Energy Policy: Chuck Schumer's math doesn't work.

I'm going to post two quotes from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D. - New York) from this month. See if you can find the discrepency.

Quote One (SOURCE):

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the Administration was "strangling" any attempts to make serious investments at alternative energy over the last seven years and that drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge would "take ten years and reduce the price of oil by a penny."

Quote Two (SOURCE):

"If Saudi Arabia were to increase its production by 1 million barrels per day that translates to a reduction of 20 percent to 25 percent in the world price of crude oil, and crude oil prices could fall by more than $25 dollar per barrel from its current level of $126 per barrel. In turn, that would lower the price of gasoline between 13 percent and 17 percent, or by more than 62 cents off the expected summer regular-grade price - offering much needed relief to struggling families."

If you said "Senator Chuck Schumer claims that coercing Saudi Arabia to increase oil production by 1 million barrels a day would drop the per barrel price by $25, saving Americans 62 cent per gallon at the gas pump. Yet, somehow, that same amount of oil coming from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would only ease oil prices by a penny," you'd be correct.

Had Clinton not vetoed the legislation allowing for drilling in ANWR back in 1995, a million barrels a day would currently be flowing through the Alyeska pipeline.

So, a million barrels from Saudi Arabia would drop the price of gas dramatically but a million barrels from ANWR wouldn't influence the price at all? Really ... ?

You don't have to have a degree in economics or political science to figure out that Schumer's numbers can't possibly both be right or why he's fudging them.

Intellectually Honest: Who's to blame for high oil prices?

Today, on Capitol Hill, members of Congress once again questioned the heads of 'Big Oil' firms about the recent increases in oil prices, and why we're paying so much to fill up our cars with gasoline.

However, we would posit that, rather than pointing the finger at 'Big Oil', members of Congress need look no further than their own mirrors to find out who's to blame for our current oil crisis.

Let's take a look at everything that Congress has done to create this crisis:

• Made drilling in ANWR off limits.
  Drilling in ANWR would require precisely 2000 acres 1.5 million acres of ANWR's northernmost coast (approx. 8% of ANWR's 19.6 million acre total size) in an area known as the "10-02" area, which had previously been set aside specifically for "oil and gas exploration" by Congress in 1980. This would create between 250,000 and 735,000 new jobs and pump up to $237 billion into the U.S. economy.
  
  Had Bill Clinton not vetoed the 1995 ANWR legislation, oil wells in ANWR would've been adding a million barrels of oil per day to our oil supply. And, even now, Congress still refuses to allow exploration there.



• Made drilling off of the coasts of Florida and California off limits.
  Our continental shelf has enough oil that we could supply all of our needs for 60-160 years, which is more than enough time to allow the free market economy to come up with a 'green', non-petroleum solution. But, we can't be allowed to drill out there, either.



• Refused to allow new leases for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
  Meanwhile, foreign competitors like China, Cuba, and Venezuela are signing new 100-year leases and pumping oil out of the Gulf using horizontal drilling techniques that actually allow them to take oil right out from underneath us.



• Promised to introduce and pass cap and trade legislation.
  Despite this same plan having already proven a failure in Europe, Congress and all three Presidential candidates have promised to pass this legislation. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates it would raise our gas prices by a further $1.50 per gallon, while others say it could increase costs by up to $5.00 per gallon.



• Shut down oil fields in Colorado.



• Refused to allow the development of shale oil fields in Western states.



• Passed legislation that would allow us to sue OPEC as a monopoly.
  ... because they certainly wouldn't retaliate by raising prices further.



• Allowed environmental attorneys to sue oil companies for the future possible destruction of an Alaskan Eskimo village.



• Added the polar bear to the 'Threatened Species' list.
  This 'protects' the polar bears' habitat which, unfortunately, happens to be in the exact area where most future oil discoveries are likely to be located, guaranteeing that any American company going after them can be sued or prosecuted for further endangering an animal whose populations have increased from 5,000 to 25,000 in the past 60 years (SOURCE).



