“The anti-fossil fuel environmental movement is in despair. For decades, proponents of the ideology of sustainable development preached that humanity was running out of oil and gas, that consumption of hydrocarbons was destroying the climate, and that renewable energy was rapidly becoming a cost-effective alternative. But the Shale Shock has slain peak oil and promises low-cost oil and gas for centuries to come.”
The world has changed. Although few yet understand it, the revolution in the production of oil and natural gas from shale has altered the course of global energy, affecting most of the world’s people. This is not a short-term event. Citizens, industries, and nations will be impacted for decades to come.
We are witnessing a modern energy miracle. For more than 30 years, US crude oil production fell from 9.6 million barrels per day in 1970 to 5 million barrels per day in 2008.…
“Cap-and-trade for CO2 emissions will be just another political plaything for crony socialism…. Cap-and-trade is high on transaction costs and wheeling-dealing and low on emission reduction. In Europe, post-Kyoto Protocol (1997 –) coal usage has increased seven percent, while gas usage has declined.”
“China to Announce Cap-and-Trade Program to Limit Emissions,” reported the New York Times last week. President Xi Jinping joined Obama’s global energy constructivism by committing (?) the world’s most populous country–and largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2)–to a to-be-determined cap-and-trade program beginning in 2017.
The Obama Administration is leveraging China’s commitment with his own Clean Power Plan to try to get other countries to sign on to a global accord in Paris this December. But these are paper promises by sovereigns who surely know that there is no guarantee that the next Administration–or Congress–will have any appetite for continuing the futile crusade to ‘save’ the climate. …
“Had the EPA/DRMS/ER people been private sector employees and supervisors, the U.S. EPA and the U.S. Justice Department would have prosecuted them as criminals and sought lengthy prison terms – just as they did with numerous U.S. citizens, including John Pozsgai, Bill Ellen, and employees of Freedom Industries and the Pacific & Arctic Railway. None of these ‘convicted felons’ intended to cause those accidents, and all were ‘absolutely, deeply sorry” for what happened. Why should the state and federal culprits be treated any differently, after having caused far worse environmental damage?”
This three-part series on the Gold King environmental disaster indicts both the practices of and the denial by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Part II examined what EPA’s contractors should have done given simple, well-known best practices:
…The competent approach would have been to drill a “cased” hole (a borehole lined with steel pipe) from above the portal into an area behind the blockage….