Don Parsons alerts us to the recent NASA data that debunks the environmental alarmists “global warming” models. On point is James Taylor’s article in Forbes, New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole in Global Warming Alarmism.

“In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth’s atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

“When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a “huge discrepancy” between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.”

Now, think of how California is shooting itself in the foot with its own emission standards more stringent than the current national standards. And don’t forget the EPA’s current efforts to regulate CO2!

Tony Senik’s Daily Caller post, The Obama Gas Tax, makes the case pretty well: Fact, gas prices are up 67% since he took office. Fact, he said that we can’t drill our way out of our energy problems. Fact, he has blocked domestic energy exploration at every turn. Fact, he exported Gulf drilling rigs and JOBS out of this country to Brazil!

What’s interesting is that he wants to subsidize so-called green technologies with your tax money. So really you’ll be paying twice: once for the gas tax then again for the green technology. Strange but these uneconomic mirrors in the desert are being blocked by the environmentalists that he supports. The same is true of the idle windmills that his favorite corporate welfare dependent GE has overstocked. But then GE who pays no income tax on its billions in profit, has agreed to buy half the production of the unmarketable little green Chevy Volts! Hell of a deal!

So, Tony Senik has really understated the problem. Gas tax plus wasted green tax subsidy plus stagflation at best or depression at worst. That’s Obama’s energy policy!  As Senik said, saying you can’t drill you way out of your energy problems is like saying “you can’t medicate your way out of an illness!”

Doesn’t President Obama see the contradiction in his positions? And, why on earth would he want to be another Jimmy Carter?

Daimia argues that “clean” equals” cool” by virtue of the EPA’s mission to limit greenhouse gasses. Those, in addition to the air you exhale are mainly caused by hydrocarbon energy, coal, oil, gas. So what does our president propose in this year of a $1.6 Trillion deficit and $14 Trillion in debt? He proposes to increase the budget for the Department of Energy by 12%, $8 Billion in addition to the $30 Billion in the 2010 “stimulated” budget!

So our president doesn’t think seriously about the morality of stealing from our future generations. He neglects to treat the budget seriously. He won’t look at the unsustainable entitlements which he has just added to with Obamacare. No, he wants more votes, greater deficits, and more debt for our grandchildren to pay! SICK!

What’s he want to do with that largess? Something smart like nuclear power? No, sorry. He wants things your tax dollars and the tax dollars of your great grandchildren must go to subsidize. Things like, solar with a budget increase of 88% and wind with a budget increase of 61%. Something my grandchildren recognize in their youth is that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Apparently Obama hasn’t gotten that message. He hasn’t driven through the Coachella Valley to Palm Desert to see the thousands of acres of still, silent wind mills bilking the US taxpayers. He hasn’t been to Victorville on an overcast day to see all those wonderful mirrors tilted toward the grey sky, reflecting only a testimony to taxpayer ignorance.

Here’s an idea. Let’s abolish the Department of Energy. What does it do that isn’t already being done by or could be done by the myriad of other real departments? It employs 1600 bureaucrats who could contribute the economy significantly better in the private sector, if for no other reason than that taxpayers would not be paying for them. It is not exactly what one thinks of as one of the essential functions of government. And, look who created it, Jimmy Carter, Obama’s alter ego! What better argument to undue it, than that Carter did it?

If we abolish the DOE, Obama will no longer have a code with which to appease the global warming alarmists! Then he must choose, make a decision! What a frightening thought!

Aha, the ethanol monster raises its ugly head! This blog has discussed the horrible economic and environmental impact of ethanol several times. See for instance: Flushing Your Money Down the Drain and Gore Took His Profits…Can Congress Take Its Losses?. Congress of course did not take its losses but continued on the path of subsidy, mandates and restraint of trade that is the foundation of ethanol.

The impenetrable roadblock to economic rationality here is the union between the big farm lobby and the environmental lobby. Corporate farmers dominate. They are rent-seekers pure and simple. They take your hard earned dollars all the was to the bank as compensation for producing a useless product that absent government mandates no one would buy. The environmentalists are emotional tree huggers grasping at pseudo science to satisfy the need to feel good. These two are often on different sides of an issue, but here they are in bed together.

What is sad to me is to see intelligent politicians like Newt Gingrich support and are paid by the farm lobby. I guess everyone has his price. And no political party is immune to the trade!

Today’s WSJ editorial, The Range Fuels Fiasco, gives a beautiful example of government “investments.” George Bush kicked off the opening act of the comedy in 2006 praising the benefits of “cellulosic ethanol from wood chips” as a way to break our addiction to oil. Range Fuels got a $76 million grant to build a plant to initially produce 20 million gallons and eventually 100 million gallons of this miracle fuel. The media applauded and the environmentalists gushed. Congress got in on the act in 2007 by mandating 100 million gallons by 2010 and 250 million by 2011. Range Fuels with all this hype raised $130 million from the private venture markets, funded in part by CALPERS. In 2008 without a drop of production the Department of Agriculture provided Range with an $80 million loan.

“In early 2010, the EPA said Range would finally produce some fuel in 2010—but only four million gallons, not 100 million, and of methanol, not cellulosic ethanol. So taxpayers have committed $162 million (along with at least that much in private financing) to produce four million gallons of a biofuel that others have been making in quantity for decades.” Range still is promising cellulosic ethanol but has had to lay off all but four employees while it raises more money.

