Free Republic

The CBS News headline proclaimed “Pickens Plan for Huge Wind Farm Blows Away,” as Texas oilman and billionaire financier T. Boone Pickens latest venture to build a huge wind farm to demonstrate the viability of alternative energy has instead become a demonstration of why such ideas are not viable. His plan was unveiled last year in the face of highest-ever oil and natural gas prices, when oil prices peaked at more than $145 a barrel and wholesale natural gas reached $47.61 per cubic meter, making his plan for a 4,000 megawatt wind power project in Pampa, Texas look very appealing....

This is really frightening. We warned Americans Barack Obama is a Marxist who would govern through dangerous people. Obama’s new Czar, for “Green Jobs” Anthony “Van” Jones freely admits he’s a proud San Francisco Communist with an arrest record. Because the media has no integrity and works against us, except for Fox News, we have heard little or nothing about this. The amount of damage this confirmed member of Obama’s secret “cabinet” will do as “Green Czar” is frightening to the core. With his signature this radical unelected party apparatchik will be able to crush America’s economy to help Obama’s...

Obama-meters on the way… By Steve Milloy Monday, July 13, 2009 Baltimore Gas & Electric is leading the way to electricity rationing, courtesy of President Obama. The utility announced today that it filed with local regulators an application to install 2 million so-called “smart meters” in the homes of its residential customers. Smart meters allow local utilities to control electricity use in your home. Using a $200 million Department of Energy grant — part of the $787 billion Obama Stimulus package enacted earlier in the year — BG&E plans to charge customers for the balance of the costs. BG&E claims...

SEATTLE – It's one of the great American summer pastimes: Pulling the car onto the driveway on a sun-drenched Saturday afternoon, lathering it up with soap, rinsing it off and watching the sudsy water flow toward the storm drain. Now, officials in Washington and elsewhere are telling residents to either take that old ride to the car wash, or hold the soap and wash the car over gravel or grass to filter the dirty water. The officials are trying to prevent the runoff, with all of its soap, grim and metals from the car, from reaching rivers and streams and...

Green Left, an eco-socialist current within the Green Party of England and Wales, held its annual general meeting on June 20 in London. It discussed the work of the network over the past year in struggles against war, racism and environmental decay and in winning support for eco-socialism as a solution to the economic and climate crises.

Organized labor this week is warning Senate Democrats not to renege on trade protections included in House climate change legislation that would buffer domestic manufacturers from cheap consumer products made in China and elsewhere. “We need to have global warming legislation that makes sure we don’t create perverse incentives that encourage these energy-intensive industries to leave the United States and invest elsewhere in the world where they don’t have the same environmental costs,” said David Foster, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance. The Blue Green Alliance is a coalition of unions and environmental groups including the Sierra Club, the...

— General Motors could literally turn green as it readies itself for major management and cultural changes that will coincide with its escape from bankruptcy protection. People briefed on its plans say the company is looking into changing the background color of its corporate logo from blue to green in an effort to show consumers that it is leaner and greener...

The White House would be wise to learn the lessons of T. Boone Pickens' wind-power failure. On Tuesday, Texas oilman and energy security proselyte T. Boone Pickens announced that he will delay, and likely permanently scuttle, plans for a 687 turbine wind project in the Texas panhandle. The demise of the project, which was supposed to be the largest in the world at a rated generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts, came when Pickens discovered he couldn't raise money to build transmission lines to carry wind energy from his remote 200,000 acres to big cities that would consume the power. Pickens...

More unemployment means a smaller carbon footprint, as California greenies succeed in convincing a judge to shut down a needed modernization of California's oldest refinery, the massive 104 year old Chevron Richmond refinery. David R. Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle reports: A judge has ordered Chevron Corp. to stop work on its controversial oil refinery expansion in Richmond, handing environmentalists their biggest victory in a long fight over the project. Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga gave Chevron 60 days to wind up work on the project, which would have given the 107-year-old refinery greater flexibility to...

The Energy Department said Tuesday it would lend $5.9 billion to Ford Motor Co. and provide about $2.1 billion in loans to Nissan Motor Co. and Tesla Motors Inc., making the three automakers the first beneficiaries of a $25 billion fund to develop fuel-efficient vehicles.

