Articles tagged as

Energy

Data Point – Selling those electric cars

As I pointed out here, President Obama has decided that: With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. That’s 4 years for now.  Thinking that’s about a quarter million cars / year, that … Read more

State Sen. Jeanie Forrester opposes clean, plentiful energy? GraniteGrok got snookered!

First of all, take a look at THIS ARTICLE about the Northern Pass Canadian hydroelectric energy project. It would provide New Hampshire and future generations with a clean, stable, renewable, cheap, ongoing energy supply.

So naturally lots of people oppose it. Republican Ray Burton—a member of the Grafton County Commission—is even seeking the help of President Obama to block the energy project. Republican State Senator Jeanie Forrester also opposes it.

Jeanie Forrester? GraniteGrok got snookered! Here’s why….

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Yes, More US Energy Use Equals More Output

This is not a theorem, or a rule, it is more of a guideline.  That US Energy consumption produces  equals output.  I made this case back in 2008 when wackadoodles like Jeanne Shaheen, Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter (among others milking the teats of the earth-mother for green votes) complained about how America used 25% of the worlds energy–or something close to it, and we were evil for using all that energy.  The narrative was that we were domestic abuses of a child named "resources."

My point, proven time and again, and again, and again, is that we took roughly 25% of the worlds energy and turned it into 25% or more of the worlds wealth and prosperity.  The US GDP as a percentage of global GDP was almost identical to our percentage of energy consumption. 

But we did it cleaner, faster, better, with more freedom and choices than anywhere else on the planet. And the end result was the richest nation with the fewest poor, the best health care, and almost a better everything else.  Even our poor are better.

Liberals and progressives in the democrat party however hate that, just like they hate this; more proof that we do more good things with energy by 6AM than the rest of the world does all day.

It is a chart (on the jump), that shows GDP output compared to energy consumption.  Follow the link, and you can play with the interactive version that shows you who, where, what and so on.  Press play to watch use and growth. Try the tabs and check boxes, and have a grand old time–for about 90 seconds.  Then share it with your annoying liberal friends, and make them buy you another drink for being wrong yet again about something else they will continue to insist is true despite evidence to the contrary.  (There is no settled science but global warming after all.)

 

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It’s A Shameless Capitalist Endorsement!

Adros EnergyI have invested some time and (renewable) energy arguing against federal subsidies and hand outs to prop up businesses that make environmentalists and their democrat sugar daddies happy.  My primary objective with "green" energy projects has not been the business itself or even the goal, but the way in which the state and federal government uses our money to pick winners and losers or to incentivise things.

So it only seems fair to point out when someone is trying to advance alternative energy the right way.   I recently met the guys who run Adros Energy in Amherst New Hampshire.  Theirs is a veteran owned company that does home energy audits, and specializes in hybridizing or combining clean energy systems like solar, thermal and wind together to free people from the control of government regulations over energy and what usually amounts to some kind of monopoly on power and pricing by one or few providers.

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The Invertebrate Jeanne Shaheen?

So did Jeanne Shaheen vote for cloture on the Reid’s Frankenstein tax compromise and will she vote to pass it? I ask because it includes Billions for a one year extension of ethanol subsidies that Senator Shaheen just insisted we could not afford.

What’s Greene Shaheen Up To?

corn snake
corn snake

Senator Shaheen has signed onto a letter to Senate Majority leader Reid and Minority leader McConnell, suggesting that the corn based ethanol mandates, and all the tariffs and protections associated with it, not be extended.  Your initial reaction might be surprise, but this is not in and of itself surprising.  Shaheen is on the record being against them since at least 2008 when she ran for the US Senate but not because she is against ethanol.  Her problem is the kind of ethanol, and so we can assume her co-signers have similar issues.

On the surface they are claiming to be against the law (the mandate) that props up ethanol on three fronts and also gives 31 billion dollars to the oil companies to offset the cost of forcing them to add ethanol to fossil based motor fuels.  I’m against corporate welfare so I can’t object to repeal even with ulterior motives, but this starts off as a calculated, backhanded poke in the eye, not just to the stupidity of the subsidy regime that liberals normally love, but to big oil.  And we should expect oil to get screwed. We should simply accept that even with repeal of the ethanol mandate, we could still see the government use other means of legislative or bureaucratic force to keep ethanol in the fuel supply and pass those costs off to the oil companies.  If they can screw oil and get what they really want along the way, that’s a dream come true to Progressives.  But what do these signers really want?

