Is Global Warming Really A Hoax?

On August 13th it appeared that editors of Newsweek Magazine had an epiphany. The cover featured a photo of the glowing sun. Superimposed on top of it, was the headline: “Global Warming is a Hoax*” However, the asterisk revealed their true motives. The article does little to give an honest look at global warming and instead carries on the mainstream tactic of trashing anyone who disagrees with the prevailing thought. They did not attack CARE. (We are not big enough to be noticed, nor do we actually disagree. We do, however, present viewpoints that differ from the mainstream.) Nor did they attack the viewpoints of the author of this posting. Known for his expertise, Michael Economides (a member of CARE's Energy Counsel) has no shortage of opinions. Upon reading Newsweek’s cover story, the following reaction flowed from his finger tips. Did you read the Newsweek piece? If not, please check it out and then come back and add your comments on the topic.

One of the vilest, most venomous pieces of writing masquerading as journalism was the Newsweek cover story on August 13, 2007.

With the sun as the backdrop, which in the piece got a minor supporting role for global warming, compared to man-produced CO2, the magazine screamed “Global Warming is a Hoax” * and the asterisk led to the clincher as a large enough footnote: “ Or so claim well-funded naysayers who still reject the overwhelming evidence of climate change. Inside the denial machine”.

The attack was so vicious that MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen, a well known climate expert and a strong doubter of any unusual global warming is “the kind of man who, if you’re in the minority, he opts to be with you.” Just before the writer gave a hint for the reason for Lindzen’s character flaw. His parents fled Nazi Germany. (I checked my facts. Lindzen is not funded by oil companies or their proxies.)

Well, I am also not in anybody’s pay and I am not even, heaven forbid, a Republican. And I have not relied on the “hundreds of scientists” constantly invoked as signing petitions but never publishing causal papers. I have personally worked on radiation heat transfer and I do not need the opinions of others about anthropogenic global warming, maybe 0.1 degrees centigrade. The postulated global warming simply cannot be caused by man-made CO2.

I am not a climate expert and I am perfectly willing to accept that global warming is happening. But the writer, Sharon Begley, did not even bother to really distinguish between global warming, an occurrence that has demonstrably happened over and over again in earth’s history, something that the climate experts are debating, and the politically loaded anthropogenic part. Make no mistake. The latter is far more salient to the Gores of the world and it is an undisguised, ideologically driven, full frontal attack on American and developed world lifestyles and the energy industry.

Had the writer attempted even remote due diligence, just by asking some of the 800 “authors” of the IPPC report to produce just one reference, she would discover that there is not one paper in the peer reviewed heat transfer or thermodynamic literature that shows the causal relationship between the presumably observed and, especially, forecasted global warming and the increased CO2 at the 300 parts per million levels. Correlation does not prove causation. That’s what I thought until now. I am even willing to accept that global warming can cause enhanced CO2 in the atmosphere by reducing the solubility of the gas in the oceans. But the other way around is what is at issue.

Instead, the well funded machine, with only ExxonMobil identified as a funder, is supposed to cast aspersions to what Newsweek thinks is the obvious. By the way ExxonMobil in a well publicized move a few years ago gave $100 million to Stanford University to study global warming issues. Much of that money went to environmentalist type projects.

First, oil companies should love the rhetoric of global warming. They would be watching with glee. If the public is conditioned to believe in alternatives such as wind at $200 per barrel of oil equivalent or solar at $1,000, if taxes are supposed to force conservation while the public uses more and more energy, guess what gift is handed to those that manage oil and gas. The reason we use those energy sources is not because of some ideological propensity. They are the easiest and cheapest to use. The profits margins of oil companies will soar in a preposterously legislated remedy-global-warming future. Environmentalist silliness will strengthen the presumed devils all the while preventing the market to develop into real technologies and alternatives. Solar and wind will never do that.

Second, while slogans and magazine articles lament what they consider to be a looming catastrophe, other than saying oil, gas and coal are bad for you, they are not really suggesting what else can be done because if they did they would quickly find the insurmountable costs. Unless committing economic suicide is what’s in their mind. If the recent virtual economy hiccup can cause the problem that it did, imagine what a forced energy supply disruption will mean for the world.

