Energy Crisis Called Off

Recent advances in technology for extracting natural gas from shale and methane beds have dramatically changed the global outlook on energy supplies.

The claims of BP and Statoil are so extraordinary that we may need to rewrite the geo-strategy textbooks for the next half century.

Please note: The free market is making these advances, without a trillion-dollar government program dictating outcomes.

A Novel Energy Idea

John Tierney (NYT), quoting Amory Lovins on the ideal national energy policy:

Nuclear power and all other ways to produce or save energy should be allowed to compete fairly, at honest prices, regardless of their type, technology, size, location, or ownership.

In other words, allow the free market to chart the course, not government regulators. Fantastic idea — which it why it will never be implemented.

Obama’s Promises

George Will takes a hard look at all the outrageous promises that Obama is making about what he will do when he becomes President, from requiring that 10% of our energy come from renewable sources within four years, to getting a million 150mpg vehicles on the roads within six years. Obama flings these promises about without a hint of how the government will intervene in the markets to make them happen, or how much it will cost. If the American people took the trouble to tally up the bill on all of Obama’s wild claims, they would laugh him off the stage. As Will notes,

In this year’s campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?

Lewis Carroll, on the Energy Crisis

According to John Weidner, read Alice in Wonderland and the energy crisis suddenly makes sense — in a perverse, progressive sort of way.

So who’s blocking “alternative power?” “Renewable energy?” Greens. Leftists. Democrats. No surprise there; once you abandon the use of logic, anything is possible . . .

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

A Green Convention — But No Bikes

I thought bicycles were the ultimate “green” transportation option. But somehow that option didn’t make it past the planners at the upcoming Democratic Party convention in Denver.

This is what happens when you put politicians, especially liberals, in charge of energy policy.

Okay, the fine print says it’s a security issue. But I suspect that could have been overcome with a little creative planning.

Pelosi Gets Grilled

Hats off to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who repeatedly hammered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on her refusal to allow an up-or-down vote in the House on the offshore drilling issue. Pelosi weaved and dodged and tried to shift blame on the evil Republicans, but Stephanopoulos refused to be distracted, repeating the same question over and over again. Pelosi came off looking like a fool.

Either ABC has suddenly turned into an agent of the RNC, or Pelosi is so out of touch with mainstream America that even the media can see it.

Texas, the Energy State

When it comes to energy, the politicians in Washington don’t get it. Texans do.

If there is an energy crisis in this country, it is because too many states and too many lawmakers in Washington are too timid about allowing entrepreneurs to bring to the surface what is buried right below us. In Texas, we’re not timid. Thanks to longstanding public policy encouraging responsible production, 18% of all the oil and 30% of all the natural gas produced onshore in the U.S. is produced in this state. That makes us the No. 1 energy-producing state in America.

Oh, one other little detail. The aggressive approach to energy production in Texas is one reason Texans do not pay any state income tax. Those evil oil companies pick up the tab for them. I could live with that.

Talk About Obscene Profits

Once again, the screaming headlines are designed to get a weary public up in arms over the “obscene profits” of the evil oil companies. See, for example, this headline on yesterday’s Drudge Report: “RECORD: EXXONMOBIL: $11,700,000,000.00.”

But look closer at the facts: Yes, ExxonMobil had record profits last quarter. But they also paid record taxes. Mark Perry provides this chart to put things in perspective.

Now if a $11.68B profit is “obscene,” what label should we attach to the government’s take?

The Oil Correction

Recently I explained why I have not joined the rush to dump the gas hogs and buy an economy car: the recent run-up in oil prices is simply unsustainable.

Now, the price of oil has already backed off 14% from its high, and it looks to go even lower.

Analysts at Lehman Brothers now forecast average oil prices of $110 in the last quarter of this year, falling to $90 in the first quarter of next.

My fear now is that it will drop so low that energy — especially the domestic drilling issue — will become a non-issue in the fall campaign, allowing Obama to return to his empty message of “change, hope, yada, yada, yada” to mesmerize the electorate. And Americans have such terribly short memories, they’ll fall for it.