• Have refused to allow a single refinery to be built in the past 30 years.
  And have, in fact, reduced the number of operational refineries by half since 1982.



• Have allowed states to dictate what unique gasoline blends have to be produced for their markets.
  California alone demands 1,400 different blends. This type of idiocy ties up production in the few refineries we do have available.



• Have bowed to the environmental lobby, refusing to allow nuclear or hydroelectic industries to build new plants or dams.
  Allowing competition in the market, or allowing us to wean ourselves off of our fossil fuels dependencies with nuclear and hydroelectric power seems like a commonsense solution. This is just one of many examples of why I'll never accuse our Congress of having a wealth of commonsense.



• Refused to fund or allow deployment of coal-to-oil technology
  This technology has been available since the 1930s, but was determined to be only profitable when oil went above $30.00 per barrel. We're above that. But, despite the United States' vast deposits of coal that could readily be turned into oil at today's prices, Congress won't let us pursue it.



• Refused to drop the Federal gasoline tax, even just for the summer.
  Barack Obama even went so far as to say that it wouldn't help the 'average' family. I don't know about you, but I paid $80+ to fill up our two cars yesterday, and that was after finding the cheapest place in town (which was still $.10 cheaper than competitors only because they hadn't raised their prices -- yet).
  
  Knocking 18.4 cents off of the price might not seem like a whole heckuva lot, and the Washington Times claims it would save motorists just $10.00 per month (SOURCE), but it would've saved me $6.00 yesterday and I figured I fill up about once a week -- meaning it'd save me $25.00 a month, or $100 over the course of the summer which is more than double what the Washington Times estimated.

So, the next time you have to open a vein to pay for your daily commute, keep in mind who's really to blame -- and, then, call your Congress(person) and demand real action to make amends for all of these problems they've laid at our feet.

I'm not a meteoroligist, but ...

I'm not a meteorologist, but I am a thinker. And, because of that, something about Prince Charles' recent catastrophic global warming pronouncement doesn't quite add up.

He said:

"We will end up seeing more drought and starvation on a grand scale. Weather patterns will become even more terrifying and there will be less and less rainfall. We are asking for something pretty dreadful unless we really understand the issues now and [the] urgency of them."

Now, see if you can follow along with me.

When the atmospheric temperature goes up, water evaporation increases proportionately. That evaporated water creates clouds. Those clouds produce rain. So, if the globe gets hotter, we should see more water evaporation and more clouds, thus, more rain.

But, it goes on from there.

More rain creates less droughts and more crops, not the other way around. And, more crops mean that we've got more plants absorbing more carbon dioxide and, thus, reduce the amount of that 'greenhouse gas' in the atmosphere, lowering temperatures back to where they were.

That would seem to be how the globe's built-in (some might even go so far as to say 'intelligently designed') thermostatic system works. And, it also seems to fit with what the 31,000+ scientists who'd signed the OISM petition seem to be saying.

As I said, I'm not a meteorolgist. As far as I know, neither is Prince Charles. So, I think after weighing all of the options, that I'm going to side with opinions of the 31,000+ scientists ...

Barack's Foreign Policy Debate with Himself.

On the day when Barack Obama (still hasn't actually) won the Democratic Presidential Nomination, The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto offers a rather interesting example of the foreign policy we should expect should he eventually win the Presidency.

The New York Times reports that Barack Obama staked out an insouciant position on Iran and other U.S. antagonists:

Arguing for engagement with the country's foes, Mr. Obama said in a speech on Sunday that "strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries."

"That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev," he said, adding, "I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela--these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet."

He went on to argue that Iran spends "one-one hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance. And we should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen."

"Let me be absolutely clear," said one candidate the next day in response: "Iran is a grave threat."

If you guessed that the candidate who thought that Iran was a grave threat was John McCain, you were wrong. While McCain has held that position, the candidate who offered the retort was Obama himself.

