The real cost of ‘global warming’

By James Delingpole:

The renewable energy industry is helping to destroy the UK economy and drive up unemployment says a new report. For every one of David Cameron’s “green jobs” created in the renewable energy sector (mainly solar and wind), another 3.7 jobs are being lost in the real economy, says the independent study by Verso Economics. In total, measurable policies to promote renewable energy cost £1.4 billion in the UK and £168 million in Scotland in 2009/10. But this doesn’t take into account the additional economic damage inflicted by the erection of enormous, bird-chopping monstrosities all over some of Britain’s most attractive tourist spots – including, for example, the hitherto unspoilt island of Tiree.(H/T Michael Daly)

Still, it’s not all bad news. Until really quite recently, it was only lonely voices like Christopher Booker’s which were prepared to speak out against the great Wind Farm scam (and related Climate Cons). Now, as the Verso Economics report shows, more and more people are waking up to the horrendous economic and environmental damage being done in the name of “combatting AGW/climate change/climate disruption/fill in fashionable new phrase here”.

Booker lays out the facts yet again in a storming piece in the Daily Mail entitled Why the £250 billion wind farm industry could be the greatest scam of our age. The real villains of the piece, he argues, are our political classes – Tories, Labour and Lib Dems alike – who are completely out of touch with their increasingly sceptical electorate.

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Obama’s economy heads further south

Steve McCann:

Fannie Mae, the now government owned mortgage finance company, has posted a loss of $2.4 Billion for the 4th Quarter of 2010. They have also requested another $2.6 Billion in aid from the Federal Government. Since 2008 Fannie Mae and its sibling company Freddie Mac have taken over $289 Billion in subsidies from the American taxpayer with no end in sight.

Coincidentally Fannie Mae has released new data from a survey they took in January 2011. As compared to a year ago the American people are more pessimistic about the outlook for housing and the economy.

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Bernard Nathanson: A Life Transformed by Truth

by Robert P. George:

A man who made a career of death and lies became a hero for life and truth.

Tomorrow morning in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Archbishop Timothy Dolan will celebrate a Mass of Christian Burial for a giant of the pro-life movement: Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

Few people, if any, did more than Bernard Nathanson to undermine the right to life of unborn children by turning abortion from an unspeakable crime into a constitutionally protected liberty. Someday, when our law is reformed to honor the dignity and protect the right to life of every member of the human family, including children in the womb, historians will observe that few people did more than Bernard Nathanson to achieve that reversal.

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Unions and the Divorcing of Reward from Merit

by Evan Sayet, FrontPage:

Two headlines, running within a couple of days of each other, caught my attention because they are interrelated. The first was from the Milwaukee Journal and it made clear that, for the first time in history, the average compensation garnered by the Milwaukee school teacher exceeded $100,000. The second was found in a variety of places, a statistic coming from no less a source than the Department of Education, which declared that “Two-Thirds of Wisconsin 8th Graders Can’t Read Proficiently.” The reason for both the exceedingly high pay and the exceedingly low scholarship is due, of course, to the unions.

Oh, there are other causes as well – but they, too, are a reflection of the union because the problem with unions is the same problem with our culture in general – the near-complete divorcing of reward from merit.

If students can’t read, then how did they make it to the eighth grade in the first place? The answer is that their grades were inflated and thus they were rewarded with grades they did not merit. They are in the eight grade because they received “social promotions,” rewards given to children obviously not based on their scholastic aptitude but on the Modern Liberal premise that not rewarding them might hurt their self-esteem.

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EPA trumpets dubious shale gas risks – but ignores environmental impacts of wind turbines

By Paul Driessen:

America is running out of natural gas. Prices will soar, making imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) and T Boone Pickens’ wind farm plan practical, affordable and inevitable. That was then.

Barely two years later, America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches – as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. They do it by pumping a water, sand and proprietary chemical mixture into rocks under very high pressure, fracturing or “fracking” the formations, and keeping the cracks open, to yield trapped methane.

Within a year, US recoverable shale gas reserves alone rose from 340 trillion cubic feet to 823 tcf, the Energy Department estimates. That’s 36 years’ worth, based on what the USA currently consumes from all gas sources, or the equivalent of 74 years’ of current annual US oil production. The reserves span the continent, from Barnett shale in Texas to Marcellus shale in Eastern and Mid-Atlantic states – to large deposits in western Canada, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana and other states (and around the world).
Instead of importing gas, the United States could become an exporter

Instead of importing gas, the United States could become an exporter. The gas can move seamlessly into existing pipeline systems, to fuel homes, factories and electrical generators, serve as a petrochemical feedstock, and replace oil in many applications. States, private citizens and the federal government could reap billions in lease bonuses, rents, royalties and taxes. Millions of high-paying jobs could be “created or saved.” Plentiful gas can also provide essential backup power for wind turbines.

Production of this much gas would reduce oil price shocks and dependence on oil imports from the likes of Gadhafi and Chavez, while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Talk about a game changer!

What’s not to like? Plenty, it turns out. The bountiful new supplies make environmentalist dogmas passé: the end of the hydrocarbon era, America as an energy pauper, immutable Club of Rome doctrines of sustainability and imminent resource depletion, the Pickens’ Plan and forests of wind turbines.

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