In the greatest of ironies, it appears the BP oil drilling spill may kill the chances for the Kerry-Lieberman sans Graham (pick one:climate, energy, jobs, flavor of the minute) bill they say they will unveil on May 12th.
Excerpt from the New York Times:
Graham Says Energy Legislation ‘Impossible’ for Now
WASHINGTON — Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the chief sponsors of a nascent plan to address energy and climate change in the Senate, said Friday that the proposal had no chance of passage in the near term and called for a “pause” in consideration of the issue.
Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had heightened concern about expanded offshore drilling, which he considers a central component of any energy legislation. Mr. Graham also said that Democratic insistence on taking up immigration policy before energy had chilled his enthusiasm for any global warming measure.
Mr. Graham said it had become politically “impossible” to consider such a difficult subject in the current environment.
Without the support of Mr. Graham and at least a handful of Republicans, the measure is most likely dead for the year. But two other sponsors, Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, vowed to press forward and said they planned to unveil some version of their climate change and energy plan next week.
Mr. Graham said he would not be part of it.
…
Excerpt from the Associated Press report:
To win over Republicans, the bill calls for expansion of offshore drilling, which some Democrats have said they now oppose because of the Gulf spill.
“Some believe the oil spill has enhanced the chances energy legislation will succeed. I do not share their view,” Graham said. While he respects the positions of Democrats who don’t want to see more offshore drilling, he said he still believes that it’s needed for the country to become energy independent.
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Our Brit friends will have to chime in but I wonder if the American commies lost a major ally when Great Britain seemed to reject the Labour Party? Great Britain’s method of election and numerous parties leaves me baffled, but as far as I can tell the Brit equivalent of Republicans (Torries) won the balance of power and the Brit equivalent of Democrats (Labour) lost. The minor parties now hold all the power, they can withhold or give the voting majority to the big two.
Someone needs to draw a political cartoon of Gordon Brown with the caption, “I was Prime Minister of Great Britain and all I got was this lousy American DVD set. Gordon Brown sold out his country to support a celebrity studded, big world government and now he is looks stupid and abandoned.
@April E. Coggins May 7, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Sorry to disappoint.
The Tory leader (“Dave Boy” Cameron) is another AGW enthusiast and very little different from Brown on the majority of policy issues. The Dims (under Cap’n Clegg) are even dafter and, for the Tories to form any kind of government they have to get the Dims’ support.
The official Election Manifesto energy policy from the Dims includes such gems as:-
No nuclear energy
100% carbon free energy by 2050
A law to limit temperature rise to 1.7 degrees.
I will offer a small prize to anyone suggesting on here how they will do that.
Brown was useless.
But compared to Cameron & Clegg he looks quite believable.
God help us. We are way up the creek with no paddle.
@DirkH says:
May 7, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Best headline since “Big Boned in Berlin” by http://www.thelocal.de
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Wrong link, here you go:
http://www.thelocal.de/opinion/20100125-24815.html
The bill is dead, not because of the oil spill, but because gas prices are @ur momisugly $3/gallon and going up. Even the dummycrats aren’t stupid enough to raise gas prices 5 months before a major election.
Enneagram says:
May 7, 2010 at 12:10 pm
“Hey buddies! Who among you said the oil was about to be exhausted?, just go to the gulf and tell the people about it!
A trillion SUVS needed to burn all that damned oil!”
at 5 billion barrels, the total reserve is only 1/6 of 1 years global consumption.
I couldn’t drop the question from my mind a few days ago, so went ahead with the following analysis:
How many birds are killed per year by wind turbines?
The National Research Council in its publication “Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects” states wind turbines kill 100,000 birds per year.
It is estimated oil production in the US kills 2,000,000 birds per year. See US Fish and Wildlife Service publication “Migratory Bird Mortality”.
Wind turbines, if we assume the wind blows all day, produces 22.8 giga BTUs per year.
The US consumes 37,000,000 giga BTUs in oil per year.
Do the math and one finds the following:
Wind turbines kill 4,385 birds per million BTUs produced.
Oil kills 0.053 birds per million BTUs produced.