Reality Catches Up with Dems

For years the Democrats have gladly carried the water for environmentalists who had all kinds of plans for saving the planet using federal money and regulations. But $4 gasoline is changing the picture. Now all those enviro-wacky schemes are viewed by voters as exacerbating the problem, with little in return.

The environmental movement is facing a critical moment. Democrats who support the greenies in their most ambitious goals, and scariest pseudo-scientific rhetoric, suddenly seem woefully out of touch with American voters.

They are trying to hold the line for now, but with a major election looming, sooner or later Democrats have got to change their tune, or face a reckoning.

Democrats, after a long holiday from reality occasioned by cheap oil, are beginning to understand that either they have to take up the challenge of meeting America’s need for oil, or voters will find someone who will.

Get Fit, Save the Planet

A Florida startup company is marketing technology to harness the pedal-power in gyms and feed it back into the power grid.

Just think — you can keep yourself in shape, and help solve the nation’s energy crisis, all at the same time.

Carbon vs. Hydrogen

What will be the dominant energy source in the 21st century? Nuclear? Nope. Solar? Wind? No, and no.

It’s natural gas.

Robert Bryce looks at the numbers, and sees a growing reliance on natural gas as a primary energy source in coming decades. The world has huge reserves of the stuff, and the technology already exists to harness it.

What’s more, the molecular composition of natural gas means the world will be continuing its march away from carbon-based energy toward hydrogen-based energy.

From prehistory through the 1700s and early 1800s, wood was the world’s most common fuel. Wood has a carbon-to-hydrogen ratio (C:H) of 10 to 1. That is, it has about 10 carbon atoms for every hydrogen atom. But as the Western world industrialized, wood lost its dominance to coal. Coal was a dramatic improvement over wood with a C:H ratio of about 2 to 1. But coal was destined to lose out to oil, particularly for transportation, thanks to oil’s greater energy density and a C:H ratio of 1 to 2. Over the coming decades, natural gas will be the big winner, a result of its 1 to 4 C:H ratio. Thus, when compared to wood, natural gas has 40 times as many hydrogen atoms as carbon atoms.

In effect, this means the world’s economies will be reducing carbon emissions simply by following market forces, even without onerous government incentives.

Coal and oil will stay around for years, but the future belongs to natural gas.

California, Land of Fruits and Nuts

And environmentalist wackos, who are systematically dismantling the energy infrastructure underlying the state’s economy.

California’s environmental policies have made it heavily dependent on other states for power; generated some of the highest, business-crippling energy costs in the country; and left it vulnerable to periodic electricity shortages. Its economic growth has occurred not because of, but despite, those policies, which would be disastrous if extended to the rest of the country.

In the not-too-distant future, California’s loony energy policies will wreck the state’s economy. Then, I suppose, we might as well cede the state back to Mexico.

We Will Bury Ourselves

Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal comments on the breathtaking stupidity of America’s unwillingness to drill our own oil during a time of global energy shortages.

While other nations use their oil reserves to attain world status, we give ours up. Why shouldn’t they conclude that, long term, these people can be taken? Nikita Khrushchev said, “We will bury you.” Forget that. We’ll do it ourselves.

Instead, our politicians shove each other to be the first to whack the very ones who could get us out of this jam — the oil companies — if we would let them.

Surely, the American public will someday wake up and realize what our political class is doing to our nation’s future, and throw the scoundrels out.

When the Lights Go Out

Want to know where our government’s current energy non-policy will eventually take us? Just look at Great Britain, which is now facing the prospect of crippling power outages due to severe environmental restrictions on new generating plants.

Thanks to decades of neglect and wishful thinking by successive governments – and now the devastating impact of a directive from Brussels – we are about to see 17 of our major power stations forced to close, leaving us with a massive shortfall. . . .

At the moment, to meet Britain’s peak electricity demand, our power stations need to provide a minimum 56 gigawatts (GW) of capacity.

Ten gigawatts, nearly a fifth, comes from our ageing nuclear power stations, all but one of which are so old that over the next few years they will have reached the end of their useful working life.

