The Deep State War Against Donald Trump Begins.  Furthermore, one of the biggest threats to the CIA and the intelligence agencies is Trump's unyielding determination to declassify documents that will jeopardize many agencies' existence, including the DOJ, FBI, DHS, CIA, and NSA.  The documents released will reveal many hidden intelligence agency conspiracies, including the effort to hide the Hunter laptop story from damaging Biden's chance of victory in 2020, in particular, the statement by more than 50 former intelligence agents that the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation.  Exploring intelligence agency misdeeds and failures back to the 2012 Benghazi terror attack would be a horror show for scores of top intelligence agency officials, as well as Obama and Biden administration senior officials.

Our Current Government Is No Longer Constitutional.  A recent Wall Street Journal editorial tells us that notwithstanding the proven sheer impracticality of it, the new greenhouse gas emissions rules that the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated require that battery-powered and plug-in hybrid vehicles constitute 32% of new automobile sales by 2027, and 71% by 2032.  Never mind that EVs are vastly inferior to gasoline-powered vehicles and extremely dangerous because they catch fire in minor accidents.  Still, coal, gas, and nuclear are out, and wind and solar are in.  The hills are alive with solar and wind farms, but what do they plan for when the sun's not shining and the wind's not blowing?  Where can you find a charging station when you need one, how long will it take to charge your EV, and how far can you drive before you next charge?  Since one terrorist with a .22 rifle can take out a substation, we might want to contemplate life without electricity.

Kamala The Tax Cutter?  Of all the results from the latest I&I/TIPP poll, the most unsettling has to be that voters think Kamala Harris is at least as much of a fiscal and economic conservative as Donald Trump.  Our latest poll, taken of 997 likely voters, finds that more voters say they trust Harris (who's already announced $4 trillion in tax hikes) than Trump to cut taxes by a 48%-45% margin.  Among the crucial independent voters, the margin is even greater — 49% to 36%.  That's not all.  More trust Harris to bring about energy independence, 48%-47%.

The Editor says...
This poll, if it's accurate, proves there are thousands of poorly-informed voters in this country who should not vote.  If you think for a millisecond that Harris will make the U.S. "energy independent" and Trump won't, you are terribly ignorant if not delusional.

Biden-Harris Admin Accused Of Deceiving America On Its Way To Freezing Gas Exports.  The Biden-Harris administration may have based its decision to freeze certain liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects upon a major act of deception, according to a government watchdog group.  The Department of Energy (DOE) announced the pause on new and pending approvals for certain LNG export terminals in January, stating that it must conduct a review of potential environmental, economic and security impacts of LNG exports to ensure that approving new capacity is still in the public interest.  An ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legal battle between the agency and an independent group called Government Accountability and Oversight (GAO) reveals that the administration may have actually conducted — or started to conduct — such a review in 2023 before effectively burying it because it may have been producing politically inconvenient conclusions, according to GAO.

The Catastrophic Costs of Government-Dictated Green Energy.  All the energy related problems we have experienced in recent years, which have been a lot:  high gasoline prices, higher heating bills, higher electricity bills, and unreliable electricity, which is a huge problem we need to talk much more about, are the result of government-dictated green energy.  And its very simple.  When you shackle the most cost effective and scalable source of energy, fossil fuels, and you subsidize unreliable solar and wind, that wouldn't otherwise be competitive, energy necessarily becomes more expensive, less reliable and less secure.  So again, it's very simple.  Unfortunately the current administration and many others are engaged in a denial campaign blaming our energy problems on everything but their own policies.

12 myths that government-dictated green energy is cheaper than fossil fuels.  Myth [#1]: "Clean electricity has become the most affordable source of energy there is."  Truth:  If this were true "clean electricity" wouldn't need enormous preferences in the form of subsidies, mandates, and no price penalty for unreliability — and "clean energy" proponents wouldn't feel compelled to cripple fossil fuels by punishing investment, production, refining, transportation, and use.  In reality, since "clean electricity" from unreliable solar and wind can go to near zero at any given time, it depends on reliable electricity.  It doesn't replace the cost of reliable electricity, it adds to the cost of reliable electricity.  That's why the more solar and wind we've used as a nation the higher our prices have gotten.

More Solar Silliness In The New York Times.  Hyping solar energy is one of America's most renewable resources.  For instance, in 1978, Ralph Nader declared that "everything will be solar in 30 years."  In 1979, President Jimmy Carter declared the US needed to capture more energy from the sun because of "inevitable shortages of fossil fuels."  In 2011, in the New York Times, Paul Krugman claimed we are "on the cusp of an energy transformation driven by the rapidly falling cost of solar power."  In 2015, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pledged that if elected president, she would oversee the installation of 500 million solar panels.  In 2021, the Department of Energy released a study that claimed solar "has the potential to power 40% of the nation's electricity by 2035."  That's a mighty big claim.  Last year, solar accounted for about 5% of US electricity production.  Furthermore, solar only provided about 2.2 exajoules of primary energy to the US economy out of 94.2 EJ used.  The DOE also claimed solar could reach 45% of US electricity production by 2050.  (That same year, President Joe Biden declared that climate change poses "an existential threat to our lives.")  The solar hype continued last month in the pages of the New York Times with an article by David Wallace-Wells headlined, "What Will We Do With Our Free Power?"

Kamala Harris Lies About Climate Radicalism, Denying Her Past Support For A Fracking Ban.  Vice President Kamala Harris lied about her radicalism on energy in Tuesday night's debate with former President Donald Trump.  When the moderators with ABC asked Harris the rare skeptical question about her policy reversals, Harris said she "made that very clear in 2020:  I will not ban fracking."  [Advertisement]  "I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States, and in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the 'Inflation Reduction' Act, which opened new leases for fracking," she said.  [Tweet]

Coming Clean on Clean Energy:  It's a Dirty Business.  Hidden behind the solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries are some dirty secrets that get swept under the rug and ignored by climate enthusiasts.  Fossil fuels are constantly put under a microscope and condemned as an evil destructive polluter; green energy is typically put on a pedestal.  Green energy, however, is not as perfect and wonderful as we are made to believe.  Yet, we are putting a lot of trust into these energy sources, without considering their ramifications. [...] One of the biggest issues involved with these forms is the extraction and manufacturing processes of various critical minerals that are required for wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries.  Many underdeveloped nations, where there's an abundance of minerals, are at risk.  The operations and procedures not only overtake land but contaminate surrounding soil and water sources.  In the worst cases, this work is accomplished through slave labor.

No, solar panels are not farmland.  Concerned that rapid development threatened critical agricultural resources, Indiana's Legislature in 2023 commissioned a study to determine the status of the state's farmland.  Noting that most agricultural land loss neighbored cities and suburban areas, the study concluded that Indiana lost 345,682 acres of farmland between 2010 and 2022.  As Bill Gates and China notoriously gobble up price-inflating fertile lands, another pressure is devouring prime farmland.  Vast solar panel arrays are disappearing farmland across the nation despite howls of protest.  Perhaps that is why the Indiana study included solar panel acreage as farmland in its bizarre farmland accounting.  Solar panels are not a nitrogen-fixing cover crop, nor do they till into the soil annually like plants.  Cows and sheep can dine on the grass beneath them but can't eat solar panels any better than humans can.  The quite understandable question arises:  why did Indiana count solar farms' land use as agricultural?

Battery Baloney, Hydrogen Hype, and Green Fairy Tales.  How low Australia has fallen — our once-great BHP now has a "Vice President for Climate," the number of Australian students choosing physics at high school is collapsing, and our government opposes nuclear energy while pretending we can build and operate nuclear submarines.  Our Green politicians want: "No Coal, No Gas, No Nuclear" while Our ABC, Our CSIRO and Our Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) are telling us that wind and solar energy plus a bit of standby gas, heaps of batteries, and new power lines can power our homes, industries, and the mass electrification of our vehicle fleet.  This sounds like Australia's very own great leap backwards.  There are two troublesome Green Energy Unions — the Solar Workers down tools every night and cloudy day, and the Turbine Crews stop work if winds are too weak or too strong.  And wind droughts can last for days.  The reliable Coal and Gas Crews spend sunny days playing cards, but are expected to keep their turbines revving up and down to keep stable power in the lines.

National Grid Propaganda Piece Withdrawn.  Regular readers might recall that back in April, I wrote an article rebutting a blatant piece of propaganda that appeared in an advertorial in the Guardian, paid for by the National Grid.  [Screenshot]  I complained to both the Guardian and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and there is both good news and bad news to report.  The bad news is that the Guardian dismissed the complaint saying:  "Colleagues have been through the piece in light of your comments, and do not believe that there is a basis for amending the copy of the article."  The good news is the ASA appear to have taken a dim view of the article. [...] [And] it is becoming increasingly clear that renewables are an expensive source of power and false claims can no longer be made in the press.

Fear Trump — or Bust?  Recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that Trump will conspire with oil executives to spike gasoline prices.  But even after Biden drained the strategic petroleum reserve before the 2022 midterms and is now again doing the same as the 2024 election approaches, gas prices have averaged only one-third cheaper than under Trump.  Trump tried to top off the reserve but was blocked by Democrats in Congress.  Nevertheless, he left Biden a nearly full reservoir of 638 million barrels (about 90 percent full), which Biden has now drained by some 270 million barrels to the present 51 percent full — and the levels are falling further as voting nears.

"All of the Above" — a Very Bad Idea.  The fundamental fight over enacting effective energy policies is between lobbyists and the public.  Lobbyists are paid to represent their clients' economic interests or political agendas.  The public consists of citizens, businesses, and the military.  Lobbyists are professionals who spend most of their time soliciting legislators on their client's behalf. [...] The result of this striking imbalance is that most energy policies are essentially written by lobbyists — which means they are permeated with benefits for their clients, and then conveyed with carefully orchestrated marketing propaganda.  To keep their control, lobbyists full well know that they must maintain the impression that their self-serving policies are actually in the public interest — so they leave no stone unturned to creatively maintain that illusion.  Despite lobbyists' carefully massaged messages, it is totally accidental if any parts of their policies actually happen to be advantageous to the public.  A classic example of this is the well-known "All of the Above" energy mantra.

What the media won't tell you about the energy transition.  Before going further, let me be clear about my politics.  I'm not a Democrat.  I'm not a Republican.  I am Disgusted.  I have no truck with either party.  As a journalist focused on energy and power systems, my affiliation is with the math and the physics.  My job is to spotlight the trends and the numbers and to separate the hype from the reality.  Unfortunately, much of the media coverage about the energy transition is just that:  hype.  As I will show in these charts, the hype has soared during the Biden administration.  Last month, the EPA announced rules to "reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants."  In the agency's April 25 press release announcing the new regulations, the word "transition" appears three times.  The EPA said it was providing "regulatory certainty as the power sector makes long-term investments in the transition to a clean energy economy."  It also quotes the BlueGreen Alliance's Jason Walsh as saying the EPA mandate provides a "toolbox of critical investments targeted to the workers and communities experiencing the economic impacts of energy transition."

Climate Change Reporters [Announce] the End of Fossil Fuel — in the Middle of Record Demand.  This in my opinion is a prime example of the fantasy world climate believers live in.  The end of fossil fuel is a fiction.  The only downward pressure on fossil fuel use in Western nations is regulatory lunacy and the ongoing export of our manufacturing industry to other nations.  That fossil fuel powered manufacturing is still happening, and we are very much still using the products of a coal based economy, but because the coal and gas burning is happening in other countries, greens frantically pretend we are somehow disconnecting our economies from burning carbon based fuels.  The only question is, what will our descendants do when the coal runs out?  Because it is inevitable we will burn or otherwise use every scrap of recoverable fossil fuel on the planet.  There is no chance politicians will leave fossil fuel in the ground.  Even the greenest politicians ditch their alleged principles when they strike a rich source of fossil fuel.

What Is The Most Pernicious Example Of "Misinformation" Currently Circulating?  "Misinformation" — It has been one of the most-used buzzwords of the past few years.  The "misinformation" label has been applied by advocates on both sides of the political divide in the attempt to discredit their opponents.  Numerous assertions that have dominated the news cycle for months or even years have ultimately proven to be completely false, that is, "misinformation." [...] Here is my candidate:  the assertion that the cheapest way to generate electricity today is with wind and solar generators.  So why do I say that the assertion of wind and solar being the cheapest ways to generate electricity is the very most pernicious of misinformation currently out there?  Here are my three reasons:  (1) the assertion is repeated endlessly and ubiquitously, (2) it is the basis for the misallocation of trillions of dollars of resources and for great impoverishment of billions of people around the world, and (3) it is false to the point of being preposterous, an insult to everyone's intelligence, yet rarely challenged.

National Grid Resorts to Propaganda.  Ten days ago, the Guardian ran an article paid for by the National Grid that purports to debunk the "myths swirling around clean energy and upgrading the grid". [...] The first "myth" is that "clean energy is too expensive" which is also encapsulated in the caption to the lead image which claims, "solar and wind energy are now the most affordable sources of energy."  The Guardian article uses a report from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), produced in conjunction with the Bezos Earth Fund to claim that "solar and wind energy are now the most affordable sources of new electricity in 82% of the world" and uses the Government's Generation Costs report to claim that new solar projects will cost only £41/MWh.  It compares this to the claimed cost of gas-fired power stations at £114/MWh.  There are several problems with Newkey-Burden's approach.  First, even if the RMI report is true, which is doubtful, it does not focus on the UK.  Energy costs in the rest of the world are only of secondary importance.

German Greens lied to push nuclear power phase-out — media.  Top-ranking German government officials from the Ministry of Economic Affairs intentionally falsified experts' reports to make it look like nuclear power was no longer viable in the country, Cicero magazine reported on Thursday.  Citing internal documents and e-mails it obtained via a court order, the media outlet claims that long-time Green Party proponents of a nuclear phase-out in high positions swept reports under the rug, or altered them, if they ran counter to their ideological convictions.  Following the disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011, Germany's parliament voted in favor of shutting down all similar facilities in the country.  In April 2023, Germany's last three operational nuclear power plants were taken offline.

The CBO Revised the Cost of Biden's Energy Policies Up by $466 Billion.  The cost estimate of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act coupled with EPA mandates, just jumped by $466 billion. [...] The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration NHTSA did an impact assessment of 4 fuel standard proposals and compared them to the cost of doing nothing.  Guess what.  Following roughly 150 pages of fearmongering discussion of things like gasoline spills, 27 references to cancer, and the hypothetical benefits of proposed actions, we arrive at this amusing table.  Doing Nothing vs Four Alternatives Year 2035  [Chart]

Joe Biden and an old retail trick.  I recall gas prices inching toward $3.00 per gallon before Donald Trump took office, and was delighted as they slipped well below $2.00 before he left office.  I know because I keep a maintenance log for my vehicles, noting the date, place, price and cost of every fill up, as well as all maintenance items.  I'm not obsessive, just "squared away," as my brother-in-law puts it.  During Trump's time in office, I paid as little as $1.79.9. Under Biden, $4.59.9.  That's a major change, and benefit, for people living anywhere, but particularly for places like Wyoming, where folks regularly travel several hours and more, one way, for necessary shopping, which they often combine with eating out and tiny vacations.  Particularly when traveling in winter, Wyomingites also like to keep their tanks as full as possible. [...] For several years now, visits to the pumps have provoked much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and the taking of Joe Biden's name in vain from surrounding drivers, particularly after he's been mumbling yet again about Bidenomics and how he's brought gas prices down.  Who you gonna believe?  Joe and his old retail trick, or the gas pump?

Fossil fuels for the foreseeable future will remain a uniquely cost-effective and scalable source of energy.
Myth:  There are no real benefits of continuing fossil fuel use because it can be rapidly replaced by mostly solar and wind.
Truth:  Fossil fuels are and for decades will remain uniquely cost-effective:  affordable, reliable, versatile — on a scale of billions of people in thousands of places.
Myth:  Fossil fuels are being rapidly replaced in an "energy transition" to solar and wind.
Truth:  Fossil fuel use is 80% of the world's energy and still growing despite 100+ years of aggressive competition and 20+ years of political hostility and massive solar and wind favoritism.
Myth:  Fossil fuel use will soon rapidly decline because countries know "green" energy will be cheaper.
Truth:  Countries that care most about cheap energy are pro-fossil fuels; e.g., China, which uses mostly coal to produce "green" tech, has over 300 planned new coal plants designed to last over 40 years.
Myth:  Solar and wind are growing fast by outcompeting fossil fuels with superior economics.
Truth:  Solar and wind are growing fast only when given massive government preferences — mandates, subsidies, and no penalty for unreliability — along with crippling government punishments of fossil fuels.
Myth:  Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels.
Truth:  For the overwhelming majority of the world's energy needs, solar and wind either can't do what fossil fuel can — e.g., non-electricity energy uses such as airplanes or cargo ships — or are far more expensive.
Myth:  Solar and wind electricity is getting so cheap that it will lead to rapid electrification of the 4/5ths of today's energy that is not electricity.
Truth:  When you factor in full cost of the 24/7 life support that unreliable solar and wind electricity need, they are far more expensive.

Carbon Dioxide:  Vital Plant Food.  Carbon dioxide has been called a poison, yet it is actually the sustainer of all life on Earth.  Plants grow from the carbon in carbon dioxide in the air, and animals grow from the carbon in the plants they eat.  So carbon dioxide cannot be a poison.  Turn on the television any day of the week, and there is likely to be some discussion or news about some aspect of energy use.
  •   Everyone needs to buy an electric vehicle.
  •   End the use of fossil fuels by 2035.
  •   Every home with a solar panel (California).
  •   Cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline.
  •   No more coal.
  •   Eliminate the use of natural gas.
  •   No gas stoves.
  •   No gas furnaces.
  •   Battery-powered trucks and buses.
All these programs are based on one important foundation:  the belief that as carbon dioxide levels rise, the earth will get warmer, and will continue to warm until, with positive feedbacks, it burns up with us on it.  Few have ever taken the time to see if the foundation upon which they are operating is actually true.  Few even dare to ask a working scientist for the truth in the matter.  The truth is that carbon dioxide is needed by every plant on the Earth.  Trees, bushes, and plants of all kinds are made mainly of carbon and hydrogen, and the carbon comes from the tiny amount of carbon dioxide that is in the air.

The Green Energy Subsidy Lie.  Environmentalists have long complained about oil and gas industry subsidies.  But we don't hear from them regarding the subsidies paid out for politically favored renewable energy programs, even though the supposedly green sources are dining sumptuously on taxpayers' dollars.  In fact, renewables are more heavily subsidized than the fossil fuels, and it would be difficult if not impossible for them to exist without the support.  From 2016 to 2022, "energy-specific subsidies and support" totaled $183.3 billion, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration report.  While "wind and solar power account for about 21% of domestic electricity production," they nevertheless took in "a staggering $83.8 billion in subsidies, by far the largest share compared to any other category," says Fox News.  The EIA says that over that period, "nearly half (46%) of federal energy subsidies were associated with renewable energy," with "federal support for renewable energy of all types" more than doubling, from $7.4 billion in fiscal 2016 to $15.6 billion in fiscal 2022.

Why wind and solar power are running out of juice.  Alternative energy madness — and that's what it is — has had its biggest impact in California.  But New York and New Jersey have adopted most of that state's mandates.  Sales of new internal combustion vehicles will be banned beginning in 2035 in the states.  All of the electricity sold to retail consumers will have to be "zero-emissions."  Homeowners and building owners will be forced to replace gas- and oil-burning space and water heaters with electric heat pumps.  And, gas stoves will be regulated out of existence.  New York also will soon implement another California import: a carbon "cap-and-invest" program, which will impose a tax on fossil fuels sold by wholesalers and utilities.  The billions of dollars collected each year will provide a green slush fund, allowing the governor and legislators to hand out money to their politically favored cronies, as has so often been the case in the past.  Washington State began its "cap-and-invest" program in January of this year.  Modeled after California's, Governor Jay Inslee promised the program would have "minimal impact, if any.  We are talking about pennies."  Instead, the program has raised gasoline prices — almost 50 cents per gallon so far this year.

How to powerfully and accurately criticize the Biden Administration's energy policies.  It is crucial to have powerful criticisms of President Biden's terrible energy policies, as they are an existential threat to our country.  However, it is also crucial that this not be pursued by inaccurate, easy-to-refute claims that serve to undercut accurate criticisms. [...]
  •   If not for global anti-oil policies, Russia's Ukraine invasion and the subsequent embargoes would be much less consequential.  Indeed, they would have been an opportunity for US producers to grow their market shares, as they did in the recent past when breaking the OPEC+ cartel.
  •   The "climate emergency" movement is trying to deny all responsibility for today's energy emergency.  They blame the emergency on Russia's invasion of Ukraine — which is a secondary factor.  Or, they chastise the fossil fuel industry for not meeting demand — which is absurd and unjust.
  •   Today's high fossil fuel prices are not primarily a "Putin price hike."  They are caused by global anti-fossil-fuel "climate emergency" policies — which made fossil fuel prices artificially high before Putin's war and prevented the free world from quickly increasing production in response.
  •   The "climate emergency" movement has the gall to chastise the fossil fuel industry for not sufficiently ramping up production post-pandemic and post-Putin-invasion.  But this insufficient ramp-up is the result of anti-fossil-fuel policies that restrict and punish new attempted production!

The Power Of Power Density.  In an August 7 article, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman claimed that "technological progress in renewable energy has made it possible to envisage major reductions in emissions at little or no cost in terms of economic growth and living standards." [...] None of the claims in Krugman's August 7 column are new.  For years, academics from elite universities, climate activists, leaders of the anti-industry industry, and legacy media outlets (and the New York Times in particular) have been peddling shopworn claims about "all-gain-no-pain" renewables.  You've no doubt heard them:  renewables are cheap and getting cheaper, wind and solar energy are the future, and the main reason that conservatives and knuckle-dragging rural landowners are opposing massive renewable projects all across America is that they don't understand "science."  That's the spin.  Here's the reality:  the conspiracy against wind and solar is one of basic math and simple physics.  It's not conservatives who are wrong on "science," it's liberals like Krugman and his myriad allies in the climate claque who refuse to recognize (or even discuss) the physical limits on our energy and power networks.