Here is a start-up automobile company involving algore, T. Boone Pickens, and KPCB partners (a "green" venture capital firm). Hold on to your wallets, these guys are good at getting tax subsidies, grants, abatements, mandates, etc. It looks like Gov. Jindal has already bought into it. Anyone willing to put personal money into this venture with an expectation of actually making a profit by selling a real product meeting consumer demand?

Like other green-leaning Colorado cities, Boulder finds good intentions aren't enough to meet greenhouse-gas goals. Even for Boulder, an icon of earthy urban planning, saving the planet doesn't come easy. Faced with a looming deadline and lagging results in its efforts to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, city leaders recently vowed to redouble their efforts. The City Council earlier this month voted to raise the city's "carbon tax" — a charge based on how much electricity one consumes — to the maximum $21 per year for residences and $94 per year for businesses. And Boulderites aren't pikers. Many of the 20 or...

Today, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, wrote Atty. Gen. Eric Holder to ask if bailed-out, taxpayer-owned carmakers General Motors and Chrysler are breaking any laws by continuing to lobby the federal government while owned by the federal government, Sensenbrenner's office has told me. Specifically, Sensenbrenner singled out GM's and Chrysler's membership in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of Fortune 500 companies and environmental non-profits dedicated to lobbying for federal restrictions on greenhouse gas--specifically, the sort of cap-and-trade scheme at the heart of the Waxman-Markey bill currently before the House. A quote from...

THE HAGUE, 16/08/08 - Wijnand Duyvendak has resigned as MP. His position became untenable following the disclosure that he was involved with an attempt to set fire to the home of top civil servant George Verberg. But attempts to rehabilitate Duyvendak have already begun. Leftwing Green (GroenLinks) leader Femke Halsema has accepted Duyvendak's decision to resign "with pain in my heart." She stressed that she found him a politician of "integrity." Halsema suggested that Duyvendak would return again to the Lower House after the next elections. "I am not responsible for the candidates committee, but I cannot imagine that GroenLinks...

Environment: Democrats failed to create jobs with their unnecessary, pork-laden stimulus bill. Now they want to kill even more of them with an equally unnecessary global warming bill.The party that cares so much about jobs for "working families" sure has a funny way of saving them. Amid pre-summer frosts and hailstorms, the White House this week released a sky-is-falling report on global warming that outdoes even Al Gore in predicting doomsday scenarios. "Heat waves will become more frequent and intense," the report warns, unleashing an apocalypse of "major insect outbreaks" and herbicide-resistant, garden-choking . . . "weeds" (horrors!). "Heat waves"...

Environmentalists and industry representatives pleaded their case with federal regulators Tuesday over rules that would slash toxic emissions from cement kilns, the top source of mercury emissions in California. The Environmental Protection Agency issued proposed regulations for Portland cement kilns earlier this year, after more than a decade of pressure from environmental groups. The rules aim to reduce the industry's mercury emissions by an estimated 81% to 93% annually, as well as cut emissions of hydrocarbons, particulate matter and hydrochloric acid.

The winners: Supermini Fiat 500 Start&Stop £9,700, 113g/km, 58.9mpg Small family car Volvo S40 1.6D DRIVe S £17,495, 104g/km, 72.4mpg Family car Toyota Avensis 2.0 D-4D T2 £17,545, 135g/km, 55.4mpg Executive car BMW 318d ES £24,235, 123g/km, 60.1mpg MPV Citroën Grand C4 Picasso 1.6 HDi £19,095, 140g/km, 53.3mpg 4X4 Lexus RX450h SE-L £50,460, 148g/km, 44.8mpg Sports car Mini Cooper S £16,575, 149g/km, 45.6 mpg Luxury car Audi A8 2.8 V6 FSI SE £49,970, 199g/km, 34.0mpg Technology Vauxhall Ampera Editor's award Tesla

Leader of Australia's influential Greens party, whose support the government needs to begin its carbon trading scheme, could be forced to leave parliament over a forestry court battle that threatens to bankrupt him. Senator Bob Brown accused the island state of Tasmania's government and its powerful logging industry of trying to push him out of the national upper house, where his party controls five of seven key swing votes. A letter was sent to Mr Brown last week by state-owned Forestry Tasmania demanding he pay a $239,368 (£120,000) legal bill by June 29 or face bankruptcy proceedings that would see...

