Posted by E!!
on January 20, 2009
Energy Policy,
Global Warming,
LOL /
No Comments
I just dropped in to The Conservative Muse for some much-needed cheering up and was not disappointed. If the hypocrisy of Hollywood on the issue of conservation ever irks, this poem’s for you! Here’s a taste:
Although he became a legitimate actor,
It’s hard to ignore the hypocrisy factor
Of Leo’s campaign to reduce all consumption –
From Hollywood types it’s the height of presumption!
Just look at Babs Streisand, who lately observed
That water and energy must be conserved
To stave off the crisis of warming we’ve made;
For curbing our usage she’s on a crusade.
We guess from these strictures she’s gotten a pardon:
She spends twenty grand just to water her garden!
Tags: Barbara Streisand, conservation, Global Warming, Gore, green, hypocrisy
This paper is the best, most concise argument for nuclear power I’ve read yet. If you are against or on the fence on nuclear energy, you should read it and consider the facts. If you are already in favor, you’ll be delighted and probably learn a few things.
Be assured, this is not some partisan policy paper. It’s full of hard data and as such is very compelling. It has been entered into the Congressional Record twice (once during Senate testimony for the budget for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, once during a House hearing on environmental benefits of nuclear power).
The paper states that nuclear waste disposal “is a political problem in the United States because of widespread fear disproportionate to the reality of risk” and contends and concludes that nuclear power is in fact “environmentally safe, practical, and affordable.”
It includes facts and citations from the British Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Internationl Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Energy Council, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Geological Survey, MIT, the Harvard School of Public Health, Houston’s Institute for Energy Research, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).
One of the authors, Dr. Denis Beller, recently completed a sabbatical from Los Alamos National Laboratory to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he coordinated university participation for UNLV’s Transmutation Research Program for reducing, reusing, and recycling spent nuclear fuel. Beller is now a Research Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNLV and a Visiting Research Professor at Idaho State University.
The other author, Richard Rhodes, is a journalist, historian and author. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently penned Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007). Rhodes has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and frequently gives lectures and talks, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
Tags: Congress, data, Denis Beller, energy, House, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NRC, nuclear, power, Richard Rhodes, Senate, the need for nuclear energy, UNLV, waste disposal
!!
Did anyone else feel the urge to choke the living daylights out of Chuck Schumer this week? If not, you must have missed the Senate floor speech in which he re-opined the tired line that if only the Saudis would produce “half a million barrels more oil a day, the price [of oil] would come down a very significant amount.”
Why does this statement make my blood pressure rise and my fingers twitch?
Because the tiny impact area within ANWR – a size ratio equivalent to a dime on a 4 x 8’ table – is projected to produce ONE MILLION barrels a day, every day, if only we would drill. And because Schumer’s (true) statement that a greater immediate supply would reduce prices falls short of saying what is also true: that even the ANTICIPATION of a greater FUTURE supply would decrease prices in the Now.
Schumer’s other infuriating comment – that more drilling would “stop the speculation that keeps driving up the price of oil” – also missed the proverbial mark. Speculators wouldn’t “stop” if the Saudis drilled more, because speculation in free markets never stops.
Instead, speculators (also known as investors, also known as buyers and sellers, also known as people trying to earn money for their families and futures) would anticipate the increased oil supply, begin to sell for less, continue to drop prices as volume increased, and thus reverse the current market trend of charging a per barrel premium for what is currently a too-scarce commodity.
Perhaps “speculation” would then stop being a dirty word and be seen as what it really is: the natural response of the market to the forces of supply and demand.
For those not convinced that these tenets of ECON 101 are true, please note that we’ve already seen the evidence. As Larry Kudlow reported the other day on NRO, oil prices dropped $9 per barrel the day after the offshore drilling moratorium was lifted by the president. This is no coincidence. It is case-and-point and perfectly illustrates what speculation really IS – not a crime against humanity, but the market doing what markets tend to do: try to anticipate the future and adjust.
It is maddening that the same people who want to spend billions on economy-choking “climate change” measures that might (MIGHT!) reduce temperatures by one quarter degree over the next one-half century cannot see the wisdom of opening a tiny piece of ANWR in return for a sure thing over the next one to ten years.
Tags: Chuck Schumer, demand, Energy Policy, free market, Global Warming, investors, Oil, price, Senate, speculation, speculators, supply
While I’ve got Harry Reid on the brain, I saw a funny note by Henry Payne on NRO’s Planet Gore blog the other day. He referred to an early June debate over the Lieberman-Warner climate bill and quoted Senator Reid as saying that global warming is “the most important issue facing the world today.” The funny part is that Reid drives to work every day in a large, armor-plated, 13 mpg Chevrolet Suburban SUV provided to him by Capitol security police. With respect for Senator Reid’s concern (awareness?) that more than one citizen might wish to do him harm, is this really necessary? Payne said one of his Detroit News colleagues recently quipped, “I’ll believe climate change is a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” Amen!
Tags: D.C., Harry Reid
