Beware of ‘post-partisan’ energy policy

Just as tea party activism is about to snatch American energy policy from the jaws of cap-and-trade, some on the right are already moving into “bipartisan” mode. The (often) conservative American Enterprise Institute has teamed up with the (liberal) Brookings Institution and the (self-described, “founded in 2003 to modernize liberal-progressive-green politics”) Breakthrough Institute to offer a “post-partisan” energy policy.

Below is the introduction and summary of recommendations of the group’s report “Post-Partisan Power: How a Limited and Direct Approach to Energy Innovation Can Deliver Clean, Cheap Energy, Economic Productivity and National Prosperity.” Our comments are in bracketed bold.

INTRODUCTION

If ever there were a time to hit the reset button on energy policy, it is today. [Agreed, if this means getting rid of centrally-planned and dictated energy policy and politics. Somehow, though…] Congress is set to adjourn without taking substantive, long-term action on either climate or energy. [Great. The defeat of cap-and-tarde is a victory for America.] While conservatives may be celebrating the death of cap and trade, the truth is that the right’s longstanding hopes for the expansion of nuclear power and oil production have also run aground, foundering on the high cost of constructing new nuclear plants and the impacts of the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. [C’mon, if the greens had passed cap-and-trade, there would still not be any nuclear power or new oil/gas drilling. To argue to the contrary is either naive or disingenuous.] As a result, energy policy is at a standstill, despite overwhelming public support for accelerating the move to clean, affordable energy sources and tapping fast-growing clean energy industries to create jobs and wealth in the United States. [American-produced energy already is clean — it’s the Chinese that could use the Clean Air Act.]

Today, few issues in American political life are as polarized as energy policy, with both left and right entrenched in old worldviews that no longer make sense. [Global warming skepticism is based on sound science. If that’s an “old worldview,” then call us dinosaurs.] For the better part of two decades, much of the right has speculated darkly about global warming as a United Nations-inspired conspiracy to destroy American sovereignty, all while passing off chants of “drill, baby, drill” as real energy policy. [Speculated? Did you miss Climategate? Glacier-gate? Pachauri-gate? Al Gore’s admission that climate regulation is about global governance?] During the same period much of the left has oscillated incoherently between exhortations that avoiding the end of the world demands shared sacrifice, and contradictory assertions that today’s renewable energy and efficiency technologies can eliminate fossil fuels at no significant cost. [The left isn’ oscillating at all. They are focused on establishing a one-world socialist paradise. Whatever path gets the comrades there, they’ll follow. Global warming has just been their most successful gambit to date.] All the while, America’s dependence on fossil fuels continues unabated and political gridlock deepens, preventing real progress towards a safer, cleaner, more secure energy system. [We have plenty of fossil fuels, and they are cheap and safe. We’d be even more energy independent, if we relied more on our own resources including coal, natural gas and nuclear power. Three cheers for gridlock — it’s better than the Obama alternative.]

The extremes have so dominated mainstream thinking on energy that it is easy to forget how much reasonable liberals and conservatives can actually agree on. [Watch out conservatives, here’s where the post-partisans get us to walk into the chopper blades.] Fossil fuels have undeniably been critical to American prosperity and development, but we can gradually move toward cleaner, healthier, and safer energy sources. [There is no objective or empirical evidence indicating that alternative forms of energy are cleaner, healthier and safer than fossil fuels.] Indeed, throughout history, as we have become a more prosperous nation, we have steadily moved to cleaner energy sources, from wood and dung to coal to oil to natural gas, hydropower, and nuclear energy. [Nonsense. There is no such transition going on. We use more coal than natural gas. The greens have essentially killed off more nuclear development. Hydropower is only used where possible. The greens want to go back to burning wood and weeds (biomass).] Our goal today should be to make new clean energy sources much cheaper so they can steadily displace fossil fuels, continuing this ongoing process. [Fossil fuels are not “dirty” as used in America.] If we structure this transition correctly, new energy industries could be an important driver of long-term economic growth. [How does more expensive energy without any accompanying benefits lead to long-term economic growth?]

Arriving at a new post-partisan consensus will require liberals and conservatives, alike, to take a renewed look at key facts, which challenge some long-standing assumptions about energy. [Translation: Now that conservatives have triumphed over cap-and-trade, it’s time to surrender.]

For liberals this means acknowledging that today’s renewable energy technologies are, by and large, too expensive and difficult to scale to meet the energy needs of the nation, much less a rapidly growing global population. [Does this mean that: (1) liberals should wake up and smell reality; (2) Al Gore and his fellow green profiteers/rentseekers should try to make money the old-fashioned way, i.e., by earning it; and that (3) green Marxist/socialists and other reds should cease and desist?] New mandates, carbon pricing systems such as cap and trade, and today’s mess of subsidies are not going to deliver the kind of clean energy innovation required. And nuclear power, long reviled by many on the left, is far cleaner and safer than most liberals imagine, and holds enormous potential to displace low-cost but high-polluting coal power. [The left doesn’t care about how safe nuclear power is. Nuclear power is energy non grata as far as the left is concerned.]

