Knocking on OPEC’s Door: The U.S. Becomes a Major Oil Exporter

By Robert Bryce -- October 8, 2009 4 Comments

Should the U.S. join OPEC? After all,  the U.S., home of the never-ending calls for “energy independence,” is an oil exporter. A big one.

Through the first six months of 2009, America’s daily exports were averaging 1.9 million barrels per day.[i] At that level, U.S. oil exports are on a par with countries like Angola and Venezuela.[ii] Of course, the vast majority of those exports are refined products, not crude. And those exports are also largely a function of America’s position as the world’s largest oil importer, which means that OPEC membership is rather unlikely.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the U.S. is an integral player in the oil market. And there has never been a bigger, more global, more integrated, more transparent market than the modern crude oil and oil products market.…

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A Death Spiral for Climate Alarmism, Redux?

By Kenneth P. Green -- September 30, 2009 13 Comments

Desperation is setting in among climate alarmists who by their own math can see that the window is rapidly closing on “saving the planet.”

James Hansen, for instance, said three years ago in the New York Review of Books: “We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.” That was also Al Gore’s estimate in “An Inconvenient Truth.” But the time has been ticking away, and it’s increasingly obvious that the Gore/Hansen “wrenching transformation” of the U.S. energy system is simply not going to happen.

Perhaps Copenhagen will make it official.

U.S. cap-and-trade has become a big political liability, in particular, as polls show voters are relatively unconcerned about climate change, and are deeply averse to higher energy prices.…

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The Global Cooling Scare Revisited (‘Ice Age’ Holdren had plenty of company)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 26, 2009 17 Comments

“Predictions of future climate trends by Stephen Schneider and other leading climatologists, based on the prevailing knowledge of the atmosphere in the early 1970s, gave more weight to the potential problem of global cooling than it now appears to merit.”

– Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Betrayal of Science and Reason (Washington: Island Press, 1996), p. 34.

Recent attention has been paid to the coming Ice Age talk of John Holdren and Steven Schneider before they got global warming religion.

Here are some “global cooling” quotations and comments from an earlier era. While such concern was not a scientific ‘consensus,’ such as that created by the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in favor of high-sensitivity anthropogenic global warming, the Ice Age scare was a very active hypothesis that should give pause to the Boiling Age purveyors of today.…

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The Federal “Green” Superhighway: 3,000 Miles to Nowhere? (Part II: Obama’s power grab, high cost)

By Robert Peltier -- September 23, 2009 7 Comments

[Yesterday’s post discussed how FERC failed to implement the siting authority granted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and examined a case study about why it failed. Part II looks at Obama’s “green power” superhighway, the recent work by regional transmission planning organizations to bring renewable energy to market, and the extremely high costs to do so.]

Public policy has long supported the ability to construct new transmission lines that relieve congestion and reduce the cost of energy to consumers. However, it is another question entirely to construct a new “green” coast-to-coast transmission corridor given the mess our transmission system is in today and its prohibitive cost. Critics have complaint that it is throwing good (transmission) money at bad (renewable) generation money.

Slowly, regional system operators are resolving transmission bottlenecks and improving the smooth flow of energy in their service territories.…

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The Federal ‘Green’ Super Highway: 3,000 Miles to Nowhere? (Part II: Obama’s power grab and high cost)

By Robert Peltier -- No Comments Continue Reading

Running Into Oil

By -- September 21, 2009 9 Comments Continue Reading

Even the Generals are Worried! Mission Creep, Climate Change, and National Security (Part 2)

By -- September 16, 2009 5 Comments Continue Reading

Even the Generals are Worried! Mission Creep, Climate Change, and National Security (Part 1)

By -- September 15, 2009 15 Comments Continue Reading

Energy Malthusianism in the Sweep of History (and Rockefeller, Insull, and Lay)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 12, 2009 7 Comments Continue Reading

On the Fall of Enron and Ken Lay: ‘Philosophic Fraud’ at an Errant Energy Company (and cap-and-trade, renewables forerunner)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 10, 2009 3 Comments Continue Reading