California Has Another Planet-Saving Idea.  There are two entirely foreseen (to sentient beings) consequences of the E.V. (electric vehicle) mandate.  The first is that California's electricity shortage will be getting worse — much worse.  Those E.V.s use a lot of juice to recharge, and they will all be plugged in at the same time — when people get home from work.  The second consequence is that the market for obsolete, gas-guzzling, smog-producing used cars is going to explode in California — increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the state that is trying to eliminate greenhouse gases.  Luckily, California is known for its innovators, and they've come up with a creative solution to their electricity shortage.  Just mandate that all the new E.V.s incorporate bidirectional charging — as Senate Bill 233 proposes.  This means that when the cars aren't being driven, their batteries can either be recharged from the grid or discharged into the grid.  Therefore, the stored energy in millions of parked electric cars can be used to meet the state's electricity shortfall during times of peak demand.  When my car is plugged in at night, it can be used to charge my neighbor's car.  After his car is fully charged, it can be used to charge my car.  It's genius! [...] It's the solution inventors never thought of: perpetual motion by legislation.  More energy out than energy in, by mandate.  Just require by law that electricity be pushed back and forth between batteries to come up with the power they need but don't have.  It's a little like using two credit cards to meet a budget shortfall — only done with electricity.

The gas is high.  It's hot here and some countries are cutting back on production.  The heat is the heat and I've lived plenty of it in Texas.  In fact, I remember when our second son was baptized back in 1988 that it was 108 around here.  That holy water must have felt great on that baby's head.  I remember 1980 when we had a whole 30 days of 100-plus temperatures.  What I don't remember was gasoline going up.

CNN: Gas Price Spike Due to Climate Change.  On Thursday, CNN hosts Poppy Harlow and Boris Sanchez blamed climate change for the recent surge in gas prices with the former saying that the surge in prices is a reason "to get it in check when it comes to climate change."  On "CNN This Morning," CNN Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans stated, "There [are] a couple of things happening here:  They're still well below last year.  Last year, at this time, we were hitting record highs, right?  $4.30, last year, at this time, today, they're $3.71.  They've been jumping overnight.  Some of these jumps have been pretty big.  One of the reasons is the incessant heat means these refineries have to — are going offline for maintenance, they can't run full throttle when it's 115 with the heat index, just like people can't work full throttle outside or on factory floors when it's so, so hot.  So, that's one of the reasons. [...]"

The Editor says...
The heat index does not affect machinery.  The price of gas is rapidly increasing because Joe Biden (or the anonymous committee that pulls his strings) has done everything possible over the last two years to cripple the petroleum industry.

The ultimate debunking of "solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels."  Myth: Solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels.  Truth: Solar and wind are only cheaper than fossil fuels in at most a small fraction of situations.  For the overwhelming majority of the world's energy needs, solar and wind are either completely unable to replace fossil fuels or far more expensive.
  •   Observe that "solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels" is usually invoked, not to encourage competition but to justify coercive government policies to punish fossil fuel use and favor solar and wind.
  •   Observe that the same people claiming "solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels" moved heaven and earth to demand at minimum hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies under the "Inflation Reduction Act" for these supposedly "cheaper forms of energy."
  •   On its face, justifying favoritism toward solar and wind by invoking their cheapness is highly suspicious.  If they're cheaper, why do they need coercive policies to throttle their fossil-fueled competitors (e.g., opposing fossil fuel investment, production, and pipelines) and reward solar and wind?

The Corruption of Climate Science.  [Scroll down]  Let's suppose that back in the mid-1960s, oil companies were presented with a theory that fossil fuel emissions would cause the climate to warm.  Wouldn't their first rational response be to question this theory?  Why would questioning a theory constitute "misleading the public"?  Even if some of the executives in these companies believed these theories, it would be absurd to suggest all of them did.  In any boardroom discussion, and this is amusingly ironic, the economic interests of an oil corporation would compel their directors to be intellectually honest and not simply accept the theory that their product was going to warm the planet.  Good luck proving that oil companies intentionally misled the public.  But so what?  Were America's oil and gas companies simply supposed to believe all these nascent theories and shut down?  What exactly should they have done, back in the mid-1960s, to cope with this allegedly looming climate emergency?  Were solar panels and wind turbines ready for rapid deployment back then?  Of course not, especially since solar panels from China, and wind turbines from Germany, are still not capable of providing more than a small fraction of the energy we need.

Debunking Another Misleading Green Energy Study.  Wind and solar, so the argument goes, would win in a fair fight, but, alas, the playing field is far from fair.  But the supposed data they are drawing on to come to such a conclusion is misleading and geared more toward generating headlines than good policy.  A primary source used to back this claim up is a working paper presented by a group of International Monetary Fund authors titled "Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies."  The paper claims that hydrocarbon-based fuels — like gas, oil, and coal — enjoy $5.9 trillion in subsidies annually. [...] There are three basic problems with the study.  First, it so broadly defines "subsidy" as to be completely meaningless.  In fact, the study states that only 8% of its reported costs reflect actual, direct subsidies.  The rest predominantly comes from the amorphous "undercharging for environmental costs" that supposedly occur from the extraction, refining, transportation, and use of fossil fuels.  Such environmental costs include "underpricing for local air pollution" (42%) and "global warming costs" (29%).  What's left goes to the equally tenuous congestion and road accidents costs (15%) and forgone tax revenues (6%).

Conservation is not an energy source.
Finally, a Solution to the Problem of Intermittent Power Generation - the "Virtual Power Plant".  As discussed here many, many times, the big problem with generating electricity from wind and solar sources is that they are intermittent.  Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't.  And sometimes they don't work for days on end.  The times when both wind and sun fail at the same time for multiple days tend to be concentrated in the very coldest days of the winter.  This poses a huge problem for central planners' dreams of "net zero" electricity.  Try to solve the problem with grid-scale batteries, and suddenly you're talking wildly unaffordable costs in the trillions of dollars.  Not to worry.  Recently everywhere talk has emerged of a new and seemingly easy solution to the problem of intermittency.  Have you heard of it?  It's the "Virtual Power Plant." [...] [T]he Virtual Power Plant is exactly what you undoubtedly already suspect it to be:  another new level of Orwellian doubletalk.  "Virtual Power Plant" turns out to be another term for pointless enforced sacrifice in service to the climate cult.  If you have been paying attention, you probably have already noticed that this "Virtual Power Plant" thing is the latest talking point of the central planners.

Power mad:  [Scroll down]  The Left blames climate change for these ["extreme weather"] events, as if, even were it true, a 1-degree change in temperature could break an electric grid while shutting down power plants would not.  A shortage of power is caused by a shortage of generation, and that shortage of generation is the result of policies that shut down power plants and replace them, inadequately, with unreliable renewable sources.  It is insanity, at least if you believe that the powers that be care about American citizens.  They don't.  The simple fact is that they don't.  This is a religion, pure and simple.

Trump Takes a Hammer to the Carefully Maintained Delusions Inside the Left-Wing Bubble.  [Scroll down]  First of all, there's the economy.  Energy is the lifeblood of any industrial power, and just two years into the Trump presidency, America was energy independent.  That might not mean much to a younger Americans, but it was once an impossible dream for America.  We didn't even speak of it, because it was too outlandish a goal.  With the exception of Reagan, every president going back to Richard Nixon imposed an anti-oil stance.  Trump was a "radical departure from 50 years of received energy wisdom," wrote Investor's Business Daily in 2018.  He told Americans that, for decades, the "myth of energy scarcity" was peddled.  ["]What the country needs, he said, isn't 'alternative' energy, or new austerity measures.  It's a government that 'promotes energy development.'  Trump listed actions he was taking to lift federal impediments to energy production.  Lo and behold, Trump was right.["]  Within two years of his inauguration, Trump had done the unthinkable.  We were energy independent, and the economy was booming.

California's in a headlong rush to renewables, but the state's CO2 emissions aren't falling.  Last week, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District approved new regulations that will ban the use of residential and commercial natural gas-fired water heaters and furnaces in 2027.  The regulation, which only applies to new appliances, prohibits residents in the Bay Area from buying or installing gas water heaters starting in 2027.  The prohibition on residential furnaces starts in 2029 and the ban on commercial water heaters begins in 2031.  In a March 15 press release, Philip Fine, the executive officer of the agency said the new "groundbreaking regulation will phase out the most polluting appliances in homes and businesses to protect Bay Area residents from the harmful air pollution they cause."  He also said the ban was justified because those appliances "significantly impact our air quality, resulting in dozens of early deaths and a wide range of health impacts, particularly in communities of color."  The move is the latest example of how California policymakers are adopting a phalanx of regulations that are forcing residents to use electricity instead of natural gas.

The Editor says...
[#1] Gas appliances do not cause "harmful air pollution."  [#2] Switching to electricity doesn't solve anything if the central power plant burns natural gas.  [#3] Air pollution (or hot or cold or rain or drought) doesn't affect black neighborhoods any differently than any other place.

Refuting Democrat denials of responsibility for the energy crisis.  For 15+ years Democratic politicians, including Joe Biden, have relentlessly attacked oil investment, oil production, and oil transport — leading to higher prices and lower security.  Instead of taking credit for their "success," they are denying that they are anti-fossil fuels!
  •   The "business decisions" denial tactic:  For 15+ years Democratic politicians have pushed everything they can to threaten new oil production: net-zero, ESG, proposed bans, etc.  Now they are blaming companies for "business decisions" to refrain from threatened oil production!
  •   The "windfall profits" denial tactic:  For 15+ years Democratic politicians have done everything they can to make new oil production unprofitable — leading to less investment.  Now they are condemning companies for not investing enough "windfall profits"!
  •   The "9000 leases" denial tactic:  For 15+ years Dem politicians have driven up oil prices by delaying/destroying countless economically viable oil projects.  To deny responsibility they are attacking companies for not developing 9000 leases the companies judge to be economically nonviable.

Internal Memo Shows Biden Admin Wanted To Ban Gas Stoves Before Public Backlash.  The Biden administration claimed the need to ban gas stoves "reached a boiling point" before the conversation really got heated.  In January, Richard Trumka Jr., a Biden appointee to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), triggered an avalanche of headlines when he told Bloomberg News, "any option is on the table" regarding gas stove regulation.  "Products that can't be safe can be banned," Trumka said.  The comment draws on left-wing myths that gas stoves are a primary source of respiratory problems through indoor emissions.  Such claims, however, have nothing to do with science and everything to do with radical climate activism.  Corporate outlets jumped to downplay the administration's threat after public outcry forced the White House to backtrack such regulations. [...] Other outlets framed conservatives as the aggressors even as nearly 100 cities have already banned the gas appliance.  Another 20 states are considering similar regulations, according to the Washington Examiner.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm praises China.  What at first would appear to be a head-scratcher comes sharply into focus only when you understand that China is constantly increasing its greenhouse gas output without U.S. rebuke.  Its output is now greater than all the other developed nations combined!  Nothing the rest of the world (i.e.  America and Europe both committed to net zero) does will achieve Biden's stated goals to "save" the planet.  China greenlights two coal plants a week while the U.S. and Europe shutter their own, risking brownouts and people dying from the cold!  Why are we such zealots for dumping our traditional sources of energy with nothing on the near horizon to replace our needs?  Granholm knows what's going on, and, like our President, both are in the tank for an ever-ascendant China.

US energy secretary praises China's climate change efforts.  United States Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm claimed in an interview that America can "learn from what China is doing" regarding climate change, while defending the nation against claims that it is among the bigger contributors to the perceived problem.  Granholm was interviewed at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, and according to Fox News, she told viewers that China is "very sensitive" on the issue of climate change, even more so than the United States.  China "has been very sensitive, and has actually invested a lot in their solutions, to achieve their goals," Granholm said in an interview with Wajahat Ali.

The Editor says...
Yes, I agree that China "has actually invested a lot in their solutions, to achieve their goals," and their goals include building coal-fired power plants at the rate of a hundred per year. [1] [2]

The lies government will tell to force green energy.  Democrats want to bury and regulate CO2, a clear, innocuous, non-pollutant gas that allows plants to grow and the world to be fed.  They want to eliminate clean-burning, efficient, affordable natural gas plants that keep people comfortable with air-conditioning and heating.  They claim that coal power plants with scrubbers emissions travel across states.  That is nuts!  The missions clearly dissipate soon after they go in the atmosphere. [...] There is no scientific data that show a direct correlation between temperatures and our consumption of natural resources or with humans breathing out CO2.

The lies government will tell to force green energy.  While Democrats are seeking to severely limit our use of natural resources, they are promoting wind turbines, no matter how many whales and other wildlife they kill.  While they are spending massive amounts to limit the non-pollutant CO2, they are requiring us to use the expensive, highly flammable pollutant lithium.  They clearly don't care about how and where it is produced, and they don't even care if child labor is used.  All they care about is controlling our lives.

Only an economic illiterate could say that Biden's policies are working well.  Here is a headline in Yahoo Finance on December 30th: "This week in Bidenomics: It was a pretty good year."  The author is Rick Newman, whose title is "Senior Columnist.  Newman admits that the S & P 500 was down 20% for the year, the Dow Jones was down 10%, and the Nasdaq was down 34%.  Nevertheless, he brags that gas prices are down from their high to $3.15 per gallon, never acknowledging that gas was $2.17 when Biden won the election.  Bragging about prices that are up 45% in two years does not show any ability to think cognitively.  Diesel prices are also down from their Biden-era high.  Still, their Biden-era "low" is $4.53, which is 90% higher than the $2.38 price for diesel when Biden was elected.  Crude oil is around $80 or up 100% from $40 when Biden was elected.  That is what happens when one of your major goals is to destroy industries that provide reasonably priced energy.

Keystone Pipeline Allowed to Reopen, Media Continues Lying about Spill.  The Keystone Pipeline runs from Alberta to Houston, almost in a straight line south down "Tornado Alley" in America's midwest, running from North Dakota to Texas.  The overall pipeline is 2,687 miles long, is owned by TC Energy, and carries 860,000 barrels of oil per day through its 30 inch diameter tubes.  The current price of oil per barrel is roughly $80.  So the pipeline is moving roughly $68.8 million worth of oil through its pipeline every day, or $25.1 billion per year.  The pipeline shut down on December 7th after a spill of 14,000 barrels of oil in rural North Kansas.  The Calgary, Canada-based company received permission from the Biden administration on Friday to reopen the pipeline, though it did not give a definitive date when it would restart.

Who's More Un-American: Oil Companies Or Joe Biden?  When Biden administration officials aren't promising to put them out of business, they're calling oil companies "un-American" for not drilling more.  They should look in a mirror.  Amos Hochstein, Joe Biden's "senior adviser for energy security" at the State Department, complained to the Financial Times last week that oil companies were using profits to buy back stock rather than invest in oil production.  "It is not only un-American, it is so unfair to the American public," he said.  "You want to pay dividends, pay dividends.  You want to pay shareholders, pay shareholders.  You want to get bonuses, do that, too.  You could do all of that and still invest more.  We are asking you to increase production and seize the moment."

Biden yells 'There is no more drilling!' just months after claiming he never shut down energy production.  Is there any lie that's just too brazen for old Joe Biden?  Seems not. [...] Biden has blamed Vladimir Putin, OPEC's barons, Big Oil, global warming, Republicans, and all other things he could think of for high prices at the pump.  The one thing he won't do is consider what Americans can see with their own eyes: that before President Trump left office, gas prices were about $2 a gallon.  Now they are $5 and $6 a gallon in California, and well above $3 a gallon in the rest of America.  That's "lived experience."  The clearest reason for that is Biden's policies to halt drilling.  Back in January 2021, Biden signed off on an executive order dictating a ban of oil and gas drilling on federal lands.  Fox News has a string of other bans and hamperings he's done to stop energy production and drive pump prices sky-high.

Biden Keeps Promising To Make Energy More Expensive.  Believe Him.  Yes, we're going to make energy more expensive.  That's Joe Biden's closing message for 2022.  "We're going to be shutting these [coal] plants down all across America and having wind and solar," Biden told a crowd in deep blue California on Friday, arguing that it was "cheaper" to generate electricity from wind and solar.  Is it?  In California, which not only leads the nation in "clean energy" production but is leading the rest of us into rolling blackouts, residents pay 24.62 cents per kilowatt-hour for energy, around double the national average.  There are only three other states where residents fork 20 or more cents over, the isolated Hawaii and Alaska and the frack-banning New York.  The price of a gallon of gas in California is around two dollars over the national average, at $5.458.  In Texas, it's $3.173.  The president also forgot to mention that affordable natural gas, propelled by technological efficiencies like fracking, is as much a reason for the struggles of coal.

This kind of back-pedaling might have worked before videotape was invented, but not today.
KJP Claims Biden's Exact Words on Coal Are Being 'Twisted'.  White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre released a statement Saturday afternoon in an effort to walk back President Joe Biden's remarks Friday.  During a campaign stop in California, Biden said, "We're gonna be shutting these plants down all across America, and having wind and solar."  Jean-Pierre claims Biden's words, which have simply been quoted and replayed, are being "twisted."

The Editor says...
Biden said what he said.  A quote is not a twist.

Fact check: Biden's midterms message includes false and misleading claims.  Biden's claim that the most common gas price when he took office was more than $5 is not even close to accurate.  The most common price for a gallon of regular gas on the day he was inaugurated, January 20, 2021, was $2.39, according to data provided to CNN by Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.  In other words, Biden made it sound like gas prices had fallen significantly during his presidency when they had actually increased significantly.  In other recent remarks, Biden has discussed the state of gas prices in relation to the summer peak of more than $5 per gallon, not in relation to when he took office.  Regardless, the comment last week was the second this fall in which Biden inaccurately described the price of gas — both times in a way that made it sound more impressive.

The Democrat War on Fossil Fuels.  On October 19, in the heat of an election campaign, President Biden told the American people, "We need to increase oil production." He went on to say, "My administration has not stopped or slowed U.S. oil production."  It was a disingenuous statement from a man whose sense of reality, fact, and fiction have become an undecipherable narrative.  Biden failed to mention the executive order he issued which stipulates, "the Secretary of the Interior shall pause new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters."  This pause is ongoing.

Biden falsely says the price of gas was more than $5 when he took office (when it was $2.39).  President Joe Biden touted U.S. manufacturing gains Thursday on a trip to Syracuse — where he claimed gas prices were down compared to when he took office, when in fact they are higher.  'We're down $1.25 Since the peak this summer, and they've been falling for the last three weeks as well as well, and adding up real savings for families today,' Biden said.  'The most common price of gas in America is $3.39 down from over $5 When I took office,' he continued.  The average cost of a gallon of gas on the AAA site was $3.76 Thursday.  When he took office, it was averaging $2.39 — or about half what he said it was then — according to the Energy Information Institute.

Bad Energy Policy Ideas Never Die.  Thus far in 2022, political actors and their acolytes are dusting off, again, every bad idea that has ever permeated political debate in the United States regarding energy.  Among them:
  •   Price caps, which do nothing to provoke demand response or salient investment.
  •   Export bans, which only shrink the global supply pie, worsening price pressures.
  •   Tapping strategic oil reserves, originally reserved for emergencies — a tactic too often deployed to manage or attempt to manage prices.
  •   Appealing to OPEC (and OPEC+) to open spigots while also investigating and/or invoking sanctions against, and/or attempting to legislate against, OPEC.
None of these are new, or even clever, or even useful, but they are being presented to voters here and abroad as such.

Unmitigated gall of Joe Biden claiming that he 'lowered' debt.  In a remarkable feat of gaslighting, the president held a press conference Friday bragging about directing the "largest one-year [deficit] drop in American history."  But Biden did nothing to reduce the deficit.  In fact, his policies have added a deluge of red ink.  Between 2017 and 2019, the budget deficit averaged $810 billion annually.  The pandemic then put millions of people out of work and brought trillions of dollars in temporary federal benefits, pushing deficits past $3 trillion in 2020 and $2 trillion in 2021.  As the pandemic receded, however, the expiration of this temporary spending was scheduled to return deficits to the pre-pandemic levels of $900 billion to $1 trillion for the next six years.  Instead, Biden's spending pushed up the 2022 deficit to $1.4 trillion — $400 billion higher than the baseline and far above pre-pandemic levels.  And this was despite shattering peacetime records for tax revenues.

Biden's Lies About Energy Can No Longer Be Ignored.  It's stunning to hear President Biden (and the rest of the Democrats) spin our growing energy crisis.  Like a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar, Biden continually tells the American people, "I didn't do it!"  In fact, yes he did.  And he still is.  "Let's debunk some myths: My administration has not stopped or slowed U.S. oil production," Biden said on Wednesday, adding that he's "doing everything in my power to reduce gasoline prices."  Is that true?  In fact, the entire energy policy of the Biden administration has been directed at not just slowing, but stopping U.S. oil production.  The intended result:  Higher gasoline prices for consumers, yet another Bidenflation tax on American families that is already pushing many to the brink of financial insolvency.  That's not a partisan talking point, by the way.  Even his own administration's energy officials admit that the goal of the administration is to get rid of fossil fuels by raising prices.  They just don't want it now, before the 2022 midterm elections.

Democrat Senate Incumbents Refuse Responsibility for Fueling Inflation, Gas Prices.  Four embattled Senate Democrat incumbents have set a pattern of refusing to take responsibility for soaring inflation and gas prices that have occurred in record-setting fashion under their leadership. [...] On Thursday, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), who is losing in the polls to Republican Adam Laxalt, claimed gas prices are spiking because oil companies are not producing enough oil.  "Instead of increasing supply, they're taking in profits," she tweeted.  Masto did not mention that gas prices have spiked since Democrats regained control of the executive branch, legislative branch, and administration state in 2021.  Nor did she mention President Joe Biden's campaign promise to reduce oil drilling.  In the last two years, the Biden administration has succeeded in driving up private and public financing costs of oil drilling, halting drilling on public lands, and canceling the Keystone pipeline.