And here’s the corker: “As for current Range CEO Mr. Aldous, he’s blaming this failure on—brace yourself—Washington’s failure to impose a tax on carbon via cap and trade. “The critical issue is really that there’s no mechanism to price carbon today,” he told a Colorado newspaper. He also blamed “public apathy toward green fuels.”

Notice the common elements of this fraud: A Pool Table, as in the kind the Music Man used to sell the boys band. That is a perceived threat, here foreign oil dependency, to create demand. A fawning press of decidedly liberal bent. Environmentalists pushing the government agenda. A large pile of free government money to be taken by corporate welfare rent-seeking types. And a paternalistic government that knows what’s best for all of the rest of us!

I recently drove through California’s major wind farms on the way to Palm Desert. Of the hundreds of acres of wind mills, hundreds of thousands of expensive towers and generators, not one was turning at any speed. I’ve taken this drive many times before and viewed the same tragedy. These monuments to leftist folly are a tragic waste of taxpayer money, a misallocation of capital on a scale seldom seen. Yes, that’s right, your hard earned dollars go to fund the tax credits and mandates without which these gigantic eyesores would not exist.

There is simply no economic justification for wind or solar power. Without tax credits they would not exist. Nor is there any economic justification for bullet trains. Obama is pushing both. He knows what’s best for you…….much better than you do! “Ya got trouble, my friends, right here in River City……TROUBLE with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool!”

The EPA has decided that the regulatory authority that gives it the charge to guard against oil spills gives it the power to regulate any oil spills. The most recent example of this is the regulation of milk production!

Yes, milk, it turns out has oil in in, not the kind that powers diesel motors, but the kind that adds inches to your waist. Since “protection” is the EPA’s middle name, it has set out to protect you from milk spills. As of now, these are not the kind of spill you aren’t supposed to cry over, but the kind of spills that may cause serious flooding to mass population centers and, yes, farms!

It will now force farmers to comply with new regulations to file “emergency management” plans to deal with spilled milk! Seriously, farmers must “train “first responders” and build “containment facilities” if there is a flood of spilled milk.”

“Since there is no free lunch, all of this is going to cost the farmers both money and time that could be going into farming– and is likely to end up costing consumers higher prices for farm products.”

“It is going to cost the taxpayers money as well, since the EPA is going to have to hire people to inspect farms, inspect farmers’ reports and prosecute farmers who don’t jump through all the right hoops in the right order. All of this will be “creating jobs,” even if the tax money removed from the private sector correspondingly reduces the jobs that can be created there.”

The regulatory bureaucracy has no incentive to be efficient, no competition and no check on its operations or expansion. It has every incentive to expand and no incentive to contract. It seeks power and stretches the power it has.

Obama has appointed leftists that will regulate the CO2 you exhale and the free speech you profess to exercise over the internet. He is thus less honest than his rhetoric and a dangerous statist indeed.

Strange but Nevada has not seen the money, jobs, industry and research that can come with the current monopoly it has via Yucca Mountain on temporary storage of spent fuel. A group called Nevadans For Carbon Free Energy, http://NV4CFE.org, has developed the concept of an energy park that would provide temporary storage, develop reprocessing and recycling, and eventually grow into power generation. The benefits to the state include jobs, state revenue, and money for the residents along the lines of the Alaska Permanent Fund.

It’s worth serious consideration given the unemployment and budget deficits. Here’s a short video from their website:

This is the only good thing to come out of the UN conference.

As with everything that expires, sunsets, or otherwise evaporates at twelve midnight on December 31st, the tax breaks for this farm-state backed snake oil also go the route of Cinderella’s coach.  And, it’s long overdue. The farmers took those city slicker environmentalists on a long hay ride and then to the cleaners and got subsidies and tariffs that made them rich. They also raised the price of corn for the poor in Mexico. Better to use that corn for moonshine than ethanol!

But the farm lobby, one of the most powerful in existence, is trying to extend the rent-seeking goodies. And this, as part of the current tax extension negotiations.

“For decades, the idea behind corn ethanol has been that fuel derived from the crop could diminish America’s dependence on distasteful foreign regimes for fuel – it’s done some of this – and cut carbon emissions – it’s done little of this. Congress established an overlapping and expensive system of subsidies, requiring that billions of gallons of ethanol be blended into the nation’s gasoline, slapping tariffs on foreign ethanol and handing those who blend the fuel into gasoline a tax credit of 45 cents a gallon.”

“In other words, the government pays the industry for the privilege of selling to a captive market, spending $6 billion in 2009 on the tax credits alone. Without the tax credits, the amount of corn ethanol produced would still increase over the next 10 years, the Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri calculates. Yet the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that taxpayers still pay $1.78 to replace a gallon of gasoline with its energy equivalent of corn ethanol. The numbers are far worse when put in terms of greenhouse gases. The CBO reports that it costs a staggering $750 to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions one ton by burning corn ethanol – and the CBO makes some generous assumptions to get even that figure.”

So, the fact that ethanol harms the environment and unnecessarily wastes taxpayer dollars has created unusual coalitions in opposition: fiscal conservatives, environmentalists, Tea Partiers and MoveOnorgers! Hopefully these strange bedfellows will stop the sop to the farmers. Maybe this year there’s a chance that reason and economics will prevail!