On top of that, however, we shall also have to shut down nine more major power stations – six coal-fired, three oil-fired – forced to close by the crippling cost of complying with an EU anti-pollution law, the so- called Large Combustion Plants directive.

This will take out another 13GW of capacity, bringing the total shortfall to 22GW – a staggering 40 per cent of the 56GW we have today.

America is only slightly behind the British on this curve. Eventually the impact of wacky environmental policies will catch up with us, too.

Remind Me Again . . . Who’s For the Little Guy?

Victor Davis Hanson ponders the liberals’ claim of fighting for the little guy, when their environmental policies are driving millions of little guys deeper into poverty.

What these elites don’t seem to realize is that the energy policies they tend to advocate are for the present paralyzing almost everyone else in the country — and that the truly ethical and environmental solution would require embracing positions long considered anathema to traditional liberalism. . . .

Most environmentalists think of themselves as egalitarians. So, instead of objecting to the view of a derrick from the California hills above the Santa Barbara coast, shouldn’t a liberal estate owner instead console himself that the offshore pumping will help a nearby farm worker or carpenter get to work without going broke?

But it’s not about helping the farm worker or the carpenter. It never has been. Radical environmentalism is the new communism, a vehicle for gaining control of the economy in the interest of promoting a mythical “greater good.” Like the old communism, this new version will end up destroying freedom and ruining the lives of millions. In fact, the process is already underway.

Rather, It’s the Democrats

Finally, the Republican Party is getting up the nerve to confront the Dems on their historic obstructionism on a national energy policy.

Democrats have blocked the development of new sources of petroleum.
Democrats have blocked drilling in ANWR.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the coast of Florida.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the east coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the west coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast.
Democrats have blocked building oil refineries.
Democrats have blocked clean nuclear energy production.
Democrats have blocked clean coal production.

And, what is the democratic solution to the current energy crisis?
–Democrats want to tax oil companies and sue OPEC!

Be sure to go to the link, and check out the map showing the Chinese drilling just 50 miles from our border — yet we are forbidden, by our own government, to drill within our borders. Unbelievable.

But there’s hope that the American people may finally be catching on to the root problem.

Recent polling data from Gallup show the percentage of voters blaming oil companies for skyrocketing gasoline prices has dropped from 34 percent to 20 percent over the past year. At the same time, support for more drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas has increased to 57 percent from 41 percent.

Even the editorial board at USA Today gets it.

It’s Not the Oil Companies

Economics professor Barbara Fischer brings a refreshing dose of sanity to the hysteria over the role of the oil companies in the current rise in gasoline prices.

Punishing oil companies is perverse logic. Slapping on a windfall profits tax will indeed cause gas consumption to fall (as the tax is passed on to the consumer); however, beware of the unintended side effects. Lower oil demand will lead to lower oil prices, which in turn will lead to higher consumption, thereby reducing the incentive to find alternative energy sources.

The ultimate irony is that while oil companies earn about 8 to 10 cents per dollar of sales, the state of Wisconsin earns 32.9 cents for every gallon of gas sold and the federal government takes another 18 cents. So who is gouging whom? Thus, state and federal government receive more than 50 cents a gallon for doing nothing.

At least oil companies are producing the gas, creating jobs, paying taxes and searching for alternative sources of fuel. Oil companies spend billions of dollars on alternative fuel sources. So taxing their profits simply reduces their incentive to continue doing so.

We have placed oil companies between a rock and a hard place. We would not find ourselves in this pickle if we allowed them to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and/or made it easier for them to build more refineries. We demand lower gas prices, yet we stand in the way of any potential solution. Then we turn around and curse the oil companies, accusing them of collusion.

Politicians in Congress are sharpening their ax in preparation for killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Someday, when we’re looking at $10 a gallon gas, the American public will finally wake up and realize they were angry at the wrong people.

The Coming Collapse of Oil Prices

The spiraling price of oil is looking more and more like a classic bubble — a run-up driven more by speculation than the usual pressures of supply-and-demand.

Ronald Bailey addressed this subject in an article two months ago. He quotes Tim Evans, an energy futures analyst at Citigroup’s Futures Perspective, who says, “I think that this is the riskiest time to be long in crude oil since 1980.”