Biden Team Doing All It Can to Buy Election with Latest Move.  Gas prices have been going up again, even as the Biden team tells us ridiculous stories of how much they're saving us on gas.  White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed on Tuesday that they were saving us $420 million a day.  At this point, they're just making up numbers and pulling them out of the air.  That takes some kind of gall to claim since we're still paying far more for gas than when Joe Biden came in.  They think we have 15-second memories and don't remember?  But if that were true, why is Joe Biden still ripping off our Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Joe Biden: $7 a Gallon Gas in California 'Always Been the Case'.  President Joe Biden during a visit to Los Angeles on Thursday dismissed gas prices in California reaching nearly seven dollars a gallon.  The president spoke with reporters briefly after getting tacos with local Democrats in Los Angeles.  When asked to react to prices reaching nearly seven dollars a gallon in California, Biden replied, "Well, that's always been the case here."  Biden argued that gas prices were still down nationwide from the previous highs in the summer, even though they have gone back up as much as 30 cents a gallon in some areas.

Newsom Tried Blaming Valero for High Fuel Costs.  It Did Not Go Well.  After Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom's state Energy Commission accused Valero Energy of price gouging and ordered an "explanation" from the company on the high price of gas in California, Valero sent a lengthy letter putting Newsom in his place and explaining why his answer is waiting in the mirror.  In doing so, the energy producer also exposed the true goal of Democrats' pain-is-the-point energy agenda. [...] The cold hard truth that Newsom, Biden, and Energy Secretary Granholm know — but refuse to admit — along with the real goal of their energy-killing policies.

Electric Mania.  [Scroll down] This distinction between renewable and nonrenewable is a fallacy as surely as it was a fallacy that electrical currents could bring a dead person back to life.  How do we capture wind or solar energy?  We must produce other things, like wind turbines and solar panels.  Are these clean?  No.  The dirty secret of wind energy and solar production is that the actual wind energy rotors and the solar panels are made of material that, at the end of its useful life, is literally ground up and put into a landfill.  I'm going to talk mainly about wind turbines, but keep in mind that everything I say is also applicable to solar panels.  By 2030, the United States is expected to see as much as one million total tons of solar panel waste.  By 2050, the United States is expected to have the second largest number of end-of-life panels in the world, with as many as an estimated 10 million total tons of panels.  What is going to happen to all that waste, much of it toxic?  Wind turbines typically contain more than 8,000 different components.  One such component are magnets made from neodymium and dysprosium; rare earth minerals mined almost exclusively in China.  Extracting REs is an energy intensive and heavily polluting process, which makes a mockery of "clean energy" all by itself.

Climate Panic Behind Energy Crisis.  The Biden administration claims to be doing all it can to increase oil and natural gas production but it's not.  It has issued fewer leases for oil and gas production on federal lands than any other administration since World War II. It blocked the expansion of oil refining.  It is using environmental regulations to reduce liquified natural gas production and exports.  It has encouraged greater production by Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and other OPEC nations, rather than in the U.S. And its representatives continue to emphasize that their goal is to end the use of fossil fuels, including the cleanest one, natural gas, thereby undermining private sector investment.

British energy planning (a horror story).  Looking for a light read?  Perhaps a fairy tale to settle the kids before bed?  If so, I highly recommend the publications page of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).  You will find endless exciting tales about the near future.  Stories of a high-tech world, in which humanity has "Built Back Greener" and enjoys prosperous existence in equilibrium with a revitalised natural world.  But perhaps fantasy is not your thing.  Maybe you'd prefer something scary — a horror story to make your hair stand on end.  Never fear — BEIS has you covered.  As a fellow spookophile, I encourage you to scroll past the utopian titles, right to the bottom.  Here we find the department's "generation capacity" estimates.  Generation capacity is the amount of electricity our country can generate or import if supplied with sufficient fuel.  As with most horror stories, the setting will initially appear rosy.

Biden Administration calls for censorship on energy.  This is shocking, or would be in a sane world:  Gina McCarthy, the Biden administration's National Climate Advisor, is openly calling on tech companies like Facebook and Twitter to censor any dissent from the administration's "green" fantasies.  McCarthy says the tech companies "have to stop allowing" people to disagree with Biden. [...] We wrote [elsew]here about the lawsuit that the states of Missouri and Louisiana have brought against the Biden administration, accusing it of coercing, or colluding with, tech companies to violate Americans' First Amendment rights.  Watch for Gina McCarthy's open call for censorship to be an exhibit in that case.

Biden Pats Himself on the Back about Gas Prices as Americans Pay at the Pump.  Brandon just got back from his trip to beg the sheiks of Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to keep prices lower for American consumers, a trip made more ridiculous even than it sounds at first glance thanks to Biden's heated, anti-Saudi rhetoric, his administration's hostility to American energy producers, and the lack of any reason for the Saudi's to go along with what Biden wants given his attempts to strike a deal with Iran and the fact that they make more money when prices are higher.  And, unsurprisingly, it doesn't really appear to have worked.  The Saudis will do as they please, particularly when Biden is the dimwitted American they're dealing with.  But that didn't stop Biden from using his Twitter account to start patting himself on the back about the recent dip in gas prices, making a small price correction in the still sky-high price of gas sound like a major victory for the American consumer and his administration.

Why Biden Is Putting Us In Danger.  There is no evidence that DOE went out of its way to sell American oil to Unipec, and little reason to believe that the U.S. could have refined that oil into gasoline, diesel, and other products had it remained in the U.S.  After all, U.S. oil refineries are operating at 94% capacity. [...] But the reason our refineries are at maximum capacity is because Biden revoked a permit for a massive refinery expansion in the U.S. Virgin Islands in March and halted its operations entirely in May.  And where the U.S. released 50 million barrels of oil in 2021 and 180 million barrels of oil in 2022 so far, China has only released 7.4 million barrels of oil, which is just a half day's consumption.  Is that because China is oil-poor?  No.  It has equal-sized petroleum reserves to the U.S.  In fact, despite promises in November and again in January to release oil from its reserves, China has instead been increasing its reserves.  And there is no evidence that any non-Chinese firms, much less American firms, bought any of its released reserve oil, which undercuts the Biden Administration's claim that the SPR release was being reciprocated.

Someday, Maybe, a Canadian Reckoning.  According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his chief accountant Chrystia Freeland, runaway inflation and the recession it announces are something of a godsend.  Price increases, she said in a recent address, are "a reminder of why climate action is so important, and why we have to work... faster towards a green economy."  The benefits, according to this authority, are clear:  More green energy, lower prices.  The claim is so fatuous as to induce intellectual migraine.

Biden Blames Republicans For Soaring Gas Prices.  President Joe Biden blamed Republicans for soaring gas prices in a Sunday [7/10/2022] tweet, moving on from the "Putin-price hike" shtick.  Biden attempted to shift blame onto Republicans as a way to drive up support amongst voters for the November midterms.  "Republicans are doing nothing but obstructing our efforts to crack down on gas-price gouging, lower food prices, lower healthcare costs, and hopefully, soon, lower your prescription drug costs," Biden tweeted.

Biden falsely claims GOP is blocking 'efforts to lower your gas taxes'.  President Biden took aim at the opposing party Wednesday by falsely claiming that Republicans — rather than members of his own party — are preventing Congress from implementing his proposed federal gas tax holiday to blunt fuel costs.  "All Republicans do nothing [and] obstruct our efforts to lower your gas taxes," Mr. Biden said in Cleveland, Ohio, during remarks about the economy and employer pension plans.  "I proposed that, and I've asked the Congress to eliminate the federal gas tax for as long as this crisis goes on."  Last month, the president called on Congress to temporarily suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal tax that drivers pay at the pump for regular fuel and the 24-cent-per-gallon tax on diesel for three months.

Democrats are the party of fear because that is all they have.  The media and other Democrats are saying that if the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] can't destroy the fossil fuel industry, then the Earth doesn't have many years left and we will all die soon.  For decades, we have been told that climate change or global warming is an existential threat to our survival and is caused by humans, fossil fuels and CO2.  What we don't see are scientific facts to support these dire talking points.  We see easily manipulated computer models that have consistently been 100% wrong.  The highest number of deaths where heat was a contributing cause, not the actual cause, from 2017 to 2021 was 1,577.  The U.S. has 330 million people and around three million die each year.  1,577 is a miniscule number, less than one tenth of a percent of total deaths.  That small number certainly can't be attributed to fossil fuels or anything else.  Here are some shocking findings:  Most people that die of heat live in hot states, and the average age of people dying due, or related to heat is 85 or older, which is more than five years longer than the average American life.  Did we need experts to tell us this?

Biden is Selling America's Reserve Oil to Foreign Countries.  As a result of his domestic war on the oil and gas industry, energy prices for American families continue to hit records with no relief in sight.  For months, President Joe Biden has repeatedly tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and claimed it was helping to ease the pain at the pump.  Not only has the depletion of the emergency supply not decreased gas prices, we're learning the supply is being sold to foreign countries.  "More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency oil reserves release aimed at lowering domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices touched record highs," Reuters reports.  "The export of crude and fuel is blunting the impact of the moves by U.S. President Joe Biden designed to lower record pump prices." [...] While Biden has been selling off America's reserve oil, he's been publicly berating oil companies and private gas station owners.  The White House has also classified oil producers as unpatriotic.

US energy producers roast Biden over gas prices tweet they suggest written by WH 'intern'.  On Sunday [7/3/2022], Biden tweeted that "companies running gas stations" should take note that "this is a time of war and global peril."  "My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril," Biden tweeted on Saturday.  "Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product.  And do it now."  Biden's tweet comes as gas prices are averaging at $4.812 nationwide, which is up 5 cents from one month ago.  In some states, however, prices are much higher.  In California, the average price per gallon of gas is $6.244 and in Illinois, it's $5.325.  Biden has attempted to deflect blame for the increase in gas prices to Russian President Vladimir Putin, dubbing it the "Putin's Price Hike," a term used repeatedly by the White House, despite his campaign promise to always take responsibility and not blame others.

US energy producers roast Biden for demanding 'companies running gas stations' lower pump prices.  The U.S. Oil & Gas Association took a hit at President Biden after he tweeted on Saturday that "companies running gas stations" should simply "bring down the price you are charging at the pump," telling him that he should "please make sure the WH intern who posted this tweet registers for Econ 101 for the fall semester."  "Working on it Mr. President.  In the meantime — have a Happy 4th and please make sure the WH intern who posted this tweet registers for Econ 101 for the fall semester...," the tweeted.  On Sunday, Biden tweeted that "companies running gas stations" should take note that "this is a time of war and global peril."

Joe Biden has a new scapegoat:  Your local gas station.  President Joe Biden is proving that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.  Recall that over the last couple of months, Biden has been desperately trying to explain away the high cost of gasoline.  When people didn't buy Democrats' scapegoating of oil companies, he claimed it was Vladimir Putin's fault.  Never mind how far gas prices had risen before Putin invaded Ukraine.  But people were not fooled, and so last week, Biden began appealing to our sense of patriotism.  The new message was that when you pay $7 for gas, you are paying for the "liberal world order."  Big surprise — even that message isn't getting the desired results.  So this weekend, Biden's team has found a new scapegoat:  your local gas station.

Mainstream media urging voters to ignore inflation, focus on imperiled democracy.  Recent surveys have consistently shown that runaway inflation is the most troubling issue to most Americans.  This has led many talking heads and media outlets to express deep concern that historically high gas prices and generally rampant inflation might lead to significant Democrat losses in the upcoming midterm elections.  The horror!  To help prevent this, Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, for example, informed her readers that it was a "wild fantasy" to believe that the GOP could lower gas prices.  Furthermore, in a Sunday opinion piece, she condescendingly warned voters to "think carefully about what they'll get if they cast their ballot based on gas prices."  By that she means evil Republicans who are pro-life and pro-Bill of Rights.  Rampell added, "The president does not have some super-secret special dial on his desk that can adjust gas prices, but many voters believe otherwise."  Yes, Catherine, I'm sure many voters think Biden has a "dial" on his desk that can adjust gas prices in real time.  (Not that he'd know how to use it if he did.)  In reality, most voters know that Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline on Day One, has rescinded or denied drilling leases, and has made it clear he is an implacable foe of the fossil fuel industry in every shape and form.  That is why gas prices have skyrocketed since he took office, and that is why voters are rightfully angry.

Biden Adviser Sperling:  Powell Didn't Contradict Biden, Gas Prices 'Due Solely to' Russia.  On Wednesday's broadcast of CNN's "The Lead," Senior Adviser to President Joe Biden Gene Sperling said that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's comments that high inflation pre-dates Russia's invasion of Ukraine don't contradict President Joe Biden's rhetoric and "the reason we've seen the gas price rise, both here and really around the world, is due to Putin."  Sperling responded to Powell's comments by saying, "Jake, that is clearly correct, and that is not contradictory with anything this president said."

Germany's 'Green' Energy Disaster Is A Warning To The United States.  As gas hit historic highs, leftists keep arguing it's a perfect time to transition to a "clean energy" economy.  "Now is the moment to double-down, triple-down, and quadruple-down on clean energy," Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted on Friday, linking to a CNN piece that contends "wind and solar" have been "bailing out" Texas during its recent heat wave.  In the piece we learn that wind, solar, and nuclear have "powered about 38% of the state's power in 2021, rivaling natural gas at 42%."  That's quite the sleight of hand; [...] Subsidized solar power generates less than 2 percent of Texas' energy during the year.  Nuclear power generates around 10 percent and wind nearly 20.  Coal accounts for nearly 15 percent and natural gas for more than 52 percent of electricity generation.  It would be far more accurate to say that coal, nuclear, and gas are bailing out Texas.  No nation has anything approaching a clean energy economy.  And those that have promised to build one are all struggling.

Chuck Todd Pretends Not to Know Things.  In a segment intended to protect the Biden regime from the outcome of their energy policies, the latest distraction is to claim gas prices are not high when "adjusted" to account for the inflation that Joe Biden has created.  Due to the scale of impact from Biden energy policy there is no real way to obfuscate at a level that hides reality.  However, Chuck Todd from NBC gives it a try.  Comrades, if you can fill up your car with 2010 gas prices, paid for with 2010 wages[,] Then surely you can fill up your pantry with 2010 food prices[,] while living in your house with 2010 mortgage or rent prices... or something.  [Video clip]

Your Government is trying to kill you & Depopulate the planet.  [Scroll down]  In the UK, the cost to fill up an average family car with petrol recently surpassed £100.  The public is being told this is being driven by war in Ukraine and moves to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian oil.  But if this were true, how do you explain this —  [Chart]  As of June 2022, the price of crude oil per barrel is $120.67, and the average price per litre of petrol in the UK is £1.85p.  But back in June 2008, the price of crude oil per barrel was $187.04, and the average price per litre of petrol in the UK was £1.04p.  So as things stand, the price per barrel of crude oil is 35.4% down from the price in 2008, but the price per litre of fuel is 78% up from 2008.  Can you see now how you are being lied to when the Government and mainstream media tell you that these rising costs are due to the war in Ukraine?

The Democrats' Capricious Energy Policy Has Been a Disaster.  Biden, who promised a 100% "clean-energy economy" with "net-zero emissions" in a couple of decades, now demands energy companies, already at utilization rates above 90%, invest tens of billions more in new drilling infrastructure, when everyone knows that tomorrow, when prices recede, Democrats are going to go right back to passing laws and regulations that undercut their business.  Today, Democrats demand CEOs spend more; tomorrow, they will promise to "hold oil executives accountable" and drag them in front of congressional committees where they will be scolded by economically illiterate windbags.  That future is baked into today's price.  Because Democrats' energy policy is a schizophrenic mess, oscillating from puerile to pernicious.  You can't spend decades working to undercut production and campaign on the promise of destroying an industry and then demand it turn on a dime when it's politically convenient.

Biden Now Claims Shipping Companies Are 'Price Gouging' but the Facts Say Differently.  We're not a dictatorship.  We don't have a king who operates by fiat.  At least we're not supposed to.  The government isn't our daddy who tells us what to do.  But the more power we allow the government to have, the more those in government will take.  We already have Biden exceeding what he's supposed to be doing with executive power provisions and the Defense Production Act.  For example, he's used the Defense Production Act to increase the production of solar panels, claiming that's related to energy concerns.  What does that have to do with the rising gas prices?  But that was his excuse for the improper use of this act, to pump solar panels to fit his political agenda.  Is someone making bank as a result?

Why The Biden Admin Wants Censorship Of Renewable Energy Critics.  In a talk with Axios, Biden Administration Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said, "The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation."  After an Axios reporter asked, "Isn't misinformation and disinfo around climate a threat to public health itself?" McCarthy responded, "Oh, absolutely... We are talking, really, about risks that no longer need to be tolerated to our communities."  McCarthy pointed specifically to those who criticized the failure of weather-dependent renewables during the blackouts in Texas in February 2021.  But many of those criticisms were factual.  Over the last decade in Texas, investors sunk over $53 billion on weather-dependent energy sources, mostly wind turbines, which alongside frozen fossil fuel plants were largely unavailable during the cold snap in February.  That was only partly because of the cold and mostly because of low wind speeds.  McCarthy claimed that the critics of renewables are funded by "dark money" fossil fuel companies, which she compared to Big Tobacco.  She claimed the critics are being paid to "fool" the public about "the benefits of clean energy."  "We need the tech companies to really jump in," she said, because criticizing renewables is "equally dangerous to denial because we have to move fast."

Biden threatens oil companies with 'emergency powers' if they don't increase their supply while they've 'tripled' profits.  Joe Biden is calling on seven of the top oil companies to do something to help quell surging gas prices after accusing them of intentionally exacerbating the strain on Americans' pocketbooks after the average price per gallon surpassed $5.00.  The president is sending letters Wednesday to Marathon Petroleum Corp., Valero Energy Corp., ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Chevron, BP, and Shell to demand action on lowering gas prices at the corporate level and account for the surge.  In a letter to Exxon obtained by Axios, Biden wrote that the difference 'of more than 15% at the pump is the result of the historically high profit margins for refining oil into gasoline, diesel and other refined products.'

Biden Is Threatening Oil Companies With Use of Emergency Powers Against Them.  Joe Biden has tried to blame everyone but himself for inflation and skyrocketing gas prices.  His most common excuse for the rise in gas prices has been that it is "Putin's price hike" because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  But the gas prices were going up long before Putin invaded in February 2022 — they've been going up ever since Joe Biden came into office.  They've doubled since Biden took office and J.P. Morgan analysts are predicting gas may be $6.00 a gallon by August.  It's over $5.00 now and the experts are predicting that it will continue to be a problem.  It's not hard to understand why, given Biden's attack on the fossil fuel industry.  When he ran, he promised that he would push the country to do away with fossil fuels.  [Video clip]  But now, Biden is trying to place the blame on another source — the oil companies.

Ri-i-i-i-ight.
Team Biden Quietly Admits Math Error Behind Long Delays in Oil, Gas Permits.  The Biden administration privately acknowledged late last month that a mathematical error is delaying the federal government's offshore oil and gas program.  In an April 29 letter to industry leaders obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that a subagency "discovered a miscalculation" that has caused a massive backlog in permitting.  Richard Spinrad acknowledged in his letter that the National Marine Fisheries Service — the subagency tasked with analyzing the impact of offshore drilling projects on wildlife — has used faulty computer modeling on such impacts.

Federal Reserve Economists Destroy Biden's Excuse of 'Oil Companies Profiteering' for Skyrocketing Gas Prices.  If we know anything about the Democrat Party and Joe Biden, it's that Democrats gonna Democrat and Biden gonna Biden.  We also know Democrats Democratting and Biden Bidening includes creating crises, and when the polls go south, blaming Republicans, billionaires, and evil corporations for them. [...] So naturally, as gas prices across the country hit new record highs this week, Biden and the Democrats again busted out the worn-out "oil and gas companies are profiteering" talking point and miraculously found a way [...] to recycle it back into the national conversation — with the liberal media sock puppets again leading the charge.  Like clockwork, The New Yorker ran an op-ed titled As Gas Prices Reach New Highs, Oil Companies Are Profiteering, in which the left-wing rag claimed "the Biden White House is confronting a form of shareholder capitalism that has no place for modest profits or rallying around Ukraine."

'Fossil Fuels' do not exist.  Despite the commonality of 'fossil' being used in conjunction with 'fuel', fossil fuels do not exist.  Fossils have no energy to transfer, which means they cannot be used as a source of fuel.  In order to understand why it is impossible for fossils to be used for fuel, it is important to understand what fossils are. [...] Fossils are, in essence, lifeless rocks with no stored energy of any kind.  A fundamental law of physics is energy cannot be created or destroyed.  It must be transferred from an already existing force — which cannot possibly be inanimate rocks.  For fuel to be taken from fossils requires the discarding of a law that cannot be violated.

The Sad Truth:  America Has No Energy Policy.  The Biden administration, like all political enterprises, loves to take credit but is loath to confess mistakes.  Biden is currently looking for someone, anyone, to take the fall far escalating gasoline prices.  A favorite scapegoat is the oil and gas industry.  According to many Democrats, the industry is a blight on humanity that must be canceled.  High oil prices fit the DNC playbook, so be prepared to view morose montages displaying diabolical men drilling dirty oil wells.  In an odd turn of events, these diabolical oil executives are being scolded because they aren't drilling oil wells as quickly as President Biden would like.

Will Joe Biden Bring the U.S. Down With Him?  Many of Biden's gaffes and much of his political mischief fit seamlessly into the Democrat plan for the nation. [...] When it comes to energy, the disaster compounds.  Biden's Executive Order on the first day of his assuming office canceling the Keystone XL pipeline project, and his suspending oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, has ensured that American energy independence has become a thing of the past, that energy prices would soar, and that rampant inflation would devastate the domestic economy.  Skyrocketing gas prices are merely the canary in the coal mine.  Blaming Russia is a patent "red" herring.

Democrats cry crocodile tears over high gas prices.  Democrats are so nervous about November's election that they just wasted a morning in the House Energy and Commerce Committee trying to scapegoat the oil industry for the high price of gasoline.  "Big Oil is lining their pockets with one hand and taking billions in taxpayer subsidies with the other," said Rep. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, in one typical statement.  "Meanwhile, the American people are getting ripped off as these companies choose to keep production low so that their own profits stay high."  It is difficult even to know where to begin with such nonsense.  But before going into the granular details about the false and misleading Democratic assertions on this issue, ask yourself one simple question:  Do oil companies make their money by not selling as much oil as possible when global prices are really high?  Or do they make money by selling as much oil as possible when prices are really high?

