Guest post by Alec Rawls
“President no longer worried about CO2!” That’s what the headlines should have read last week after Obama presented an elaborate argument that alternative energy is the only viable response to high energy prices without ever once mentioning CO2, global warming or climate change. Instead, he presented the need to lessen our reliance on oil purely as an economic imperative.
Back when he thought that global warming was a winning concern Obama used to acknowledge that his anti-CO2 policies were going to cause high energy prices (forcing them to “necessarily skyrocket“). Now he is trying to use the high energy prices that he intentionally caused as a reason to get away from fossil energy. But if we are no longer worried about climate, how about just undoing the anti-fossil-fuel policies that drove prices up in the first place?
Obama’s silence on climate is a testament to how thoroughly the alarmists have lost the climate debate in the eyes of the voting public. Obama can’t even mention climate change (never mind global warming), even in a speech about his own climate-driven policies.
To make his economic argument, Obama puts forward two glaring lies. Let’s take these whoppers one at a time.
The lie that we are already aggressively developing our fossil resources
From the President’s March 15th energy policy speech at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland:
Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. (Applause.) Any time. That’s a fact. That’s a fact. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs to a record high. I want everybody to listen to that — we have more oil rigs operating now than ever. That’s a fact. We’ve approved dozens of new pipelines to move oil across the country. We announced our support for a new one in Oklahoma that will help get more oil down to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
Over the last three years, my administration has opened millions of acres of land in 23 different states for oil and gas exploration. (Applause.) Offshore, I’ve directed my administration to open up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources. That includes an area in the Gulf of Mexico we opened up a few months ago that could produce more than 400 million barrels of oil.
So do not tell me that we’re not drilling. (Applause.) We’re drilling all over this country.
That’s chutzpah, bragging about opening up drilling in the Gulf after using the Deep Horizon spill as an excuse for wiping out the Gulf drilling industry with an illegal moratorium.
Everyone knows about the big anti-oil moves from Obama and the Democrats, like rejecting the Keystone pipeline and continuing to block drilling in ANWR, but if you want a picture of how systematic and extreme their anti-fossil-energy policies have been, take a look at the list compiled by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings. As soon as they got in the Obamatons started revoking all the permits that were in the pipeline: for exploration, for mining, for drilling, for building power plants. Everything was shut down to almost nothing, and that is the way it has stayed.
Speaker John Bohner put a few of the highlights onto a timeline along with gas prices. Cause and effect:
What about that record amount of oil production? From Tina Korbe:
Energy experts say the president’s rhetoric isn’t exactly forthright. It’s unfair for the president to take credit for record high oil production. Not only does it take oil three to five years to come online, which means the previous administration was responsible for approving the exploration and drilling permits that led to increased production, but oil production on federal lands actually declined from 2010 to 2011. Oil production on private lands is responsible for the increase.
She quotes CNS for the specifics:
As CNSNews.com has reported, oil production on federal lands declined in fiscal year 2011 from fiscal year 2010 by 11 percent, and natural gas production on federal lands dropped by 6 percent during the same timeframe.
In contrast, oil production on private and state lands accounted for the entire increase, reported the IER, as production was up 14 percent from 2010 to 2011. Natural gas also was up 12 percent from 2010 to 2011.
The energy boom from advances in fracking technology are so massive that Obama has not been able to suppress them entirely, but he sure is trying, and we know why. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu was up-front about this as recently as two weeks ago when he testified before the House Appropriations committee:
“Is the overall goal to get our price [of gasoline] down,” Nunnelee began. “No,” interrupted Chu, “the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy.”
Chu’s goal is less oil consumption, which of course requires higher prices, “to strengthen our economy.” (Note that Chu is a physicist, not an economist.) Chu has been saying for years that:
Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.
That’s $7 to $9 per gallon. Under duress he recanted last week and said that he no longer wants higher prices, but that just stripped away his last remaining virtue, which was his honesty.
Lie number 2: that America is energy poor, so there is not much we can gain by drilling anyway
Someone who knows absolute nothing about anything might find this Obama riff compelling:
There’s a problem with a strategy that only relies on drilling and that is, America uses more than 20 percent of the world’s oil. If we drilled every square inch of this country — so we went to your house and we went to the National Mall and we put up those rigs everywhere — we’d still have only 2 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. Let’s say we miss something — maybe it’s 3 percent instead of 2. We’re using 20; we have 2.