For conservatives this means acknowledging that fossil fuels have serious health, safety, and security consequences aside from any risks global warming might pose. [Sorry, not buying the junk science. This sentence is footnoted to materials from groups like Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Clean Air Task Force.] The biggest obstacle facing nuclear
power is not environmental policy but rather public opposition, high construction costs, and associated financial risks. [All green activist inspired problems.] And while many faults can be found with ethanol and synfuels investments, the bulk of historic federal investments in energy technology — from hydro and nuclear to solar, wind, and electric vehicles — have been an overwhelming success. [Hydro has worked. Nukes can work. but solar, wind and EVs are taxpayer rip-offs.]

This white paper is the product of a more than yearlong dialogue between scholars at three think tanks situated at divergent points on the political compass. Drawing on America’s bipartisan history of successful federal investment to catalyze technology innovation by the U.S. military, universities, private corporations, and entrepreneurs, the heart of this proposal is a $25 billion per year investment channeled through a reformed energy innovation system. [Because central planning (as the 20th century proved) works so well…]

This new system is built on a four-part energy framework:

1. Invest in Energy Science and Education
2. Overhaul the Energy Innovation System
3. Reform Energy Subsidies and Use Military Procurement and Competitive Deployment to Drive Innovation and Price Declines
4. Internalize the Cost of Energy Modernization and Ensure Investments Do Not Add to the National Debt

To accelerate energy innovation and modernization, we propose a role for government that is both limited and direct. It is limited because it is focused, not on reorganizing our entire highly complex energy economy, but rather on specific strategies to drive down the real cost of clean energy technologies. Instead of subsidizing existing technologies hoping that as they scale up, costs will decline, or providing tax credits to indirectly incentivize research at private firms, this framework is direct because the federal government would directly drive innovation and adoption through basic research, development, and procurement in the same way it did with computers, pharmaceutical drugs, radios, microchips, and many other technologies.

Time and again, when confronted with compelling national innovation priorities, the United States has summoned the resources necessary to secure American technological leadership by investing in breakthrough science and world-class education. The United States responded vigorously to the Soviet launch of Sputnik by investing the resources necessary to ensure American innovators, entrepreneurs, and firms would lead the world in aerospace, IT, and computing technologies, igniting prosperous new industries in the process. [The successes of the Manhattan Project and race to the moon should not swell the heads of would-be central planners. Both were exceedingly limited-in-scope projects. Not easy, but limited.] Today, we invest $30 billion annually in pursuit of new cures to deadly diseases and new biomedical innovations that can extend the lives and welfare of Americans. [Investment? We have accomplished precious little with that annual $30 billion. That expenditure has become more akin to workfare for the overeducated.] We similarly devote more than $80 billion annually to military innovations that can help secure our borders. [Another rousing government success!] We propose a similar national commitment to energy sciences and education, which have languished without the funding deserving of a national innovation priority. [We already spend a fortune on education — more than any other nation. What do we get for it? 25th in worldwide math and science?] At the same, this proposal is based on what we know about successful public-private partnerships to build and strengthen regional hubs of innovation, such as the one that evolved into Silicon Valley. Therefore, we propose investment in a national network of regional clusters of universities, entrepreneurs, private investors, and technology companies. [Apparently, we can’t make progress until we have the proper bureaucracy set up. Taxpayers need to hold on to their wallets any time the term “public private partnership is used.]

While the left wants to cut fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies and the right wants to cut renewable energy subsidies, we propose across-the-board energy subsidy reform, disciplining all incentives for technology deployment and adoption to a new framework that rewards innovation — as measured through real declines in the cost of generating energy — not simply producing more of the same. [Why not get rid of all subsidies and reform the tax code? Make technologies compete on their own economic merits. Technology is its own incentive; if it needs to be subsidized then it has no real value.] Today’s federal investments — whether for solar and wind or ethanol and nuclear — are structured around scale and quantity, not innovation. The innovation system we propose builds on the successes of military procurement to purchase and prove advanced energy systems while providing competitive markets for emerging energy technologies, which can facilitate mass manufacture, demand progressive innovation, and bring down the real, unsubsidized cost of clean and secure energy alternatives. [Military procurement as a model? Which cost-overrun should we point to? What is this fascination with command-and-control style government?]

These productive investments have the potential to raise America’s economic growth over the long term and thus help reduce the budget deficit. America’s $1.3 trillion budget deficit is largely a consequence of low growth and the increasing cost of structural entitlement programs, but it can be overcome by a combination of higher growth, responsible entitlement reform, and targeted spending cuts. Achieving higher growth will require continued federal investments in productive enterprises, including health, information technology, and energy. [Believe it or not, fire, electric current, the automobile, airplane, telegraph, telephone and many other technologies were all developed and commcialized without government involvement. AEI and Brookings have been in Washington, DC too long.] Furthermore, fear of technology failure should not paralyze strategic investments in innovation, since some amount of failure is inevitable and essential to such a disruptive and non-linear process. [We have nothing to fear, but the government itself.]