You worry a lot about the environment and do everything you can to reduce your carbon footprint -- the emissions of greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change. So you always prefer to take the train or the bus rather than a plane, and avoid using a car whenever you can, faithful to the belief that this inflicts less harm to the planet. Well, there could be a nasty surprise in store for you, for taking public transport may not be as green as you automatically think, says a new US study. SNIP These are hidden or displaced emissions that...

I'm thinking that Bob Lutz, truthteller, is not long for the payroll of General Motors. After all, he is a Global Warming Denier, who, if this were the time of Henry VIII, would be burned at the stake as a heretic. But for now, it is nice to see at least one auto executive call BS on the Enviro-kooks.

NEW YORK — If the United States and every wealthy country in the world were to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero tomorrow and there were no change in the developing world, “the crisis would still overtake us,” said Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States, at a forum in New York City last week. Whether or not that is precisely true, the implication almost certainly is. Little progress can be made in addressing the global climate crisis, after all, unless common cause is found between rich countries, who created the problem in becoming so, and poorer...

On May 19th MIT released a report that proves something. They proved group think still exists. That's all they proved. How can this be? Their model seems so all encompassing... The key lay in this phrase, "selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge", from MIT's recent publication. Because they are using mathematical equations that have been found to be incorrect, they cannot get repeatable results that can be applied systemically to the entire Earth’s climate that matches the data actually recorded. They can only get a probability. This...

On May 12, the White House withdrew the nomination of Chuck Hurley to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Mr. Hurley had a long record of backing hyperregulation as chief executive officer of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and as a board member of the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running. Environmental groups reportedly opposed his nomination because he had said that increased Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards made cars less safe. Contradicting environmentalist orthodoxy carries a price. A May 13 headline in the National Journal explained the politics of Mr. Hurley's political demise: "Enviros Forced NHTSA Nominee to...

Get ready, folks: America is about to own a car company. As of Monday, we the taxpayers will own more than 70 percent of GM. Whether the company will be formally renamed Government Motors remains to be seen. But that’s what it will be. Instead of putting the failed car enterprise into bankruptcy six months ago — where Carl Icahn or Wilbur Ross could have bought it — the Bush administration chose Bailout Nation. Under Team Obama, that bailout has morphed into full-scale government ownership. Twenty billion dollars of TARP money is already invested in GM, with another $50 billion...

BEIJING (AP) — U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged Beijing on Thursday to cooperate on climate change, calling a safe environment a basic human right.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged Beijing on Thursday to cooperate on climate change, calling a safe environment a basic human right. Speaking at Beijing's elite Tsinghua University, Pelosi continued the theme of her five-day China trip — that combating global warming represented a new challenge that both governments must tackle jointly. "We are all in this together," Pelosi told an audience of about 200 students and faculty who applauded enthusiastically throughout the 45-minute session. "The impact of climate change is a tremendous risk to the security and well-being of our countries." Pelosi's trip has been notable for skirting human...

While many companies hire lobbyists to win earmarks, General Electric’s unmatched lobbying force has secured a tax increase — or its equivalent — in President Barack Obama’s budget. Labeled “climate revenues” and totaling $646 billion over eight years, this line item in Obama’s budget has inspired confidence in GE Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt. As Immelt put it in a letter this week, he believes that the Obama administration will be a profitable “financier” and “key partner.” On page 115 of Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget is Table S-2, titled “Effect of Budget Proposals on Projected Deficits.” The chart forecasts the...

Director Mike Judge’s new animated television series “The Goode Family” is a send-up of a clan of environmentalists who live by the words “What would Al Gore do?” Gerald and Helen Goode want nothing more than to minimize their carbon footprint. They feed their dog, Che, only veggies (much to the pet’s dismay) and Mr. Goode dutifully separates sheets of toilet paper when his wife accidentally buys two-ply. And, of course, the family drives a hybrid. On Wednesday at 9 p.m., “The Goode Family” will have its premiere on ABC and become the first animated series on the network’s prime-time...

