!!UPDATE!! The swans have returned. Tom Nelson has a word or two about it.

T-boone At It Again

So just why is it that T-boone is backing so many alternative energy plans? In a word, Money. He has made billions in oil and claims he wants to drill, drill, drill. In the mean time he says we should run the country broke developing pie in the sky wind and solar power. Now his latest ad is about natural gas. It’s not new, it was in his original plan, but now he’s using some scare tactics about Iran to persuade us. Basically, he has bought up all the right of ways for the transmission lines for his new power sources, and despite his words to the contrary, the government will pay for most of the developement. That means You and Me through our taxes. He stands to make billions more and that begs the question, Why? He’s 80 years old and can’t take it with him, and I don’t see any great charities he’s backing. More background info Here, Here, and Here.

Steve Milloy has more on T-boone.

“Get this one,” says billionaire T. Boone Pickens in his latest TV ad, “Iran is changing its cars to natural gas and we’re not doing a thing here. They’re doing this to use less oil and sell it for $120 a barrel. We can switch our cars to natural gas and stop sending our dollars to foreign countries.”

Readers of this column know better than to take at face value the marketing of the so-called “Pickens Plan.”

So what’s the full story behind Iran’s move, and what would be the impact of switching our cars to natural gas?

Although Iran is a major oil and gas producer, it lacks oil-refining capacity and must import about 50 percent of its gasoline. To be less vulnerable to international pressure concerning its nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to reduce Iran’s reliance on imported gasoline.

He started with rationing in May 2007. But that quickly led to violent social unrest.

Ahmadinejad then decided to convert Iran’s new car fleet to natural gas. So 60 percent of Iran’s car production this year — about 429,000 vehicles — will be dual-fuel-ready, capable of running on both gasoline and natural gas.

But contrary to Pickens assertion, Iran isn’t trying to use less oil:; It’s trying to use less imported gasoline — and only to thwart a possible international gasoline embargo.

So should we use Iran as a role model? Think about that. IRAN…. as a role model.

Read the rest.

Arctic News Confusing

Well, here we go again. Global Warming causing the arctic ice to melt, Global Cooling causing the arctic ice to grow. Let’s take a look at the gloworm’s story first.

OTTAWA – The incredibly rapid rate at which Canada’s Arctic ice shelves are disappearing is an early indicator of the “very substantial changes” that global warming will impose on all mankind, a top scientist said on Wednesday.

Researchers announced late on Tuesday that the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in the Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, had shrunk by 23 percent this summer alone.

Oh really?

The largest shelf is disintegrating and one of the smaller shelves, covering 19 square miles (55 square km), broke away entirely last month.

“Climate models indicate that the greatest changes, the most severe changes, will happen earliest in the highest northern latitudes,” said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.

“This will be the starting point for more substantial changes throughout the rest of the planet…. Our indicators are showing us exactly what the climate models predict,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Global warming is forecast to generate more damaging weather extremes such as hurricanes, cyclones and floods.

Oh, really? Hurricanes, cyclones and floods being caused by global warming has been proven false years ago. That’s why they call it a “Hurricane Season”. Some have more, some have less, but history shows it’s cyclical, and the big ones hit at any time.

Now let’s look at the growing ice, and the coming mini ice age, which is far worse than a little warming.

Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has indicated a dramatic increase in sea ice extent in the Arctic regions. The growth over the past year covers an area of 700,000 square kilometers: an amount twice the size the nation of Germany.

With the Arctic melting season over for 2008, ice cover will continue to increase until melting begins anew next spring.

The data is for August 2008 and indicates a total sea ice area of six million square kilometers. Ice extent for the same month in 2007 covered 5.3 million square kilometers, a historic low. Earlier this year, media accounts were rife with predictions that this year would again see a new record. Instead, the Arctic has seen a gain of about thirteen percent.

William Chapman, a researcher with the Arctic Climate Research Center at the University of Illinois, tells DailyTech that this year the Arctic was “definitely colder” than 2007. Chapman also says part of the reason for the large ice loss in 2007 was strong winds from Siberia, which affect both ice formation and drift, forcing ice into warmer waters where it melts.