To ensure that these limited, targeted new investments do not add to the federal deficit, we propose a suite of options that Congress and the President can use to finance energy innovation. [Because the government can/should be picking winners and losers? President Obama was a community organizer, not Thomas Edison, in his past life (and even Edison was wrong when it came to electricity for the masses).] These include cutting existing energy subsidies, charging new royalties for oil drilling, small surcharges on oil imports or electricity sales, and a very low carbon price. While each of these mechanisms may bother some on both the left and right, all should agree that exacerbating the national debt is unwise. Revenues must be found in order to make these productive investments, which have long-term potential to revitalize the economy. [A growing economy will float all boats — including our bloated government. Growing government will do just the opposite.]

Increasing investment in energy technology and innovation, as we advocate, remains exceedingly popular with Americans of all political stripes. Of all energy policy proposals, from carbon pricing and cap and trade to new oil and gas drilling, expanding production and lowering the price of clean, innovative energy technologies is the most popular approach, regularly receiving support from 65 to 90 percent of Americans in independent news polls, Gallup surveys, and other opinion research. [Unicorns for everyone and free cotton candy would also be popular.]This public support is consistent over time, and reflects the historical willingness of publics to pay slightly more for cleaner and safer energy sources. [Let’s poll the public and whether it likes being lied to and ripped off by the government.]

In the pages that follow, we aim to present a practical and bipartisan [Bipartisan = supposed conservatives who want to be invited to tony Washington DC cocktail parties.] approach to American energy policy. The time has come for a fresh start that can bring our nation into the future through a pragmatic drive to make clean energy cheap and abundant. [Fresh start = July 4, 1776]

POST-PARTISAN POWER
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE!BROOKINGS INSTITUTION!BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE
SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS”

Invest in Energy Science and Education

Secure funding necessary to complete the doubling of Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science budgets. Direct a significant portion of new funds to programs related to energy sciences, including roughly $300 million in annual funding to scale up the Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) program over the coming years. [The Department of Energy is a failure and should be abolished.]

Invest roughly $500 million annually to support K-12 curriculum and teacher training, energy education scholarships, post-doctoral fellowships, and graduate research grants. [We need to get the federal government out of education. Has anyone noticed that kids have gotten stupider as the government gets more involved?] Just as the United States rose to the Cold War challenge by enacting the National Defense Education Act and leveling critical investments in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, a new national commitment is needed today to train, educate, and inspire a generation of energy innovators, engineers, and entrepreneurs. [Cold War defense challenges were solved by men and women who were educated in the days before taxpayer largesse flowed freely to a corrupted university system.]

Overhaul the Energy Innovation System

Help reform the U.S. energy innovation system by investing up to $5 billion annually to establish a robust national network of regional energy innovation institutes bringing together private sector, university, and government researchers alongside investors and private sector customers. Funded at $50-300 million annually, each institute will foster competitive centers of clean energy innovation and entrepreneurship while accelerating the translation of research insights into commercial products. [Because in Washington DC: Bureaucracy=Success]

Bring the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) to scale by providing $1.5 billion annually, while dedicating a significant portion of new funding to dual-use energy technology innovations with the potential to enhance energy security and strengthen the U.S. military. The Department of Defense (DOD) should work actively with ARPA-E to determine and select dual-use breakthrough energy innovations for funding through the ARPA-E program and potential adoption and procurement by the DOD. [Hopefully, DOD’s success with pioneering the Internet will translate into a perpetual motion machine.]

Reform Energy Subsidies and Use Military Procurement and Competitive Deployment Incentives to Drive Price Declines

Reform the nation’s morass of energy subsidies. Instead of open-ended subsidies that reward firms for producing more of the same product, employ a new strategy of competitive deployment incentives, disciplined by cost reductions and optimized to drive steady improvements in the price and performance of a suite of emerging energy technologies. Create incentives for various classes of energy technologies to ensure that each has a chance to mature. Decrease incentive levels until emerging technologies become competitive with mature, entrenched competitors to avoid creating permanently subsidized industries or picking winners and losers, a priori. Meet the new morass; same as the old morass.]

Expand DOD efforts to procure, demonstrate, test, validate, and improve a suite of cutting-edge energy technologies. New, innovative energy alternatives are necessary to secure the national defense, enhance energy security, and improve the operational capabilities of the U.S. military. Provide up to $5 billion annually in new appropriations to ensure the Pentagon has the resources to pursue this critical effort without infringing on funds required for current military operations. [We should just surrender to the Chinese now. In return, maybe they’ll let us keep using knives and forks.]

Recognize the potential for nuclear power — particularly innovative, smaller reactor designs — to enhance American energy security, reduce pollution, and supply affordable power. [We can “recognize” anything we want, but as long as the greens have the ability to choke of nuclear power through regulation and litigation, they will.] America cannot afford to bank on one technology alone, however, and must pursue all paths to clean, affordable energy, supporting all innovative, emerging clean energy sources, from advanced wind, geothermal, and solar to electric vehicles and advanced batteries, allowing winners to emerge over time. [At what point does the taxpayer get to pull the plug on failed technologies?]

