Just The Links, Please

Wherein I write a sentence or three about each.

• I think the Tories missed an opportunity to win control of Parliament outright and Republicans risk doing the same. What must they do? Follow Barone's advice and propose a bold plan that cuts Fed spending to ~20% of GDP.

• Think moderation of radical Islam is inevitable? Think again.

• That Rush Limbaugh, he's pretty clever.

• Education reform--real reform, not the kind proposed by teachers' unions--remains one of my highest order priorities.

• What's up with Anglo-American relations? Nothing good.

• I'll just use the article title since it's sooo good: No, You Can't Keep Your Health Plan.

• When you make terrorists into run-of-the-mill criminals it does damage to both our ability to prevent terror acts and to American civil liberties.

• Islam and Trotsky.

• There are real limits to Obama/Reid/Pelosi's ability to tax-and-spend--whether they realize it or not.

• Hypocritical Democrats aren't the only ones selling American education down the river--some Republicans do it too. It will come as no surprise to most of you that these Republicans reside in Illinois.

• That awesome European model for what America could do and be? Not so awesome. Hey Krugman, are you paying attention?

• A little push-back on financial reform.

• The fundamental problem of government bureaucracy.

• What happens when you prioritize "fairness" over freedom.

• What's going on in North Korea? Obama doesn't really know.

• Another great school-choice column. Love this stuff.

• North vs. South--not the Civil War but Europe.

• Another of my favorite hobby-horses--shale-based energy--and how it's going to bring on an energy revolution. But not the kind my friend Sameer keeps rapping (literally) about.

Enjoy!

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

More Good News On Energy

Props to markets, again.

Much the same technology being used to get at shale oil is now being used to access natural gas. And the results are astonishing.

Equally dramatic is the effect on U.S. reserves. Proven reserves have risen to 245 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2008 from 177 Tcf in 2000, despite having produced nearly 165 Tcf during those years. The recent increase in estimated U.S. gas reserves by the Potential Gas Committee, representing both academic and industry experts, is in itself equivalent to more than half of the total proved reserves of Qatar, the new LNG powerhouse. With more drilling experience, U.S. estimates are likely to rise dramatically in the next few years. At current levels of demand, the U.S. has about 90 years of proven and potential supply—a number that is bound to go up as more and more shale gas is found.

To have the resource base suddenly expand by this much is a game changer. But what is getting changed?

It transforms the debate over generating electricity. The U.S. electric power industry faces very big questions about fuel choice and what kind of new generating capacity to build. In the face of new climate regulations, the increased availability of gas will likely lead to more natural gas consumption in electric power because of gas's relatively lower CO2 emissions. Natural gas power plants can also be built more quickly than coal-fired plants.

Some areas like Pennsylvania and New York, traditionally importers of the bulk of their energy from elsewhere, will instead become energy producers. It could also mean that more buses and truck fleets will be converted to natural gas. Energy-intensive manufacturing companies, which have been moving overseas in search of cheaper energy in order to remain globally competitive, may now stay home.

Along with shale oil and clean coal, natural gas is an energy game-changer.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Bjorn Lomborg's 'Climate-Industrial Complex'

From last week's journal, a great article by this blog's favorite purveyor of global warmism common sense, Bjorn Lomborg. As the article title indicates--The Climate-Industrial Complex--Lomborg warns against the many special interests that stand to gain from adoption of the radical green plans President Obama has proposed.

The cozy corporate-climate relationship was pioneered by Enron, which bought up renewable energy companies and credit-trading outfits while boasting of its relationship with green interest groups. When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, an internal memo was sent within Enron that stated, "If implemented, [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory business."

[Aside: As James Taranto frequently reminds his readers, Paul Krugman is a "former Enron adviser." That shouldn't surprise anyone.]

I'm always surprised by liberal friends of mine who are sure that the only nefarious business interests at work in the world today are "Big Oil" companies which obviously hate the planet and just want money. They, in turn, are always surprised to learn that Al Gore, in addition to being a Nobel and Academy Award winner, is also, as Lomborg describes him,

a politician, a campaigner and the chair of a green private-equity firm invested in products that a climate-scared world would buy.

Yeah, folks, green technology is a money maker--just not for most Americans.

This is what happens when the government intervenes in the market and picks the winners--you pay more taxes and Al Gore laughs all the way to the bank.

If you have tips, questions, comments, suggestions, or requests for subscription only articles, email us at lybberty@gmail.com.