Biden blames COVID and Putin for soaring gas prices, and says Americans will save $80 a month if they buy an electric car.  President Joe Biden said Thursday [3/31/2022] that record gas prices were caused by the pandemic and Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine as he unveiled a two-pronged plan to increase supply and reduce demand.  He announced he would release a million barrels of oil per day from the nation's strategic reserve for the next six months and accelerate the switch to electric vehicle[s].  But his analysis of the cause of the crisis will attract criticism for opponents who accuse him of shifting the blame for his administration's economic woes.

The Editor says...
The article above is accompanied by a handy chart that shows the price of gasoline since 2019.  Gas prices went down during the Covid pandemic, and started to climb rapidly as soon as Biden was elected, due to his rash and destructive behavior.  Neither Covid nor Putin had anything to do with today's record high gas prices.  Joe Biden is lying.

[The] White House [has been] forced to clean up [a] new Biden gaffe on renewable energy.  The White House has been forced to correct yet another error by President Biden after he said Americans who use renewable energy to power their homes could save "about $500 a month on average."  Biden made the claim during remarks announcing the planned release of 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months.  The speech included a plug for the administration's proposed green energy programs currently before Congress.  "If your home is powered by safer, cheaper, cleaner electricity, like solar or heat pumps, you can save about $500 a month on average," the president said.  Hours after the speech, the White House sent out a transcript of the president's remarks with the word "month" crossed out and the word "year" added in brackets.

Bungling Biden tells families they can save $500 a month by switching to renewable energy:  White House issues a correction.  President Joe Biden vastly overpromised Americans that they can expect savings of $500 a month by transitioning to renewable energy, which the White House corrected by saying the savings would actually come over a year.  In a fumble during his speech on gas prices on Thursday, Biden touted rebate programs for consumers switching to green energy but incorrectly cast how much would be saved.  'If your home is powered by safer, cheaper, cleaner electricity like solar or heat pumps, you can save about $500 a month on average,' Biden said.  The White House corrected Biden's remark in a transcript, making clear he meant to say the savings he predicted would be over a year, not a month. [...] Biden is grappling with fallout from surging energy prices, including gasoline that has reached an average of $4.23 per gallon, after the United States banned imports of Russian oil and gas.

Fact-checking Biden's claim that oil and gas companies are price gouging.  As rising prices at the pump continue to squeeze wallets, President Joe Biden has stepped up attacks on oil corporations that he claims are charging motorists more just to pad their pockets.  It was the latest scapegoat for the high fuel costs that have put political pressure on Democrats.  Biden and his aides had previously attempted to pin the blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine prompted Biden to ban imports of Russian oil and gas earlier this month.

Getting Squeezed at Pump?  Blame Biden, Not Putin.  All across the country, Americans are facing staggering gasoline prices, pinching their wallets even further as inflation runs rampant.  But what's causing gas prices to skyrocket?  The Biden administration blames Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine, as well as greedy U.S. business owners, for the sharp rise in prices.  But that doesn't pass the smell test for Katie Tubb, a senior policy analyst for energy and environmental issues at The Heritage Foundation.  "I think it's incredibly disingenuous for the administration to say that, in part because Americans aren't stupid and they saw prices go up before Russia invaded Ukraine," Tubb says.  "And so I find that, honestly, a very discouraging characterization by the Biden administration."

Biden Administration Handicapped Domestic Energy Production on First Day in Office, Memos Reveal.  Contrary to President Biden's recent claims that his administration is pulling out all the stops to alleviate America's inflation woes, since its early days it has fostered a policy environment that is hostile to domestic energy production, fueling price hikes at the gas pump long before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to memos obtained by National Review. [...] He assured Americans last week, "It's simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production.  That's simply not true."  But these memos, obtained by National Review, appear to show that the Biden administration intentionally handicapped the domestic oil industry from day one as part of its mission to transition the U.S. to a green economy.  Now that gas prices and inflation are reaching record heights, Biden has pinned a large chunk of responsibility on Russian president Vladimir Putin, whose attack on Ukraine has created tumult in energy markets, given that much of the West, particularly Europe, is dependent on Russia for oil.

Biden's "They have 9,000 to drill onshore that are already approved" Drilling Permits Canard.  As I discussed in [another] post, the "9,000 permits to drill now" are the result of operators, with large onshore Federal lease positions, stockpiling four years' worth of drilling permits in anticipation of Brandon delivering on his promise to halt new drilling permits on Federal lands and waters. [...] Firstly, the president has no authority to end drilling by 2035 or any other date.  Not unless congress changes the laws governing drilling on Federal lands and waters.  Secondly, while the central claim is effectively a lie, Politifact rated Brandon's 9,000 permits canard as mostly true.  How can a lie be mostly true?

Sen. Ed Markey:  GOP's 'biggest lie' is that drilling for more oil and gas is the path to energy independence.  Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat, has claimed that, despite an abundance of evidence showing that "clean" energy is currently neither as reliable nor as efficient as traditional energy, America should invest in it right now instead of the latter.  He made this bold but dubious assertion while delivering a speech this weekend at the Democrat National Committee's winter meeting.  "Republicans and their oil-soaked cronies ... want to feed the American people one of the biggest lies of all — that drilling for more oil and more gas is the path to energy independence," he said during his speech.  "Republicans say that they have an all-of-the-above plan, but it's really an oil-above-all plan.  The GOP always has stood for the gas and oil party.  And its argument of drilling equals energy independence is leakier than an old oil tanker."

Manchin Busts Biden's Energy Lie and Lays out What Can Be Done.  Joe Biden has said that he's doing everything he can to work on the issue of rising gas prices.  At the same time, he's also said there wasn't much he can do, and has blamed it on Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.  Biden tried to blame it on oil companies, too, claiming they have permits but aren't drilling enough.  Talk about completely not taking the blame or the responsibility for anything.  Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) — the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chair — busted those lies, saying there's a lot that can be done — starting with getting stalled pipeline permits approved.

Awash In a Sea of Stupid.  [Example #4] Blaming Putin for Higher Gas Costs:  Biden's entire energy policy has been to starve U.S. citizens of the plentiful conventional fuels, including oil and gas, and driving up their cost which began rising soon after he was elected and have not stopped rising.  He said that he planned to increase energy costs, and it is the one promise he has certainly been keeping, a promise which seems as certain to tank his party in the midterms as it has been a big factor in his plunging popularity.  So, what are the Democrats to do to deflect attention from the fact they are responsible for this?  Well, like Elizabeth Warren, a fake Indian but genuine demagogue, they can try to blame the energy producers, but that doesn't seem to have persuaded enough voters, so — hey... blame Putin!  And that's exactly what they've tried.  Unfortunately for them, that's easily proven to be nonsense.  Li

Fact-Checking 3 Biden Claims on Gas Prices.  [#2] Keystone 'Nothing to Do' With Oil Supply.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki was dismissive of questions regarding the Keystone XL pipeline, which Biden canceled on his first day in office.  "The Keystone was not an oil field.  It's a pipeline," Psaki said this week.  "Also, the oil is continuing to flow in, just through other means.  So, it actually would have nothing to do with the current supply imbalance."  The pipeline transporting oil from Canada into the United States would not immediately boost supply.  But as a futures market, oil prices are based in part on anticipated supply.  Boosting the long-term outlook would likely affect prices, Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, an app that directs motorists to the best gasoline deals, told Politico. [...] Also, in the long term, the Keystone XL pipeline — stretching from Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Nebraska — would carry about 830,00 barrels of oil per day into the United States from an ally.  That would easily supplant the 800,000 barrels per day the United States imported from Russia during 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Biden Is Helping to Drive Up the Price of Oil.  I don't know why I bother arguing with libdolts on Facebook.  These are people who struggle to fill their tanks like the rest of us.  Meat is so expensive that they are feeding their kids Alpo, yet they won't say the obvious:  Biden did this on purpose. [...]
  [#1]   The Biden administration tried to use a bogus, wildly inflated figure regarding carbon emissions to justify new rules and possibly laws on fossil fuel.  A judge clown-slapped the administration for the Pinocchio tactic, causing a stall.  The Biden administration claims this decision has somehow caused a cessation of work on no fewer than 18 federal oil and gas leases in New Mexico.
  [#2]   Biden hasn't held an onshore lease sale in a full year.  He is the first president in 20 years to NOT do this.
  [#3]   ConocoPhillips COULD drill 160,000 barrels per day in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska for the next 30 years, but the commies at the Center For American Progress pushed the Biden administration to stop the drilling.
  [#4]   Biden's anti-fossil fuel gibberish hasn't gone unnoticed.  As one oil exec told Bloomberg, "Biden is signaling that his environmental goals trump energy security and consumer prices."  He continued, "that's not lost on public companies or the banks they rely on."

Biden Tries to Blame Energy Failures on 'Putin's Gas Price Hike'.  When President Biden was inaugurated, the average price of regular gasoline in the U.S. was $2.38.  A little over a year later, the price has reached a record high of $4.32.  Attempts by the White House to blame this increase on Vladimir Putin notwithstanding, the price had already risen to $3.53 before Russia invaded Ukraine.  The problem is obviously the direct result of Biden's irresponsible energy policies.  During his first few weeks in office he issued a series of executive orders for the explicit purpose of discouraging domestic energy production — while demand for fuel was rapidly increasing.  The inevitable result has been stratospheric gas prices.  The attempt to label this increase "the Putin spike" is only the latest red herring the White House has deployed to divert public attention from the genuine cause of the problem.

Fact-checking President Biden's claim that his policies aren't holding back domestic energy production.  As a candidate, he [Biden] promised he was going to go after fossil fuels.  During the debates, he said he was going to "transition" from the oil industry — and "transition" is a word we're hearing a lot from the Biden administration recently when asked about rising gas prices; both Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm have mentioned the country being in a transition period to green energy.  President Biden has said that it's not true that his policies are holding back domestic energy production, and since we can't count on the mainstream fact-checkers to debunk that, we have Drew Holden with one of his great threads:  [Numerous tweets]

Don't let Biden lie his way out of the energy crisis he created.  President Joe Biden is trying to distance himself from soaring gas prices by blaming Russia and lying about his restrictive energy policies.  Deflection and dishonesty — the two things at which Biden is best.  "It's simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production," he told reporters Tuesday.  "That's simply not true.  Even amid the pandemic, companies in the U.S. pumped more oil during my first year in office than they did during my predecessor's first year."  That last claim from Biden is particularly insidious because it omits two material points.  First, domestic oil production only decreased during former President Donald Trump's last year in office because the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down; second, domestic oil production could be higher, but instead, it has been steadily decreasing ever since Biden's first day in office.  The decrease is no coincidence.  Contrary to what the White House might say, the explicit purpose of the climate agenda Biden has spent the last year pushing is to rid us of our dependence on fossil fuels.  To him and to most Democrats, that means less domestic oil and gas production.

Biden's Big Energy Lies Exposed.  President Joe Biden, sorely in need of an alibi as oil and gasoline prices soar and wreak havoc on the economy, now blames Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine for the spike in energy prices.  In fact, surging oil and gas prices are the inevitable results of Biden's own foolish green policies.  "Putin's war is already hurting American families at the gas pump ... I'm going to do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike here at home," Biden told Americans Tuesday, as he imposed a ban on Russian oil.  Later, he doubled down on his claim.  "Can't do much right now.  Russia's responsible," Biden said.  "It's simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production."  Such lies would be laughable, if not for the disastrous impact that Biden's inflation is having on working Americans and small businesses, still struggling to recover from the Democrats' COVID lockdowns of the past two years.

Biden Gets Confused Trying to Find His Way off the Stage.  Joe Biden is supposed to be in charge, yet he doesn't seem to understand what he's even doing from moment to moment.  On Wednesday [3/9/2022] he pushed yet another claim that has no basis in reality — "a gallon of gas is down 14 percent today," he declared.  [Tweet]  The national average is up almost 17 cents from the day before, when it was $4.104 and the "highest in history." [...] The memo has gone out now to all the Democrats to call the rise in prices "Putin's price hike" — as though Americans aren't able to remember beyond the last couple of weeks.

Texas Dems to Biden:  Drill, baby, drill.  Not even Joe Biden's allies on Capitol Hill bought the nonsense excuses he slung today [3/8/2022] while announcing an embargo on Russian oil imports.  Biden claimed that high gas prices resulted from oil-producers gouging consumers, and denied entirely that he had restricted production:  [Tweet]  Really?  Exactly one week ago, Biden didn't appear to be too interested in such domestic production.  His administration rolled over on a court decision to block drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico, the Washington Post reported, and pointed out numerous other actions taken by Biden to curtail exploration and production.

Biden's Handlers Want Skyrocketing Gas Prices.  The EPA Just Revealed Why.  Nothing presses the accelerator to reach a zero-emissions future more effectively than gas prices rising so high that driving a carbon-emitting car is simply too expensive.  At the Monday White House event, [Vice President Kamala] Harris was likewise enthusiastic, saying, "We are all in the midst of a turning point.  We have the technology to transition to a zero-emission fleet.  We can address the climate crisis and grow our economy at the same time."  We are all in the midst of a turning point, and the green energy forces are not going to let it go to waste.  On Tuesday, Old Joe Biden said that the situation was going to get worse, as prices are "gonna go up," and that he couldn't do anything about it.  "Can't do much right now.  Russia's responsible."  Biden also risibly claimed that "It's simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production."

Merkley: 'We Should Have a Climate Emergency' and Need to 'Have the World Transition' to Green Energy to Undercut Russia.  On Monday's broadcast of MSNBC's "All In," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) argued that in order to undermine Russia's power, we have to "end our dependence on oil and have the world transition to renewable energy."  Because Russia will be able to sell oil as long as there's demand for oil, and called for a "climate emergency."  Merkley said, "As long as there is a world market for oil, Russia will be able to sell its oil.  And so, unfortunately, not all my colleagues yet understand that the way to undercut the power of Russia is to end our dependence on oil and have the world transition to renewable energy."

The Editor says...
The high price of gasoline is not the result of a "climate emergency."  It is the result of a series of unwise decisions made at the highest levels of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government.  The previous president was able to keep U.S. oil and gas production going quite well, and gas prices two years ago were about half of today's prices.  As soon as the earth-worshiping tree-hugging environmentalist fruitcakes are pushed aside and the oil companies are unleashed, the price of gas will automatically drop to the lowest level that competitive capitalism will support.

This Invasion Is Brought to You by ... Western Environmentalists.  For more than 40 years, the environmentalist movement has been warning that global warming is the result of mankind's burning of fossil fuels and poses an "existential threat" to human and other biological life.  This is one of the many grandiose lies the Left uses to reshape, if not destroy, Western civilization.  Other grandiose lies used to achieve that result include America being systemically racist; that violent crime is the result of racism and poverty; men give birth; sex and gender are "nonbinary"; and that former President Donald Trump was a Russian asset.  It should now be obvious that the "Greens," the environmentalist movement — not global warming — poses an existential threat to humanity.

Joe Biden Has a Problem With Facts - We Produce LESS Oil Not More Than Under Trump.  The Biden Bunch has decided that the reason for rising gas prices should be blamed on their failure to help prevent Russia from invading Ukraine and should be blamed on Russia itself.  Oddly enough not on his lack of a coherent energy policy — this is not based on reality but on unicorn dreams.  Well, now, President Puddin Brain has decided that we shall no longer import that Russian crude a full 12 days after the invasion and right before the leaders in his party would have voted to do the same and embarrassed him.

Psaki lists 9 talking points to defend gas prices, calls for a focus on 'facts' and oh boy, does internet deliver.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki is desperately throwing out propaganda on Twitter, spewing "facts" that blame high gas prices on Russia instead of President Joe Biden and then lecturing Americans on the specifics of energy production and security.  "The reason why the price of gas is going up is not because of steps the president has taken, they are because Putin is invading Ukraine," she said in a White House press briefing on Friday [3/4/2022].  "When it comes to U.S. energy production — and how we achieve energy security — it's important to look at the facts.  So here are 9 specifics," Psaki tweeted as she revved up for a leftist lesson on energy.

Jayapal: Gas Prices Will Go Up 'No Matter What' and We Need to Move Off Fossil Fuels.  On Saturday's broadcast of MSNBC's "Cross Connection," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) argued that we have to move off of fossil fuels so we're "free of the ability of dictators to blackmail us over oil and gas," and that increasing domestic oil production wouldn't keep gas prices from increasing because "no matter what we do, prices of gas are going to go up."

NBC Reporter Insists Biden Canceling Keystone Pipeline Made No Difference On US Dependence On Foreign Oil.  NBC's Chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander repeated White House talking points to his Republican guest during a MSNBC interview on Thursday.  Alexander denied that the Keystone XL Pipeline would've had any impact on the United States' dependence on foreign oil.  Alexander was speaking with former chief of staff for former Vice President Mike Pence, Marc Short, when he started arguing with him over solutions to the U.S.' dependence on foreign energy, amid the Ukraine-Russia war.  He asked Short if President Biden should put embargoes on Russian oil and gas exports, and Short said yes and blamed the Biden administration for making the U.S. more reliant on foreign energy by shutting down the Keystone Pipeline.

Top 10 ways Biden deluded himself during his State of the Union.  [For example,] Biden boasted about tapping into 30 million barrels of our emergency oil reserves — less than two days' supply — while not mentioning a word about unleashing our plentiful untapped oil and gas supplies.  He even pretended that his policies would cut "energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combating climate change," citing a dubious study which projected theoretical savings in 2030.  But the entire purpose of his climate-alarm agenda is to reduce our consumption of oil and gas by raising the price.  Instead of restoring America's energy independence, Biden blathered about something called "environmental justice" and electric-car charging stations.

Biden's Energy Department:  People Who Do Not Embrace Climate Change Are Spreading 'Misinformation'.  The latest narrative in the ongoing claims that policy disagreement amounts of misinformation now includes climate change.  Those who do not see weather as an existential threat are spreading misinformation — this time about solar and wind energy.  Taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR) is jumping on the misinformation bandwagon with a story on Tuesday about Biden's Energy Department and other climate-change promotors warning that opposition to alternative energy is making headway because of people allegedly not telling the truth.  "The spread of misinformation about solar and wind energy is leading some states and counties to restrict or even reject projects," NPR said in introducing the piece that rejects any criticism of climate change or the radical policies to fight it like the Green New Deal.  "The Energy Department calls it a key threat to decarbonizing the grid."

Energy costs were already going up, because Biden has been strangling domestic energy production since day one.  War in Ukraine is a fig leaf.
Kamala Harris Warns Americans of Higher Energy Costs if Russia Invades Ukraine.  Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged Americans would face higher energy costs in the event of Russian President Vladimir Putin sending troops into the Ukraine, citing the punishing sanctions prepared for when it happened.  "When America stands for her principles and all of the things that we hold dear, it requires sometimes for us to put ourselves out there in a way that maybe we will incur some cost," Harris explained to American reporters on Sunday, after meeting with European leaders about the Russian threat to Ukraine.

Experts say Biden's offer to replace Europe's gas supplies if Putin turns off the taps 'is just not physically possible'.  Experts have warned that President Joe Biden's plan to shore up Europe's supply of natural gas if Vladimir Putin cuts off supplies won't work because other nations can't make up the shortfall.  The Biden administration Tuesday [1/25/2022] said it is preparing to source gas from other countries in case Russia cuts off energy supplies — a scenario European allies fear will come to pass if Moscow invades the Ukraine.  However, Samantha Gross, the Director of Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told DailyMail.com that the imitative was doomed to failure.

A Danish newspaper decided to finally ask questions.  Sadly, most American journalists won't.  Sadly, most people pretending to be journalists, won't ask any questions.  They are too busy campaigning for Democrats and pushing their leftist agenda to remake and destroy America.  I keep wishing some enterprising reporter would do a simple amount of investigative reporting on climate change.  There needs to be just one question:  Can you show us some piece of scientific data that shows a direct relationship between temperatures and fossil fuel use over the last 150 years?  Give the simple project to a 7th grader with two variables, temperature and crude oil use, and ask for a line graph.  The temperature line, would be horizontal, with periods where the temperature goes up and down and with a minor rise over the total period.  The crude oil line would be almost vertical with an exponential rise from around zero to around 100 million barrels per day.  Why would anyone advocate destroying an industry, that has greatly improved the quality and length of everyone that uses it, when there is zero correlation?

Joe Biden's Dirty Little Secret:  He Wants Higher Gasoline Prices.  When he announced last week that he would release more oil from the American Strategic Petroleum Reserve, President Joe Biden told the American people he is doing everything possible to bring down gas prices at the pump.  That's a lie.  This administration and the climate change crazies have declared war on American energy.  They want high oil and gas prices.  The Biden master plan is for American oil and gas production and consumption to go to zero over the next 15 to 20 years.  How do you achieve that goal?  By making oil and gas so expensive and so unavailable that Americans are forced to use alternatives.  In other words, the fact that gasoline is roughly $1.25 more expensive per gallon today under Biden than it was a year ago under former President Donald Trump didn't happen by accident.  This was not a result of a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, that could knock out our oil facilities.  This was by design.

Biden is Concern-trolling high energy prices to voters — and working on the sly to raise them higher.  Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed that high energy prices, including soaring prices at the pump, are some kind of priority for him.  He's made loud noises for the cameras about a couple of piddly measures of his to cut energy costs for consumers, which would at best be temporary and at worst, useless.  But out on the sly, he's stepping up his war on Big Oil, something he doesn't want you to know about, which will raise energy prices.  He's still Creepy Joe.  On camera, he loves to say the things he thinks all those voters who now disapprove of him would like to hear.

Joe Biden Blames Russia and Saudi Arabia for Not Producing Enough Oil After Restricting U.S. Production.  President Joe Biden complained that Russia and Saudi Arabia were not producing enough oil to alleviate high gas prices in the United States, despite his administration's efforts to reduce domestic production.  "I do think the idea that Russia and Saudi Arabia, and other major producers are not going to pump more oil so people can have gasoline to get to and from work, for example, is not right," Biden said during a press conference after the G20 Summit in Europe.