Internalize the Cost of Energy Modernization and Ensure Investments Do Not Add to the Deficit

Secure revenues to ensure these productive new investments do not exacerbate the national debt, through one or a combination of the following means: phase out unproductive energy subsidies, which have not sufficiently driven innovation; direct revenues from oil and gas leasing to energy innovation; implement a small fee on imported oil to drive energy innovation and enhance American energy security; establish a small surcharge on electricity sales to fund energy modernization, similar to the Highway Trust Fund; and/or dedicate revenues from a very small carbon price to finance necessary investments in clean energy technology. [Translation: Make consumers pay more for energy.]

So there you have it —  “post-partisan energy policy.” It’ll build on what’s failed and then charge people more for it.

Sorry, but we’re for gridlock until the American left packs up and moves to Totalitarian Fantasy Island.

Michael Mann: Vote Democratic and save me from jail!

Poor, poor pitiful Michael Mann. Check out his op-ed in last Friday’s Washington Post — our comments in bracketed bold.

Get the anti-science bent out of politics
By Michael E. Mann
Friday, October 8, 2010; A17

As a scientist [Wanna poll that assertion?], I shouldn’t have a stake in the upcoming midterm elections, but unfortunately, it seems that I — and indeed all my fellow climate scientists — do. [Republicans = Inquisition, don’t ya know…]

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has threatened that, if he becomes chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he will launch what would be a hostile investigation of climate science. The focus would be on e-mails stolen [There’s no evidence that the e-mails were “stolen.”] from scientists at the University of East Anglia in Britain last fall that climate-change deniers have falsely claimed demonstrate wrongdoing by scientists, including me. [As between so-called climate-change deniers” and Michael Mann, “falsely” and “wrongdoing” only apply to Mann.] Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) may do the same if he takes over a committee on climate change and energy security.

My employer, Penn State University, exonerated me [False: PSU never really investigated Mann; it more or less just took his word that he had done nothing wrong. Since there was no genuine investigation, he could not have been genuinely “exonerated.”] after a thorough investigation [LOL!] of my e-mails in the East Anglia archive. Five independent investigations in Britain and the United States, and a thorough recent review by the Environmental Protection Agency, also have cleared the scientists of accusations of impropriety. [All were as whitewashey as PSU’s. “Independent” is probably not the right adjective to describe the investigations; “staged” is much more accurate.]

Nonetheless, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is investigating my previous employer, the University of Virginia, based on the stolen e-mails. [Even if the e-mails were stolen, how exactly does that exonerate Mann? BTW, Daniel Ellsberg stole files (Pentagon Papers) and he was/is a hero of the Left.] A judge rejected his initial subpoena, finding that Cuccinelli had failed to provide objective evidence of wrongdoing. [The judge said that Cuccinelli was within his rights to file such subpoenas and that he needed to be more specific as to what he was looking for.] Undeterred, Cuccinelli appealed the decision to the Virginia Supreme Court and this week issued a new civil subpoena.

What could Issa, Sensenbrenner and Cuccinelli possibly think they might uncover now, a year after the e-mails were published? [Evidence of f-r-a-u-d.]

The truth is that they don’t expect to uncover anything. Instead, they want to continue a 20-year assault on climate research, questioning basic science and promoting doubt where there is none. [No, they are just questioning whether the hockey stick was a fraud and whether a fraud was perpetrated on taxpayers.]

Cuccinelli, in fact, rests his case largely on discredited claims that Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) made during hearings in 2005 at which he attacked me and my fellow researchers. [Discredited? By who? When? Where? Any names? Details?] Then-Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) had the courage and character to challenge Barton’s attacks. We need more political leaders like him today. [Boehlert = RINO]

We have lived through the pseudo-science that questioned the link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer [Tobacco company hijinks = Michael Mann innocence?], and the false claims questioning the science of acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. [What false claims is he referring to? Does he know anything about either? Or is this just more guilt by Mann-uendo?] The same dynamics and many of the same players are still hard at work, questioning the reality of climate change. [No one questions “the reality of climate change”; it’s the causes and drivers that are being debated.]

The basic physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide and other human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere have been understood for nearly two centuries. Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers and raising sea levels. It is leading to more widespread drought, more frequent heat waves and more powerful hurricanes. Even without my work, or that of the entire sub-field of studying past climates, scientists are in broad agreement on the reality of these changes and their near-certain link to human activity.[These last three sentences are disputed by skeptics.]

Burying our heads in the sand would leave future generations at the mercy of potentially dangerous changes in our climate. [Humans have always been at the mercy of nature. Fossil fuels have greatly lessened our vulnerability.] The only sure way to mitigate these threats is to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions dramatically over the next few decades. [Really? No more bad weather if we reduce CO2 levels?] But even if we don’t reduce emissions, the reality of adapting to climate change will require responses from government at all levels. [There is no evidence that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will have any discernible effect at all on the climate.]