Now, you don’t need to be getting an excellent education at Prince George’s Community College to know that we’ve got a math problem here. (Laughter and applause.) I help out Sasha occasionally with her math homework and I know that if you’ve got 2 and you’ve got 20, there’s a gap. (Laughter.) There’s a gap, right? …
We will not fully be in control of our energy future if our strategy is only to drill for the 2 percent but we still have to buy the 20 percent.
Obama’s 2% figure refers to “proven reserves,” and the smallness of this particular number is actually a measure, not of our resources, but of how little they have been developed. Investors Business Daily explains:
The U.S. has 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than 2% of the entire world’s proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration. But as the EIA explains, proved reserves “are a small subset of recoverable resources,” because they only count oil that companies are currently drilling for in existing fields.
We have very little “proved reserves” because we have developed only a small fraction of our resources into active fields. The relevant number to look at is the amount of oil we could produce if it were allowed, and here we are proverbial thousand pound gorilla. Again, from IDB:
We actually have the world’s largest fossil energy resources, and the “recoverable” part is rapidly expanding as the technology for extracting it advances. Estimates for technically recoverable shale gas reserves increased 134% in 2010, and we’ve hardly begun on shale oil. Then there are methane hydrates, which according to the Department of Energy contain “more energy potential … than all other fossil energy resources combined.”
In short, the United States, and the entire world, have only been tapping the planet’s most easily accessible fossil energy supplies, and even those are far from running out, while vastly larger resources wait in store. Obama’s claims about the impossibility of relying on fossil energy are a fairy tale for childish green adults who want to see themselves as saving the planet. They dream of going “forward” to windmills and absorbing solar radiation like a snake on a rock, yet none of them have enough confidence in the saving-the-planet part to even mention it anymore.
The war on CO2 is over! Tell the EPA!
Obama’s lies about fossil resources are just supporting lies. His big lie is his pretense that his anti-CO2 policies are not about CO2. So take him at face value. He has apparently surrendered his claim that CO2 is dangerous. From his energy-policy speech, it seems that global warming is no longer a motivating concern.
THAT is a big story. Quick, tell the EPA. With this change in the administration’s position there should be no more regulation of CO2 and Obama should rescind his promise to bankrupt the coal industry:
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.
That war against coal is proceeding apace, every bit as much as Obama’s drive for higher gas prices. And all for nothing, since even Obama is no longer worried about CO2.
At some point—long before we run out of fossil energy—a cheaper source of energy will be developed and fossil fuels will go by the wayside. The only reason to interdict that natural progression and try to go backwards to wind and solar is a belief that fossil fuels imperil the planet. For that to be true, human effects on climate would have to dominate natural effects, a hypothesis that has already been falsified by 15 years of no warming. The only people who believe it at this point are the paid shills of our lavishly funded climate-alarm industry and their anti-capitalist allies. It has actually become unmentionable, which really does warrant some mention.
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Obama lies? No kidding. He has always been a liar and a power grabber.He has surrounded himself with cronies like Chu who want to control all of our lives and in the end destroy freedom as we have known it. If he is elected for another term, there may will be an insurrection in this country and it won’t be peaceful.
As a parting shot, Vangel Vesovski says: “The claims of recoverable reserves are not actually supported by the production data.” Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. Want an example, just look at the relatively quick change in natural gas supplies in the last decade or less.
If Obozo had started 3 years ago, leasing on federal lands, we would be in a lot better shape to be more in control of oil prices. Why? Stability in crude oil markets is achieved when there is roughly a 1 to 2 million barrel per day “overhang” in supply. When that occurs, there is sufficient market flexibility to cover for minor regional supply disruptions. If there’s a sudden oversupply (or drop in demand), the price can drop sharply because the excess oil must be stored at a cost. Lacking a market, the value of an incremental barrel is low. Conversely, if demand grows by 0.5 to 1 million bbls/day without supply gains, the price can shoot up rapidly. As that market cushion erodes, buyers get nervous and bid up the price. That is where we are now. If Obozo would have had permitted back then( including ANWAR), we would be starting to bring the stuff to market about now. In fact, if he was smart enough to change directions and say so, we would see oil futures drop lie a stone and catch a lot of these speculators in the crossfire.