As the economy sheds jobs, community colleges across the country are reporting a surge of unemployed workers enrolling in courses that offer training for "green-collar" jobs. Students are learning how to install solar panels, repair wind turbines, produce biofuels and do other work related to renewable energy. "I think the opportunities in this field are going to be huge," said Rudy Gastelo, a part-time handyman who left the construction industry two years ago. "I'm not getting that 9-to-5 paycheck, so I'm looking forward to maybe getting a job within a solar company."

From the April 20, 2009 National Review With the selling of President Obama’s economic agenda now in full gear, this is a good time to take stock of his energy plans against the background of energy trends worldwide. Alas, even a brief glimpse reveals that Obama’s focus on renewable energy and the introduction of a cap-and-trade regime runs counter to both economic rationality and current energy trends to the point of guaranteeing its inevitable failure, which will result in serious economic harm to the United States. The president is imposing his green agenda on America, even as the renewable-energy bubbles...

"Curiouser and curiouser", said Alice. Not an unnatural response to the wholesale departure from reality she experienced at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. And we have precisely the same head-scratching response to the refusal of green ideologues to grasp the energy realities of our age, especially as they affect a realistic role for renewable energy sources. The Green Gospel If any group has set the agenda for Green-ism in our age, it is Greenpeace. In 2007 Greenpeace produced a film ‘The Convenient Solution', which succinctly put the case for renewable energy's ‘urgent' solution before the world. Introducing the film on...

How does the "The Clean Energy Divide" sound to you? The Obama administration is exploring alternative names for cap and trade legislation. People don't really know what cap and trade means, but they don't like it. So a new name is being concocted to gather support for the legislation. It doesn't look like the names "carbon tax" or "regressive tax" are in the mix, though. How does "clean energy divide" grab you? WSJ: Seeking to bolster public support for climate legislation, the Obama administration is consulting pollsters who advocate avoiding phrases such as "cap-and-trade" and "global warming." On Monday, the...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twd59PrqCNg

A key part of President Obama's energy plan -- replacing fossil fuels with green alternatives -- is facing increasing opposition from an unlikely source: environmentalists. Some environmentalists, who have successfully fought a wind farm on the border of Oregon and Washington, are trying to block a massive solar plant in the Mojave desert. And now an Oregon county is considering a ban on wind power in the foothills of the blue mountains. "We all want to be as green as we can be. But at what cost?" Richard Jolly of the Blue Mountain Alliance. "To take everything from us? This...

It gives me great pleasure to announce the end of “global warming.” Or rather at least the term “global warming.” As doubt about the hysteria of global warming and anthropogenic climate change continue to grow amidst the scientific community and the public, a new marketing message by advocates of the theory is beginning to emerge. Much like how the Obama Administration has decided to forgo the use of the phrases ‘enemy combatant’ and the ‘Global War on Terror’ because they were deemed offensive, it is believed that messaging will help turn the tide and spur action on climate change. The...

London, England (CNS) - Britain's Prince Charles is opening a MySpace account. The 60-year-old royal has turned to the social networking site to warn young people about the dangers of deforestation and climate change.His page is expected to explain why it is vital to preserve rain forests and how cutting down trees emits more carbon in a year than all the cars, planes, boats and trucks in the world.Speaking about his decision to take his eco-crusade online, Charles said: "One of the internet's strengths is that it can enable diverse communities to come together to ensure that everybody's views and...

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - Last week Google brought in a herd of goats to mow the grass on its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters rather than using lawnmowers. The company said that it wanted to take a more "low-carbon" approach with the goats reducing the company's contribution to air and noise pollution. The cost of hiring the 200-some goats is about the same price as mowing, but the goats were "a lot cuter to watch." PETA responded to a TechCrunch call about the goats saying that though they have no problem with letting goats do what they do, they do have concerns...

My son and I went to AT&T Park today to watch the Giants play the Colorado Rockies. It was pretty rainy driving up and I thought the game might be cancelled which would a pretty rare event for San Francisco in May. As we entered the park, we received free ball caps to commemorate "Solar Day," sponsored by PG&E. Before the game started, PG&E ran a commercial on huge TV screen extolling the virtues of solar and how wonderful the PG&E company is because of their efforts to build a solar-powered baseball park, a solar powered utility and a solar...