I have calculated that sequestering just the expected incremental CO2 between today’s levels and 2030 will require 1.7 million wells at a cost of over $7 trillion. Alternative energy sources will cost more.

I am sure that all this nonsense will be swept away by the economy and reality. There is no need to worry. Oil and gas will be the dominant sources of energy for another 50 years, at least.

Prof. Michael J. Economides, University of Houston and also Editor-in-Chief Energy Tribune Houston, TX

Lower Gas Prices' Positive Effect on Industry

Does it seem that the media loves to report on gloom and doom, but seldom presents the positive side of things? This is especially true when referencing gas prices and the oil and gas industry in general. This short piece from one of our favorite sources, the Business and Media Institute, looks at the media’s dire predictions about gas prices, where they really are today and how the lower prices do actually benefit the industry, not just the consumer.

Forbes.com reported on August 7 oil prices are declining and gas prices are reciprocating.

“With gasoline prices peaking in May and subsiding a bit since then, it was only a matter of time before oil followed suit,” wrote Ruthie Ackerman, a reporter at Forbes.com. “Since the summer driving season is also wrapping up, oil demand should naturally decrease, putting a downward pressure on price.”

Leading up to the summer driving season, some in the media warned of $4, $5 and $6 a gallon gasoline. They may have to wait even longer to see those predictions come true as prices fall.

Contrary to conventional wisdom from those in the media, lower oil prices do have a positive effect on the oil and gas industry, as Ackerman pointed out.

“Lower oil prices are not only good for the consumer, but also boost investor confidence. ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) shares jumped 1.7%, or $1.42, to $83.50 at the close of the day Monday, while Chevron (NYSE:CVX) shares shot up 1.2%, to $1.00, to $82.02. BP (NYSE:BP) shares were boosted 1.6%, or $1.04, to $67.54 and Sunoco (NYSE:SUN) increased 1.0%, or 61 cents, to $63.48.

Water Experts Find Earth’s Warming, Rainfall Linked To Sun

As global warming issues continue their presence in the news media, we at CARE continue to share viewpoints that may not make it to the mainstream media who seem to have totally accepted the “sky is falling” mentality without doing further investigation. We believe that people are smart, that if those seeking answers are provided with the complete picture, they will come to their own conclusions that will be more accurate than the spoon-feeding the media offers. Here is an interesting piece from one of our Energy Counsel Members that presents insights into the viewpoint that links the earth’s warming to sun spots. If you are truly searching for answers to the global warming debate, please take the time to review all of the various posting available here on the CARE Blog.

A team of water experts says the pattern of droughts and floods in South Africa shows our global warming was triggered by the variability of the sun’s irradiance rather than by human-emitted CO2. They say variations in South African rainfall patterns are keyed to periodic reversals of the sun’s magnetic field—and to the constantly changing distance between the sun and the earth as both move through space.

In South Africa, alternate 11-year sunspot cycles produce opposite rainfall results. One complete “double sun cycle” occurs every 20.8 years: the “first” cycle brings a big flood, followed by a small drought; the next brings a big drought, followed by a small flood.

Lead author Will Alexander used the double sunspot cycle to publicly predict the end of major South African droughts in both 1995 and 2006. He notes that South African droughts have often been broken at 11-year intervals by severe floods associated with sunspot maxima—as in 1822, 1841, 1863, 1874 and 1885. The research summary appears in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering.

The South Africans’ conclusion is reinforced by Dr. Robert Baker of Australia, who told a recent meeting of the International Geographical Union that he has found the same 21-year cycle in Australian drought and rainfall. Baker says “the sun is like a musical instrument, vibrating in complex patterns,” with all of the planets moving in similar relationships.

H. N. Bhalme and D. A. Mooley published similar conclusions about India’s floods and droughts in the Journal of Applied Meteorology, September, 1981, based on an Indian flood index compiled from 1891 to 1979. They reported that “a highly significant 22-year cycle in the flood area index was nearly in phase with the 22-year double sunspot cycle.” Bhalme and Mooley also noted that the western U.S. has a similar relationship with the double sunspot cycle and severe flooding.