Birds are much safer when we get our energy from oil over wind.
It’s funny what pops out when you do a little math.
I thought the entire region from the mouth of the Mississippi to Texas is already dead.
Isn’t most of the area threatened by this spill part of the infamous ‘dead zone’?
http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/
If true, what damages will BP be responsible for, exactly?
Isn’t the ‘dead zone’ the result of all of the over application of fertilizers in the Mid-West?
If that is true, why aren’t all the farming communities upstream held legally responsible for all the damage they have caused?
After all the hysteria about this great disaster, so far we’ve counted two gannets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/science/07container.html?ref=us
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard confirmed that the oil hit the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana’s southeast tip on Thursday, and the state said two gannets, a type of large seabird, had been found dead, covered in oil.
We have to conclude that one of the greatest of environmental disasters in oil patch history has killed two birds.
Certainly this compares favorably with the hundreds of thousands of birds killed by wind turbines.
I wonder how many birds are killed per BTU of each respective energy technology?
You have to love this quote from the above NYT article:
“The possibility remains that the BP oil spill could turn into an unprecedented environmental disaster,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on a visit to Biloxi, Miss. “The possibility remains that it will be somewhat less.”
I could say the possibility remains I could be involved in a fiery, head on collision on my way to work this morning. Nonetheless, I will get into my car and drive to work.
It’s a meaningless statement. No matter what happens, Janet Napolitano has cover.
I want to know how the Times Square bomber got through all that security at JFK.
Maybe Janet could help us out there and quit worrying about the Gulf.
I am somewhat OT, but this oil spill , stirs a memory , of having sometime way back in the last century read an interview in some gloosy US magazine (omni perhaps or playboy) with John Isacs who was then one of the top figures at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla , and in a a part of that interview he was voicing his indignation over two ecology researchers wording of a conclusion of a report they had gotten a grant to write once a year for a the prior decade.
It had to do with a study they had ongoing on the effects on nature of a oil spills, a small tanker had gone to ground in a cove or a bay that offered some kind of barrier to a 10000 tons (or maybe it was gallons i do not have the article at hand) oil spill so it mostly sank to the bottom ( heavy crude probably) and did not spread out much, and those circumstances were used to take advantage of ( rightfully in my opinion) a that accidentally created “natural laboratory”, to study possible long term effects of such accidents, especially as there was an older study of this particular site already in existence, so there would be good data to compare with. Isacs gripe with the report he was fuming about , was that the conclusion really said noting about how things really were at the site under study , he had had to dig deep in their field data , to find out that some of microorganism found there had been able to take advantage of all that “free and easy” hydrocarbon windfall coming their way and had in reality over the years digested it and multiplied furiosly , with a knock on effect up the whole local food chain and plant life , so that the biomass in the area was 4-5 times it´s size prior to the accident, and was thriving.
The scientists in question had presented that in their conclusions as ” the state of the biology in the area is definitely abnormal compared to its state prior to the spill, and needs to be monitored carefully” or something to that effect , but not a word about what had really happened and, he said the whole thing was presented in such away as to give the impression that the area was mostly devoid of live , and stone dead.He had only taken a closer look because some friend of his told him this exact area was the best fishing ground along the coastline for 500 miles. His opinion was that the report authors were more concerned with their fund grant than with honest science.
Erik says:
May 7, 2010 at 12:20 pm
..my forcast for next year – Kill Bill: Vol. 2
————————————————————————————————-
The second one was actually kinda interesting. The first one was just bloody and shallow.
Nothing is going to stop Obama. If Washington won’t move with him then he’ll go through the EPA like he is already doing. He will get his way. He is a spoiled child.
So, the only way to deal with it is after he is out of office elect people that will completely undo what the child did. 🙂
Florida Power & Light Company recently put the DeSoto Next Generation solar energy plant on-line. The construction cost was more than $150,000,000. It provides part-time (daylight hours) electricity for about 3,000 homes and businesses. The cost, per actual customer, was more than $50,000 per each.
