[This important press release from the Institute for Energy Research yesterday is reprinted for MasterResource readers this weekend.]
Politics, not science drove offshore drilling ban, 40K jobs sacrificed
Washington, DC – In the days following the Gulf oil spill, President Obama requested that the Secretary of the Interior conduct a 30-day review of the offshore drilling program in the United States and issue a report with recommendations. This report was to be “peer reviewed” by a team of seven engineers recommended by the National Academy of Engineering.
The team of engineers reviewed, approved and signed off on a version of the 30-day review that was presented to them by the Administration. However, after they signed their names to this document, a significant change was made – a change that led to the 6-month suspension of deepwater exploratory drilling.…
This post by Richard Schlesinger of EnergyBizInsider is reproduced with permission. The problem of rent-seeking by corporations (political capitalism) has been explored previously at MasterResource.
Although the electric industry has endorsed the concept of cap-and-trade as the least onerous approach to carbon regulation, at least one major company endorses it with unalloyed enthusiasm. Exelon not only supports the idea, it stated in a second-quarter conference call to analysts, which it posted to its Web site, that it expects to see a “$1.1 billion and growing annual upside to Exelon revenues from implementation of Waxman-Markey.” Is that number real or simply wishful thinking? Does Exelon know something that’s escaped the rest of us?
Actually, if one makes a couple of assumptions, the potential earnings boost is very real. Here’s how it works.…
[Editor Note: This piece originally appeared in the Calgary Herald on December 28th. It should be noted that a new website is devoted to Climategate.]
Responses to “Climategate”–the leaked e-mails from Britain’s University of East Anglia and its Climatic Research Unit — remind me of the line “Are your feet wet? Can you see the pyramids? That’s because you’re in denial.”
Climate catastrophists like Al Gore and the UN’s Rajendra Pachauri are downplaying Climategate: it’s only a few intemperate scientists; there’s no real evidence of wrongdoing; now let’s persecute the whistleblower. In Calgary, the latest fellow trying to use the Monty Python “nothing to see here, move along” routine is David Mayne Reid, who penned a column last week denying the importance of Climategate.
Unfortunately for Professor Reid, old saws won’t work in the Internet age: Climategate has blazed across the Internet, blogosphere, and social networking sites.…