Red China Tried To Go Green, Now It's Going Dark.  Last year, President Xi Jinping announced that Communist China was going to go carbon neutral by 2060.  Like every Communist 5-year-plan, it began with lies and ended in disaster.  The 14th Renewable Energy Development Five Year Plan would have China dominate the green energy industry and increase its share of non-fossil fuel energy from 15% to 20%.  That was last year.  This year, China is importing American coal to keep the lights on in its cities.  China's desperate buying spree has sent the price of lignite coal, the dirtiest coal, up from $20 to $120.  While Democrats are trying to destroy coal in America, our shipments of coal have increased 30 times making China our second biggest coal market.  And we have the "green energy" of the reds to thank for it.

China's Stunning Green Energy Collapse Should Come As No Surprise.  As reported in the FrontPageMag article "Red China Tried To Go Green, Now It's Going Dark," the U.S. is currently experiencing widespread supply chain disruptions caused in part by China's disastrous renewable energy collapse, which has led to a severely crippled economy brought on by widespread power blackouts.  Democrats tout green energy as a "clean" and "renewable" source of electricity.  They also say that producing green energy has minimal impact on the environment (that's a flat-out lie).  For those who have been led to believe that green energy is "clean," I strongly urge them to watch Michael Moore's jaw-dropping documentary, "Planet of the Humans."  The 2019 feature length film exposes the Democratic Party's push for subsidized wind and solar energy for what it is:  a brazen environmental hoax that causes eye-popping harm to the environment, while funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to Al Gore and other inside investors in government-backed green energy projects.

A hurricane of misinformation on climate change.  Sanders's own Vermont provides a great example of why.  In 2005, Sanders urged his home state to commit to reducing carbon emissions by 25% by 2012 compared to 1990 levels.  To that end, the state's largest utility started one of the nation's leading efforts to get customers to switch to solar power and the nation's fifth-best energy efficiency program five years in a row.  And guess what happened?  As Michael Shellenberger points out in his book Apocalypse Never, Vermont's carbon emissions actually rose by 16% instead of decreasing by 25%. That's because, while Sanders and other politicians were grandstanding about solar power and energy efficiency, environmentalists successfully ended the state's use of nuclear power, which provided necessary and completely carbon-free electricity.  Vermonters had to buy fossil-fuel-generated power from out of state to make up for it.  This same dynamic is currently playing out in California, which closed one nuclear power plant in 2013 and is set to close its last one in 2025.

Biden urges investigation into 'illegal activity' that may be causing spike in gas prices.  President Joe Biden said Wednesday [8/11/2021] his administration is taking steps to crack down on illegal activity that might be contributing to a rise in gas prices.  Biden announced that the National Economic Council has asked the Federal Trade Commission to use "every available tool" to monitor the U.S. gasoline market and look for any illegal activity that might be causing gas prices to jump while the cost of a barrel of oil is going down.  "That's not what you'd expect in a competitive market," Biden said from the White House.  "I want to make sure that nothing stands in the way of oil price declines leading to lower prices for consumers."

The Editor says...
Ri-i-i-ight.  Nothing will stand in the way, except killing the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office, threatening Enbridge Line 3, perpetual ethanol mandates, Biden's ban on new oil and gas leasing and drilling on public lands,^* and printing billions of dollars in U.S. currency that did not previously exist and aren't backed up by anything.

Jen Psaki Gives Insulting Answer When Asked Why White House Has 'Shifted Tone' on Gas Crisis.  We reported yesterday on how President Biden's Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told some flat-out whoppers about the gas shortages during Tuesday's White House press briefing, and at times almost appeared to be gleeful over the crisis. [...] Earlier in the briefing, Granholm proclaimed that "It's not that we have a gasoline shortage, it's that we have this supply crunch."  Oh, okay.  As it turns out, Granholm is not the only member of this administration who is straight-up gaslighting the American people on the so-called "supply crunch."  During today's back and forth with reporters, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the administration's previous comments on how there wasn't a gas shortage.

Secretary of Energy Granholm Attacks Gas 'Hoarders'.  The Biden administration's secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm has demonstrated her deadly combination of daft, dismissive and just plain stupid.  In a White House press briefing on Tuesday Granholm expressed a flat-out lack of compassion for citizens in the United States as we deal with the serious consequences of a cyber-attack on one of our largest fuel sources. [...] When asked by a reporter "how does this speed up the efforts at DOE to move in more of a renewable direction since this is going to have an impact on people at the pump?"  In a condescending response she answers, "Yeah, I mean, we obviously are 'all in' on making sure we meet the President's goals of getting to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.  And, you know, if you drive an electric car, this would not be affecting you, clearly."  Hopefully a follow-up question will be asked of Mrs. Granholm as to where she thinks electricity to charge the cars comes from.

White House Said There Was No Gas Shortage Before Acknowledging Problems Hours Later.  The White House repeatedly reassured Americans on Monday [5/10/2021] there was no gas shortage in the United States after the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack before acknowledging supply problems hours later.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki brought Homeland Security advisor Dr.  Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall and Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger to reassure Americans the Biden administration was on top of the crisis, urging Americans to remain calm.

Caught lying:  The Biden-Harris Fossil Fuel Frack Flip Flop.  If you ever wondered what "say anything" looks like in a political campaign, look no further than this video that featured presidential and vice-presidential candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  To me, they look like Janus.  As the god of transitions and dualities, Janus is portrayed with two faces — one facing the past, and one facing the future.  Make no mistake about it, they'd shut down the country to solve "climate change" while telling you they won't.  [Video clip]

Here Are 11 of Joe Biden's Biggest Debate Lies.  [#3] BIDEN:  "I have never said I oppose fracking."  FACT: Biden spent the entire primary opposing fracking.  There's a ton of video of it.  Here's a taste:  [Video clip]

Fact check: Biden falsely claims he never opposed fracking.  Facts First:  It's false that Biden never said he opposed fracking.  In two Democratic primary debates, Biden made confusing remarks over fracking that his campaign had to clarify.  In 2019, Biden said "we would make sure it's eliminated" when asked about the future of coal and fracking; in 2020 he said he opposed "new fracking." Biden's written plan, conversely, never included a full ban on fracking or even on new fracking.  Rather, it proposes "banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters" — not ending all new fracking anywhere or ending all existing fracking on public lands and waters.

Disingenuous use of statistics:
Yale Says Fracking Causes Sexually-Transmitted Infections.  Here's the premise:  The rates of two sexually transmitted infections, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, were found to be 10% and 15%, respectively, higher in Texas counties where fracking took place compared to other counties where fracking wasn't being done.  Is there anything to this?

Proving a Negative.  Remember a few years ago during the Obama administration when oil/gas pricing was high?  The popular line among the Democrats — obsessed as they were about not offending their Green voting bloc — was, "We can't drill our way out of this [high oil pricing]."  Just like subsequent events in other areas have proven them wrong about so many things ("The stock market will tank if Trump is elected!"), the Democrats were wrong about this too.  Dead wrong.  As fracking and other drilling/extraction technologies (such as horizontal drilling and the capability to rejuvenate old wells previously thought to be "unproductive") have improved, the oil output of the United States has increased to its highest level in 50 years.  In fact, U.S oil production is more than double what it was as recently as just ten years ago, before the fracking revolution.

One thing to change:  Anecdotes aren't data.  Wind and solar accounted for 3% of global energy in 2018 [and] that is staggeringly small given more than a decade of mandated use by government edict and trillions of dollars in global government subsidies.  In the decade leading to 2018 the developing nations increased CO2 emissions by about 4.5 billion metric tons completely overwhelming the developed nations that decreased CO2 emissions by about 1 billion metric tons led by the U.S.  About 67% of the developing nations CO2 huge emissions increase in the last decade was from India and China. [...] EIA projects that CO2 emissions will climb by over 8.8 billion metric tons by 2050 from year 2018 levels with the developing nations accounting for 92% of that increase resulting in these nations representing 70% of global CO2 emissions in year 2050.

CNN Democratic climate gabfest displays candidate's monumental energy ignorance.  The stupendous display of global energy and emissions ignorance by the Democratic Party Presidential candidates on CNN's climate alarmist gabfest was nothing short of astounding. [...] Global energy use climbed by 18.5% during the decade between 2008 and 2018.  About 98.5% of that decade long energy growth occurred in the developing nations with about 78.5% of that growth obtained from increased fossil fuel use.  The rate of energy growth in the developing nations during that decade was 5.5 times greater than in the developed nations that saw little growth.  The developing nations consumed 59% of global energy use in 2018 accounting for 64% of global CO2 emissions that year.  Fossil fuels accounted for about 85% of 2018 global energy consumption with the developing nations energy provided 87.5% through use of fossil fuels.

Renewable Energy Hits the Wall.  Wind and solar are erratic sources of energy.  The output depends on the weather.  Solar doesn't work at night.  Because they are erratic, there have to be backup plants, generally natural gas plants, that balance the erratic flow of electricity from wind or solar.  The backup plants increase output when renewable energy output declines and vice versa.  Because both wind and solar are subjected to periods of near zero output, the backup system has to be able to carry the entire load of the electric grid without the wind or solar.  Neither wind nor solar can replace conventional plants.  If you hear that a utility is replacing fossil fuel plants with wind or solar, that can't happen.

The Democrat Party Is A Joke That Would Cease To Exist Without The Media's Support.  On climate change — which mind you is, always has been and always will be infinitely ubiquitous — they claim they want to "save the planet" but in reality they simply want to control the one commodity that the entire human race most relies on:  Energy.  On literally every issue, the Democrats are social psychopaths whose goals are so far out-of-touch with reality that they have to lie in order to pitch them.  There isn't a single thing the Democrats want and/or fight for that they're honest about.

Delingpole: Every Story You Read About the Environment Is #FakeNews.  [Scroll down]  In the face of such overwhelming 'evidence', what possible reason could any casual reader have not to believe that world is indeed in the midst of an unprecedented environmental crisis wherein critically endangered species are being wiped out by callous, out-of-control, unregulated hunters, where extreme weather is endangering homes and lives, where not even the formal gardens in Britain's world-renowned stately homes are safe?  This, my friends, is why we are in such trouble.  Every one of those stories is a lie.  Almost every word of every one of those stories is a lie.  But how many of the people who read those stories would be aware of this?

90 Scientists:  Global Warming is a Total Hoax.  The view that CO2 is a pollutant is the single biggest lie of the entire environmental movement.  CO2 is not a pollutant, it is plant food.  It is, as these scientists say, "indispensable for life on our planet."  Plants absorb CO2 and use it to grow.  They also release oxygen into the atmosphere, which is a nice thing if you like to breathe.  If you run a greenhouse and you want to turbo-charge plant growth, you can do it by injecting CO2 into the greenhouse.  Side by side videos of plants in an environment with normal CO2 levels and plants in an environment with highly elevated levels of CO2 show an astounding difference in the rate of growth.  In fact, an area the size of the United States has greened up around the world as the CO2 concentration has increased.  CO2 is not our enemy.  CO2 is our friend.

Electricity from Large Dams Does NOT Count as Renewable Energy.  [Scroll down]  In other words, these interest groups have decided that the way to meet the renewable energy goal is to have more solar and wind power even if hydroelectric power is cheaper.  They are set on their solution.  Notice that that means that they don't really want renewable energy.  They want solar and wind.

Ocasio-Cortez Blames Pipeline That Hasn't Been Built Yet For An Oil Spill.  Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blamed the Keystone XL pipeline for leaking about 5,000 barrels of oil in rural South Dakota about two years ago.  There's just one problem:  The Keystone XL pipeline has not been built yet.  During a House hearing Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that "Keystone XL, in particular, had one leak that leaked 210,000 gallons across South Dakota" while she questioned Wells Fargo president and CEO Timothy Sloan.

Report: America's oil boom could lead to a 'climate catastrophe'.  The US drive to become the world's largest oil and gas producer will sow the seeds of a "climate catastrophe," according to a report delivered at the Davos summit. [...] You would think "moving further and faster than any other country" in producing oil would be cause for a celebration of national pride.

New York State and Renewables.  Exploiting shale hydrocarbons involves drilling and fracking.  Naturally, there is some disruption, but the disruption is minor compared to the value of the wealth unleashed.  The crackpot greens magnify and exaggerate every potential problem.  They even mislead, as in the movie Gasland, where a man lights his water faucet on fire.  The implication was that fracking caused natural gas to mix with the water supply.  But the area chosen already had natural gas in the water long before fracking was involved. [...] The geopolitical benefits of fracking are huge.  In ten years, the United States' energy balance of trade went from a large deficit to nearly even as U.S. oil and natural gas production increased dramatically.  World energy prices have declined in the face of increasing U.S. energy production.  Our dependence on imports from far-flung oil-producing countries has declined dramatically.  The refining and petrochemical industry, centered in Texas, is booming.

Green New Deal:  A Crazy, Expensive Mess.  Producing 100 percent of electricity from renewable sources is a practical impossibility in the near future.  Scientists doubt it would be achievable by 2050, let alone 2029, the deadline Democrats would set.  Such a massive overhaul in power generation would require the closure and replacement of about 83 percent of U.S. electricity generation, including all coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants.  While nuclear energy does not release carbon dioxide, it is not renewable and would not be allowed under the Green New Deal.  Today, renewable electricity — mainly wind, solar, and hydroelectric — provides only 17 percent of American electricity.

Who Are the Actual Adults, and Who Are the Adults Who Act and Govern as Children?  For eight years, the children running the economic policies blocked drilling and pipeline projects.  The adult has opened up drilling, and now the narcissistic, ignorant child is taking credit for the increased production.

Fracking Miracle:  The Latest American Exceptionalism.  Throughout the 1970s, oil-producing Middle Eastern nations held the United States economy by a metaphorical leash through their ability to impose crippling oil embargoes, to punish us for our support of Israel or whatever else we'd done to raise their ire.  On multiple occasions, depressingly long lines of cars waiting to refuel at gas stations offered a grim reminder of our precarious dependence upon nations hostile to U.S. interests.  As recently as 2006, President George W. Bush raised eyebrows and heckles when he used his own State of the Union speech to promote "wood chips and stalks, or switch grass" as an answer to our decades-old energy dependency.  Then, exhibiting his typical razor-sharp economic and geostrategic prescience, Barack Obama mocked the "Drill, Baby, Drill" slogan by assuring us that "we can't drill our way" out of the problem.

Drill, Barry, Drill!  Watching Barack Obama try to take credit for the achievements of others has a certain twisted entertainment value.  This time it is the fracking revolution that has made America the world's number one producer of oil and gas.  Almost unbelievably — it would be unbelievable, if we were talking about anyone but Obama — Barack is now attempting to take credit for it!

The Nerve:  Obama Takes Credit for America's Energy Independence.  "Suddenly America is like the biggest oil producer, the biggest gas producer," said Barack Obama in an impromptu remark at Rice University on Tuesday [11/27/2018].  "That was me, people."  After a minute of additional economic boasts, Obama instructed the audience, "Say 'thank you.'"  Here was the essential Obama on display:  smug, verbally maladroit, and shockingly dishonest.  If America increased its energy production while Obama was in the White House, it was despite of his policies, not because of them.  In a June 2010 speech after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama reminded America that "part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean — because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."  In scolding America for its dependence on cheap oil, Obama rolled out all the self-hating green clichés:  we consume ten times more than we produce; we need to end our "century-long addiction to fossil fuels; oil is a finite resource."  Implicit in the speech was the idea that consuming oil was in itself an evil like, say, shooting heroin or watching Fox News.  After listing some alternative approaches to energy production, Obama claimed to be open to new ideas "as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels."

Obama takes credit for U.S. oil-and-gas boom: 'That was me, people'.  Former President Barack Obama took credit once again for the U.S. oil-and-gas boom, even though critics noted Wednesday that the upswing in oil and natural gas production occurred in spite of his policies.  Mr. Obama told the audience at a gala for Rice University's Baker Institute that he was "extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords" before saying "I know we're in oil country and we need American energy."  "You wouldn't always know it, but it went up every year I was president," he said to applause.  "That whole — suddenly America's like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people."

Joke of the day:  Obama takes credit for oil boom.  Obama in 2012: "We can't just drill our way to lower gas prices."  Obama on Tuesday:  "Suddenly America is the largest oil producer, that was me, people ... say thank you."

Barack Obama's failed reset.  The Obamas left the White House almost two years ago.  Can you believe it?  But they don't want you to forget how awesome they were.  Excuse me, are.  Well, with Michelle's current rock star-like book tour, the pair's global speech and their deep ties to Hollywood celebs, they are hard to avoid.  Tuesday night [11/27/2018], Barack Obama visited the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and he came off as a man who is obsessed with himself and obsessed with taking credit for another guy's (Trump's) success.

New Report Shows How Incredibly Wrong Obama Was About Energy Independence.  Has any politician ever been more wrong than Barack Obama was about U.S. oil production and energy independence? [...] Crude oil production in the U.S. has climbed more than 67% in just the past six years.  And the Department of Energy expects it will climb an additional 11% next year.  Earlier this year, U.S. production hit 11 million barrels a day, surpassing Russia as the world's largest oil producer, after having blown past Saudi Arabia in February.  This explosion in domestic oil production is largely due to fracking, which has opened vast expanses of once-inaccessible crude oil.  It was also never supposed to happen.  At least not if you'd been listening to President Barack Obama.  For eight years, Obama told the country over and over again that the U.S. would forever be dependent on foreign countries for oil.

The NY Times' "Three Surprising Energy Trends" Editorial:  Surprising Because They Aren't True.  Let's start with electricity prices.  The editorial acknowledges that "electricity prices vary a lot from state to state, for many reasons.  For example, prices in California, which has made reducing emissions a priority, have gone up in recent years.  But they have fallen in New York, which has set similarly ambitious climate targets."  What the Times fails to mention is that the states with the most ambitious renewable generation and climate mandates, including New York, California, and many New England states, have the highest electricity prices in the continental US.  In 2017, for example, the average residential price in New York was over 18 cents per kilowatt-hour, 40 percent higher than the national average, and just slightly below the California average.  And with Governor Cuomo's mandate to develop 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind generation, residential customers in New York can expect to see much higher prices, thanks to lavish subsidies for wind developers.

EPA: Trump's easing of coal rules could kill 1,400 people per year.  The Trump administration announced plans on Tuesday [8/21/2018] to ease Obama-era restrictions on coal-fired power plants, but an Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the new rules said they would increase carbon emissions and could cause up to 1,400 premature deaths each year.

The Editor says...
[#1] Carbon dioxide is not carbon.  [#2] Show me the death certificate of any person whose death was caused by carbon dioxide emissions from a power plant.  It doesn't happen.

How to Read the News Like a Pro.  First the headline, which reads:  "Once oil wealthy, Venezuela's largest state struggles to keep the lights on."  That headline gives the impression that Venezuela has run out of oil, but nothing could be further from the truth.  The country still possesses the world's largest oil reserves, so there's plenty of oil wealth.  It's still right there in the ground.  It hasn't gone anywhere.  The problem is that Bolivarian socialism has ruined the country's extraction industry, but you wouldn't know that from anything in the entire story.

Why NAACP's Anti-Oil And Gas Report Is Hot Air.  The NAACP recently published a paper with a dramatic claim:  "African-Americans face a disproportionate risk of health problems from pollution caused by the oil and gas industry."  It generated many headlines.  But it's deeply misleading.  Instead of acknowledging the complex factors that cause health problems in minority communities, the paper's authors point a collective finger at energy firms.

Hydrocarbon Hypocrisy.  Governor Andrew Cuomo and activist/actress Cynthia Nixon, opponents in September's New York gubernatorial primary, don't agree on much — but they are [opposed to] hydrocarbons.  Cuomo has outlawed natural-gas hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the Empire State, while Nixon wants to ban fracked gas from even entering the state.  Never mind that the revolutionary energy-extraction method has over the past decade transformed America from a net hydrocarbon importer to the world's leading energy producer.  Both candidates promise to block new gas pipelines in New York, too.

Magical Wind Power: Illusions versus Reality.  The primary reason why wind energy has been a success has nothing to do with wind energy!  Instead, its success is 100% due to the fact that wind energy proponents are masterful lobbyists. [...]
  •   Wind lobbyists have successfully infiltrated our language with totally inaccurate and misleading terminology, such as "wind farms" and "clean energy."  Neither exists.
  •   Wind marketers have successfully portrayed their product as "Free, Clean, and Green" — despite it being none of those.  The reason they have coined these malapropisms is simple:  those who control the words control the narrative.
  •   Wind salespeople have successfully convinced financially distressed communities that hosting a wind project will be a economic windfall — even though numerous studies from independent experts indicate that the net local economic impact could well be negative.
  •   Wind-peddlers have successfully sold technically challenged local representatives that the wind-developer is their friend and business partner — even though these sophisticated and aggressive entrepreneurs typically look at these rural people as rubes and marks, and their number-one focus is to make as much money as possible, at the rubes' expense.
  •   Wind developers have successfully persuaded much of the public that wind energy is an inevitable matter, so fighting it is a lost cause.  The reality is that in many cases, local communities can effectively defend themselves by simply passing a proper wind ordinance.
  •   Wind-supporters have successfully imparted the belief that a certain wind project will power 20,000 homes — even though that project will not actually power a single home 24/7/365.
  •   Wind advocates employ a sleight-of-hand tactic to dismiss noise complaints by claiming that "wind turbines don't make any more noise than a refrigerator."  The fact is that the main acoustical concern with wind turbines is the infrasound generated (which is below our level of hearing).  So discussing the audiblepart of turbine noise purposefully distracts from the serious inaudible(but still very much experienced) noise issue.
  •   Wind propagandists say that wind energy is saving the environment — even though the evidence indicates that it is environmentally destructive on multiple fronts.
  •   Wind-promoters have successfully conveyed the idea that wind energy is a low-cost option of electricity — even though when all its costs are fully accounted for, wind energy can be three to five times as expensive as traditional electricity sources.
  •   Wind advocates have successfully communicated the notion that using more wind will directly result in the closure of coal plants — even though 10,000 wind turbines could never equal the performance of even a single coal facility.
  •   Wind-boosters have successfully disseminated the impression that wind is a major and essential contributor to preventing climate change — even though there is no empirical scientific proof that wind energy saves any consequential CO2.
[...] I could go on and on, as the list of wind lobbyists' deceptions is distressingly long.