'Alternative Energy': Oil, Coal, & Natural Gas

I love this topic & I love posting things like this--a bit I found in the Notable & Quotable section of the Wall Street Journal, Jon Basil Utley writing in at Reason.com:

It's only a matter of time before President Barack Obama's vast popularity runs aground on his energy policies. In the name of saving the planet from global warming, he has delayed new oil drilling, an action that will have major political repercussions once the world economy recovers. Instead of using some [of] the stimulus billions to produce more gas and oil, Obama's wild-eyed supporters dream of "renewable" energy derived from corn, wind, sunshine, and even grass.

With the appointment of extremists like climate czar Carol Browner and science adviser John Holdren, Obama has placed his administration's environmental policy in the hands of radicals. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar proposes replacing oil and coal with windmills. Yet Barron's recently reported that America would need to build 500,000 giant offshore windmills and transmission lines to produce Salazar's specified 1,900 gigawatts of electricity. In contrast, oil and gas drilling could provide hundreds of thousands of solid, well-paying blue-collar jobs. . . .

All of these things are happening at a time when natural gas is abundant and cheap. The new technology of horizontal fraccing has made it economically feasible to drill into vast shale deposits in many states, even famously difficult ones like Michigan and New York. Many cars could run on natural gas, much like many buses do already. On a recent trip to Peru, I learned that most taxicabs have been converted to natural gas for a cost of about $1,000 each. New technologies continually revive old oil and gas fields and make new ones economically viable. So it's little more than socialist Malthusianism to argue that the world is running out of cheap energy. Science will always find and harness new sources.

History suggests that markets will always find a cheap source of energy.

As for me and my blog, I'll stick with the historically overwhelming power of the market, over the liberty-taking, economy-destroying, command & control social engineers in the Obama administration.

Cap & trade, in addition to being pointless from an "environmental" perspective and incredibly costly (effectively a huge tax on American families), is at its core an opportunity for your intellectual betters in the Obama administration to take control of a huge section of the American economy and your lives.

You see, they're smarter and more enlightened than you & me are and thus, should be controlling an ever-increasing portion of our lives.

It's about power & control: They own/run/influence a huge section of the financial industry as a result of TARP, etc., and now effectively control Chrysler. Next up? This is no secret. Government healthcare, cap & trade and other stuff I'm forgetting at the moment.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Eugene Gholz: On Energy Independence

For awhile now I've bought into the argument that we should reduce our usage of oil and move to other energy sources in order for us to attain "energy independence." All along, I've had concerns about the practicality of such a goal and the unintended consequences--call it my ethanol starvation concern--that might result.

Though I'm not entirely prepared to back off of that broad goal, I'm beginning to rethink my position--not least of all because most of our oil--2/3 by some estimates--comes from Canada and other "friendly" nations.

A recent article by Eugene Gholz, associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas Austin, adds weight to my intuited concerns. An excerpt from that article:

Our exaggerated fears over energy security have some benefits – for example, they may reduce the United States' inclination to attack Iran. But they also have big costs. Politicians could be induced to try costly solutions for problems that don't exist, such as President Bush's commitment to double the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Western leaders may also pay too much heed to an oil producer's saber-rattling. (ed. note: Russia) And, finally, exaggerated fear may encourage oil-market traders to panic at the first sign of even a small disturbance. When it comes to energy security, let's not let fear get the best of common sense.

(emphasis, ed. note, added)

The overarching question I have about all of this is: In an increasingly globalized world, is it possible to be truly independent in anything? Let alone energy independence?

(h/t Dartblog)


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Fact: Global Warming Fried The Brains Of 9 British Jurors

Reader and friend of OL&L, B. Berns, wrote of the latest ridiculous Global Warming court ruling:

Are you sure we want to move there????!!!!!????

Short answer: Not permanently.

If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, last week a jury in Britain ruled that the threat of Global Warming was great enough to justify 35000 GBP in damage to private property.

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of "lawful excuse" under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

This is a gross application of the "burning house" exception.

I won't waste your time going through all the tenuous linkage steps between a clean-coal fired plant and the purported far-off destructive results of global warming or climate change or whatever buzz word they're using to describe something about which the fetishists know so little.

Suffice it to say, the hysteria in the United Kingdom is completely out of proportion to the supposed threat and people are making stupid decisions as a result.


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Quote of the Day

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a McCain economist, was recently quoted in the National Journal, responding to former Enron Adviser*, Paul Krugman's criticism of McCain's pro-drilling policy:

If we could get a firm commitment to expanded supply of oil on the market three and a half years from now, that would change spot market prices three and half years from now, that would change futures prices today and that would translate into pressure on prices instantaneously. You know, Mr. Krugman's a good economist; he can go back and read his finance text

*Thank you James Taranto.

h/t: John Fund, Political Diary


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Shale Oil & Energy Independence

This is what we've been talking about.

We have "more [oil shale reserves] than the entire world has consumed since oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in the 19th century."

(h/t Power Line)


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