If this cost were amortized over 50 years, and completely paid for by the customers actually getting the use of this electricity, the cost would be about $282 per month per user. And this for part-time electricity. This monthly cost does not include maintenance and operational costs over the 50 year period, nor does it include profit for FPL. The user monthly electric bill would well more than double for having the “benefit” of using solar power.
Money thus spent would be money not spent in other sectors of the economy.
Anyone who thinks that widespread construction of this sort of electrical generating plant would be a good idea is plain nuts. Our economy would be completely destroyed, and when great numbers of citizens become engulfed in poverty, the results aren’t pretty.
We simply can’t afford this sort of nonsense.
Amino Acids in Meteorites said on May 8, 2010 at 7:48 am:
You can take the screw out of the wood, but the hole is still there, needs to be patched, and the wood still isn’t as it used to be.
However, I do think America is long overdue for The Great Unscrewing.
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
There’s always new trees to get new wood from. 🙂
Al Gore weighs in on the Gulf spill:
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-crisis-comes-ashore?page=0,0
I enjoyed this: “One important difference between the oil spill and the CO2 spill is that petroleum is visible on the surface of the sea and carries a distinctive odor now filling the nostrils of people on shore.
Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, is invisible, odorless, tasteless, and has no price tag.”
OK, Al, nice pitch for your business model! What am I offered for this ton of carbon dioxide? Going once, going twice…
Martin Brumby Thank you for your reply, depressing as it is. I am truly hoping that our salvation from this madness comes from a modern day Churchill. I am disturbed to no end that it may have been Margaret Thatcher who inadvertently released the global warming demons. Obama and our current crop of whack jobs look to Europe for their justification, and sure enough they find it.
from –
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=globalwarming&thread=1197&page=1#46478
” CO2 Casino: Real pollutors Real winners
Chapter 11 of NAFTA
Two major clarification :
1- Environmental Laws as Expropriation under NAFTA
2- Corruption led to illegal policies and regulations
As we know now that CO2 is not involved in Climate Change
this will allow any investor to claim damage to the NAFTA tribunal alleging fraud.
All restrictions imposed on existing businesses will be treated as
Expropriation and submit to NAFTA 1110-2 clause: Compensation
shall be equivalent to the fair market value of the expropriated
investment immediately before the expropriation took place.
Dont panic Cultists! Quebec already passed a Carbon Casino bill
and had a solution for that.
The State is now able to emit and GIVE for free its Carbon Emission
Certificate to Whom will bribe them or whom will claim damage under NAFTA Chapter 11
So Pollutors will be given free emission rights credits to trade
and you and me will have to pay for it.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118605037/abstract
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119084632/abstract
http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/nafta-alena/texte/chap11.aspx?lang=en#article_1108
http://www.canlii.org/fr/qc/legis/lois/lrq-c-q-2/derniere/lrq-c-q-2.html
. . .
Excellent document on CO2 capture for extracting petroleum
(up to 40% more) and the need to carry the cost on the general public using CO2/AGW scam!
“…A significant amount of CO2 could be captured
from Alberta supply sources (most likely in Fort
McMurray, Fort Saskatchewan and Red Deer).
However, the costs to generate this benefit are
significant. Preliminary estimates indicate these
costs are greater than the potential offsetting
revenue stream from CO2 sales to the EOR
market and the anticipated value of CO2 offset
credits. Companies making CCS investments
face significant capital cost exposure. Industry
is prepared to step up and contribute to the
significant up-front costs, but it can’t be expected
to bear the burden alone. As a result, there is an
important role for government to play…”
http://www.ico2n.com/docs/tech/ICO2N_The%20Vision_%204pg%20overview.pdf
“
Attention: Cap & Trade back again!
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/capandtrade_is_back.html
In the mean time: EPA to stifle shale gas industry!
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/05/epa_seeks_to_stifle_shale_gas.html
The Australian website Business Spectator has a cute graphic to size this crisis.
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/THE-DAILY-CHART-How-big-is-the-BP-spill-pd20100511-5C22T?OpenDocument
Let us hope that the people in every state of the Union are as smart as those in Utah. Tea anyone?