I will for for ABO in Nov. I will let you translate ABO.
I’m with Ally E., once he’s got those 4 more years, he, Chu and the EPA will revert to their former modus operandi. I haven’ seen anything so far that makes him believable or honest. The present political rhetoric is just a means to getting another 4, then it’s back to business as usual.
Obama is not to be trusted. He is in election mode and is now playing to the centre so you can be sure he is NOT going to play up to the Warmistas. He is keeping CO2-is-a-pollutant out of the public eye for now ! But he has not thrown it under the bus ! If he is reelected, look out ! His czars will make sure that gasoline is at least $10.00 a gallon by the end of 2016 ! And Dr.Chu will be back with a vengence !!
You know, I found this very interesting, along with some of the contrary commentary. And I have no love at all for the current US administration. Still I’d be happier if commentaries could be freed of the verb “lie” in all its forms. I think they’d stand a better chance of convincing others if they were.
Donald Klipstein suggests:
How about comparing the peaks of two big El Ninos: 1998 and 2010? Same temperature. No warming.
Donald L Klipstein says:
March 19, 2012 at 8:26 pm
The past 15 years started with a century class El Nino and ended with a double dip La Nina. Global temperature trend would be shown more accurately with a time period having lack of upward or downward trend in ENSO and AMO, such as from the beginning of 1999…….
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Puh-lees……that went directly into a double dip La Nina right after your better start point…… if you’re going to pretend to be reasonable, pretend better. 2001 would be a better start point, because it was a fairly neutral year and while 2002 had an El Nino, it wasn’t as strong. ……. funny
I am glad Mr Obama won’t mention his CO2 doubts out loud. If he were to make a definitive statement that CO2 wasn’t bad, I would have to go look at what Armageddon was about to befall us all from CO2. Pretty much whatever Mr. Obama says I look for the deception, because the guy hasn’t played it straight with anyone yet. I am not even sure he knows when he is prevaricating.
Fay at Fingal Head,
I don’t think you’re naive at all. Thing is, SpaghettiO’s potential replacement is probably paddling the same canoe.
Green donors bet on Mitt Romney flip-flop – Darren Samuelsohn – POLITICO.com
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/73642_Page2.html
As Romney shows, politics makes strange bedfellows | Campaign 2012 | Washington Examiner
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/romney-shows-politics-makes-strange-bedfellows/353561
Increasing taxes, capping greenhouse gasses, legalizing gay marriage, and backing Hillary Clinton for president — these are the recent political and policy priorities of Mitt Romney’s very biggest financial backers.
While Romney’s Florida victory spurs talk of inevitability, exit polls show him still struggling among conservatives and Tea Partiers. Campaign finance reports filed this week reveal a gulf between the GOP base and Romney’s funding base.
Financiers Julian Robertson, Paul Singer, and Miguel Fernandez all gave $1 million to Romney’s shadow campaign — Restore Our Future, the super-PAC supporting Mitt Romney and run by former Romney aides
Robertson also has a big-government environmentalist streak. He sits on the board of the Environmental Defense Fund, and he has hired K Street lobbyists (including now-Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind.) to advance the Warner-Lieberman bill that would have capped industrial emissions of greenhouse gasses — in effect a tax on burning coal and oil.
Hedge fund millionaire Paul Singer also gave Romney’s super-PAC $1 million in November. Singer’s Elliot Management is politically out of step with its industry: In the 2008 and 2010 elections, while the rest of the industry was giving about 68 percent of its money to Democrats, Singer’s firm was giving about 98 percent to Republicans.
Singer spent a good part of 2011 rallying other Republican financial moguls in an attempt to recruit New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to run for president.
But Singer’s biggest cause in 2011 was not partisan — he spent $1 million lobbying to legalize gay marriage in New York state. That puts Singer not only far to the left of the GOP base and Romney, but also to the left of President Obama, who publicly opposes gay marriage. Singer’s son married a man in Massachusetts.
Miguel Fernandez of Miami has succeeded in health-care investing in recent years, and last July he gave $1 million to Restore Our Future —half from his own pocket, and half from an account of his called MBF Family Investments.