Add another name to the ever-growing list of environmental hypocrites: that of Barack Obama. The president celebrated the annual Earth Day festivities by jetting aboard Air Force One from Washington to Des Moines, Iowa, and from there he choppered over to the town of Newton -- delivering remarks at a plant that manufactures wind-turbine towers. There, he called for "a new era of energy exploration in America" (except for offshore oil drilling, no doubt). Now, Obama could have given this speech at the White House -- except that the background visuals probably wouldn't have been so, well, visual. And a...

See how we should celebrate at the link

Saturn caravan helps welcome new president, promotes energy conservation. "Change starts in your driveway!" declared Saturn General Manager Jill Lajdziak, as she launched the trip outside the North American International Auto Show in downtown Detroit. ...To gather promises and greetings, the VUE's planned stopovers at Saturn retailers, grade schools and colleges, including three of the 17 involved in the EcoCAR contest--Ohio State, Penn State, and Howard University... Here students and others signed oversized greeting cards (infused with plantable wildflower seeds) for the newly elected chief executive. The card read: "Change: Thanks to you the word is no longer a cliche....

Hug a tree. Recycle. But don't forget the biodegradable "green" poop bags to ensure your dog has a small carbon pawprint. Yes, Earth Day has come to this.

The decision on CO2 emissions is likely a boon for cleantech; critics fear huge risk to U.S. economy.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Bush administration did not properly study the environmental impact of expanding oil and gas drilling off the Alaska coast and canceled a program to find new reserves. A three-judge panel in Washington found that the Bush-era Interior Department failed to consider the effect on the environment and marine life before it began the process in August 2005 to expand an oil and gas leasing program in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas. The appeals court ordered the department, now run by President Barack Obama's appointee Ken Salazar, to analyze...

For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration. President Obama, in fact, has used Spain’s green initiative as a blueprint for how the United States should use federal funds to stimulate the economy. Obama’s economic stimulus package,which Congress passed in February, allocates billions...

The companies announced Tuesday that they are working together to develop a two-wheeled, two-seat electric vehicle designed to be a fast, safe, inexpensive and clean alternative to traditional cars and trucks .

WASHINGTON – The increased use of ethanol could cost the government up to $900 million for food stamps and child nutrition programs, a congressional report says. Higher use of the corn-based fuel additive accounted for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the rise in food prices between April 2007 and April 2008 .. The CBO said other factors, such as skyrocketing energy costs, had an even greater impact than ethanol on food prices during that period. .. Ethanol's impact on future food prices is uncertain, the report says, because an increased supply of corn has the potential to eventually...

Writing for Time, a magazine on the brink, science-challenged eco writer and earth-doom hysteric Bryan Walsh describes a Planet On The Brink: It is the black-and-white indri, largest of the lemurs … the species — like many other lemurs, like many other animals in Madagascar, like so much of life on Earth — is endangered and dwindling fast. Time‘s editors would once have cut this sort of demented exaggeration. I know; I used to work there. But quality editing is, as Walsh might say, endangered and dwindling fast. Oddly, this runs parallel to magazine sales. Walsh continues: Through our growing...

The Obama administration wants to reduce oil consumption, increase renewable energy supplies and cut carbon dioxide emissions in the most ambitious transformation of energy policy in a generation. But the world’s oil giants are not convinced that it will work. Even as Washington goes into a frenzy over energy, many of the oil companies are staying on the sidelines, balking at investing in new technologies favored by the president, or even straying from commitments they had already made. Royal Dutch Shell said last month that it would freeze its research and investments in wind, solar and hydrogen power, and focus...

Another sign that that the eco-movement is a victim of the economy: Condé Nast, the publisher of Vanity Fair has decided to kill its annual green issue, according to an article by Rachel Shields in the April 5 The Independent (UK). "Condé Nast, publisher of Vanity Fair, argues that the environment has become so integral to the news agenda that there is no longer a need for a dedicated issue," Shields wrote. "Vanity Fair remains committed to covering the environment, and we'll spread our coverage throughout the year, instead of relegating the bulk of it to a specific issue," a...