Challenges to policy proposals for how to deal with this problem should be welcome — indeed, a good-faith debate is essential for wise public policymaking. [Quite a statement from someone who tried to silence critics.]

But the attacks against the science must stop. [No one is attacking science. We’re attacking junk science.] They are not good-faith questioning of scientific research. They are anti-science. [Mann accuses his opponents of what he is doing — an old trick of narcissists and Communists.]

How can I assure young researchers in climate science that if they make a breakthrough in our understanding about how human activity is altering our climate that they, too, will not be dragged through a show trial at a congressional hearing? [Easy… tell them not to engage in junk science or fraud.]

America has led the world in science for decades. It has benefited our culture, our economy and our understanding of the world. [No thanks to Michael Mann and his kind.]

My fellow scientists and I must be ready to stand up to blatant abuse from politicians who seek to mislead and distract the public. They are hurting American science. And their failure to accept the reality of climate change will hurt our children and grandchildren, too. [If Michael Mann wants to “stand up” to something, why doesn’t he stand up for a debate against a skeptical climate scientist? I think we all know the asnwer to that one.]

Michael E. Mann, the author of “Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming,” is a professor in the meteorology department at Penn State University and director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. [PSU’s continued employment of Mann gives a whole new meaning to Nittany lion.]

We urge people to move to Virginia just so they can vote for Ken Cuccinelli in future elections.

WV Guv takes ‘dead aim at cap and trade’

Democrats haven’t done much to earn anyone’s trust lately, but here’s West Virginia Governor and U.S. Senate candidate Joe Manchin trying to make amends in a TV ad where Manchin literally shoots a cap-and-trade bill. Manchin gets an A+ for this effort.

C’mon John Raese… let’s see you top Manchin’s ad!

Insider trading on green energy in Harry Reid’s office?

The Wall Street Journal reported today about a staffer in Harry Reid’s office who nearly doubled his $3,500 investment in a renewable energy firm in 2008. Sen. Reid helped pass legislation that benefitted the firm.

Reid’s spokesman tried to defend the staffer, Reid’s top energy policy adviser, by asserting that he had no influence over tax incentives for renewable energy firms.

Under federal securities law, of course, it is not important whether the staffer had any influence over legislation, Sen. Reid or anyone or anything else.

If it can be shown that the staffer breached a duty of confidentiality in using “inside information” as the basis for buying and selling the stock, then he may very well be guilty of the crime of insider trading.

In May 2009, the Associated Press reported,

Federal prosecutors and the FBI have been investigating possible illegal insider trading by two Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement attorneys who were in a position to receive sensitive information about agency probes of public companies.

Similarly, if the staffer had material information that the public didn’t have and he took advantage of it in the buying and selling of securities, he could have committed a serious crime — as well as anyone he may have tipped off.

Reid’s staffer has denied wrongdoing, but that should not be dispositive.

The Department of Justice, FBI and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ought to be investigating the staffer as well as any other potential insider trading violations described in the WSJ article.

At the very least, the staffer should be afforded the same opportunity as Martha Stewart to chat with federal investigators — that worked out so well for her.

Don’t expect this to happen, however, as Sen. Reid and other members of Congress will no doubt quietly work to quash any investigation.

Obama kills Maryland nuke power project

President Obama is so concerned about greenhouse gas emissions that he’s essentially killed the Calvert Cliffs (Maryland) nuke power project.

Oh sure, Constellation Energy technically pulled the plug on its own project, but only after the Obama administration demanded $880 million in exchange for a $7.5 billion loan guarantee.

That the Obama administration would allow a mere $880 million to come between it and its supposed goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is absurd. The administration has blown billions of dollars on a variety of allegedly green stimulus projects that have no prospects of accomplishing anything meaningful.

President Obama is doing what the greens want (i.e., killing off nuclear power) and he is doing it in a way that provides political cover (i.e., making Constellation the bad guy).

California, where the graft is greener

by Steve Milloy
GreenHellBlog, October 8, 2010.

The banana-fication of California is reaching critical mass.

The Antelope Valley Union High School District has entered into public-private partnership (taxpayer beware!) with private firm PsomasFMG to build a 9.6 megawatt photovoltaic system, according to a report in Climatewire. And what a deal it is.

The school system, which expects to save $40 million over the life of the panels (no word of how long “life” is), will not have to put any money down, instead signing a 20-year power purchase agreement with PsomasFMG for about 80 percent of its power needs. Southern California Edison will generously provide the other 20 percent at a reduced rate. A “bonus” feature of the deal is that PSomas will donate $20,000 to train a teacher to design a special algebra curriculum (6th grade to high school) to train students to work in the solar industry. Solar algebra? Are you kidding me?