Here are 1,366 well sourced examples of Barack Obama's lies, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc..  [#441] During Obama's Presidency, domestic oil production increased, and the Obama administration claimed credit for it.  However, this increase only happened on privately owned land and state owned land, which Obama had no control over.  On land that is owned by the federal government, oil production actually went down.

Time for Industrial Wind to pay its fair share of Oklahoma's education costs.  House Bill 1010XX passed.  Oklahoma companies are paying more taxes to fund it.  You and I are paying more taxes to fund it.  Industrial Wind will contribute nothing.  In fact, these multibillion-dollar companies based outside of Oklahoma threatened to sue and file bankruptcy if required to participate in funding HB 1010XX.  They printed and distributed expensive fliers at the Capitol claiming "Oklahoma is closed for business," followed by one that touted a number of statistics about its success.  Is the industry thriving or on the brink of bankruptcy?

Vox's New "Genius" Idea:  Cut Off Fossil Fuel Supplies.  The Vox #fancystats eggheads are at it again with a proposal they're sure will save the environment:  cut off the supplies of fossil fuels.  David Roberts writes the Restricted Supply Side idea is a really good one and believes it could actually help (!?!?!?!?!) the economy.  His particular notation is a study done by London School of Economics and Political Science professor Fergus Green (rather aptly named) and Richard Denniss at Australia Institute.  What's interesting is the fact Green and Denniss don't 100% believe it's feasible, at the moment, and also admit to putting oil, coal, and gas in the same bucket when it comes to "the relative strengths of supply-side policies vary among fossil fuel-types."  It doesn't mean the two aren't planning to try to convince environmentalists to add supply restrictionist policies to their framework.  The key idea on making restricted supplies economically viable has to do with purposefully harming the consumer who uses the item.

Here's Why Russia Is Delivering Loads Of Natural Gas To This Deep Blue State.  Officials in Massachusetts and neighboring New Hampshire blocked financing in 2016 for the $3 billion Access Northeast Pipeline, which would have helped the state weather an energy crunch this winter.  The state's decision to rely principally on green energy hiked gas prices and forced it turn to Russian oil imports.  Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey concluded in 2016 that "no new pipelines are needed" and that we "can maintain electric reliability through 2030 even without additional new natural gas pipelines" Healey also joined New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's investigation into ExxonMobil's alleged willingness to hide internal documents about climate change.  Environmentalist groups like 350.org and Greenpeace are organizing online campaigns to oppose every new coal, oil, and natural-gas project in the country.  Greenpeace, for one, has etched out the position that the only good fossil fuels are the ones that are left in the ground.  The Sierra Club, meanwhile, claims the U.S. is ready for 100 percent green energy.

Obama said we can't drill our way to energy independence.  Actually, we did..  In 2012, no less an authority than Barack Obama told us that calling for increased production by increased drilling — "drill, baby, drill," he called it — was not a plan, but rather "a bumper sticker."  Mr. Obama assured us, "You know, we can't just drill our way to lower gas prices," as if all the people who disagreed with him were simply refusing to admit that, deep down, they were wrong and he was right.

The Editor says...
"Drill, baby, drill" was a campaign slogan used by Sarah Palin, not Barack H. Obama.

Bill De Blasio Admits He Wants To Kill The Oil Industry With Global Warming Lawsuit.  New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said his administration's recent divestment action and lawsuit were meant to "help bring the death knell" to the the oil industry.  But de Blasio's remarks on killing off the oil industry directly contradict New York City's statements to the court, filed in their lawsuit against five major oil companies.  De Blasio recently announced the the city would divest its public pension fund from fossil fuels over the next five years, and the mayor filed a lawsuit against five major oil companies demanding billions for damages allegedly caused by global warming.

The Editor says...
Does the mayor's limousine run on batteries, or does it run on combustible products sold by oil companies?  How much actual (measured, quantified, demonstrable) warming can the mayor blame on "the oil companies?"  It would have to be measured in thousandths of a degree, wouldn't it?  What "damages" can the mayor point to, that resulted from unnatural temperature changes?  Does he have courtroom-quality evidence to support his claims?

Mining up 28.6 percent — in a single quarter.  Those jobs aren't coming back the liberal liars scolded us.  Hillary and Obama wanted tor retrain coal miners as computer programmers.  We elected Trump, and in April, May and June alone, mining increased 28.6 percent.

The Clean Power Plan's Counterfeit Benefits.  The Trump Environmental Protection Agency's proposed repeal of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan represents an amazing and long overdue breakthrough in the history of environmental regulation.  Not only has no Republican administration ever before mustered the courage to rollback a major EPA regulation, but the Trump administration has done so by directly challenging the rule's purported health benefits.  That's unheard of.  Although the Clean Power Plan was pitched as being about reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from coal-fired power plants, the benefits of averted climate change is not how the Obama EPA justified the rule on an economic basis.  There certainly were no discernible climate change benefits to be claimed as House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) forced Obama EPA administrator Gina McCarthy to acknowledge in testimony.  [Video clip]

California cities sue big oil firms over climate change.  California cities San Francisco and Oakland filed separate lawsuits against five oil companies on Wednesday [9/20/2017] seeking billions of dollars to protect against rising sea levels they blamed on climate change, according to public documents.

Bay Area cities sue major oil companies over climate change.  San Francisco and Oakland are suing to get five oil companies, including San Ramon-based Chevron, to pay for the cost of protecting the Bay Area from rising sea levels and other effects of global warming.  "These fossil fuel companies profited handsomely for decades while knowing they were putting the fate of our cities at risk," San Francisco City Atty.  Dennis Herrera said in a statement.

SF, Oakland sue top five oil and gas companies over climate change.  The cities of San Francisco and Oakland have filed separate lawsuits against five major oil and gas companies for allegedly contributing to the costs of climate change and sea level rise by producing massive amounts of fossil fuels, city leaders announced Wednesday [9/21/2017].  The lawsuits against Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell claim the companies have known for decades that global warming and sea level rise were accelerated by the investor-owned producers of fossil fuels, but the companies still continued to "aggressively produce, market and sell vast quantities of fossil fuels for a global market," according to a news release from the San Francisco City Attorney's Office.

Solar Panel Fraud.  Beyond all of this solar power promotion, you may have been victimized by the propaganda about the harm being done to the planet because "burning fossil fuels pollutes the atmosphere."  The culprit, say the propagandists, is carbon dioxide that causes global warming (or its new label, climate change).  But carbon dioxide is food for plants.  It isn't bad; it's hugely beneficial.  As for it affecting the atmosphere, climate scientist Dr. Willie Soon says the amount of carbon dioxide produced nationally by burning fossil fuels is equivalent to adding two more attendees to the 100,000 fans packed into a football stadium.  In other words, carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil, or natural gas is of little consequence — good or bad.

Judicial Watch:  Documents Reveal Obama EPA's Projection of Reduced 'Premature Deaths' by Clean Power Plan Was Misleading.  Judicial Watch today [8/23/2017] announced it received documents from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that show the agency's claim that the Obama administration's 2015 Clean Power Plan would prevent thousands of premature deaths by 2030 was, at best, misleading. [...] The documents forced out by Judicial Watch reveal that carbon dioxide reduction itself would not prevent any deaths.

The Climate Alarmists' Gross Perversion of the Word 'Clean'.  Climate alarmists have gone to endless efforts to gain public acceptance of their doomsday premise that the world must greatly reduce its use of fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.  They have fudged the surface temperature data, used meaningless climate models, argued that human emissions of carbon dioxide will warm the planet despite the strong evidence to the contrary, and so on, but their greatest perversion is of the English language.  They have branded CO2 as a pollutant and claimed that reducing it is necessary to make the world "clean."  All the alarmists from Gore to McKibben to Obama are guilty of this; in fact, the use of this terminology is so uniform that one suspects that they all have been coached to say it at every opportunity.  Unfortunately, their efforts have even been supported by the Supreme Court, which decreed that CO2 is subject to regulation by the USEPA under the Clean Air Act despite no real support for this in the legislative history.

Green Delusions and the Wind Bully.  The electric power grid is an essential of modern life.  Take it away, and the consequence would be mass extinction.  The greens are eager to tamper with the grid.  They want to substitute "clean" wind and solar electricity for the "dirty" nuclear, coal, and natural gas electricity.  The word "clean," like the word "green," has a new meaning.  Now "clean" means politically correct.  Something is clean if it conforms to green dogma.  The Panera Bread fast food chain tells us that its food is now "clean."  It means that its food is politically correct, not containing a long list of taboo ingredients. [...] As George Orwell often pointed out, changing the meaning of words is a method of controlling and limiting the ability to think.

Chuck Schumer Claims Gas Prices 'Never Go Down' as Gas Prices Hit Lowest Point in 12 Years.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claims that the price of gas "never goes down" as gas prices hit record lows under the Trump administration.  Schumer told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week Sunday morning [7/23/2017] that gas prices can only go up, citing "huge companies buying up other big companies" as the cause of rising gas prices.

Is U.S. Fracking Killing OPEC?  Just three and a half years ago, the price for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude peaked at $110.62 a barrel.  At the time, President Obama was pushing Americans to conserve and warning, "we can't drill our way out of the problem."  Turns out, we could.

"Fast Moving Clouds": The Latest Excuse for a Government Funded Solar Bankruptcy.  What do you say when the government demands to know what happened to all the public money they lent to your failed solar business?

Coal's Colossal Comeback.  Liberals have been saying that Donald Trump was lying to the American people when he said that he could bring coal jobs back.  Well, so far, he has delivered on his promise.  There's more good news for the coal industry.  Earlier this month, Peabody Energy — America's largest coal producer — moved out of bankruptcy, and its stock is actively trading again.  Its market cap had sunk by almost 90% during Barack Obama's years in office.  Arch Coal is also out of bankruptcy.  It turns out that, after all, elections do have consequences.  The Obama administration and its allies, such as the Sierra Club, tried to kill coal because of their obsession with global warming.  Regime change in Washington has brought King Coal back to life.

Air Quality and Industrial Sand (Frac Sand) Mining.  Air quality is a high priority with all industrial sand mining companies and policymakers in areas near industrial sand operations. They aim to protect the public from hazardous levels of small particles of silica dust.  These particles, when present in unsafe concentrations, can cause health problems such as asthma and silicosis.  Silicosis is a serious but preventable lung ailment that can affect workers in industries with high exposure to silica dust.  Although air quality is an important concern that must be addressed, the issue is often raised by mining opponents as a way to impede the permitting of industrial sand facilities.  Mining opponents often merely assert these facilities will hurt air quality, and seemingly no amount of scientific evidence will persuade them to believe otherwise.  When not supported by scientific evidence, these allegations are problematic.

Science Deniers in the Wind Industry.  Like the tobacco industry before it, the wind industry has spent decades vehemently denying known harmful consequences associated with its product, while promoting its fraudulent feel-good image.  Dismissing or denying the serious health impacts of industrial-scale wind turbines is wishful thinking, akin to insisting that tobacco is harmless because we enjoy it.  The problem with wind energy is not just its costly, subsidized, unreliable electricity; the need to back up every megawatt with redundant fossil-fuel power; or its impacts on wildlife and their habitats.  Infrasound (inaudible) and low-frequency (audible) noise (slowly vibrating sound waves collectively referred to as ILFN) produced by Industrial-scale Wind Turbines (IWTs) directly and predictably cause adverse human health effects.

On Energy, Obama Lies With Statistics.  The Obama administration has been reading the polls, and is panicked by the implications of $4 a gallon gasoline.  Consequently, President Obama gave a speech today in which he trotted out a "Blueprint For A Secure Energy Future."  We will have more to say about the administration's proposals, which I don't think contain anything new, but for the moment, I want to note the dishonesty with which President Obama introduced them.

Revisiting Obama's Energy Lies.  Barack Obama wasn't confused, he was lying.  He misrepresented America's petroleum resources, over and over, because doing so served his anti-progress agenda.  And to my knowledge, not a single news outlet — not one — ever pointed out that Obama was lying, even though everyone who knew anything about energy was aware of the deception.  It is amazing how a change in administrations causes the press to completely reconceive its role.

The "Wind and Solar Will Save Us" Delusion.  The "Wind and Solar Will Save Us" story is based on a long list of misunderstandings and apples to oranges comparisons.  Somehow, people seem to believe that our economy of 7.5 billion people can get along with a very short list of energy supplies.  This short list will not include fossil fuels.  Some would exclude nuclear, as well.  Without these energy types, we find ourselves with a short list of types of energy — what BP calls Hydroelectric, Geobiomass (geothermal, wood, wood waste, and other miscellaneous types; also liquid fuels from plants), Wind, and Solar.  Unfortunately, a transition to such a short list of fuels can't really work.

Obama's biggest whoppers.  [For example,] "The Keystone pipeline is for oil that bypasses the United States."  Long before Obama killed the Keystone pipeline project in 2015, he made a number of dubious claims about it, including that the pipeline would have no benefit for American producers at all.  But the crude oil would have traveled to the Gulf Coast, where it would be refined into products such as motor gasoline and diesel fuel; the State Department said odds were low that all would be exported.  Also, about 12 percent of the pipeline's capacity had been set aside for crude from North Dakota and Montana.

The Editor says...
It matters very little if crude oil is tranported from the Canadian border, shipped to Port Arthur or Pasadena, Texas, run through a refinery (or not), then exported.  This would still keep people working in the refineries and ship yards along the Texas coast.  Shouldn't the President concentrate on keeping people employed?

A Factual Look at Obama's Presidency.  A particularly misleading aspect of Obama's farewell address is the following statement, which he led up to by railing against the "selective sorting of the facts" and declaring that "science and reason matter":  ["]Take the challenge of climate change.  In just eight years, we've halved our dependence on foreign oil; we've doubled our renewable energy; we've led the world to an agreement that has the promise to save this planet.["]  Actually, renewable energy increased by 27% between 2009 and 2015, which is nowhere close to doubling.  Obama's statistic may be rooted in a crafty definition of renewable energy that excludes major sources like hydropower.  Furthermore, Obama's words leave the distinct impression that the U.S. has cut oil consumption by replacing it with renewables.  Yet, U.S. petroleum consumption rose from 6.6 billion barrels in 2009 to 6.7 in 2015.  The primary reason oil imports have fallen is that domestic production has risen due to the use of hydraulic fracturing or fracking, which is unpopular with many environmentalists.  Per the U.S. Energy Information Administration, fracking has "allowed the United States to increase its oil production faster than at any time in its history," and it now produces "about half of total U.S. crude oil production."

Putin's Other American Propaganda Effort:  Anti-Fracking News.  Energy politics makes strange bedfellows, none stranger than Robin Hood and Russian President Vladimir Putin.  RT, a media organization that the U.S. intelligence community calls "the Kremlin's principal international propaganda outlet," published an article on Jan. 2 under the unlikely headline:  "Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest hideout under threat from frackers."  The article, which carries no byline and cites the work of environmental activists, laments plans of a unit of Ineos Group, a Switzerland-based chemical company, to conduct seismic testing for natural gas near Major Oak, the millennium-old tree that served in legend as headquarters to Robin Hood and his merry fellows.

The hypocrisy of climate change advocates.  For those of you who don't know what a climate denier is, it means you either challenge, question or flat-out reject the idea that the planet is warming due to human activity.  In the scientific world and in the world of international liberal groupthink (but I repeat myself), this is blasphemy.  Should you remotely doubt the dubious models, unrealized dire predictions, changing goal posts or flawed data related to climate science, you are not just stupid according to these folks, but you are on par with those who deny the Holocaust.

Obama Credits Green Energy For Cutting Foreign Oil Imports — He's Wrong.  President Barack Obama is making a major public relations blitz to highlight his legacy, including tying falling reliance on foreign oil to his green energy policies.  Obama claimed the U.S. "traded foreign oil for clean energy," but what he should have said is the U.S. traded foreign oil for hydraulic fracturing.  Green energy had little to do with it.

More Fracking Lies from the EPA.  [Scroll down]  Most oil and gas wells are fracked in some way.  It is a common well completion procedure.  The process has been in common use for over 60 years.  The EPA "Science Advisory Board" has employed the Gasland canard:  ["][F]racking could impact drinking water throughout the drilling process.["]  Fracking is a well completion operation.  Frack jobs are performed in the well completion procedure.  This is the only phase of the "drilling process" in which frack jobs are performed.  As such, it cannot "impact drinking water throughout the drilling process."  In the Gasland canard, "the drilling process" includes everything from wellsite preparation, to drilling, to completion, to production, to wastewater disposal, to plugging & abandonment, to wellsite reclamation... And then any pollution in the entire process is attributed to fracking.

Which Fake News?  For some years, I have been covering allegations that Chevron poisoned a great number of indigenous people in the Ecuadorian rain forest through sloppy drilling technique and inadequate environmental remediation after the fact.  It did not happen.  Chevron has never even drilled in Ecuador.  Some years ago, the company acquired Texaco, which had drilled in Ecuador, and whose work had been inspected, audited, and signed off on as clean by the Ecuadorian government many years ago.  There was pollution, almost certainly caused by the Ecuadorian state oil company, and had nothing to do with Chevron.

Van Jones on Pipeline Protest: 'This Feels Like Selma!  It Feels Like Montgomery!'  Van Jones, a CNN commentator and former adviser to President Obama, on Monday compared the pipeline protest in Cannon Ball, North Dakota to the civil rights movement of the 1960s:  "This feels like Selma!  It feels like Montgomery!  It feels like a time when a group that nobody paid attention to, black folks in the South, stood up and the world stood with them, so it's a very powerful, emotional moment, I think, for the tribal communities," Jones told CNN's "New Day."

Stick This in Your Pipeline.  The next radical environmental tactic is now evident for eyes to see:  block all infrastructure projects — especially oil and gas pipelines — with criminal trespass and obstruction.  Having killed the Keystone pipeline (only temporarily, now that Trump is going to approve it once he takes office), the red-greenies are trying to stop the Dakota Access pipeline that has received all of its regulatory permits.  Naturally environmentalists have to lie about the whole matter, whipping up claims that sacred native American grounds are being harmed by the pipeline, or that groundwater is at risk.

Tapped out: science shuts down an anti-fracking myth about drinking water.  For years, anti-fracking activists have cited Pavillion's plight over and over again as proof that hydraulic fracturing must be banned.  Josh Fox, director of the anti-fracking movie Gasland, has probably done more than anyone to spread this assertion.  Fox even got himself arrested at a 2012 congressional hearing on the Pavillion case.  I got to watch that happen:  I was a witness at the hearing for the oil and gas industry[.]  It was all a myth.  Not even President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believed it was true.  In fact, the so-called contamination in Pavillion — announced to the world in 2011 — was almost certainly caused by the EPA itself.

Obama: 'We Can't Drill Our Way to Lower Gas Prices' — Experts: 'Yes We Can'.  President Barack Obama has said many times that we cannot "drill our way to lower gas prices."  But according to a Heritage Foundation report on the vast oil and gas resources in the United States, that is simply not true.  "Can we drill our way to lower gas prices?  Yes, we can," Kevin Dayaratna, senior statistician with the Heritage Foundation said on Tuesday [10/25/2016] of the report he co-authored with David Kreutzer and Nicolas Loris.  "The U.S. did drill its way to lower gas prices over the past several years, for both natural gas and gasoline, and broke the back of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the process," the abstract of the report, Time to Unlock America's Vast Oil and Gas Resources, states.

OPEC puts Iran's oil output less than real volume.  OPEC has put Iran's oil output figure about 250,000 barrels per day less than the real volume, Ali Kardor the managing director of Iranian National Oil Company told Trend.  According to OPEC's latest monthly report based on the secondary sources, Iran produced about 3.65 million barrels per day (mb/d) of crude oil in September.

In Laos, Obama Repeatedly Calls Americans 'Lazy'.  During a townhall meeting in Laos, President Barack Obama called Americans "lazy" multiple times.  For one, Obama said Americans' reluctance to embrace his favored environmental policies is a sign of laziness.  "Usually when you see the environment destroyed, it's not because it's necessary for development," Obama said.  "It's usually because we're being lazy and we're not being as creative as we could be about how to do it in a smarter, more sustainable way."

Obama Botches Climate Science in Lake Tahoe Speech.  President Barack Obama made a stop at Lake Tahoe on Wednesday [8/31/2016] to talk climate change, spending, and environmental regulation — distorting science along the way. [...] Along the way, he made another glaringly unscientific claim — namely, that as a result of his administration's new fuel economy standards, "during the first half of this year, carbon pollution hit its lowest level in a quarter century."  The reason carbon "pollution" (a misleading term, since carbon dioxide is not toxic) began falling, before Obama took office, is because of a switch to natural gas, largely through fracking — often over the objections of Democrats and the federal government.

Toxicologist on cancer warnings:  NC acted despite science.  Officials in North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory's administration are telling a string of misleading half-truths about the safety of well water near Duke Energy coal ash pits containing a cancer-causing chemical and are responsible for any resulting fear and confusion, a state toxicologist said after being attacked by state officials.

Obama's Energy Pie In The Sky Is A Lie.  "In fields from Iowa to Texas, wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power.  On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills, and employs more Americans than coal.  Meanwhile, we've cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly sixty percent, and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth," Obama exclaimed.  Well sure, if you subsidize something to the point where you're practically giving away it will be cheaper, but it's still not cheaper than conventional power.  That's just a lie he threw out for the left to run with.  Without government mandates and subsidies, none of this [stuff] would "cheap" and no one would want it.  He is right about one thing.  Oil imports have cratered, but not because anything he did.

Obama Brags About Low Energy Prices, Then Proposes To Raise Them.  [Scroll down]  "Anyone who says we can drill our way out of this problem does not know what they are talking about, or does not know the truth," he [Obama] said at a 2012 event in New Hampshire.  The reason, he said, was that we use 25% of the world's energy but have just 3% of the oil reserves.  So the only solution was mandatory conservation and spending billions on the "energy of the future."  Turns out it was Obama who didn't know what he was talking about.  We did, in fact, "drill our way" to lower gas prices.  Thanks to fracking, oil companies are now able to produce vast amounts of previously unrecoverable oil.  In the past seven years, domestic oil production shot up a stunning 77%, according to the Energy Information Administration, making the U.S. the biggest oil producer in the world.