Clearly, what these water experts are all describing is a global climate connection with the sun.

The number of sunspots on the sun, and their intensity, varies in a cycle averaging 11 years. The distance between the sun and the earth keeps changing slightly and predictably because 1) they move on slightly varying paths through space; and 2) both bodies accelerate and decelerate constantly depending on the combined gravitational forces of the other big planets.

These factors apparently produce the moderate 1,500-year climate cycle on earth, which was discovered in the Greenland ice cores in 1980s and has since also been found globally in seabed and lake sediments, fossil pollen, tree rings and peat bogs.

Earth’s recent global warming occurred too early—before 1940—to be blamed on human CO2 emissions. The net global warming since 1940 is only 0.2 degrees C, with none at all since 1998. There’s little correlation between the earth’s recent temperatures and CO2 levels, but a strong correlation between the sunspot index and subsequent changes in our sea-surface temperatures.

The 1,500-year climate cycle shifts temperatures about 2 degrees C above and then 2 degrees C below the long-term average at the latitude of Washington and Paris, with greater temperature changes near the poles. Temperatures change little near the equator, but rainfall patterns can change greatly; for example, 5,000 years ago the Sahara was wet enough for grazing and hunting, while Kenya was very dry.

The UN climate change panel has declared the solar variations “too small” to produce the climate warming of the past 30 years. However, a recent Danish experiment showed that the solar variations may be amplified fourfold because they create significant changes in the earth’s cloud cover. More clouds cool the earth by deflecting more of the sun’s heat back into outer space.

The evidence for a sun/climate connection keeps pouring in, while all we hear from the Kyoto crowd is “The computer models agree with each other.”

DENNIS T. AVERYFormer senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department, co-author Unstoppable Global Warming--Every 1500 Years

Conservation, the Environment, and “Energy Independence”

As gas prices have been high and global warming has been hot, the media has spent an inordinate amount of time discussing energy. New topics are touted on the nightly news. Those who get their insights from the news--and who do not have a background in the subject themselves--often question why don’t we do this or that. Recently at a public event where CARE was present, a man spouted a comment like: “I am waiting for the day I can hook my care up to the natural gas line at my house and drive on natural gas.” Wouldn’t hat be a nice idea? But in reality it doesn’t work, at least not yet. There are numerous problems with many of the ideas. We need ideas! From ideas, come more ideas, and more. Like a brainstorming session, many of the ideas do not work, but in the pool of thinking, a viable one may surface. But as you hear these new ideas presented, remember, they are ideas—not reality.

Here one of CARE’s Energy Counsel members shed’s light on the difference between energy ideas and energy reality.

Energy Ideas vs. Energy Reality
Few issues in modern history have generated more ideology-driven misinformation than energy. While most would agree that energy is crucial to the world economy, very little public discourse seems based on the intractability of certain facts.

The problem: the huge gap between the theoretical and the practical, the latter affected by logistical and economic considerations. For certain people, the achievement of their desired course of action, based on their preferred world-view, is often confronted with abysmally small odds. It should not be acceptable for governments and non-governmental groups to avoid disclosing the required path and costs for achieving their goals. Many imply that the government and/or taxes should provide the funds, but even then the magnitude of such costs is rarely revealed.

Much of the rhetoric involves issues such as conservation, the environment, and “energy independence.” Exacerbating the situation is the recent clamor about anthropogenic global warming, and the expressed desire to either reduce carbon dioxide emissions (by using non-fossil fuels) or to sequester them.

Let’s examine the big picture of world energy supplies between 2004 (the latest year for which full information is available) and the forecast for 2030. According to the Energy Information Administration:

· In 2004, world energy demand was 446 quads (quadrillion British thermal units). By 2030, demand is expected to be 721.6 quads, a 62-percent increase.
· In 2004, fossil fuel demand was (in barrels of oil equivalent): oil, 30.1 billion; natural gas, 18.5 billion; and coal, 20.4 billion.
· In 2004, those three sources accounted for 86 percent of total global energy use.
· By 2030, expected fossil fuel use will be (again, in barrels of oil equivalent): oil, 42.7 billion (a 42-percent increase over 2004); natural gas, 33.9 billion (an 84-percent increase); and coal, 43.9 billion (a 71-percent increase).
· By 2030, fossil fuels will account for a business-as-usual 86.5 percent of the total energy mix. That’s despite all the rhetoric about alternatives and despite the fact that the total energy demand will increase by 62 percent.