Larry Elliott sees a parallel with the dot.com boom of the late nineties. “The oil market, to put it simply, is a massive bubble waiting to be popped.” When? Elliott won’t venture a guess.

“Bubble markets are not remotely rational, which is why it is impossible to say how high the price will go or how long the boom will continue before the bust arrives. But make no mistake, that moment will come.”

Justin Lahart is not convinced that we’re seeing a bubble, but agrees that the eventual outcome is a fall in prices.

The combination of a change in consumer behavior and an economic slowdown that is showing signs of spreading beyond the U.S. may already augur just the kind of sharp drop in prices that occurred back then [1980s]. But if that happens, it won’t be because oil prices were in a bubble; it will just be because that is the way commodity markets work.

What does all this mean? Well, for me, it means I’m in no rush to dump my gas-guzzling car at a fire-sale price, and pay a premium for a more fuel-efficient model. Barring an unforeseeable catastrophe in the market, the price that I’m paying for gasoline at the pump will eventually fall to a more reasonable level.

And life will go on.

Oil Execs Educate Senators on How Markets Work

John Hinderaker at PowerLine records some interesting details from the testimony this week of the oil executives before a Senate committee investigating the high price of oil. If you want to understand why you’re paying almost four bucks a gallon for gas, Hinderaker’s article would be a good place to start.

First, the “big oil” companies are not nearly as big as their competitors, the nationalized oil companies of other countries. American companies represent only a small fraction of the market, and are at a distinct disadvantage trying to compete for scarce supplies against these behemoth operations. According to Exxon’s Stephen Simon:

For an American company to succeed in this competitive landscape and go head to head with huge government-backed national oil companies, it needs financial strength and scale to execute massive complex energy projects requiring enormous long-term investments.

If our government adopts a policy of punishing our own oil companies with a windfall profits tax, further crippling the companies’ ability to compete for supplies, imagine what that will do to the price of gasoline at the pump.

Second, you can hardly blame the oil companies for high prices, when relatively cheap sources of new petroleum right here at home have been placed off limits by politicians. Shell’s John Hofmeister explained,

According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Finally, there’s this curious piece of information: On average, 15% percent of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4% represents oil company profits. If 4% profit represents “gouging the consumer,” what does the 15% tax represent?

Seems to me that American consumers should be hauling some representatives of Big Government before a committee to demand answers.

The Obama Energy Plan

Obama gave the first hint of his energy policy in a speech to a large crowd of fawning adorers in Oregon yesterday.

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

So “leadership” apparently means the government telling Americans what cars we can drive, how much food we can eat, and what temperature to set our home thermostats at.

Francis Cianfrocca sees in these remarks the first signal to other nations of how America will play in the global competition for energy.

If nothing else, he’s now made completely clear his view that the answer to the global energy problem is for Americans to net-reduce our usage of energy, even before more efficient technologies become available. To Obama, this is leadership. He may suppose that everyone else will say “if you do that, we’ll do it too.” Their actual response is more likely to be: ”Thanks for the cheaper energy, suckers.

Oil: A Simple Supply-and-Demand Problem

Fred Barnes looks at the asinine energy strategy of the Democrats: Severely restrict domestic drilling (in the name of environmental correctness), and punish the profitability of the oil producers. In a day when Americans are already being severely squeezed at the pump, what else can this produce but even tighter supplies, and higher prices?

Oil from current sites is gradually being depleted. Unless new sources come on line in the next few years, America will produce less oil at home and become even more dependent on oil from abroad, the Middle East in particular.

Reid and Democrats, OPEC’s best friends, aren’t noticeably concerned. Their next step is to remove tax incentives to explore and drill for more oil. And Senator Hillary Clinton is eager to impose a new windfall profits tax on oil revenues. These measures have no purpose other than to punish oil companies. They are counterproductive.

When you remove incentives to produce something and when you slap higher taxes on its producers, one thing happens: You get less of the product.