Earlier predictions were also wrong because researchers thought thinner ice would melt faster in subsequent years. Instead, according to the NSIDC, the new ice had less snow coverage to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, resulting in a faster rate of ice growth.

Most concern has focused on the Arctic regions, rather than Antarctica. Recent research has indicated Antarctica is on a long-term cooling trend, for reasons which remain unclear.

Earlier this year, concerns over global warming led the US to officially list the polar bear a threatened species, over objections from experts who claimed the animal’s numbers were increasing.

You be the judge. But in my opinion a little warming, can’t hurt as much as a little cooling.

Source: Warming

Source: Cooling

Tboone: He’s Only Helping Himself

The more I hear about Tboone, the more he sounds like Algore. Again I ask, why does a billionaire need to scam the public to earn another billion or two? He’s in his 80′s fercrisake! You can’t take it with you. Here’s another article from Steven Milloy of JunkScience exposing more of Tboone’s dirty dealings.

The more you learn about T. Boone Pickens’ plan to switch America to wind power, the more you realize that he seems willing to say and do just about anything to make another billion or two.

This column previously discussed the plan’s technical and economic shortcomings and marketing ruses. Today, we’ll look into the diabolical machinations behind it.

Simply put, Pickens’ pitch is “embrace wind power to help break our ‘addiction’ to foreign oil.” There is, however, another intriguing component to Pickens’ plan that goes unmentioned in his TV commercials, media interviews and web site — water rights, which he owns more of than any other American.

Pickens hopes that his recent $100 million investment in 200,000 acres worth of groundwater rights in Roberts County, Texas, located over the Ogallala Aquifer, will earn him $1 billion. But there’s more to earning such a profit than simply acquiring the water. Rights-of-way must be purchased to install pipelines, and opposition from anti-development environmental groups must be overcome. Here’s where it gets interesting, according to information compiled by the Water Research Group, a small grassroots group focusing on local water issues in Texas.

Purchasing rights-of-way is often expensive and time-consuming — and what if landowners won’t sell? While private entities may be frustrated, governments can exercise eminent domain to compel sales. This is Pickens’ route of choice. But wait, you say, Pickens is not a government entity. How can he use eminent domain? Are you sitting down?

At Pickens’ behest, the Texas legislature changed state law to allow the two residents of an 8-acre parcel of land in Roberts County to vote to create a municipal water district, a government agency with eminent domain powers. Who were the voters? They were Pickens’ wife and the manager of Pickens’ nearby ranch. And who sits on the board of directors of this water district? They are the parcel’s three other non-resident landowners, all Pickens’ employees.

A member of a local water conservation board told Bloomberg News that, “[Pickens has] obtained the right of eminent domain like he was a big city. It’s supposed to be for the public good, not a private company.”

What’s this got to do with Pickens’ wind-power plan? Just as he needs pipelines to sell his water, he also needs transmission lines to sell his wind-generated power. Rights of way for transmission lines are also acquired through eminent domain — and, once again, the Texas legislature has come to Pickens’ aid.

Earlier this year, Texas changed its law to allow renewable energy projects (like Pickens’ wind farm) to obtain rights-of-way by piggybacking on a water district’s eminent domain power. So Pickens can now use his water district’s authority to also condemn land for his future wind farm’s transmission lines.

Read It All

Related article

Related article

Tboone Sounding Like Algore

Look at this from Planet Gore.

Here’s how Gore works. He’ll cite one scientific finding that shows what he wants, and then ignore other work that provides important context. Here’s a list of his climate exaggerations from his well-publicized July 17 rant, along with a few sobering facts.

Gore: “Scientists . . . have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire [North Polar] ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months.”

