Free Republic

This week's uprising in Egypt that occurred in concert with a minor spike in the price of oil unsurprisingly led to renewed commentary suggesting the U.S. must achieve "energy independence." A USA Today editorial noted that "More than half the oil Americans use is imported - a vulnerability exposed by the ongoing tumult in Egypt", while noted energy scold T. Boone Pickens decried our continued "exposure" to overseas events that allegedly reward us with higher oil prices. But looked at with a more reasoned eye, the events in Egypt exposed the sheer absurdity of the charitably false notion of energy...

From the video caption: Seven false green energy job 'myths' are debunked. This video was produced by http:rev-up.org -- a site that provides teachers and students all the resources they might need for renewable energy education.

Looking good is what Avon is all about, so it's not surprising that a cosmetics giant with annual revenues of $10 billion is concerned about its image. That, after all, is the motive behind Avon's boycott of fuel derived from Alberta's oil sands -- looking good. Never mind that oil banned from Alberta -- the most regulated and transparently sourced oil on the planet -- will have to be replaced by oil from some despotic regime but, hey, maybe you can put lipstick on a pig. "Avon recognizes its responsibility to the environment and the world's forests," said Tod Abreast,...

ITHACA-- The future of Marcellus Shale hydraulic fracturing in New York faces more push-back from local politicians. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) was in Ithaca Wednesday to sign a letter asking Gov. Paterson to withdraw the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) the state Department of Environmental Conservation released last year. Walter Hang, president of Toxics Targeting, wrote the letter last year. Former congressman Eric Massa and Rep. Mike Arcuri's names are also on that petition.

Recovery: While states like Nevada wallow in recession, tiny North Dakota becomes the first state rated as expanding by a leading service. Could it be the state's burgeoning energy industry? The recession — induced by Democrats and activists meddling in the housing market through the Community Reinvestment Act and then whistling past the bad-loan graveyard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — officially ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. For much of the country, mired in a jobless recovery with job losses so great and prospects so bleak that it will take decades just...

"It has been a matter of policy in the wind farm industry to make the financing of it both opaque and complicated," said Mr Etherington. "In all countries across Europe the customer is not told how much they are paying for it, and the whole financing of the industry is coming out of subsidy on electricity generation." .....Recent research by Kroll, the international corporate security firm, has discovered examples all over Europe of so-called "clean energy" schemes being used to to line criminals' pockets rather than save the planet. Some involve windmills that stand derelict or are simply never built,...

In the 1980′s I altered the words of a pop song to describe how I felt about our economy and my personal future: The future is so bright I have to wear welding goggles. (For most of you who don’t know about manufacturing, welding goggles filter out almost all light – arc welding is like staring into the sun.) I don’t know anyone who feels this way anymore. America is lost. We are stagnant. There is no really big thing coming along in technology that will save the day, although there are millions of incremental improvements that are improving the...

The Finnish Parliament approved the construction of two nuclear power plants on Thursday, the latest victory for proponents of atomic energy in Europe. Just two weeks ago, the Swedish Parliament narrowly voted to allow the reactors at 10 nuclear power plants to be replaced when the old ones are shut down — a reversal from a 1980 referendum that called for them to be phased out entirely. The vote will allow the Finns to build their sixth and seventh nuclear plants. The country’s four existing nuclear plants provide about 28 percent of Finland’s total electricity needs, according to the World...

Energy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is its lies. Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did. According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar's May 27...

Deja Vu: In a Carteresque speech Wednesday, the president said we should tax our way out of despondency and dependence on fossil fuels. The American dream isn't slipping away. It's being stolen by big government. It might as well have been President Carter addressing the audience of students and faculty at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. Instead it was President Obama who spoke of our dependence on fossil fuels and blamed everybody and everything, except for a lack of presidential leadership, for our current situation. On July 15, 1979, President James Earl Carter gave what has become known as the "malaise"...

Energy: An administration never enthusiastic about offshore drilling is using the Gulf oil spill as an excuse to suspend Arctic exploration. Who could've seen that coming? Now we'll be more dependent on foreign oil. Suspicions in some quarters that the administration was being deliberately lax in its response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in order to pursue a larger, anti-domestic energy agenda were met with derision. But if not deliberate, the effect is the same as the administration prepares to shut down our search for new oil. President Obama on Thursday announced a suspension...

The BP Spill: Tuesday on Capitol Hill, oil executives were subjected to the Senate's latest show trial. Senators did not say the accident in federal waters was a federal responsibility or that nature spills more oil every day. The morning hearing by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee chaired by Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and the afternoon session before California Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environmental and Public Works Committee prove White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's dictum that a good crisis is a terrible thing to waste — especially when your goal is exploiting the Deepwater Horizon disaster...

Energy: The administration has banned new offshore drilling until the Gulf oil spill is investigated. Was its heart in it anyway? It seems environmental concerns apply only to certain forms of energy. No one pays much attention to the aquatic "dead zones" that have appeared off our shores at the mouths of our rivers due to agricultural runoff created by mandates for corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is green energy, good energy — never mind that such biofuels drive up food prices, increase hunger around the world and damage the environment in their own way. The explosion that blew apart an oil...

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill. We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline. Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., Obama announced the welcome news that his administration will let lease sales go...

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

A new technique being used to drill through a type of rock known as shale has led to a surge in domestic natural gas production over the last three years and enabled the United States to overtake Russia recently as the world's No. 1 producer of natural gas. As a result, we are seeing a remarkable turnabout in energy geopolitics: as U.S. natural gas reserves have soared thanks to advanced drilling methods, Russia's goal of establishing a world gas cartel patterned on OPEC has collapsed. How big of a development is this? Think back to 2003, when America's demand for...

On a party-line vote, the Democratically-controlled state Senate killed a bill tied to Gov. Robert McDonnell’s (R) plans for offshore oil and natural gas exploration. Twenty-two Democrats — including all senators from Arlington County, City of Alexandria and Fairfax County — voted down a bill that would have designated 80 percent of revenue and royalties produced by drilling off the shore of Virginia for the commonwealth’s transportation trust fund. All 18 Republicans supported the measure. While on the campaign trial this past fall, McDonnell had promoted drilling for oil and natural gas off the shore of Virginia Beach, saying, among...

Energy: A new study shows that our reluctance to develop domestic energy will cost the beleaguered U.S. economy trillions in opportunity costs, reduce our gross domestic product and increase our trade deficit. From trying to stimulate jobs in nonexistent ZIP codes at great expense to worshiping the false gods of climate change, our biggest deficit these days may be in the area of common sense. A new study shows that many of our wounds are self-inflicted as we forgo the wealth and jobs to be found in our waters and under our feet. The study by Science Applications International Corp....

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama next week will announce a loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the United States in almost three decades, an administration official said Friday. The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House energy plan administration officials hope will draw Republican support. Obama's direct involvement in announcing the award underscores the political weight the White House is putting behind its effort to use nuclear power and alternative energy sources to lessen American dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil...

Energy: When even Chuck Schumer is upset with the White House, you know something's amiss. In this case, it's news that efforts to boost wind power with taxpayer stimulus dollars are filling foreign coffers and creating foreign jobs. According to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Investment Act has been spent on wind power. The goal was to further energy independence while creating American jobs. It has done neither. Of the money spent, according to the report, nearly 80% has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines. "In all...