As usual, nothing in Washington is quite what it seems.

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More Stupid Environmentalist Notions

Liberals say the dumbest things. A few days ago we read that a number of activists are trying to terminate the license renewal for Seabrook Nuclear power plant because, they insist, renewable sources will become available to replace the power Seabrook currently generates.

Is Carol Shea-Porter anti-millitary?

Carol Seiu-Porter’s energy policy agenda actually costs the US military billions of dollars more per year in increased fuel and energy costs. Stephen Hayward at the Weekly Standard estimated that every $10/barrel added to the price of oil costs the defense department (and you) one billion dollars more per year.

Public Service Is About Trust

I’d just assume have a root canal without pain killer as suffer through an editorial by Carol Shea-Porter, but sometimes you have to take one for the team. So I have immersed myself in the last rights editorial of the soon to be former congresswoman from New Hampshire’s first district, which is ironically titled, ‘Public Service is about trust.’

Trust?

Before I proceed let me offer up a comment on Carol’s notion of trust.  In traditional progressive fashion the meaning of trust has had to have been tortured before admitting under duress and threat of death to its friends and family members, that Carol’s application of it’s meaning holds any relevance at all to the historical application.  In fact Carol’s willingness to even use the word in this context, nay–any context at all–in reference to what she refers to as her public service, is a public disservice to the word, the language, the people of the first district, and serves to cement the likelihood that she is the disconnected, ruling class political shill we suspect her to be, if not also clinically insane.

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Lynch Lied.com Updates

Swing on over to Lynchlied.com to check out some of the most recent ‘lies.’  There’s a new one posted that is near and dear to my heart.  (I’ve been talking about it for years) It reminds us that John Lynch’s support of RGGI is a broad based tax that has sucked 25 million dollars out … Read more

Destroying The Future Of America

Image Credit: Mattox Firearms school.comDemocrats continue to insist that they created jobs.  To do this they extracted trillions from our economic future in an effort to create jobs that did not yet exist–that perhaps were  not needed yet.  Looking at similar exercises, cash for clunkers–which moved car sales forward a few months but has since resulted in a collapse in the market; the home mortgage bail outs, supports, credits, and the "home affordable" programs which improved home sales briefly but which have since collapsed (also to historic lows); and then there’s the stimulus, several public sector employee bailouts, bank lending infusions, small business bills, and everything in between including health care reform–many trillions spent, all made with claims that they would create, save, or incentivize job creation.

Lets concede the possibility that some jobs were saved or created with money from the future.  Let’s also, for academic purposes,  concede the number of 1.4 million-3.3 million jobs saved or created ( quote from Paul Hodes campaign if that matters).  What happens now?  Even if we can agree to these figures the mathematical reality is that despite these efforts, and at great expense, we still lost more jobs than we saved or created.  Millions are still unemployed with hundreds of thousands more people working less, working shorter hours, or who have given up looking altogether just in the 12 months since someone declared the recession over.  We got a net sum loss with the price of admission, and that debt is now looming over our ability to sustain or improve the job picture moving forward because of the Faustian fiscal political calculation the democrats made in what now appears to be a series of vote getting scams gone horribly wrong.

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Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'EmI haven’t written a post about energy for almost a week so I’ll keep this one short.

Greene Shaheen, Carol CO2-Porter, and Paul ‘Carbon Credits’ Hodes, all support massive taxation on emissions because without them, we are doomed…doomed I tell you DOOMED!  So doomed that  Hodes and Porter at least, voted for a remedy that doesn’t do anything except make energy cost more while enriching energy companies, corporate farms, green energy companies in China, themselves, and the government.  But they insist it’s to save the earth.

Don’t be surprised, they are full of crap.

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Winds Of Change

It should be common knowledge that if we get rid of John Lynch and enough democrats that we can also free New Hampshire from the retarded fad known as RGGI. And the green energy initiatives that are all based on flawed science and an economic model that costs us jobs and business growth.