Fact: The Arctic Ocean was much warmer than it is now for several millennia after the end of the last ice age. We know this because there are trees buried in the tundra along what is now the arctic shore. Those trees can be dated using standard analytical techniques that have been around for decades. According to Glen MacDonald of UCLA, the trees show that July temperatures could have been 5-13°F warmer from 9,000 to about 3,000 years ago than they were in the mid-20^th century. The arctic ice cap had to have disappeared in most summers, and yet the polar bear survived!

Gore: “Our weather sure is getting strange, isn’t it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory. . . .”

Fact: The reason there “seems” to be more tornadoes is because of national coverage by Doppler radar, which can detect storms that were previously missed (not to mention that every backyard tornado winds up on YouTube nowadays). Naturally, the additions are weak ones that might, if lucky, tip over a cow. If there were a true increase in tornadoes, then we would see a definite upswing in severe ones, too. If anything, the historical record indicates a slight negative trend in the frequency of major tornadoes, based upon death statistics.

Gore: “ . . . longer droughts . . . ”

Hogwash. The U.S. drought history, given by the Palmer Drought Severity Index, is readily available and extends back to 1895. There’s not a shred of evidence for “longer droughts” in recent decades. The longest ones were in the 1930s and 1950s, decades before “global warming” became “the climate crisis.”

Gore: “ . . . bigger downpours and record floods . . . ”

It’s true, U.S. annual rainfall has increased about 10 percent (three inches) in the last 100 years. But it’s equally true that this is a net benefit. Temperatures haven’t warmed nearly enough to increase the annual surface evaporation by the same amount, so what has resulted is a wetter country during the growing season. Farmers love this, because most of the nation runs a moisture deficit during the hot summer growing season. Increasing rain cuts that deficit.

Gore: “The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis.”

This is likely James Hansen of NASA, Gore’s climate guru. He has written and given sworn testimony that six feet of sea-level rise, caused by the rapid shedding of Greenland’s ice, could happen by 2100. Why didn’t Gore defer instead to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization with at least a few hundred bona fide climate scientists? Its 2007 compendium estimates that the contribution of Greenland’s ice to sea level during this century will be around two inches. Gore also forgot the embarrassing truth that there has been no net change in the planetary surface temperature, as measured both by thermometers and satellites, for the last ten years.

Now look at what Tboone is saying.

“In 1970, we imported 24 percent of our oil. Today, it’s nearly 70 percent and growing,” he intones. Aside from the fact that the Department of Energy (DOE) puts the import figure at a more moderate 58 percent, Pickens gives the impression that imported oil is scary because it all comes from the unstable Mideast.

His TV commercials feature images of American soldiers fighting in Iraq and he likens the annual $700 billion cost of foreign oil to “four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.”

But hold the phone. Only 16 percent of our imported oil comes from the Persian Gulf — barely up from 13.6 percent in 1973, according to the DOE. Imports from OPEC countries are actually down — from 47.8 percent in 1973 to 44.5 percent in 2007.

Contrary to Pickens’ assertion that oil imports are growing, the DOE expects oil imports to decrease by 10 percent by 2030.

Pickens tries to shame Americans because, “America uses a lot of oil … That’s 25 percent of the world’s oil demand, used by just 4 percent of the world population.”

Some might think these figures make us sound greedy and wasteful.

But what Pickens omitted to mention is that the size of the U.S. economy in 2007 was about $13.8 trillion and the size of the global economy was $54.3 trillion.

This means that the U.S. economy represents about 25.4 percent of the global economy. So what’s the problem if a nation that produces 25 percent of the world’s goods and services needs 25 percent of the world’s oil output?

Would he prefer that we shrink our economy by 84 percent to match our share of world population?

Pickens plays the hope-squasher.

“Can’t we just produce more oil?” he asks. “The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone,” he responds.

But there are hundreds of billions of barrels of oil in the form of oil tar sands and oil shale in North America, not to mention the more than one hundred billion barrels of oil in the outer continental shelf of the U.S. and on public lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve (ANWR).

And don’t forget that coal-to-liquids technology can convert our 268 billion tons of coal into 20 times the nation’s current crude oil reserves, according to investment analysts. We have liquid fuels to burn.