Wind and solar energies, the two most touted non-fossil sources, will not amount to more than one percent, a fraction of total energy demand. The reason: wind-generated electricity is at least twice the break-even cost of natural gas, and even larger than that for coal. Solar, even with speculated and currently non-existent technology, is at least ten times as costly.

The sequestration of carbon dioxide is even more problematic. According to EIA projections, the oil and gas used for transportation and power generation, plus the amount for coal combustion, will result in an increase in world carbon dioxide emissions, from 25.55 billion metric tons in 2004, to 43.68 billion metric tons in 2030, a 71-percent increase.

If only the incremental carbon dioxide above that emitted in 2004 is sequestered, the operating costs would be $180 billion to $540 billion per year (at $10 to $30 per ton, a figure from an August 2003 report by the MIT Laboratory of Energy and the Environment).

If the sequestered carbon dioxide is injected at what is considered a very good rate per well, 10,000 tons per year (a figure from a 2004 report by the National Energy Technology Laboratory), then that would require 1.8 million new wells. That’s about the same number of wells now in production worldwide. At an average drilling cost of $2 million per well, those new wells will cost $3.6 trillion. The ancillary infrastructure for those wells could push the cost to $7.2 trillion – about 60 times the current annual budget for well construction in the industry, estimated at $120 billion.

This is why the anthropogenic global warming issue is so critical. For a country such as the United States, “energy independence” would mean reducing the use of foreign oil and natural gas. It would mean electrifying transportation (at a huge cost in new infrastructure), and using a lot more nuclear and a lot more coal, with far increased emissions to be sequestered.

The path from idea to reality is lined with staggering costs.

Prof. Michael J. Economides, University of Houston and also Editor-in-Chief Energy TribuneHouston, TX

How Did Live Earth Really Impact the Earth?

Like many of us, you may have wondered about the impact of Live Earth. The media covered it as if it was the Super Bowl. Reports following the event talked about the jets flown in by the stars and the “carbon footprint” of each jet compared to average Americans. They also talked about the smaller than touted attendance. But here’s an interesting piece about Live Earth written by one of our Energy Counsel Members. Does this make you think?

Live Earth–Dead Africans?

Promoters claim the Live Earth concerts drew 2 billion fans--a number equal to people worldwide who still don’t have access to electricity. Others say the actual audience was a fraction of that--a few tens of millions, including via television and webcasts.

About 45,000 attended the actual concert in Australia, 100,000 in Brazil, a few hundred in Washington, DC. In Johannesburg, the first snow in 25 years was blamed for almost nobody showing up. (If this snow was due to climate change, what caused the snow 25 years ago?) Elsewhere the heat was blamed. And only 4.5 million watched the BBC television broadcast in Britain.

However, the concerts might be deemed successful if measured by cash the promoters raked in. By gasoline and aviation fuel burned to get to the events (the stars alone flew a combined 223,000 miles, says the New York Post). By wattage consumed and greenhouse gases emitted to power televisions and air-conditioners for stay-at-home fans. Or by the overheated and often hypocritical rhetoric of global warming catastrophe.

Al Gore demanded immediate action, but ignored his own profligate consumption: over a thousand flights (mostly first class or in private jets) to warn of a “climate crisis,” a house that uses 20 times more electricity than the average US home, and more in a week than 26 million Ugandans together use in a year.

Prince Charles’ three mansions produce 500 times the CO2 emissions of the average British home, and he and his entourages routinely burn thousands of gallons of fuel on globe-trotting flights.

Madonna wailed that people must “jump up and down” to prevent the alleged crisis and “save the planet”--then took a private jet back to one of her nine houses and fleets of gas-guzzling cars.

Actor Ed Begley, Jr. uses alternative energy to supplement enormous amounts of non-alternative electricity that powers the community and movie studios that make his lifestyle and career possible. He believes Africans, by contrast, should have electricity only where they need it: little solar panels “on their huts.”