But while the school district is “saving” millions in electricity bills (who knows how the “savings” were actually calculated), federal and state taxpayers will be paying for this scam, including a 22-cents-per-kilowatt-hour subsidy from the state-run California Solar Initiative. While it apparently is illegal for school districts to get federal funding for such projects directly, the project will evade the law by using PsomasFMG as the subsidy recipient. Try a scheme like that at home with, say, federal tax or election laws and see in which federal prison you land!

And many Californians appear to approve of this sort of activity.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll claims that Proposition 23, a ballot initiative to roll back California’s global warming law until unemployment recedes, is losing 49%-37%. That any Californian who could vote himself out of a paper bag would oppose Proposition 23 is incredible — the state has a budget deficit of $19 billion and and unemployment rate of 12 percent. The state needs to create economic growth and revenue producing jobs as opposed to innovative ways to milk a shrinking tax base.

Perhaps, we can hope, the poll is just another mainstream media ploy to discourage voters from turning out to save California from the green grifters.

In any event, the people behind the Antelope Valley school district scheme should be investigated — not cemented in place by the defeat of Proposition 23.

Obama's Sunshine Scam

By Steven Milloy
Human Events, October 8, 2010

It’s hard to sufficiently mock President Obama’s decision to install solar panels on the White House. But I’ll try.

The cost of the panels at this point is unknown. But the White House has assured the public that the installation job will be offered through a competitive bidding process. Given that Jimmy Carter spent about $30,000 in the 1970s installing solar panels on the White House (removed in 1986 by President Reagan), you can bank on President Obama’s folly blowing that price tag away, especially when you consider all the federal employee staff time, and security and public relations efforts that will go into the project.

Since the annual savings of the system is estimated to be only $2,300, you could also safely bet that the system will never actually pay for itself—no matter how many decades (centuries?) the system is used.

The system won’t make the White House energy independent since nighttime, clouds and rain will all force the building to remain hooked up to its existing power sources and back-ups.

Finally, the system will offer no environmental benefits. Whether or not you believe that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are changing global climate for the worse, whatever few tons of carbon dioxide emissions that might possibly be avoided through White House (or anyone else’s) use of solar panels will scarcely offset the new coal-fired power plant that China erects every other week.

The panel installation can be, then, little more than a too-little-too-late exercise in public relations to salvage something legislatively for President Obama’s green base.

While even President Obama has given up on a cap-and-trade bill coming out of this Congress, he no doubt would like to prod Congress into passing a so-called national renewable electricity standard (RES) in the upcoming lame duck session of Congress. An RES would require that a certain percentage of electricity generation come from solar, wind biomass and other supposedly renewable sources. Conveniently, Senators Jeff Bingaman (D.-N.M.) and the retiring Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.) have just introduced such a bill (S. 3813).

Although the Bingaman-Brownback bill is little more than cap-and-trade in renewable drag, it has attracted some Republican support in the Senate from Susan Collins (Maine), Jon Ensign (Nev.) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa). But Democratic skeptics like Mary Landrieu (La.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.) have offset these Republican votes. Sen. Dick Durbin has also rained on the Bingaman-Brownback RES parade, telling Congressional Quarterly, “It’s not an easy and quick bill. There are many choices, and most of them are controversial. To think we can do them quickly in a lame duck is a long shot.”

The President’s desperate green supporters insist the White House project is not completely symbolic. The CEO of solar panel maker Sungevity told Climatewire that, “This is not about Carter and another President doing solar; it’s about the fact that solar is able to save customers money.” Just who those customers are and how much money they’re actually saving, wasn’t disclosed, however.

The Center for American Progress’ Richard Caperton told Climatewire that if the President used the solar panel announcement “appropriately,” he could “show that the [solar] industry leads to jobs.” But of course the vast majority of solar manufacturing jobs are in China, where renewable energy workers earn about 1/10 of American workers.

DuPont is expanding its facility in Circleville, Ohio, to manufacture solar energy materials, accepting $56 million in federal stimulus and state aid for the $175 million project. What does the taxpayer get for all that money? Seventy new jobs created, 444 existing jobs retained and 230 construction jobs. Add all the jobs up and divide and you get a per job cost of $235,000, $76,000 of which comes from taxpayers.

Taxpayers are on the hook for about $114,000 for each stimulus-funded solar panel job at projects in Longmont, Colo., and Tipton, Ind. Then there is the $592,000-per-solar-job cost at the Emmet J. Bean Federal Center in Indianapolis, Ind.

Pardon me, but since the purpose of all this is to force consumers to spend more money buying high-priced energy (but only when the sun shines), as a taxpayer, I vote for unemployment.

Mr. Milloy is the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com. His columns and op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of “Green Hell,” a new book from Regnery Publishing.

Obama’s Sunshine Scam

By Steven Milloy
Human Events, October 8, 2010

It’s hard to sufficiently mock President Obama’s decision to install solar panels on the White House. But I’ll try.

The cost of the panels at this point is unknown. But the White House has assured the public that the installation job will be offered through a competitive bidding process. Given that Jimmy Carter spent about $30,000 in the 1970s installing solar panels on the White House (removed in 1986 by President Reagan), you can bank on President Obama’s folly blowing that price tag away, especially when you consider all the federal employee staff time, and security and public relations efforts that will go into the project.