Gratitude for Big Oil

My late father worked as a field hand for Exxon from the late 1940’s until his retirement in the mid ’80’s. So oil is in my blood. And it makes my blood boil to hear politicians denigrate “big oil” as a bunch of greedy corporate fat cats who are out to gouge the little guy. In my personal experience, that is definitely not the case.

The Houston Chronicle recently ran this article by Tom Potts, an Exxon retiree whose career covered the same time period as my father’s. Potts provides an excellent insight into the corporate culture that motivates Exxon — and serves our nation so well.

Profits are a measure of success — a universal goal of free enterprise — and Big Oil should be congratulated, not condemned for its success. We should be grateful that these U.S.-based corporations are alive and well. Were they not willing to invest substantial portions of their earnings in exploration for new petroleum reserves and the development of new energy sources, someday we might all be riding bicycles to work. And were they not willing to pay substantial dividends to shareholders, including pension funds and other financial resources important to all of us, our economy truly would tank.

Potts details the employee savings plans, philanthropic contributions to schools and universities, commitment to personal and corporate ethical standards, and shareholder dividends as examples of what every corporation should aspire to achieve. Our nation is fortunate to have such corporate citizens.

Personally, I’m proud to be an Exxon kid. I wish our politicians shared that appreciation for what “big oil” has done for our nation. If they follow through on their threats to punish the oil companies with windfall profit taxes, they will be killing the goose the lays the golden egg — and all of us will end up paying even steeper prices for our energy.

Start Drilling!

So says Robert Samuelson in describing why America’s energy policy is such a mess.

We’re almost powerless to influence today’s prices. We are because we didn’t take sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do: Start drilling. . . .

What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity. Americans favor both “energy independence” and cheap fuel. They deplore imports — who wants to pay foreigners? — but oppose more production in the United States. Got it? The result is a “no-pain energy agenda that sounds appealing but has no basis in reality” . . .

Oil Company Profiteering?

Here are a couple of  interesting factoids on those incredible oil company profits that I’ll bet you haven’t heard. First:

While crude oil has gone up from about $66 a barrel to almost $119 — an 80 percent increase during the last year — gas has gone from $2.71 a gallon to $3.60, an increase of only 33 percent.

In other words, the oil industry’s profits have not been keeping pace with the rising cost of their primary raw material.

Second:

Mutual fund giant Vanguard . . . has more than $18 billion in ExxonMobil stock. Most of that is owned by investors in the company’s S&P 500 index fund and its total stock market index fund. And it’s not just Vanguard. Almost every major mutual fund company owns oil stocks. Two of Fidelity’s mutual funds, for example, rank in the top 10 holders of ExxonMobil stock.

The oil companies are “broadly owned by tens of millions of middle-class Americans, anyone with a pension plan or 401(k) or IRA account, a mutual fund,” Dougher said. “They’re really the owners. So, when their stock portfolios go up, that’s really who benefits.”

In other words, if Congressional critics act on their threat to rein in those evil corporate profits of the oil companies, guess who’s gonna feel the pain? That’s right — the millions of small investors who are depending on those profits to finance their retirement.

It’s called “free enterprise,” people. Why aren’t they teaching this in high school anymore?

Biofuels: A Greenie Boondoggle

Steve Milloy argues that the recent push to develop biofuels from food stocks is a lose-lose-lose proposition. The fuel-from-food has not reduced our dependence on foreign oil, it has not reduced carbon emissions (and according to some research, may even make it worse), and is driving up the cost of basic foods, which severely impacts the poorest inhabitants of the planet.

In the meantime, of course, the greenies are doing everything they can to restrict our access to cheaper, more dependable sources of energy, such as coal, natural gas, nuclear power, and wind.

Millions in the developing world have died and continue to do so from the greens’ campaign against pesticides such as DDT. Nothing less should be expected from their new campaign that threatens global food and energy production.

UPDATE: One U. N. official calls the hunger crisis “a silent tsunami,” and specifically calls out the biofuel craze for blame. Furthermore,

The World Health Organization views hunger as the No. 1 threat to public health around the world, responsible for a third of child deaths and 10 percent of all disease.

Hmmm. And all this time, I thought global warming was our greatest challenge.

