A Free-Market Energy Blog

Obama’s Proposed Oil and Gas Tax Hike: What Has the Industry Done for Us Lately?

By Donald Hertzmark -- February 24, 2010

So let me see if I have this right – President Obama’s budget proposes to increase taxes on oil and gas by $36.5 billion over the next ten years, while laying out even larger sums for more politically favored energy sources – especially wind and solar.  And the reason advanced for this is that these “subsidies [sic] are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices.”

Neither of the claims in this statement is true.  In fact, they are the opposite of truth.  The oil and gas industries are major sources of revenues for governments at all levels in the US, and production incentives have contributed to a stunning turnaround in the country’s natural gas supplies – with higher production and lower costs a major feature.…

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The Rapidly Melting Case For Carbon Legislation

By Robert Bryce -- February 23, 2010

What a difference 12 months makes. Almost exactly one year ago, the popular, newly minted president, Barack Obama, was telling Congress that he wanted “legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.”

The Democrats, fully confident of their new president and their grip on both houses of Congress, were certain that they could pass yet another big energy bill that would finally push hydrocarbons off their pedestal and replace them with wind turbines, solar panels, and every other type of alternative energy.

An Unstimulated Economy

But a lot has happened since Obama delivered his first State of the Union address. The global economy has continued to show lackluster growth. And perhaps most important: unemployment rates in the U.S. remain stubbornly high and are expected to stay high for at least the next two years.…

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More on EPA’s Climate Science Problem: The Peabody Petition

By Chip Knappenberger -- February 22, 2010

In my last post, I pointed out a problem with the EPA’s major finding that:

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations.

I showed that it could be reasonably and straightforwardly argued that less than half of the warming since 1950 contained in the “observed” global temperature history can be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This is bad for the EPA, as this finding was simply parroted by the EPA from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)—a report relied on heavily by the EPA in underpinning its Endangerment Finding (that greenhouse gases released by human activities “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”). When the IPCC is wrong, so is the EPA.…

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Is DOE/Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s Windpower Impacts Study ‘Junk Science’? (Albert R. Wilson challenges the ‘experts’)

By Kent Hawkins -- February 20, 2010
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Green Jobs: The Last Redoubt (invoking military images of us-versus-them)

By Donald Hertzmark -- February 19, 2010
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Radioactive Corporate Welfare

By Jerry Taylor -- February 18, 2010
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Climategate: Seven Hard Questions from the Case Study of the Fall of Enron (will the AAAS panel consider them?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. --
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The Beginning of the End for Cap-and-Trade? (BP America, Conoco-Phillips, and Caterpillar bolt) (UPDATED)

By Kenneth P. Green -- February 17, 2010
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Pacific Legal Foundation vs. EPA on Endangerment (Bad science and bad policy can be avoided)

By Tom Tanton -- February 16, 2010
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Julian Simon Changed His Mind–Can Others Come to View Humans as the Solution, not the Problem?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 15, 2010
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