While producing this oil may not be as easy as it was in 1859, when crude oil bubbled out of the ground in northwest Pennsylvania, it is much more feasible and far less expensive than Pickens’ fantasy of replicating the entire existing U.S. wind supply system every year for the next 15 years in addition to building the national infrastructure for natural-gas filling stations.

Finally, Pickens laments the $700 billion (less at current oil prices) “wealth transfer” from America to foreigners every year because of our “addiction.”

But is he also concerned about our “addiction” to other imports?

In 2007, the U.S. merchandise trade deficit — the difference between imports of goods from and exports of goods to foreign countries — exceeded $815 billion.

Contrary to Pickens’ demagoguery, “wealth transfer” is a term generally used in the context of estate planning, where money is simply “gifted” to heirs.

Our purchases of foreign oil, in contrast, are more reasonably known as “trade” — and trade is good.

Americans are not simply petro-junkies who mainline crude oil for the masochistic high of watching gas pump numbers spin faster. We produce goods and services with imported oil more than any other people on this planet.

I don’t know what would drive a billionaire to make such statements. Greed? Power? The need to be noticed? Well read the whole story and see just who Tboone’s new friends are.

Tboone’s New Buddies

Picken Apart T. Boone

I used to think he was a pretty cool guy. But alas, he’s just another SnakeOil Salesman.

Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens launched a media blitz this week to announce his plan for us “to escape the grip of foreign oil.” Now he’s got himself stuck between a crock and a wind farm.

Announced via TV commercials, media interviews, a July 9 Wall Street Journal op-ed and a Web site, Pickens wants to substitute wind power for the natural gas used to produce about 22 percent of our electricity and then to substitute natural gas for the conventional gasoline used to power vehicles.

Pickens claims this plan can be accomplished within 10 years, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reduce the cost of transportation, create thousands of jobs, reduce our carbon footprint and “build a bridge to the future, giving us time to develop new technologies.”

It sounds great and gets even better, according to Pickens. Don’t sweat the cost, he says, “It will be accomplished solely through private investment with no new consumer or corporate taxes or government regulation.” What’s not to like?

First, it’s worth noting Pickens’ claim made in the op-ed that his plan requires no new government regulation. Two sentences later, however, he calls on Congress to “mandate” wind power and its subsidies. Next, Pickens relies on a 2008 Department of Energy study claiming the U.S. could generate 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2030.

Setting aside the fact that the report was produced in consultation with the wind industry, the 20-by-2030 goal is quite fanciful.

Even if wind technology significantly improves, electrical transmission systems (how electricity gets from the power source to you) are greatly expanded and environmental obstacles (such as environmentalists who protest wind turbines as eyesores and bird-killing machines) can be overcome, the viability of wind power depends on where, when and how strong the wind blows — none of which is predictable.

Wind farm-siting depends on the long-term forecasting of wind patterns, but climate is always changing. When it comes to wind power, it is not simply “build it and the wind will come.” Even the momentary loss of wind can be a problem. As Reuters reported on Feb. 27, “Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency.”

The electric grid operator was forced to curtail 1,100 megawatts of power to customers within 10 minutes. Wind isn’t a standalone power source. It needs a Plan B for when the wind “just don’t blow.”

This contrasts with coal- or gas-fired electrical power, which can be produced on demand and as needed. A great benefit of modern technology is that it liberates us from Mother Nature’s harsh whims. Pickens wants to re-enslave us with 12th century technology.

Then there’s the cost of the 20-by-2030 goal — $43 billion more than the cost of non-wind assets, according to the DOE — and this doesn’t include many billions of dollars more for additional transmission lines. Could the 20-by-2030 goal even be accomplished?

According to Electric Utility Week on June 9, a DOE official informed attendees at a June wind industry meeting that reaching the goal would entail replicating the entire existing U.S. wind system (about 17,000 megawatts of capacity constructed over the past decade) every year starting in 2018.