Since the annual savings of the system is estimated to be only $2,300, you could also safely bet that the system will never actually pay for itself—no matter how many decades (centuries?) the system is used.

The system won’t make the White House energy independent since nighttime, clouds and rain will all force the building to remain hooked up to its existing power sources and back-ups.

Finally, the system will offer no environmental benefits. Whether or not you believe that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are changing global climate for the worse, whatever few tons of carbon dioxide emissions that might possibly be avoided through White House (or anyone else’s) use of solar panels will scarcely offset the new coal-fired power plant that China erects every other week.

The panel installation can be, then, little more than a too-little-too-late exercise in public relations to salvage something legislatively for President Obama’s green base.

While even President Obama has given up on a cap-and-trade bill coming out of this Congress, he no doubt would like to prod Congress into passing a so-called national renewable electricity standard (RES) in the upcoming lame duck session of Congress. An RES would require that a certain percentage of electricity generation come from solar, wind biomass and other supposedly renewable sources. Conveniently, Senators Jeff Bingaman (D.-N.M.) and the retiring Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.) have just introduced such a bill (S. 3813).

Although the Bingaman-Brownback bill is little more than cap-and-trade in renewable drag, it has attracted some Republican support in the Senate from Susan Collins (Maine), Jon Ensign (Nev.) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa). But Democratic skeptics like Mary Landrieu (La.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.) have offset these Republican votes. Sen. Dick Durbin has also rained on the Bingaman-Brownback RES parade, telling Congressional Quarterly, “It’s not an easy and quick bill. There are many choices, and most of them are controversial. To think we can do them quickly in a lame duck is a long shot.”

The President’s desperate green supporters insist the White House project is not completely symbolic. The CEO of solar panel maker Sungevity told Climatewire that, “This is not about Carter and another President doing solar; it’s about the fact that solar is able to save customers money.” Just who those customers are and how much money they’re actually saving, wasn’t disclosed, however.

The Center for American Progress’ Richard Caperton told Climatewire that if the President used the solar panel announcement “appropriately,” he could “show that the [solar] industry leads to jobs.” But of course the vast majority of solar manufacturing jobs are in China, where renewable energy workers earn about 1/10 of American workers.

DuPont is expanding its facility in Circleville, Ohio, to manufacture solar energy materials, accepting $56 million in federal stimulus and state aid for the $175 million project. What does the taxpayer get for all that money? Seventy new jobs created, 444 existing jobs retained and 230 construction jobs. Add all the jobs up and divide and you get a per job cost of $235,000, $76,000 of which comes from taxpayers.

Taxpayers are on the hook for about $114,000 for each stimulus-funded solar panel job at projects in Longmont, Colo., and Tipton, Ind. Then there is the $592,000-per-solar-job cost at the Emmet J. Bean Federal Center in Indianapolis, Ind.

Pardon me, but since the purpose of all this is to force consumers to spend more money buying high-priced energy (but only when the sun shines), as a taxpayer, I vote for unemployment.

Mr. Milloy is the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com. His columns and op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of “Green Hell,” a new book from Regnery Publishing.

LOL of the day: EWG claims EPA panel nominee is biased

October 8, 2010

Mr. Edward Hanlon
Designated Federal Official
Science Advisory Board
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Mail Code 1400R

Washington, D.C. 20460-4164

Dear Mr. Hanlon,

This letter responds to the comments of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) concerning the nomination of Dr. Michael Economides to serve on the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) Panel for the Review of the Hydraulic Fracturing Study Plan.

The EWG objects to the nomination of Dr. Economides because, by authoring an op-ed that was published in the Syracuse Post-Standard on September 13, 2010, “Mr. Economides appears to be biased in favor of a predetermined outcome to EPA’s study…”

If such a standard — i.e., publicly expressing an opinion relating to an area of one’s expertise — is grounds for disqualification, then the SAB will need to disqualify many of its current members.

For example, consider the following examples of current SAB members with well-known opinions and biases:

  • Gina Solomon, a member of the SAB Drinking Water Committee is an employee of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental activist group. Ms. Solomon, herself a self-acknowledged activist, has a long history of making alarmist statements to the media on a variety of environmental topics — too many to do justice in this short letter. But one may get a flavor of her various biases from her blog (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/gsolomon/).
  • Arnold Schecter, a member of the SAB Dioxin Review Panel, has many times expressed his alarmist opinions regarding dioxin. Mr. Schecter’s Facebook page, not surprisingly, reveals that he is a fan of the Environmental Working Group — which perhaps is why EWG hasn’t requested to have Mr. Schecter disqualified from serving on the Dioxin Review Panel.
  • Bruce Lanphear, a member of the SAB Lead Review Panel, has often expressed alarmist opinions about exposure to lead, including that “there is no safe exposure to lead.” Mr. Lanphear has also called for a ban on commercial uses of lead.

