Another Oil Crisis Coming?

Despite a recent rise in oil prices, they are still quite low compared to last year’s painful run-up. Our politicians, therefore, in their usual short-sighted wisdom, have decided that there is no urgency to pursue new oil. This will likely set us up for another price spike.

While low prices and excess capacity sound good, they could vanish like the morning dew. The long lead times, up to a decade for a new field, needed to expand capacity and replenish supplies should compel us to drill like there’s no tomorrow — for there might not be.

Oil will continue to be a big player in our energy mix no matter how many windmills we tilt at or how many clown cars we place in front of 18-wheelers on our interstates.

California, Meet Minnesota

Gov. Schwarzenegger of California could learn a thing or two from Gov. Pawlenty of Minnesota. Both are Republicans, but only Pawlenty knows how to stand up to a spendthrift Democratic legislature and force the state to live within its means.

More importantly, the voters of Minnesota have noticed.

Mr. Pawlenty’s hardball has earned him glowing praise from the state’s job creators, in particular small businesses, who are relieved to be spared additional tax burdens in today’s economy. The governor’s message — that it is simply “inappropriate” for state legislators to keep spending like lunatics and raise taxes in a recession — has resonated with cash-strapped voters.

The California Election and Obamanomics

An editorial in the Washington Examiner looks at the implications of Tuesday’s election in California, in which voters overwhelmingly rejected tax hikes to deal with the state’s budget mess.

California’s rapid decline was self-inflicted with unsustainable government spending, capitulation to union demands, the third worst business climate in the U.S., years of excessive income taxes, and job-killing environmental regulations. This is the same toxic brew now fueling Obama’s national agenda. There are abundant signs that the voter rebellion seen Tuesday is already spreading beyond California.

Carbophobia in the Age of Science

Robert Brinsmead has written an excellent paper that explains the role of carbon in the maintenance of life on Planet Earth — and the irrationality of all the hysteria about carbon among the AGW crowd. As Brinsmead explains, life as we know it would not exist without carbon.

The entire lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere is therefore saturated and permeated with carbon. Carbon is among the most ubiquitous substances on this planet. It is irrational nonsense to claim that something as ubiquitous as carbon has become a threat to either life or the environment. For every living thing, whether plant or animal, can only exist by absorbing carbon from the environment and by emitting carbon into the environment. Neither life nor the ordered existence of this planet as we know it could continue to exist without this continuing vital exchange and circulation of carbon and carbon dioxide between lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere.

So what explains the irrational fear of carbon (“carbophobia”)  among radical environmentalists? Brinsmead sees a non-environmental mindset at work here.

They are biased against economic growth, industrial activity and human technology. They hate the affluence and creativity of a free economic system. They long for the day when they can dance on the grave of capitalism. Most of all, they are biased against people being free to be productive and prosperous in a free enterprise way of life. They believe that humans are the cancerous pathogens of the earth whose freedom and prosperity has to be drastically curtailed. The only future these eco-activists see for mankind is to worship at the neo-pagan shrine of Mother Nature in some sort of return to a primitive, ecotopian past.

If you want to understand the entire scope of the  carbon debate, read this paper.

Response to “The Science is Settled”

Warren Meyer (a.k.a. The Climate Skeptic) summarizes his standard response to the alarmists’ boast that “the science is settled,” thereby silencing the opposition. He acknowledges that skeptics sometimes make some untenable arguments. But the alarmists make their own share of unsubstantiated scientific claims, particularly with regard to the feedback mechanisms that supposedly multiply the effect of CO2.

Catastrophists posit enormous temperature increases, deflecting criticism by saying that CO2 as a greenhouse gas is settled. Though half right, they gloss over the fact that 2/3 or more of their projected temperature increase is based on a theory of Earth’s climate being dominated by strong positive feedbacks, a theory that is most certainly not settled, and in fact is probably wrong. Temperature increases over the last 100 years are consistent with neutral to negative, not positive feedback, and the long-term history of temperatures and CO2 are utterly inconsistent with the proposition there is positive feedback or a tipping point hidden around 350ppm CO2.

Of course, this is just another lonely voice crying in the wilderness, since climate alarmists like Al Gore absolutely refuse to debate the science with qualified critics in a public forum. It’s much easier to just push the PC agenda through a willing and gullible media, and let fickle public opinion do the rest.