Musings and Memories

From HumanEventsOnline:

Despite his conditional, latter-day support for limited offshore drilling, Obama is the sole sponsor of legislation that would block geological research to locate offshore oil.

In 2005, Congress mandated new, quintennial inventories, then gave Interior six months and $0.00 to assess how much oil and natural gas undergird the 1.76 billion-acre Outer Continental Shelf -- a laughably impossible task.

Obama’s “Oil SENSE Act” would repeal the 2005 Energy Policy Act’s authorization of these inventories. S.115 would leave decision makers with Carter Administration maps drawn with pre-PC technology. This is like engineering a Space Shuttle mission with slide rules.

From FrontPageMagazine:

.....Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don’t Want You to Know About Because They Helped Cause Them, provides a framework for a detailed examination of the effects of sacred-cow environmental projects such as the ban on DDT and the promotion of ethanol. He also explores the cover-up of the polluting effect of contraceptives and abortion drugs, the failure of ill-advised forestry management policies and the bankruptcy of the endangered species act.

...environmentalists tout the benefits of bio-fuels, but in reality bio-fuel production pulls land out of food crop production, increases food prices, threatens wildlife and ultimately increases greenhouse gas emissions. Bio-fuels do not offer any of the purported benefits touted by environmentalists, he says, who, at bottom, have contempt for the internal combustion engine itself

.....ethanol provides only two-thirds the energy content of gasoline, is expensive to produce and releases more harmful emission amounts than gasoline. Its real costs are hidden by government support, including $5 billion in subsidies, a federal excise forgiveness tax of $.51 per gallon, and an ethanol tariff protection from imports of 2.5%, plus $.54 per gallon. The government requires gasoline producers to buy four billion gallons of ethanol yearly, purchasing support that will increase to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Further, ethanol emissions are actually double those of gasoline when its emissions are counted and combined with emissions arising from its transportation via truck rather than pipeline systems and its intensive production requirements – planting, growing, weeding, reaping, fermentation and distribution.
Further, diverting corn production from food production increases the acreage devoted to corn; squeezes out cultivation of soybeans, cotton and barley; and causes upward price pressures on other grains, dairy products, poultry and meat. Ethanol production incentives could also prompt farmers to clear forests which could eliminate animal habitats and lessen air quality with fewer trees to absorb carbon dioxide.