China Secures Oil and Gas Resources: U.S. Fiddles with ‘Green’ Energy
By Mary Hutzler -- December 21, 2009Around the world, China is investing in oil and gas resources to fuel its booming manufacturing industries and transportation sector to continue its sky-rocketing economic growth. China is not endowed with very much oil and gas resources of its own. Thus, it needs to partner with countries around the world to ensure availability of future supplies of oil and natural gas that it will need to keep up its current pace of economic growth.
The U.S., which does have oil and gas resources, is not following China’s lead in investing in these resources. Instead, the U.S. is looking toward wind and solar technologies to fuel its economy. However, wind and solar power are generating technologies and will not help where oil is needed in the transportation and industrial sectors.
Further, wind and solar power have capacity factors that cannot compete with those of fossil fuel generating technologies, and they can create instability issues with the electrical grid.…
Continue ReadingDebating Climate Change on Stossel: Economics to the Fore
By Jerry Taylor -- December 19, 2009Last week, I appeared on the premier of John Stossel’s new show on Fox Business – a show titled (appropriately enough) Stossel. The topic was global warming and, happily, I had an hour (well, actually only about 43 minutes once you subtract out the commercials) to discuss the issue with John and members of the studio audience. If you missed the show, you can catch it here.
My arguments on Stossel tracked those offered here at MasterResource last month. In short, I had no interest in engaging in a debate about the physical science of natural versus anthropogenic climate change.
I was entirely interested in the implications for public policy if we accept the most recent IPCC report at face value. I think it’s quite interesting that even if one accepts the common definition of what constitutes “mainstream science” on this issue that one is still hard pressed to put forward a defensible mitigation scheme.…
Continue Reading“The Wind Farm Scam” by John Etherington (the UK environmental civil war builds)
By Glenn Schleede -- December 18, 2009Editor Note: Author John Etherington, formerly a Reader in Ecology at the University of Wales, has extensively researched the implications of intermittently available renewable electricity generation, particularly wind power. He is a Thomas Huxley Medallist at the Royal College of Science and a former co-editor of the International Journal of Ecology.
It may be a bit too late to order copies of the just published 198-page The Wind Farm Scam (Stacy International, 2009) by British ecologist John Etherington as a holiday gift, but it’s well worth getting (and giving) copies of the book as soon as you can secure them.
The book should be required reading for every high school, college, and university student — especially in those institutions offering energy and environmental programs.
Although the book written about the UK experience, most of its facts about “wind farms” are applicable worldwide. …
Continue Reading