There is no question that many other members of the SAB and its ad hoc committees and panels could be exposed for the apparent wrong of expressing an opinion.

If Dr. Economides is to be disqualified for holding opinions in his field of expertise, is the EPA prepared to similarly disqualify the above-mentioned individuals as well as all other SAB participants who can be shown to have publicly expressed their opinions?

Sincerely,

/s/

Steve Milloy
Publisher, JunkScience.com

cc:
Lisa Jackson, Administrator
Angela Nugent, DFO SAB

If Ken Cuccinelli is on a witch hunt then…

… Michael Mann is a witch.

The Washington Post today editorialized that the Virginia attorney general is on a witch hunt. [Click for Cuccinelli’s new investigative demand to the University of Virginia.] But even the Post is not too thrillled with Mann’s work, labeling it “not unacceptably poor.” At least now we’re all only debating how “poor” Mann’s hockey stick is.

The Post tries to exonerate Mann by claiming that he was cleared by the National Academy of Sciences and his employer, Penn State. Neither claim is true.

First, while the post refers to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, it was actually a panel of the non-prestigious, for-hire National Research Council that actually reviewed Mann’s work. Below is the NRC’s conclusion about the hockey stick:

In response to a request from Congress, this report assesses the state of scientific efforts to reconstruct surface temperature records for the Earth over approximately the last 2,000 years and the implications of these efforts for our understanding of global climate change. Because widespread, reliable temperature records are only available for the last 150 years or so, scientists estimate temperatures in the more distant past by analyzing “proxy evidence,” which includes tree rings, corals, ocean and lake sediments, cave deposits, ice cores, boreholes, and glaciers. Starting in the late 1990s, scientists began using
sophisticated methods to combine proxy evidence from many different locations in an effort to estimate surface temperature changes during the last few hundred to few thousand years. This report concludes that large-scale surface temperature reconstructions are important tools in our understanding of global climate change that allows us to say, with a high level of confidence, that global mean surface temperature
was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600, although available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. Very little confidence can be assigned to statements concerning the hemispheric mean or global mean surface temperature prior to about A.D. 900, primarily because of the scarcity of precisely dated proxy evidence. [Emphasis added]

No part of that conclusion, of course, exonerates Mann or his hockey stick. Where in that conclusion, for example, does it say that the hockey stick appropriately deleted the Medieval Optimum or the Little Ice Age? Where in that conclusion does it say that Mann appropriately grafted late-20th century thermometer data onto the tree ring data (while deleting tree ring data not favorable to his case for warming) to give the impression of dramatic, manmade warming during the 20th century? For more on Mann and his hockey stick, check out JunkScience.com’s “Michael Mann: Defamed or defined by ‘Hide the decline’?”

As to Penn State’s “investigation” into Mann’s hijinks, click here to read about that whitewash.

By labeling Cuccinelli’s request for data from a state university a “witch hunt,” the Post is trying to liken the Virginia AG to Sen. Joe McCarthy. In that case, I’m all for such witch hunts, because Sen. McCarthy was correct. The U.S. Government was chock full of Soviet agents, communists, fellow travelers and other security risks during the mid-20th century. These “witches” did real damage to the U.S. and other nations around the world. Similarly, Mann and his ilk have done real damage to science and our educational system, while helping to advance the misanthropic “progressive” (read Marxist-socialist/neo-communist) political agenda.

The Red Menace is back — although it never really went away in the first place. We should all hope that Cuccinelli has the same fortitude, persistence and resilience as McCarthy.

[Note: Readers interested in Joe McCarthy and the supposed communist “witch hunts” should read M. Stanton Evans’ shocker “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies.” What you’ll learn is that “McCarthyism” isn’t what Joe McCarthy did to others; it;’s what the communists and their enablers did to him. Ann Coulter called Evans’ book “The greatest book since the Bible.” At this point in our nation’s history, though, I disagree. “Blacklisted by History” is the greatest book ever.]

Disingenuous EPA statement of the day

In an interview with Politico.com about her damn-the-critics approach to greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said,

“The Clean Air Act is a tool. It’s not the optimal tool. But it can be used. And, in fact, I’m legally obligated now to use it. And so we’ve laid a lot of groundwork on that and we’ll continue.” [Emphasis added]

But EPA is not, in fact, legally obligated to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act.

In its March 2007 decision Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled only that the EPA may — not that it had to — regulate GHGs. And the Bush administration subsequently declined to regulate GHGs.

It wasn’t until December 2009 that the Obama EPA got around to declaring greenhouse gases to be a threat to the public welfare (the so-called “endangerment” finding), an optional pronouncement that enabled the EPA to move toward regulating greenhouse gases.

But just as the EPA opted to make the endangerment finding, it could opt to reverse it, thereby relieving the agency of any obligation to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act.

Lisa Jackson knows full well that the EPA does not have to regulate GHGs, yet she plays to the media like her hands are tied to following an economically-suicidal and environmentally-futile course.