These alarmists attempt to justify their extravagant lifestyles by grandstanding at Live Earth concerts--and purchasing energy-efficient light bulbs or “carbon offsets” (eg, having trees planted somewhere). With their next breath, they say other people’s energy consumption could cause catastrophic global warming that could bring record cold and heat waves, terrible floods and droughts, disease epidemics and species extinctions.

The only “evidence” they have for any of this are worst-case scenarios produced by computer models that do not accurately reflect complex atmospheric processes and cannot predict temperature or rainfall even one year in the future--much less 40 or 90 years. That’s like saying the movie “Jurassic Park” proves scientists can bring dinosaurs back to life.

But if the concerts cause more people to demand that Africa and other poor countries not develop the energy they so desperately need, these false global warming “solutions” could be disastrous for the world’s most impoverished citizens.

Some 95% of Sub-Saharan Africans still do not have electricity, lights or refrigeration--or have them only a few hours a week. As a result, millions die every year from lung infections caused by pollution from wood and dung fires, and acute intestinal diseases caused by tainted water and spoiled food. Millions more die from diseases that would be largely eradicated by the improved living standards, healthcare systems and agriculture that come with prosperity, modern technology and abundant energy. The situation is likewise dire in many other areas.

But Al Gore, Live Earth rock stars and radical pressure groups like Rainforest Action and Greenpeace constantly battle energy projects in poor countries. They oppose coal and gas-fired power plants because of speculative global warming, hydroelectric projects because they dam up rivers, nuclear power because it generates radioactive wastes. They expect African and other poor nations to base their future on insufficient, expensive, unreliable wind and solar energy. That is a virtual guarantor of perpetual poverty.

Environmentalists also oppose biotechnology to improve agricultural output, insecticides to reduce malaria and other diseases, and even jetliners that bring tourists to Africa and African produce to Europe.

At bottom, environmentalists don’t want the world’s poor to rise up out of poverty and become middle class, because then they would become consumers, use more resources and demand more electricity. Green activists are happy to demand more aid and debt relief, but they do everything possible to prevent energy, mineral and economic development, modern agriculture and living standards, or meaningful opportunities for the world’s poor to take their rightful places among the Earth’s healthy and prosperous people.

Poor countries should worry not about climate change--but about whether they will have electricity for refrigerators, lights, and modern homes, hospitals, schools, shops, offices and factories. They should be concerned not about the supposed (and often far-fetched) risks of development and technology--but about the real, immediate, life-threatening dangers that development and technology would prevent. Our climate has always been turbulent, unstable and unpredictable. While the scientific debate continues to rage over the mechanisms and consequences of climate change, growing numbers of scientists say there is little evidence that humans and carbon dioxide are the primary cause, or that human influences will bring catastrophic change. (A number of these scientists are featured in the new British television documentary, “The Great Global Warming Swindle” and Chris Horner’s book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.)

Ice core and other data indicate that, over the past 650,000 years, temperatures usually rose first and CO2 levels increased several centuries later. That’s the inconvenient truth about Al Gore’s alarmist theory.

Other studies point to the sun as the dominant cause of climate change. As its energy output increases, the Earth warms, stronger solar winds reduce the cosmic rays that help generate clouds, fewer clouds cause our planet to warm still more, and warmer oceans release more CO2 into the atmosphere. Less solar energy results in reduced solar wind, more cosmic rays and thus more clouds--further cooling the planet.

If solar scientists are correct, in another decade or so, the sun will begin its weakest cycle in two centuries, possibly leading to another period of global cooling.

The lesson for poor nations is simple. Their people need--and deserve--abundant, reliable, affordable energy to power modern, industrialized, healthy, prosperous nations. Governments and communities must help facilitate this process, and challenge anti-energy pressure groups whenever necessary.

Poor countries don’t have to depend on the World Bank or foreign aid--any more than Britain and the United States had to rely on them to develop and prosper. If their institutions and policies are sound, poor countries and communities can get the investment money and technology they need from private domestic and foreign sources.