Obama gets faced trying to lecture SUV driver at Detroit Auto Show.  This man's job is to make the decision about what his family needs.  Obama's job is to govern the nation well and make good decisions about peace and prosperity.  One such decision would be to approve more oil leases on federal lands so oil is more plentiful, or to approve the Keystone XL pipeline so it's easier to transport oil to market.  But Obama wants to do none of that.  He'd rather lecture people about buying SUVs or about not inflating their tires properly.

Top 10 Lies in Obama's State of the Union.  [#6]  "Seven years ago, we made the single biggest investment in clean energy in our history.  Here are the results."  It is laughable that Obama would claim his failed clean energy spending — think Solyndra — led to the fracking-fed energy boom we have enjoyed for the past several years, especially when the administration did all it could to stop oil and gas development.  He also nixed the Keystone pipeline and started a plan to kill coal plants.

Cheap Oil Is the Story of the Year.  Not only is gas now less than $2 a gallon in many areas, but it could fall further in the weeks ahead.  The falling price means, of course, an expanded supply.  Barack Obama sure had this story dead wrong.  He thinks we are running out of oil.  In a 2008 speech in Lansing, Michigan, presidential candidate Obama was all doom and gloom about oil, advising:  "We cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing."  Then in 2010 from the Oval Office he solemnly declared:  "We're running out of places to drill," and he jeered that the oil and gas industry might want to start pumping for oil near the Washington Monument.

Dead wrong on oil.  It would be hard to find anyone in all of America who has been more wrong on the American energy story than Barack Obama.  Oil prices have fallen from $105 a barrel in the summer of 2014 to hovering at $35 a barrel today.  That's a two-thirds reduction in the price and the biggest factor is shale oil brought to you by fracking.  In many areas of the country gas is now less than $2 a gallon and it could fall further in the weeks ahead.  The falling price means, of course, an expanded supply.  But now listen to President Obama, who has lectured the nation on energy as if he were one of the top experts for the last eight years.  In a 2008 Speech in Lansing, Michigan, presidential candidate Obama was all doom and gloom about oil, advising:  "We cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing."

'Four Times Greater Than Solyndra': DOE Drops 1,200 Pages Of Heavily Redacted Docs On Green Energy Loans.  The Department of Energy recently turned over more than 1,200 pages of heavily redacted documents in response to a records request about a subsidized biofuels company from The Daily Caller News Foundation.  In October, TheDCNF filed a FOIA request with the Energy Department, asking for email records from government officials regarding federal loan guarantees given to Abengoa, a Spanish-based green energy company.  The request came on the heels of reports Abengoa was running into big financial problems, despite being given generous taxpayer-backed loans.  The DOE gave TheDCNF the records it requested Dec. 18, and after spending time reviewing the documents, it's apparent there's a lot of information the department did not want the public to see.  The DOE redacted virtually all information specific to Abengoa — in many cases whole pages were blacked out.

When factoids rule.  Mr. Obama crowed over a compromise he made with Congress to permit oil exports after four decades of laws forbidding them.  To get this, to create thousands of new jobs and return American clout in world energy markets, the Republicans agreed to spend new billions on subsidies for the so-called green energies of certain crony capitalists.

EPA: Coal [is] Not Marketable.  Coal, oil and natural gas are unpopular at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris — so much so that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said she and her associates are "pumped up about the work we're doing."  Answering questions Thursday [12/10/2015] while in Paris, McCarthy said the EPA is doing as much as it can to limit not just CO2 and mercury pollution from power plants that burn coal, but also methane emissions associated with the oil and natural gas industries.  "The Clean Power Plan is one of the keystones of President Obama's Climate Action Plan.  It has changed everything in the U.S.," McCarthy said.  "It is riding the wave of new solutions and technologies.  We are going to show that utilities can do it.  We don't need to make a choice between the environment and the economy.  We can build a growing economy, as we have in the U.S., by actually focusing on green, clean solutions."

Obama: Keystone would make planet 'uninhabitable'.  President Obama said Monday [11/6/2015] that the Keystone pipeline and other such fossil-fuel development projects would make Earth "uninhabitable."  "We've got to lead by example, because ultimately, if we're going to prevent large parts of the Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable, then we're going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them," Mr. Obama told cheering grassroots supporters at a gathering in Washington.

The Editor says...
[#1] How many places in the world are uninhabitable today?  Not many.  [#2] If the Chinese build a new oil pipeline, would you know about it?  No.  Would China's new pipeline make any part of this country uninhabitable?  No.

Congressman on Going Green: Minorities Won't Be Hurt by Eschewing Fossil Fuels.  Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, pushed back against politicians who argue that hurting the fossil fuel industry would adversely impact the poor, saying a "minimal" amount of minorities are working in the industry. [...] Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, advocated for the implementation of zero waste policies.  "Did you know that no animal other than us creates waste?  We're the only ones who have waste.  Nobody else has garbage cans because everything else is usable in some kind of way but we throw stuff in garbage cans like it's useless.

The Editor says...
Anyone who has ever shoveled muck out of a barn, cleaned a bird cage, or maintained an aquarium, knows that all animals create waste.

Obama in Alaska: Climate-change deniers 'are on their own shrinking island'.  "The time to heed the critics and the cynics and the deniers is past," [President Obama] told delegates to an international conference on climate change in the Arctic [8/31/2015].  "The time to plead ignorance is surely past.  Those who want to ignore the science, they are increasingly alone, they are on their own shrinking island."  He used the backdrop of America's only Arctic state to emphasize the need for this country and others to move, and move fast, to reduce carbon emissions, to pursue cleaner energy sources and to stop relying on "unstable parts of the world" for oil.

The Editor says...
If he wants to "to stop relying on 'unstable parts of the world' for oil, why is he opposed to drilling in ANWR, offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the Keystone XL pipeline, and fracking?

In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale.  [The Daily Mail] has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium:  it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.  The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China.  This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the 'green' companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

The President's Clean Energy Farce.  Green energy investments are a guaranteed flop, the kind of failure only a shady Broadway producer could envision.  This current green energy production really got underway when the economic "stimulus" set aside $80 billion to subsidize politically connected energy projects, according to the Heritage Foundation.  Since the halcyon days of the stimulus, 1,900 investigations have been opened to probe stimulus fraud and about 600 convictions have been secured by prosecutors.  What is more, about 10 percent of the Obama-backed green companies have gone bankrupt or out of business.  But Obama does not let the facts get in the way of a good, green story.

EPA distorts health benefits of mega-costly clean-air rule.  The Environmental Protection Agency is exaggerating the potential health benefits — especially for children — it says result from a new rule that will set sharply lower ozone levels across the U.S., according to a detailed study of the EPA model.  The study concludes many of the supposed benefits may already exist under current EPA standards.  The ozone rule, slated for publication in October is billed by its critics as the most expensive regulatory change in American history.  Estimates of the cost of compliance, for industries and all levels of government, run as high as $1.1 trillion, and the negative impact on U.S. Gross Domestic Product is estimated to run even higher.

EPA Administrator: Climate Change Affects 'Our Ability to Earn a Decent Living'.  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy said on Tuesday that climate change affects "everything and everyone we love," including our ability to secure a livelihood.  "Climate change is one of the most important issues [that] we face.  It is a global challenge, but in many ways it's also very personal to all of us, because it affects everything and everyone we love," McCarthy said.  "It affects our kids, our communities, even our ability to earn a decent living."

The Editor says...
Nothing in Ms. McCarthy's statement is true.  Climate change is perfectly normal, natural, and so gradual as to be imperceptible.  Global warming is neither a global challenge nor a local problem, especially since it stopped almost 20 years ago, all by itself.  It does not affect anything or anyone we know.  Not me, not you, nobody.  It certainly does not prevent anyone from earning a living.

Also posted under Global warming is blamed for everything.

HHS Secretary Pitches Clean Power Plan to Kids, With Reference to 'Cooties'.  "The only thing your kids should be afraid of catching in the backyard is cooties," says Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell.  That's one of the reasons why the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan is "good for our children's health," Burwell blogged last week.  She explained that the rule finalized this month by the Environmental Protection Agency will "leave the planet safer and healthier for our children and our grandchildren" by cutting carbon pollution from coal-fired plants.

The Editor says...
Carbon dioxide is not carbon, nor is it pollution.  If you mean carbon dioxide emissions, don't say carbon pollution.

Obama's Climate Plan and Poverty.  President Obama says that critics of his plan to decarbonize the economy are "the special interests and their allies in Congress" repeating "the same stale arguments" about "killing jobs and businesses and freedom."  He adds that "even more cynical, we've got critics of this plan who are actually claiming that this will harm minority and low-income communities."

Green groups' deceptive con game.  Recently, investigative journalists at the Asheville Citizen-Times and National Review revealed that the Sierra Club had allegedly added signatories to a petition demanding that Duke Energy cease the operations of one of its coal-fired power plants in Asheville, North Carolina.  Of the 80 businesses listed on the petition, at least six had never agreed to lend their support to the Sierra Club at all, several claimed to be victims of bait-and-switch, strong-arming tactics and one didn't even exist.

Mr. Obama, 97 percent of experts is a bogus number.  Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree:  Climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.  President Obama tweeted that, and it has been repeated by countless others.  It is tempting for a politician to claim that 97 percent of experts agree with you.  But do they?  The 97 percent claim was taken from a study paper by Australian John Cook, Climate Communications Fellow for the Global change Institute at the University of Queensland, and his colleagues, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters in May, 2013. [...] The paper is a treasure trove of how-not-to lessons for a graduate class on survey design and analysis:  the sample was not representative, statistical tests were ignored, and the results were misinterpreted.

Also posted under What consensus?

The EPA Myth of "Clean Power".  There are many things I do not like about the Environmental Protection Agency, but what angers me most are the lies that stream forth from it to justify programs that have no basis in fact or science, and which threaten the economy. [...] Simply said, there is no need whatever to reduce CO2 emissions.  Carbon dioxide is not "a pollutant" as the EPA claims.  It is, along with oxygen for all living creatures, vital to the growth of all vegetation.  The more CO2 the better crops yields will occur, healthier forests, and greener lawns.  From a purely scientific point of view, it is absurd to reduce emissions.

Congressman Slams EPA For Claiming Global Warming Rules Will Reduce Energy Prices.  Rep. David McKinley was astounded to hear a top Environmental Protection Agency official say regulations to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants would reduce consumer energy bills after 2030.  "Are you serious?" McKinley, a West Virginia Republican, asked EPA acting administrator for clean air Janet McCabe in a hearing Wednesday [4/8/2015].  McCabe had just said Americans' energy bills would go down after 2030 as a result of energy efficiency mandates.  "That is what our analysis shows across the country," McCabe said, talking about the agency's regulations forcing states to reduce power plant emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. EPA claims that despite huge amounts of coal-fired power plants closures, these regulations would reduce energy bills 8 percent after 2030.  "Unbelieveable," McKinley said.  "Just seems delusional."

The Editor says...
If that's the case, maybe the EPA could tighten the rules some more and make electricity too cheap to meter.

4 Most Noteworthy Moments from Obama's Interview with Vice News.  [#1] Obama [says] Some in Congress Are 'Shills' for Oil Companies.  Asked by [Shane] Smith why it's so difficult to convince Americans to take stronger action on anthropogenic climate change, the president didn't mince words, using colorful language to describe certain (unnamed) lawmakers who he believes are too cozy with fossil fuel companies.

The Keystone Copout: Nothing Obama says to justify his pipeline veto is true.  In an interview last weekend with a North Dakota TV station, Mr. Obama said:  "I'm happy to look at how we can increase pipeline production for U.S. oil, but Keystone is for Canadian oil to send that down to the Gulf.  It bypasses the United States and is estimated to create a little over 250, maybe 300 permanent jobs."  Except for the prepositions, everything in that statement is false.

Does Anyone Fact-Check the President?  Let's note two instances from a single town hall appearance in South Carolina yesterday.  The first related to climate.  Obama, while defending his Keystone veto, said:  ["]The pattern overall is that the climate is getting warmer.  That's undeniable.["]  Far from being undeniable, the claim that "the climate is getting warmer" is false.  Satellite measurements show that there has been no warming for around 18 years, a fact that has caused great consternation among climate alarmists.

Obama: Keystone oil 'extraordinarily dirty'.  President Obama on Friday [3/6/2015] ratcheted up his criticism of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, days after the Senate failed to override his veto of legislation approving the project.  "The truth is it's Canadian oil that's then going to go to the world market.  It will probably create about a couple thousand construction jobs for a year or two, but only create about 300 permanent jobs," Obama said at a town hall in South Carolina when asked by an attendee about his decision.  "The reason that a lot of environmentalists are concerned about it is the way that you get the oil out in Canada is an extraordinarily dirty way of extracting oil.  And, obviously, there are always risks in piping a lot of oil through Nebraska farmland and other parts of the country," Obama added.

Obama's claim that Keystone XL oil 'bypasses the U.S.' earns Four Pinocchios.  President Obama, seeking to explain his veto of a bill that would have leapfrogged the approval process for the Keystone XL pipeline, in an interview with a North Dakota station repeated some false claims that had previously earned him Pinocchios.  Yet he managed to make his statement even more misleading than before, suggesting the pipeline would have no benefit for American producers at all.

Reporters Laugh As White House Tries To Explain Why Keystone Pipeline Review Took 2,300 Days.  White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest unintentionally gave reporters a laugh today [2/24/2015].  One intrepid reporter asked Earnest what every reporter should be asking Earnest:  Why is it taking the State Department so long to complete its review of the Keystone XL Pipeline?  To be specific, it's taken about 2,300 days.  "Well, I think it's certainly fair to suggest the that State Department is conducting an in-depth review," Earnest said.  The crowd laughed at that one.

Why Can't He Tell The Truth?  In the President's State of the Union address, he bragged about how U.S. oil production has surged thanks to shale drilling.  Question for Mr. Obama:  Does he not recall that he and his followers have been fighting and harassing the oil companies that are finding and producing all of that oil?  Does he believe he deserves any credit at all for acts and successes done by people against whom he has waged war since he was a child?

EPA chief: Public tired of debating climate change.  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy said Friday that the public does not want more "debate or discussion" about climate change, but government action.  "First, people overwhelmingly consider climate change to be a problem — and they want action, not more debate or discussion," McCarthy said in a speech at Georgetown University. [...] "Coal as a fuel source for power plants is really not competitive in most of the United States," McCarthy said in a Q&A after her speech.

The Editor says...
Note two obvious canards:  (1) Coal is a highly competitive fuel for power plants.  Just ask the governments of India and China, where new coal-fired power plants are being built as fast as possible.  (2) The American people don't care about global warming any more (perhaps because there is no warming).

Obama misleads students about climate and energy.  In his October 2 address on the economy at Northwestern University, President Barack Obama told students, "If we keep investing in clean energy technology, we won't just put people to work assembling, raising and pounding into place the zero-carbon components of a clean energy age.  We'll reduce our carbon emissions and prevent the worst costs of climate change down the road."  But what does climate change have to do with energy supply?  Almost nothing.

Jerry Brown at UN Climate Change Summit: 'Carbon Pollution Kills!'  Arriving in NYC aboard the People's Climate Train, which travelled across the country from Emeryville California, Sister Ayya Santussika, a Buddhist nun, said that climate change is a "moral issue" and affects everyone of us. [...] Gov. Brown signed some bills on Sunday [9/21/2014] that mandates an increase in the amount of electric cars for California, reduces the time it takes to get rooftop solar panel permits, and establishes new regulations to restrict atmospheric pollutants.

The Editor says...
Carbon dioxide is not carbon, for the same reason that water is not hydrogen.  Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere supports life.  It is not a threat.  It is not pollution.

EPA Chief: Costly 'Clean Power Plan' Gives Americans 'More Opportunities to Reduce Waste'.  The sweeping EPA plan announced earlier this month sets carbon-reduction targets for each state, then allows states to decide how to meet those targets, either on their own or in partnership with other states.  McCarthy said many states will choose the most "cost-effective strategy," which is to reduce consumer demand for electricity:  But that means raising the cost of electricity, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) told McCarthy:  "EPA has said the rule will not increase the cost of electricity, but under this proposed rule, the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour will actually increase.  Isn't that correct?"

Media won't tell you, so here are reasons to doubt global warming.  In 2017, a new administration could halt the EPA's "war on coal" fiasco (which is just a prelude to a "war on fossil fuels") with a simple order.  We're told the new rules will "save consumers money," but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobbying group, says, "These rules threaten to suppress average annual U.S. Gross Domestic Product by $51 billion and lead to an average of 224,000 fewer U.S. jobs every year through 2030, relative to baseline economic forecasts."  The group estimates the cost to the average family at $3,400 per year.  For what?  According to climatologists Paul Knappenberger and Patrick Michaels (June 12, wattsupwiththat.com), "Using a simple, publicly available climate model emulator called MAGICC that was in part developed through support of the EPA, we ran the numbers as to how much future temperature rise would be averted by a complete adoption and adherence to the EPA's new carbon dioxide restrictions.  The answer?  Less than two one-hundredths of a degree Celsius by the year 2100."

Energy Sources, Costs and Global Warming.  Last month the Wall Street Journal (8/18/12) published a breakdown of federal subsidies for electric power production, citing the U.S. Dept. of Energy and the Institute for Energy Research as sources.  Here is the comparison of subsidy costs per megawatt hour:

  Fuel Type              $ Subsidy per megawatt hour
  Oil and Gas            $0.64
  Coal                    0.64
  Hydropower              0.82
  Nuclear                 3.14
  Wind                   56.29
  Solar                 775.64

Gina McCarthy: New emissions rules are clean and affordable.  The Obama administration has released strong new rules targeting coal-burning power plants in an effort to curb global warming.  The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Power Plan seeks to cut carbon emissions by 30% by 2030.  The 645-page rule is a centrepiece of President Barack Obama's plans to leverage similar commitments other polluting nations like China and India.  EPA administrator Gina McCarthy dismissed criticism the rules would lead to an exorbitant rise in electricity prices.

More about the use of the EPA as a weapon against the coal industry.

Obama suggests his upcoming rule on coal plants will avert long-term health crisis.  President Obama on Saturday [5/31/2014] tried to bolster public support for new rules his administration will announce next week on coal-firing [sic] power plants, arguing their carbon emissions are a national health crisis — beyond hurting the economy and causing global warming.  "We don't have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children," Obama said in his weekly address.  "As president and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that's beyond fixing."  The cost of carbon pollution "can be measured in lost lives" and roughly "100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks will be avoided" in just the first year that the standards go into effect, Obama said in the address [...]

The Editor says...
Name one person who has had a heart attack this year because he or she lives near a coal-fired power plant.

Billionaire Liberal Donor Gets [His] Way on Keystone Pipeline.  Last week, the Obama administration yet again delayed its long-delayed determination whether or not to approve the Keystone pipeline, a nondecision strategically announced not just on a Friday, but a Friday that is one of the holiest days of the year.  The administration had enough self-awareness to know its latest exercise of executive inaction was nothing to be proud of.  Even in the mainstream media, almost everyone assumed the move was entirely political.  The project has undergone multiple reviews beginning in 2009 and always gotten a clean bill of health.  The administration cited a lawsuit in Nebraska that might affect the path of the pipeline as reason for the new delay.  This is an absurd fig leaf.

Wasserman Schultz: Politics Didn't Factor into Obama Keystone Pipeline Delay.  DNC Chair and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told Meet the Press' David Gregory Sunday morning [4/20/2014] that President Barack Obama's latest delay in the approval of the proposed Keystone Pipeline was not a political decision meant to animate members of the Democratic base ahead of the 2014 midterms.

Barbara Boxer Says Keystone Pipeline a Cancer Risk.  Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is now accusing the Keystone pipeline of being a cancer risk.  Her first point was that the pipeline "will bring 830,000 barrels of dirty tar sands oil into our nation every day."  She then segued to point #2 by asserting that the heavy tar sands oil will put people who live near refineries at risk for cancer.

Did the Washington Post Collaborate With Congressional Democrats to Smear the Koch Brothers?  Dear Senator Whitehouse and Congressman Waxman:  On March 26, you wrote a letter to David Robertson, President of Koch Industries, about Koch's ostensible relationship to the Keystone Pipeline.  I found this surprising, as it is well documented that Koch has nothing to do with Keystone.  It will neither ship oil on the pipeline, nor receive oil from the pipeline at any refinery. [...] I am investigating whether either or both of you, or any member of your staffs, coordinated with the Washington Post in the publication of the March 20 article.

Build the Keystone Pipeline, Already!  President Barack Obama frequently says he wants to turn the economy around, put America back to work, produce more energy, improve public safety, and open new markets to goods stamped "Made in the USA."  If he truly believes this, he will end the delays and approve the Keystone XL pipeline.  Of all the opportunities arrayed before him, the 1,179-mile Alberta-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline (KXL) is the most "shovel-ready."

Consumers Pay Steep Price for Renewable Power Mandates.  Renewable power mandates are driving up Ohio's electricity prices, U.S. Energy Information Administration data show.  Electricity prices in Ohio have risen more than twice as fast as the national average since Ohio enacted its mandates in 2008.  The sharp price increases occurred despite promises during 2008 legislative hearings that renewable power mandates would have little or no impact on electricity prices.

Obama's Newspeak.  America, of all places, is becoming Orwellian.  The president repeatedly reminds the American people that under his leadership, the U.S. has produced a record level of new oil and natural gas.  But didn't Obama radically curtail leases for just such new energy production on federal lands?  Have the edicts on the barn wall of Animal Farm been changed again, with the production of new oil and gas suddenly going from bad to good?

Obamanomics: Tax The Rich, Punish The Working Poor.  The great entrepreneur Harold Hamm [...] has turned North Dakota into Saudi Arabia.  Energy independence is in sight.  Now, the energy sector is responsible for roughly 10% of our growth.  And tens of thousands of energy jobs are now being created at very high wages, all while our trade deficit is evaporating and our entire Middle East foreign policy may be changing.  Of course, the Obama administration is taking credit for the oil-and-gas revolution.  But they initially opposed it and in fact had nothing to do with it.  And if they opened up federal lands and offshore drilling, the energy success would be even greater.