So, he thinks that Iran is a 'grave threat' but that if they 'ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance.'

[ Michelle Malkin has this, and other Obama gaffes (thus far, at least) HERE. ]

This sounds remarkably like the same sort of 'nuanced' foreign policy that we got from John F. Kerry (who, by the way, served in Vietnam) when he voted for funding the Iraq war before voting against it.

Investors Business Daily continues the critique of Senator Obama's 'latest foray into dangerous naivete', saying he 'consitently demonstrates his lack of qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief based on experience, worldview and judgment'.

I can't find much there to disagree with. They continue:

He went on to defend his policy of "aggressive personal diplomacy" and called for "tough, disciplined and direct diplomacy. That's what Kennedy did. That'd what Reagan did."

Well, not quite.

Kennedy in his inaugural address pledged that "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." That doesn't sound like Obama's policy on Iraq or anywhere else.

Yes, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev. But the Soviet leader came away from that summit so unimpressed with the young and untested American president that the following year he put nuclear missiles in Cuba targeted on American cities. Kennedy was forced to blockade Cuba and risk nuclear war.

We can't risk that with Iran. As John McCain points out, Iran, unlike the Soviet Union, is directly and daily involved in the killing of Americans through training of Iraqi insurgents and arming them with deadly improvised explosive devices. It is a state sponsor of terror that supports Hezbollah in its attempt to turn democratic Lebanon into an Islamofascist state.

Obama said that Reagan's "direct negotiation" with Gorbachev "over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall." What brought down the Berlin Wall, and the Soviet Union, was Reagan's unrelenting resistance to and confrontation with the "evil empire" based on his strategy of "we win, they lose." That was how Reagan "negotiated" with Gorbachev.

Yes, Reagan talked with Gorbachev. But he resisted the Soviet advance from Nicaragua to Grenada to Afghanistan. He put Pershing missiles in Europe. He launched the Strategic Defense Initiative and said "nyet" when Gorbachev wanted us to deal it away. When Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," the end of the Cold War already was a fait accompli.

Would Obama have done or said any of this?

Obama wants to talk with Iran. But the question he refuses to answer is what he'd tell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Obama dislikes being called an appeaser. But would he say to Iran: No deal unless you disown and disarm Hezbollah? We doubt it. More likely he'd sacrifice a country such as Lebanon to Tehran's ambitions in a modern-day Munich.

When you consider his views the threat posed by Iran, his desire to meet with its leader (who remains pledged to Israel's destruction), and his advisor's desire for Israel's disarmament, it becomes unmistakably clear that Barack Obama is running for Jimmy Carter's second term.

More inconvenient truths for Gore.

A new study has revealed yet another truth that is a bit inconvenient for Al Gore: 'Global Warming' isn't causing increased, or more intense, hurricanes.

Not only that, but were global warming to actually occur, the increased water temperatures in the Atlantic would actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist Tom Knutson.

TheLedger.com carries the story from Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press:

Another group of experts, those who study hurricanes and who are more often skeptical about global warming, say there is no link. They attribute the recent increase to a natural multi-decade cycle.

What makes this study different is Knutson, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, N.J.

He has warned about the harmful effects of climate change and has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration on past studies on the dangers of global warming.

He said his new study, based on a computer model, argues "against the notion that we've already seen a really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming."

The study, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, predicts that by the end of the century the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic will fall by 18 percent.

The number of hurricanes making landfall in the United States and its neighbors — anywhere east of Puerto Rico — will drop by 30 percent because of wind factors.

And, in semi-related news, despite Gore's name-calling on 60 Minutes, Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Sceince and Medicine is set to release, today, that more than 31,000 scientists -- 9,021 of whom hold PhDs -- have signed the OISM petition rejecting the claims of manmade global warming, reports the National Post.

Those 31,000+ scientists signed the OISM petition, which reads:

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

Seems Al Gore's whole thing about 'settled science' and 'overwhelming consensus' is a bit ... faulty. Or, fabricated. Or, farcical.