African, Asian, Latin American and Eastern European countries have abundant oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric resources. And they have the ultimate resource--the brain power, creativity and proud work ethic of their people.

If they can harness these resources, and unleash the power of free enterprise--under sound legal, regulatory, economic and property rights systems--they will generate previously unimaginable opportunity, health and prosperity for their people.


Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Atlas Economic Research Foundation, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (http://www.eco-imperialism.com/), and one of the experts profiled in “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”

Canadian Ice Cores Shed Light on Global Warming

It seems like we post a disproportionate amount of items dealing with ethanol and/or global warming. We are not fixated on these topics, but they are both newsworthy in that they are addressed on an almost daily basis by the mainstream news media. The information presented, however, only offers one side of the story. While CARE is not trying to be specifically pro or con on one side or another, as we have mentioned in previous postings, we do believe you need a “second opinion” so you can develop your personal viewpoint with the full spectrum of expert advice. If you have not read CARE’s previous postings on global warming, please track back to them so you can have the complete picture. Today we offer you insights on the topic from one of our frequent contributors: Dennis Avery.

Another scientist has added his voice to the Global Warming debate. Canadian climatologist Tim Patterson says the sun drives the earth’s climate changes—and Earth’s current global warming is a direct result of a long, moderate 1,500-year cycle in the sun’s irradiance.

Patterson says he learned of the 1,500-year climate cycle while studying cycles in fish numbers on Canada’s West Coast. Since the Canadian West had no long-term written fishery records, Patterson’s research team drilled sediment cores in the deep local fjords to get 5,000-year climate profiles from the mud. The mud showed the past climate conditions: Warm summers left layers thick with one-celled fossils and fish scales. Cold, wet periods showed dark sediments, mostly dirt washed from the surrounding land.

Patterson’s fishing profiles clearly revealed the sun’s 87 and 210-year solar cycles—and the longer, 1500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles found since the 1980s in ice cores, tree rings, and fossil pollen.

“Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators is not unique,” says the climatologist from Carleton University. “Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia’s Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.”

But there was a problem. By themselves, the variations in solar irradiation were too small to account for the big variations his research team found in the Canadian fish catches.

“Even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century’s modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate changes. Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered,” says Patterson.

“In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2000, Vizer, Shaviv, Carslaw and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies . . . varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system. . . . These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation, which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet.”

“When the sun is less bright, more cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth’s atmosphere, more clouds form and the planet cools. . . . This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere . . . was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age.”

The Canadian expert concludes, “CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet’s climate on long, medium and even short time scales.” Instead, Earth’s sea surface temperatures show a massive 95 percent lagged correlation with the sunspot index.

Patterson says climate change is the most complex field we’ve ever studied. He notes that a 2003 German poll of 530 scientists from 27 countries found two-thirds of the respondents doubted that “the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases.”

Attempting to stop global warming with the Kyoto Protocol, he warns, could be as useless as King Canute commanding the tides to cease.

DENNIS T. AVERYFormer senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department, co-author Unstoppable Global Warming--Every 1500 Years

The 2007 Energy Bill: Significance, Symbolism and Cost

After receiving the opinions of Paul Dreissen, we asked other member’s of our Energy Counsel for their thoughts. The following is what we received from Michael Economides (previously published with Human Events). What are the Senators thinking? Or, are they thinking?

On June 21 the US Senate passed an energy bill that if it becomes law it would set in motion one of the most economically destructive paths in memory. Thrown together is an unsavory mix of little impact but enormously expensive, complete with delusions of energy independence, biofuels, global warming and all the other slogans du jour of environmentalism. More to the point, and not surprising, the bill does not address at all the fundamental issue: In a modern world run on energy, with galloping China and India, with ever-controlling producing nations, where will America’s energy supply come from? The country imports now almost 70 percent of its oil and the rest of it is under constant assault.

A sample:

An increase in automobile fuel economy requirements (the Corporate Average Fuel
Economy, CAFE standard) to a fleetwide average of 35 mpg by 2020 from the
current requirements of 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for SUVs and small
trucks.