Obama's Keystone Dithering.  Nowhere has President Obama's legendary indecision been on more vivid display than in his bizarre dithering over the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move crude oil from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries some 1,700 miles to the south.  The southern leg of the pipeline, from Oklahoma to the Gulf, began operating last week.  But the northern end has been in limbo for five years.  Last March Obama assured Senate Republicans that a decision on Keystone would be made before the end of 2013.  We are still waiting.  One more broken promise.

Alberta premier to challenge Gore on oil sands 'myths'.  Alberta Premier Alison Redford said she wants to clear things up with Al Gore over his claims that the province's oil sands are one of the dirtiest sources of fuel.  On a call with Alberta reporters Monday [1/20/2014], Reford said she will set the record straight with the former U.S. vice president when she sees him at the World Economic Forum in Davos later this week, according to the Calgary Herald.

Barack Obama's Presidency Is A Complete Failure By His Own, Self-Imposed Standards.  How many times has President Obama told us that he is "fighting for the middle class"? [...] If President Obama is "fighting for the middle class," why doesn't he approve the Keystone Pipeline?  Building and maintaining the pipeline would provide thousands of good paying jobs.  So would refining and selling the oil and gas from the Gulf Coast refineries where the pipeline would deliver the Canadian crude.  Moreover, that plentiful supply of low cost energy from a long time, reliable ally would support hundreds of thousands if not millions of additional good paying jobs in the American economy.

Climate change warning stickers on gasoline pumps?  A group of Bay Area environmentalists wants to slap warning stickers on gasoline pumps, telling drivers that the fuel they're buying is cooking the planet.  The stickers would constantly remind consumers of the link between driving and climate change.  "Human beings are not really wired for seeing the cause and effect of climate change," said Jamie Brooks, with the Bay Area chapter of 350.org.  "The cause is burning fossil fuels, but we're not going to feel the effects until well into the future.  There's no immediate signal to a consumer of gasoline to show their effects on climate."  That's where the labels would come in.

The Editor says...
Those who put political graffiti on other people's private property are truly annoying.  In this case, the left-wing earth-worshiping activists are spreading a lie, because carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

The Solar Swindle.  Solar electricity is growing, promoted, and most importantly, heavily subsidized.  The promoters of solar electricity claim that it is close to being competitive with conventional sources of electricity.  That is a fantasy.  Solar electricity is expensive and impractical.  If it weren't for government subsidies, some explicit and some disguised, the solar industry would collapse.

Report confirms government effort to alter coal job loss estimates.  The Obama administration tried to edit a report on new coal regulations to lower analysts' estimates of serious job losses, an official investigation has found, backing up reports that the Interior Department pressured a private contractor to change information in order to make the data more acceptable.  The Associated Press and Fox News reported in 2011 that a company claimed the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement asked it to change variables in a calculation that showed new environmental regulations would lead to large job losses.

Environmentalism's Endless Lies.  [Scroll down]  There is no such thing as "environmental justice."  It is an invention of environmental groups that are intent on convincing people that whatever they do or fail to do somehow has an impact on the weather.  Indeed, the entire global warming hoax, now called climate change, was based on the lie that humans were responsible for producing huge amounts of carbon dioxide via industry, driving, or making some toast for breakfast.  The environmental enemy was and is the use of energy, but it is energy that has so vastly improved and protected everyone's life.

Andrew Cuomo facing court battle with energy company over fracking moratorium.  When [Andrew Cuomo] was elected Governor of New York, he ran on a hazy platform when it came to several controversial issues in the state, none more so than the question of fracking.  Vowing to take an "honest look" at the situation, along with the already existing moratorium on the process, he promised that action would be taken one way or the other.  As it turned out, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Obama: 'We Have Accomplished As Much, If Not More, Than Any Time in Our History'.  [Scroll down]  The president then listed among the accomplishments of his administration:  "saving an economy from a Great Depression; revitalizing an auto industry that is producing better cars and has come roaring back like nobody believed; doubling our exports; drastically reducing our dependence on foreign oil; doubling fuel efficiency standards; doubling our production of clean energy; reducing the pace of our carbon emissions; [...]

Federal Ethanol Policy: Bad for the Planet, Good for Lobbyists.  The federal government's push for greater ethanol production, carried out in the name of saving the planet, has done great harm to the environment. [...] [W]hen EPA models indicated that the ethanol mandate would not make fuel green enough to satisfy the law, the agency was pressured into rigging the input assumptions to produce the desired results.  By assuming a huge increase in crop yields (and thus fewer new acres plowed) but a very small increase in corn prices, the EPA was able to claim that ethanol-blended gasoline would produce 21 percent fewer carbon dioxide emissions than standard gasoline, beating the law's emissions-reduction target by just one percentage point.  Those rigged assumptions turned out to be dead wrong.

Interior Secretary: Obama Will Use Executive Powers to Conserve Lands.  President Barack Obama will use his executive powers to protect more mountains, rivers and forests from development if Congress does not act to preserve such wild spaces, the U.S. Interior Secretary said on Thursday [10/31/2013].

The Editor says...
Mr. Obama couldn't care less about wide open spaces, camping and hiking in the wilderness, or expanding national parks.  His goal is to choke off the supply of domestic oil and cripple the U.S. economy.

Turns out, the NSA is also collecting all your Contacts, IM lists and group-chat pals.  You gotta watch this South Sider's words.  He fancies himself a good talker.  But he quite often ends up uttering what Huckleberry Finn calls "stretchers."  Remember one of Obama's other favorite recent lines, how the U.S. has never before produced so much oil and gas?  So, no implied need for the Keystone XL pipeline, right?  Again, the words claiming implicit credit for presiding over an energy production surge appear accurate, as far as they go.  However, the energy explosion comes only because of production surges on private lands, not on the federally-controlled lands where Obama's minions have actually crimped output.

Does McAuliffe Even Understand the EPA's New Rules for Coal Plants?  Lachlan Markay put together this map of where the country's major coal mines are, and where the EPA's "listening sessions" about the rules new were held.  As you'll notice, the sites of the mines and the "listening sessions" weren't near each other.  If you wanted to ensure that no one who actually works in mining weighed in at these "listening sessions," this is pretty much how you would do it.

Obama donor gained nearly $1b in tax credits in Solyndra bankruptcy.  Most people who follow the news are aware that President Obama invested $527 million in Solyndra, the now-bankrupt California-based solar panel manufacturing company.  What is much less well-known is that the federal government was legally required to cut its losses of tax dollars just months into the project, and that only an illegal loan modification made to benefit an Obama fundraiser led to taxpayers losing more than $500 million.  "The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra," Obama declared in May 2010, but even then, the company was burning through more than $10 million a month and headed towards bankruptcy.

Energy Production Up In Spite Of Obama, Not Because Of Him.  This is a recurring, though dishonest, theme with this administration.  In early 2012 it claimed that "domestic oil and natural gas production has increased every year President Obama has been in office."  In 2011, you might recall, it said oil production "reached its highest level in nearly a decade and natural gas production reached an all-time high."  The implication, of course, is that the gains are due to Obama policies, and this time the White House took the claim up another notch by asserting oil output is at "its highest level in 17 years."  We don't dispute that fact.  But the surge hasn't been due to Obama's policies; it's happened in spite of them.

American energy booming despite Obama's policies.  Oil, natural gas and coal production in this country are at record levels.  But this is despite Obama's policies, not, as he implied, because of them.  Oil, natural gas and coal production are zooming upwards on private land, but plummeting on government lands.

The Keystone XL Pipeline and the Truth.  The proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has long been polarized on a number of issues.  Hysteria abounds, with junk science everywhere we look — driven in no small measure by the desire to shut down development of northern Alberta's oil sands via constraining Canadian oil export markets, as well as some apparent anti-Americanism.

Is this the future of fracking?  From the sleepy backwater of Franklin Forks, just ten miles from the New York county line in rural Pennsylvania, blonde and photogenic Tammy [Manning] and her children have been feted by television companies and environmentalists alike:  portrayed as the 'perfect' example of how one family's lives have been blighted by a greedy energy company whose hunger for profit had put their health at serious risk.

Energy Secretary Moniz: 'There's no war on coal'.  Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz sought Thursday [8/1/2013] to reaffirm his department's commitment to coal as part of America's future energy mix, countering accusations that the Obama administration is waging a "war" against the fossil fuel out of environmental concerns.  "There's no war on coal," Secretary Moniz said at a Monitor-hosted breakfast in Washington.

Obama's Keystone Job Claims As Phony As His Recovery.  The president falsely claims that the jobs created by the pipeline from Canada would be but a "blip relative to the need," ignoring his own State Department and the unions that support him.  At the rate President Obama is going, he may claim that building the Keystone XL pipeline will actually cost jobs.  In an interview with the New York Times last Saturday, he argued that the best estimate is 2,000 initial construction jobs followed by no more than an additional 100 jobs, a mere "blip."  The newspaper's transcript of the interview showed Obama chuckling dismissively as he made his point.

'Gasland' scandal ignited at EPA.  HBO viewers thought they saw Steve Lipsky, a Parker County, Texas, home-owner, holding his garden hose belching fire from his methane-contaminated water well.  The flaming water was terrifying and "Gasland Part II" blamed it on fracking done by Range Resources, a Fort Worth-based shale gas driller.  What viewers actually witnessed was Lipsky holding a hose secretly connected to a gas vent, not a water line.  This fraud came out in a lawsuit filed by Steven and Shyla Lipsky against Range for $6.5 million in the 43rd State District Court of Texas.

Coal industry threatened by stringent new EPA standards.  The Obama administration has rejected accusations it has launched a "war on coal."  But it presses ahead with yet more carbon regulation.

Want infrastructure improvement and middle class jobs, Mr. Obama? Approve the Keystone XL pipeline.  One has to be forever bemused by our President of Perpetual Irony.  Recently, in his big economic speech, he stood at the port in Jacksonville, Florida to emphasize infrastructure's role in creating jobs.  He then proceeded to call out House Republicans as obstructionists.  Question 1:  What is a project which will immediately increase the capacity our energy infrastructure and create jobs at no cost to the government?  Question 2:  Who is the obstructionist not allowing that to happen?

DOE forecasts suggest that fossil fuels are the energy sources of the future.  President Obama has frequently promoted renewable energy sources, and said during his 2012 campaign that "We've got to look at the energy sources of the future, like wind and solar and biofuels, and make those investments."  By "investments" Obama most likely means massive "taxpayer-funded subsidies" for wind, solar, and biofuels.  At the same time, Obama has often dismissed fossil fuels as "energy sources of the past."  But according to projections from Obama's Department of Energy, the reality is much different [...]

The Top 5 Lies About Fracking.  Gasland Part II, the sequel to director/activist Josh Fox's earlier anti-fracking docudrama Gasland, will run on HBO next Monday.  It appears to have rounded up the usual corporate villains and appealing victims of profit-hungry capitalist skullduggery, rather than telling the more substantial story:  that fracking combined with horizontal drilling has unleashed a bonanza of cheap natural gas.

The President's Broken Window Fallacy: Carbon Policies and Jobs.  That there are no free lunches is an eternal truth, notwithstanding the assertions of experts and public officials.  The Obama version of this ancient snake oil is simple:  we can have a stronger economy and more employment if we discard part of the power-generating capital stock. [...] For the economy as a whole, the broken window — or the electric generating capital forced into retirement — is a net loss.  We cannot become richer over time by making ourselves poorer in the here and now.

Mr. President, It's Not "Carbon Pollution" It's the "Elixir of Life!"  On June 25th, President Obama unveiled his plan to reduce what he refers to as "carbon pollution" — the emission of gaseous carbon dioxide into the air that primarily results from the burning of fossil fuels.  In discussing the rationale for his plan, the President claims that carbon dioxide, or CO2, "causes climate change and threatens public health" and that "cutting carbon pollution will help keep our air and water clean and protect our kids."  Unfortunately, President Obama's statements could not be further from the truth.

Beware! Media Will Support Obama's Climate Lies.  At the heart of the President's speech is his reference to "carbon pollution."  It has no scientific basis.  You will not read that in Wednesday's newspapers, nor hear it on radio and television unless you are tuned to conservative media.  The claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant is absurd insofar as it is, next to oxygen, the second most vital gas for life on planet Earth.  It is responsible for the growth of all vegetation, including crops vital to feeding humanity and the livestock on which they depend as a food source.

The Top 5 Lies Of Obama's Climate Change Speech.  President Obama is being lauded for his plans to restrict carbon dioxide emissions.  But the scheme looks more like the last refuge of a desperate movement, because the speech he gave in its defense was full of lies.  Al Gore called Obama's Tuesday presentation at Georgetown University a "terrific and historic speech."  It was not an honest message, though.  His text was laden with myths, fables, distortions and outright lies.

"A dangerous, arrogant, fact-free tirade."
Blowing Smoke: Obama Climate Speech Riddled With Lies.  President Barack Obama's naïve and error-riddled speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday clearly demonstrated that he is serious about trying to stop global climate change.  However, like the tide, climate change is a natural event of such proportions that it is largely unaffected by human activities.  Obama ignores that the "official climate science" on which he bases America's climate and energy policies has been washed away by 17 years without global warming, despite atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) — the gas Obama blames for rising temperatures — continuing to increase primarily due to the emissions of China and India.

Obama should confront climate change fantasies.  President Obama's new climate policies outlined Tuesday include both brilliant and useless ideas.  The confusion stems from Obama's unwillingness to confront three climate fantasies:
  •   Renewables are a major part of the solution today.  No, they are almost trivial.  Today, the world gets 81% of its energy from fossil fuels — by 2035, in the most green scenario, we will still get 79% from fossil fuels. [...]
  •   Biofuels should play a major part of the solution.  No.  For now, biofuels simply diverts food into cars, driving up food prices and starvation, while clearing forests for new fields emit more CO2 than biofuels save.
  •   Efficiency can cut emissions.  No.  While efficiency is good, studies show it has little climate impact, because its savings gets eaten up by more use.  As your car gets more efficient, you drive it further, and the money you still save get used for other carbon-emitting activities.

No 'War on Coal' says Energy Secretary.  Oh, really?  That will come as good news to the thousands of coal miners and others who work in the coal industry slated to lose their jobs because of EPA regs and Obama executive orders. [...] Of course there's a war on coal.  The war has been going on for at least 3 years as more than 142 coal fired plants have been shuttered, according to the Sierra Club.  But apparently, that's not considered a war on coal by the administration.

Ethanol Proponents Mislead on Gas Prices.  The reader doesn't need a PhD in economics to see the smoke and mirrors in the Buis and Dinneen piece.  Early on, they claim that Renewable Identification Number (RIN) credits for ethanol are "free," and that they were "created at the oil companies' insistence."  Then in the very next sentence they say that early this year "the price of RINs rose dramatically," and later in their op-ed state that petroleum industry trade groups are spending "millions of dollars" to attack the renewable fuel mandates.  Now regardless of what the reader may think about oil companies, the above claims make no sense.

The President's Ruinous Energy Policy: Once More with Feeling.  During his reelection campaign, the president boasted that domestic oil and gas production was at an all-time high, with the implication that he was somehow responsible for this accomplishment.  In fact, Obama has done everything possible to retard oil and gas exploration, including a 40% decline in production on federal lands, a continued moratorium on East-Coast drilling, and refusal to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.  Obama also continues to drag his feet on a decision to allow the export of liquefied natural gas to non-Free Trade Agreement countries.

Obama repeats energy mistakes of the past.  A new language was introduced in Washington when President Barack Obama began his first term in office. [...] The language is newspeak.  Introduced by George Orwell, it is characterized by using familiar words and phrases in unfamiliar ways. [...] His "all-of-the-above" approach apparently means wasting precious federal revenues on failed renewable projects while bankrupting the coal industry and slapping new taxes and regulations on U.S. oil and natural gas producers.

'No such thing as ethical oil,' Al Gore tells Toronto audience.  [Scroll down]  In a public interview with The Globe and Mail's editor-in-chief, John Stackhouse, Mr. Gore also spoke of his wish that U.S. president Barack Obama would cancel the Keystone XL pipeline intended to transport heavy crude from the Alberta oil sands to U.S. refineries.

Gore: 'There's no such thing as ethical oil'.  Former Vice President Gore on Tuesday [5/7/2013] said "there's no such thing as ethical oil," slamming the notion that importing oil from U.S. ally Canada was better than doing so from unfriendly nations.  "There's no such thing as ethical oil.  There's only dirty oil and dirtier oil," Gore told Canada's The Globe and Mail during a Tuesday event in Toronto.

Al Gore Makes A Crackpot Statement About Dirty Oil.  Speaking before an audience gathered by the Toronto Globe and Mail, the former vice president rejected the idea that oil from Alberta is "ethical oil" because, in the words of Globe and Mail editor-in-chief John Stackhouse, it is produced by a democratic nation that is committed to human rights. [...] While Gore's overall point is pure crackpottery, he is partly right.  There is no such thing as ethical oil.  But neither is there a such thing as unethical oil.  It is an inanimate commodity without moral orientation.

President Obama steals credit for energy success he opposed.  President Obama may be the first chief executive to take credit for the results of things he has opposed throughout his time in the Oval Office.  The latest example came last week, when the Department of the Interior announced it had approved 21 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for energy resource exploration and development.

The Associated Press tells a fear-mongering sob story about how fracking will ruin everything when it comes to Illinois.
Southern Illinois braces for oil rush as 'fracking' regulations considered by lawmakers.  After drilling intensively in many states in the last few years, the industry is now preparing to push into new territory, hoping to tap deposits long considered out of reach.

Methane study, EPA debunk claims of water pollution, climate change from fracking.  After a 16-month investigation, state regulators Monday said that natural gas fracking, contrary to highly publicized claims, isn't to blame for high methane levels in three families' drinking water in a northern Pennsylvania town.  For fracking proponents, it was another piece of good news.  The oil and gas industry still was unwrapping the federal government's acknowledgment that fracking isn't nearly as harmful to the environment as it previously claimed.

The attack line about 'special' deals for the industry doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
About Those Tax Breaks for Big Oil.  Thanks in part to a bill sponsored by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland and ranking member on the House Budget Committee, it's all much clearer now.  The congressman has inadvertently called attention to the fact that those special tax breaks just for the oil and gas industry don't exist.  Mr. Van Hollen proposes to create some very special punishments instead.

The Dream of a World Without Oil.  [Mark Z.] Jacobsen's article provides a thorough assessment of the future of WWS [wind, water and solar].  Unfortunately, rather than buttress his argument, his figures undermine the conclusion that we don't need fossil fuels.

Jobs of the Future?  [Scroll down]  President Obama refers to green jobs as "jobs of the future."  If so, some comparisons in the BLS green jobs report show a future that looks pretty old.  Engineering services (100,847 green jobs) and architectural services (71,891 green jobs) each has fewer green jobs than used merchandise stores (106,865), waste collection (116,293), and school and employee bus transportation (160,896).  Using the BLS metric, Obama's "jobs of the future" are more likely to be found in trash collection, the Salvation Army, and driving school buses than in engineering and architectural services.

Obama falsely claims credit for America's energy boom.  During the Friday [3/15/2013] event at which President Obama announced $2 billion in new green energy subsidies, he erroneously credited his administration's "all of the above" energy policy for the nation's increased oil and gas production. [...] The numbers and facts that Obama cited were all correct.  But his claim is still false, unless he can somehow claim credit (and we wouldn't necessarily put it past him) for placing massive shale deposits below ground stretching from Texas to North Dakota and from the mountain West to western Maryland.

Obama predicts cars that drive from 'coast to coast without a drop of oil'.  Obama, expanding on an initiative he addressed in his State of the Union speech last month, said the United States must shift its cars and trucks entirely off oil to avoid perpetual fluctuations in gas prices.

Obama touts energy production his administration has hindered.  Between fiscal years 2010 and 2012, total U.S. oil production rose by about 1.1 million barrels per day over fiscal year 2007, and natural gas production rose 20 percent from 2007 to 2012.  What the president failed to mention is that the growth he is so proud of has taken place in spite of his administration's energy policy, not because of it.

Did Obama Just Block Keystone?  [Scroll down]  So the Obama administration could green-light the pipeline, file a report that stops short of calling Keystone a major global-warming hazard, and still find the project delayed for years by environmental groups bringing court challenges under the new NEPA guidelines.  In this scenario, headlines loudly proclaiming Obama's approval of Keystone would shield him from Republican attacks.  Simultaneously, the president could mollify the left by claiming credit for guidelines that effectively allowed his allies to stop the pipeline.

Obama's War On Drilling: Oil Surplus, Not Scarcity, Is The New Regulatory Excuse.  Regardless of abundance and necessity, the Obama administration continues to justify new regulations that restrict access to America's oil and gas reserves.

Obama: Only Canada would profit from Keystone XL.  President Obama told a group of House Republicans at a closed-door meeting on Wednesday [3/13/2013] that the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline won't profit anyone but Canada.  Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., told the Associated Press that Obama said the benefits of the project have been overstated because many of the jobs created would be temporary, and much of the oil produced from the pipeline would be exported.

SOTU: Energy Fabrications, Falsehoods and Fantasies.  [For example,] That's why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.  Drilling permits that once took 30 days to be approved now take more than 180 days.  Even relatively simple things like the approval of development plan (DOCD) revisions are sometimes drawn out to nearly 300 days.

Will Obama Trade A Carbon Tax For Keystone XL?  Having failed to lower the sea levels in his first term, President Obama, in the first SOTU of his second term, highlighted the need for fighting climate change and proposed an Energy Security Trust Fund to siphon off money from those who actually produce abundant and useable energy to fund alternative energy sources which constitute a rounding error in the percent of energy produced by various sources.

Domestic Energy: Triumph in the Face of Adversity.  Who should be given credit for this explosion of production?  In his re-election campaign, Obama boasted that it was his administration that made this possible.  However, of all the outrageous lies he has told, this has got to be the biggest.  The primary reason for the explosive growth of North American fossil fuel production is the innovation in extraction technology — not big government.