Who is the True Environmentalist?

This has been around the internet quite a bit over the last year, but it bears repeating.

House #1

A 20 room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern “snow belt” area. It’s in the South.

 

House #2

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every “green” feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American Southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the “environmentalist,” Al Gore.

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas; it is the residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

For the skeptics: The integrity of this comparison has been confirmed by the folks at Snopes.com.

I’m From the Government — I’m Here to Help

Uh, no, thanks.

Jeff Jacoby notes two good examples of why the good intentions of government meddling in the free market usually ends up causing more problems than it solves.

First, the big push to create more corn-based ethanol, in order to reduce CO₂ levels and fight global warming.

The problem, laid out in two new studies in the journal Science, is that it takes a lot of land to grow biofuel feedstocks such as corn, and as forests or grasslands are cleared for crops, large amounts of CO₂ are released. Diverting land in this fashion also eliminates “carbon sinks,” which absorb atmospheric CO₂. Bottom line: The government’s ethanol mandate will generate a “carbon debt” that will take decades, maybe centuries, to pay off.

Second, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco is a problem entirely of the government’s making.

The crisis has its roots in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, a Carter-era law that purported to prevent “redlining” – denying mortgages to black borrowers – by pressuring banks to make home loans in “low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.” Under the act, banks were to be graded on their attentiveness to the “credit needs” of “predominantly minority neighborhoods.” The higher a bank’s rating, the more likely that regulators would say yes when the bank sought to open a new branch or undertake a merger or acquisition.
. . .
Banks nationwide thus ended up making more and more subprime loans and agreeing to dangerously lax underwriting standards – no down payment, no verification of income, interest-only payment plans, weak credit history. If they tried to compensate for the higher risks they were taking by charging higher interest rates, they were accused of unfairly steering borrowers into “predatory” loans they couldn’t afford.

Trapped in a no-win situation entirely of the government’s making, lenders could only hope that home prices would continue to rise, staving off the inevitable collapse. But once the housing bubble burst, there was no escape. Mortgage lenders have been bankrupted, thousands of subprime homeowners have been foreclosed on, and countless would-be borrowers can no longer get credit. The financial fallout has hurt investors around the world. And all of it thanks to the government, which was sure it understood the credit industry better than the free market did, and confidently created the conditions that made disaster unavoidable.

And people want to turn over their health care to the same bunch of bungling bureaucrats? The free market can be an ugly mess sometimes, but at least it is a self-correcting mechanism that eventually drives out inefficiencies and improves the standard of living for everyone. Government mandates work in the opposite direction. When will we learn that?

The Truth About Those “Evil Oil Companies”

Tammy Bruce sets the record straight on the record profits earned by ExxonMobil last year. Their profit may have broken a record, but so did the taxes they paid. And who benefits from those profits? The middle-class stock holders, that’s who:

Ironically, many of the people who cheer the Clinton/Obama/Hugo Chavez message of nationalizing companies don’t even realize they’re cheering for the cutoff of checks their parents or grandparents rely on every month; dividend checks from those ‘evil, profit mongering oil companies,’ which in fact are owned by the American people, primarily the middle class and the elderly.

And don’t forget the billions in research and development that the oil companies are spending in an effort to find the energy we all expect to have in abundance, and cheaply.

Someday, after the golden goose is slain, we’ll all wake up and realize how good we had it.

Now THIS is Energy Independence

Scott Adams (yes, that Scott Adams) has compiled some research on new technologies that would allow homeowners to get completely off the power grid. These technologies include advances in solar panels, lithium-ion batteries made with silicon nanowires, and even micro-nuclear reactors. Oddly, he does not mention residential wind turbines, an existing technology with a long history of improvement.

One issue with these residential power sources is conversion. Most of these technologies produce 12-volt DC, which must be converted to 110-volt AC. Ironically, of course, many household appliances, such as computers, convert that 110 AC back to 12-volt DC. A lot of energy is wasted in those conversions. So to maximize the efficiency of these systems, homes should be wired to accommodate 12-volt DC appliances.

Getting off the power grid is entirely possible — but still prohibitively expensive for most people.