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More Trouble Than They Are Worth

This would have to be filed away as a classic, not just because of its age–it’s a few years old–but because it reminds us of why we don’t want congress and congressman, working–and the busy-body ruling class in general–spending too much time in the swamp.  They cause more problems than they solve.     (Another … Read more

CLEAR gets KO’d For Now

Oil and GasWith bi-partisan support the Senate has blocked a new energy tax passed by the House that would have hit the middle class and working families right in their shrinking wallets.  The CLEAR act, a job killing tax raising attempt by House democrats beholden to radical environmentalists, would have driven energy industry jobs out of America by the thousands while raising taxes on oil and natural gas.  It also would have increased our dependency on foreign energy, enriching countries that just a few years ago the democrats were claiming should not be getting wealthy on the backs of hard working Americans.  Yet here we are with 10% or more of the population out of work or underemployed  and the disconnected ruling-class House democrats are passing massive new energy taxes and shifting more American dollars off shore to places they themselves have said do not have our best interests at heart.

Morons? Hard to tell. This looks like an intentional effort to make energy more expensive so their green lobby campaign donors and the deep pocketed environmental justice crowd can make the even more expensive ‘so-called’ alternative more attractive.  Whatever the goal the pain and suffering this new tax burden and job loss would place upon average families, and single moms with kids is unconscionable and the left could care less.

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Reducing Foreign Dependency On What?

Can we even count how many times our New Hampshire congressional democrats claimed that we needed to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?  Twice?  A dozen times?  Hundreds?  Is it safe to say that among the lot there has been enough rhetoric on reducing foreign dependence to fill the Verizon center?

So why then have the House Democrats, Carol SEIU-Porter, and Paul ‘Sugar Daddy’ Hodes voted in favor of legislation (The CLEAR Act) that would tax domestic oil and gas even more?  Has it occurred to them that this will give foreign oil a distinct price advantage over domestic oil?  Probably not.

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Sugar Daddy

Paul Hodes has a dirty little secret.  His ‘commitment’ to green energy has strings attached that lead directly to the sugar industry and a significant campaign cash “Thank You.”  Back in 2007 and 2008 Congress waged an epic battle over the Farm Bill.  They didn’t call it the farm bill they called it the Food … Read more

Chicago On The Merrimack

The democrat party line on BP is to close ranks and paint Republicans as protecting big oil.  This is necessary to distract America from Obama’s incompetence and the democrat’s cozy relationship with the British energy company.  Both Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes got the memo—they are on board—using tragedy for personal and political profit as each has sent out fundraising propaganda asking supporters to help them fend of the GOP and its defense of big oil.  These people are unbelievable. 

In a recent Hodes fundraising email staffer Valerie Martin claims that… 

"Republicans… are standing up for Big Oil, Big Insurance, and Big Banks. 

It’s just another example of a Republican defending the special interests, not your interests.…

Other Republicans are even inexplicably criticizing President Obama’s efforts to make sure BP has money set aside to pay for the damages they caused.”” 

So let me see if I’ve go this right.  Paul Hodes (lawyer) sanctions the chief executive’s right to pry billions away from a private company without due process of law, when it is politically or ideologically convenient.  You can run on that and democrats will vote for you?

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Can Charlie be “Energy Independent”?

I recently read an article claiming that "biomass" energy will produce more greenhouse gasses than coal over the next 40 years.

Basically, biomass energy is the process of harvesting, then burning/incinerating wood and other plant (sometimes animal) products.  In addition to wood, the biomass plant category includes corn, hemp, and sugarcane.  The act of harvesting can include using construction debris, collecting waste or fallen trees, or by cutting live trees.

Massachusetts, under Governor Deval Patrick, recently invested $1M into the development of four new wood-burning plants in their State, but has decided to rethink their position based on this study, which was prepared for the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.  The department has opened the study for comments, and plans to conduct hearings this July.
 
Click References to this study can be found in numerous articles: Here, and here

Now, I’ve listened to Charlie Bass speak a number of times.  Each time, he’s touted the fact that he’s been successful in the renewable, "biomass" energy business for a while.  Charlie has used his time and experience in the biomass industry, since losing to Paul Hodes in 2006, as a badge of honor.  Charlie is a board member for 2 renewable energy companies.
 
He has claimed that biomass can help us "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" (it could make a small dent, at the expense of cutting a lot of trees), is renewable (only if cut-based harvesting is followed by replanting), and is clean.  Well, according to this study, it may not be as clean as we thought, and is certainly not "carbon-neutral".
 
I recently asked Charlie whether he’ll resign from the boards of these companies (one makes wood-pellets, the other builds biomass plants), or recuse himself from all energy policy activity in Congress, should he be elected in November.  His response was that he will "resign from the boards".

However, my big question is…

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