What about Pickens’ plan to shift us into natural gas vehicles? Well, they cost a lot more: an extra $3,000 to $6,000 for cars and $30,000 to $40,000 for buses and trucks. There are only about 1,300 natural gas refueling stations in the U.S., as compared with about 180,000 conventional gas stations — that’s a lot of infrastructure to build and finance. Will Pickens’ plan reduce our dependence on foreign oil? Doubtful.

Even if the fleet of natural gas-powered vehicles is enlarged, the bulk of existing and new vehicles will continue to depend for the foreseeable future on gasoline. Americans own about 260 million vehicles, a total that grows by more than 3 million vehicles every year.

Turnover is low as about 60 percent are owned for more than seven years. Besides, as demand for natural gas increases, so will prices. In the Washington, D.C., area, natural gas is already about two-thirds as costly as gasoline — and that’s with hardly any demand.

None of these facts and circumstances are new to Pickens. So what’s up with him?

Not only does Pickens’ firm, BP capital, have significant investments in natural gas, but last June he announced plans to build the world’s largest wind farm in west Texas, capable of producing 4,000 megawatts of electricity.

The federal government subsidizes wind farm operators with a tax credit worth 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour — potentially making for a tidy annual taxpayer gift to Pickens based on his anticipated capacity. But all is not well in Wind Subsidy-land.

Since Congress didn’t renew the wind subsidy as part of the 2007 energy bill, it will expire at the end of this year unless reauthorized. Subsidies are perhaps more important to the wind industry than wind itself. Without them, wind can’t compete against fossil fuel-generated power.

As pointed out by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on July 9, “In 1999, 2001 and 2003, when Congress temporarily killed the credits, the number of new turbines dropped dramatically.”

It’s little wonder that Pickens is waging a $58 million PR campaign to promote his plan. If it works, his short-term gain will be saving the tax credit and his wind farm investment.

In the long-term, he stands to line his already overflowing pockets with hard-earned taxpayer dollars. What will the rest of us get from this T. Boone-doggle? That’s anybody’s guess, but it probably won’t be cheaper energy, energy independence or a cleaner environment.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert, advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Polar Bears and Global Warming, The True Story

From the San Francisco Examiner. Via JunkScience

Washington, D.C. (Map, News) – The U.S. government says the population of polar bears has increased four-fold since the 1960s, so the bureaucrats whose job security depends on stirring up environmental distress have classified the huge white beasts as an endangered species. Surely Alice in Wonderland has donned a disguise that makes her look and sound exactly like Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. Alice issued a decision last week under Kempthorne’s signature that effectively mandates nothing can be done anywhere by anybody in the lower 48 states if it increases the greenhouse gases that fuel the global warming that is allegedly melting the Artic ice the polar bears require for survival.

It’s hard not to think the government’s left hand doesn’t know what its other left hand is doing on this issue. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the polar bears have increased their numbers from as low as 5,000 in the 1960s to an estimated 20,000 today. As Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., notes, the credit for this “should be given to protection already provided the polar bear by way of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the several international conservation treaties including the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears and the U.S.-Russia Polar Bear Conservation and Management Act of 2006, as well as conservation, education, and outreach agreement with native peoples.” Inhofe is the ranking GOPer on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. So, if the polar bear population is increasing because of laws, treaties and education programs that have been on the books for decades, what might be the real motive behind this latest global warming-induced lunacy?

Two things — ideological fanaticism and bureaucratic imperialism. First, elitist Americans are regularly seized by ideologically inspired enthusiasms that blind them to reality. Exhibit A here is California Democrat Barbara Boxer who chairs Inhofe’s panel. She claimed “the plight of the polar bear is a stark reminder that the planet is already experiencing the ravages of global warming. Today’s announcement underscores how important it is for the Senate to pass national legislation to cut global warming pollution and avert the dangerous effects of climate change.” Boxer has never been confused by the facts.

Second, the bureaucrats love it because implementing anti-global warming legislation will require vast budget and work force expansions for the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere throughout the federal leviathan. Combine these two factors and the result is a weapon of mass deception that obliterates reality.