There is nothing wrong with better efficiency, but we went through this before. The American public voted with bigger cars, driving more and asking for more services. For example, FedEx and DHL have created a new era of deliveries and expectations. One of the things that the social engineers forget is that the personal car is a symbol of American personal freedom, what makes this country what it is. And yet they constantly want to harp on forcing us back to a European mold, forgetting that Holland can be driven across in two hours. Gasoline demand constantly increases because we drive more, and we do more with our driving. In 2004, the National Commission on Energy Policy determined that even if Congress mandated that the domestic auto fleet increase its average to the much larger fuel economy of 44 miles per gallon America’s motor fuel consumption will still increase by 3.7 million barrels per day by 2025. Even the apologists of the bill, in very flawed calculations, suggest that the bill will save 1.3 million barrels per day (about 6% of current consumption) by 2025 and manipulatively “slightly less than what we import from Saudi Arabia.” (echoes of Al-Queda?) The new CAFE standards will put an economic straightjacket on already battered US automobile manufacturers but are unlikely to change the American public’s tastes and preferences.

Requires that half of the new cars manufactured by 2015 be capable of running on
85 percent ethanol or biodiesel fuels

A requirement to produce 36 billion gallons a year of ethanol, as a substitute for gasoline, by 2022, a sevenfold increase over production in 2006. Ethanol would be made from corn and cellulosic sources such as prairie grass and wood chips.

Corn ethanol is a scam with a negative energy balance. It takes about 1.8 gallons of gasoline to produce one gallon of ethanol. More important is that corn ethanol cannot provide enough fuel to displace imported oil. In 2005, U.S. farmers produced about 11.1 billion bushels of corn. If the U.S. turned all of that corn into ethanol, it would only supply about 6 percent of America’s total annual oil needs or about 20 percent of our gasoline needs. If all 3.2 billion bushels of soybeans produced by American farmers in 2006 were converted into biodiesel, they would only yield about 4.8 billion gallons of diesel fuel, about 1.5 percent of America’s oil needs. The talk about cellulosic ethanol is tantamount to legislating that all new American children grow to be 6-ft tall. The enzyme that would convert biomass into cellulosic ethanol does not exist and nothing is expected any time soon.

Supports large-scale demonstrations that capture carbon dioxide from
coal-burning power plants and injects it into the ground.

Carbon dioxide sequestration is what the bill advocates imply. But again reality raises its ugly head. Taking just the portion of oil and gas used in combustion for transportation and power generation (the rest is used as source of materials) and adding the combustion of coal, according to EIA calculations, world carbon dioxide emissions are slated to increase from 25.55 billion metric tons in 2004 to 43.68 billion metric tons per year in 2030, a 71 percent increase. If just the incremental carbon dioxide is injected at a very good rate per well of 10,000 tons per year, there is a need for 1.8 million new wells, about the same number of wells in current operation worldwide, still active and drilled in the entire history of production of all oil and gas. At an average cost of just drilling of $2 million per well, there will be a need for $3.6 trillion, not counting infrastructure which could easily double the figure. This is about 60 times the current annual budget for well construction in the industry, estimated at $120 billion.

This is why anthropogenic global warming is not a trivial issue for the world in either the cost of energy transition to something else or in sequestering emissions. In going from idea to reality the path is lined with staggering costs.

But none of this bothers the architects of this bill, whose real significance is at best symbolic and very costly but smacks with social engineering, a yet another failed attempt throughout the last 150 years in Europe and the United States. We should all be stewards of the environment (the US is one of the cleanest nations on earth), but radical environmentalism, even when it wears a tie, has replaced older–isms. It is more of a nuisance, intended by mostly upper middle class and wealthy westerners to shock and be relevant, a more veiled attempt than Paris Hilton’s antics. Of course, try as they may, the US economy is enormously resilient and will likely shrug this nonsense off.

Although it may have been attributed to others, the recent bill has about the same depth as what Georges Clemenceau, France’s World War I prime minister said: “If my son is not a communist by the age of 20, I will disown him and if by the time he is 40 he is still a communist I will disown him.” Many environmentalists are way past 40.

Prof. Michael J. Economides, University of Houston and also Editor-in-Chief Energy TribuneHouston, TX