When Candidates are Dangerously Wrong ... by Alan Caruba

When Candidates are Dangerously Wrong
By Alan Caruba
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Americans have painted themselves into the corner on energy and the two presumptive candidates for President are ready to finish off the nation with the worst possible “solutions.”



Sen. Barack Obama is talking of “windfall profits” taxes on the oil companies, thus threatening to take away the money they need to invest in exploration, extraction, refining and delivery of the gas and oil we need to fuel our cars and trucks, and heat our homes.



It takes up to ten years between finding a new reserve of oil and actually delivering it. It’s been nearly four decades since any oil company has built a new refinery because the United States has made it too expensive to do so thanks to lawsuits and a maze of environmental laws. As for exploring for oil in the U.S. or off-shore, would you spend millions doing that if you knew the government wouldn't let you drill or extract it?



Like Sen. McCain, Sen. Obama believes in global warming even though the planet stopped its long, completely natural warming in 1998. The Earth is cooling, but please don’t let that get in the way of either candidate proposing “solutions” to address a drastic warming that is not happening.



Sen. John McCain says that global warming in undeniable even though literally hundreds of scientists worldwide say it isn’t happening. In March I attended a conference on climate change sponsored by the Heartland Institute. It attracted over 500 meteorologists, climatologists, economists, and other very smart people from around the world who sat through two days of presentations and seminars all jammed with information confirming that there is no global warming, if you interpret this to mean a massive rise in the temperature of the planet.



Sen. McCain, however, is worried about “carbon fuel emissions” at a time when the cost of those carbon fuels, gasoline in particular, is going through the ceiling thanks, not to a lack of supply, but the speculators in the world’s commodity exchanges.



It is moronic to worry about carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) when this gas, vital to the growth of every piece of vegetation and all life on Earth, constitutes a mere 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere.



Look up at the sky above you. It’s about 95% water vapor. You know, water as in hydrogen and oxygen molecules. You drink it. You wash in it. You swim in it. There are large bodies of it called oceans. Those oceans which normally retain and release 80-90% of the Earth’s heat are now cooling!



So neither one of the candidates has a grasp of economics or science and we are about to elect one of them the next President of the United States of America!



Meanwhile, The New York Times on May 11 published an editorial, “Rethinking Ethanol” in which the geniuses who write such things have concluded that maybe diverting food products like corn into a fuel product that provides less mileage per gallon, costs more to produce than gasoline, and adds its own pollution to the air, is probably not a good idea. Their solution? End the tax subsidy that goes to ethanol producers.



According to The New York Times, “The other reason is a spate of studies suggesting that some biofuels—corn ethanol in particular—could accelerate global warming.”



You have to be a special kind of idiot to (1) advocate a Congressional mandate for billions of gallons of ethanol as a gasoline additive and (2) continue to maintain that global warming is occurring.



The New York Times has been lying about global warming since the 1980s. The good news is that it is laying off large numbers of its reporters and editors. Its circulation has been sinking like a stone and maybe someday it will be sold on street corners as a single broadsheet hawked by boys shivering in the snow while shouting, “Read all about it! No more global warming!”



If you get the feeling that the United States is heading over the cliff for failing to anticipate and encourage its energy industries, for codifying in law requirements to deal with a non-existent problem, and for refusing to reverse course, you’re right.



There is a price for being an idiot. Think about that the next time you fill up your gas tank.

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the web site of The National Anxiety Center, http://www.anxietycenter.com/. He blogs at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/.

© Alan Caruba, May 2008


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