What Will The Goracle Do Now?

I told ya so! The Goracle is getting desperate, and that is what the $300 million ad campaign is all about. Seems as though even the U.N.’s IPCC has to admit global warming has stopped and may be taking a holiday for the next 10 years. Steve Milloy from JunkScience has a few words to say about this “startling” discovery.

Can global warming’s vested interests close the deal on greenhouse gas regulation before the public wises up to their scam?

A new study indicates alarmist concern and a need to explain away the lack of actual global warming. Researchers belonging to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, reported in Nature (May 1) that after adjusting their climate model to reflect actual sea surface temperatures of the last 50 years, “global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations … temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.”

You got that? IPCC researchers project no global warming over the next decade because of Mother Nature. Although the result seems stunning in that it came from IPCC scientists who have always been in the tank for manmade global warming, it’s not really surprising since the notion of manmade climate change has never lived up to its billing.

Would you buy a used car from this guy?

Global temperatures remain well below an El Nino-driven 1998 spike despite ever-increasing atmospheric CO2. Global warming hysterics purport that manmade emissions of CO2 are the primary driver of global climate and that controlling emissions will favorably affect climate. While this is obviously not so since it virtually supposes that without human activity climate change would not occur, it nevertheless remains their viewpoint.

The Nature study, however, reasserts Mother Nature in her rightful place as our climate dominatrix. Although there is no evidence that manmade CO2 emissions play any detectable role in climate change, the very idea that Mother Nature may cool the planet despite humanity’s furious output of greenhouse gases should be even worse for the climate alarmists’ way of thinking.

It would mean that greenhouse gas emissions are actually beneficial, since without them, Mother Nature’s cooling could be quite damaging. The last time the Earth significantly cooled was during the 14th to 19th centuries — a period known as the Little Ice Age.

Just one more quote.

Just this week, Al Gore drummed up $683 million for an investment fund that aims to profit from government-subsidized global warming-related technologies. A few weeks ago, Gore launched a $300 million global warming ad campaign. Do you think he’s at all interested in returning that money to investors and contributors? Or that he and the IPCC are interested in returning their Nobel Peace Prizes?

The Rest Is Here. It’s Good.

More Scare Tactics From The Enviro-nuts

A must read article from The Washington Times. It seems the Rodent Doctors have come up with the latest threat to mankind.

A new health scare — over the safe and useful plastic component, bisphenol-A (BPA) — has taken wing, fomented by the usual suspects: “experts” in rat toxicology working with alarmist, chemical-hating “environmental” activists and self-serving media scaremongers. Soon, we know all too well, will come the plaintiffs’ lawyers to “protect” the public from the non-existent (but lucrative) threats lurking in our plastic bottles.

Once again, our environmental stewards have ventured into an area to which they are ill-suited: human health. The new draft report on the chemical, issued by the National Toxicology Program (NTP, a branch of the EPA), is being trumpeted by greeniacs everywhere as if a cure for cancer had been discovered or malaria eradicated.

The facts buried in the report are quite the opposite of the newspaper headlines. There is no cause for concern, much less alarm, over the tiny exposures we face from plastic bottles made with BPA. The hysteria, aggravated by reports of moms nationwide throwing out “toxic” baby bottles with the number 7 on them, is based (as usual) on rat tests and “general themes” of toxicity, rather than on anything approaching scientific evidence.

This new scare is part and parcel of the “back to nature” school of public health. There is no substance to the dogma promulgated by technophobes that “natural is good, synthetic is bad.” All of the great epidemic infections we have conquered are of “natural” origin — and we beat them with technology. The same folks who warn us against BPA — and phthalates in toys and all the other phony threats — tend to oppose gene-splicing technology, which holds the promise of relieving food scarcity now threatening world health and stability. But they’d rather rant about non-existent health threats they invent than deal with real-life problems. They have been warning us about the dangers of cosmetics, French fries and vaccines — while ignoring real problems, such as smoking and underutilization of interventions such as colonoscopy and adult immunizations.

The Rest is Here