While Romney publicly denies he’s a liberal Republican, he apparently hasn’t convinced Fernandez of this. Before giving $1 million to Romney’s super-PAC, Fernandez split much of his money between Democrats and liberal Republicans who faced conservative opponents…
NW says, “Still I’d be happier if commentaries could be freed of the verb “lie” in all its forms.”
Ah, how about Fraud, Scoundrel, Wastrel, Traitor, Fool, Coward, instead of lie or liar? All = Obama
I’ll take the alternate energy crowd seriously when they propose daming Niagara falls and the Niagara gorge.
Currently the Niagara Falls generating capacity is 5 million kilowatts that’s 2 or 3 large coal. generating plants. Niagara falls power generation could be at least doubled and probably tripled fairly easily. That would eliminated the need for 2 to 5 coal generating plants or all the windmills currently in operation.
It would also be cheap electricity.
Harpo says:
March 19, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Whether or not our own dear SCOAMF believes that the globe is warming, whether or not he believes this is caused by CO2, & whether or not he believes that burning “fossil” fuels has caused any appreciable increase in atmospheric CO2 are entirely beside the point. If pressed upon the point, I would venture that most Yale men would admit that their school is no better than Cornell or UNLV in any objective test, but that won’t stop them from playing their games with oblate spheroids in the intent of scoring more points.
Vangel Vesovski says:
March 19, 2012 at 7:12 pm
[snip] And this is why the actual production of oil has not changed much since 2005 even though hundreds of billions in new investment has helped develop new fields.
——
The Alberta government disagrees with you:
“New projects are being added every year and production is expected to increase from 1.31 million barrels per day in 2008 to 3 million barrels per day in 2018…”
http://www.energy.alberta.ca/OurBusiness/oilsands.asp
Also, there is a big difference with energy used for transportation and energy use for stationary generation and use. For example, a lot of energy is lost when converting it into a battery or hydrogen fuel storage system for transportation, while the lost energy used to extract fuels for transportation use is made up for in its greater density of energy storage and less waste energy compared to non fossil fuel methods. In other words, it would be worthwhile to use hydro generated energy to increase fossil fuel extraction and recovery than to use it for electrically powered transportation. Airlines won’t be flying using batteries as their power source any time soon.
Hey guys! Isn’t it great to see that the Administration already is coming off its CAGW stance? I predicted this at least two years ago. Mr. Obama should be welcomed to the fold, not reviled as a liar. He is a politician standing for reelection for crying out loud. Of course he is going to back away gracefully.
The Obama Administration has slowed down the permitting process after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but that doesn’t seem entirely out of line to me. That was a bad one, and to take a little time to reconsider safety measures and slow down the permitting process was not a bad idea. This does not mean that no permits have been issued by the way—far from it. A little south of fifty permits have been issued. The same goes for the Keystone XL pipeline. It was pushed through far too quickly. 60 days to approve it? Come on, that’s irresponsible. Ask Nebraska Governor David Heinemann (R), or Senator Mike Johanns (R-Nebraska). They are against it, and they hardly qualify as your bleeding-heart liberals.
And if Mr. Boehner wants to convince someone that world oil prices are tied to U.S. production, he needs to take his story a little farther into the countryside. Any sentient being knows that oil is a world commodity, and the world market sets the oil price—period. Demand from China and India has everything to do with oil prices, ANWR or Keystone XL very little. Those are the facts.
If you are looking for politicians curtsying to a frothy-mouthed base, please tune in to Romney, Santorum, et al. But perhaps they want soon-to be outlawed condoms for oil transportation.
Climate skepticism can always use converts. When a slow conversion is happening in the White House, I think the right idea is to say hail and well met, not to get one’s undies in a bundle.
Philip Bradley says:
March 19, 2012 at 9:26 pm
I’ll take the alternate energy crowd seriously when they propose daming Niagara falls and the Niagara gorge…. It would also be cheap electricity.
—————————————————————————-
We would have to contract the Chinese to build it. They have current know how.
Everyone who knew how to build one in the USA is dead.
Now you know why we call them moratoriums.
It’s happening to steel too….and…and…and…and…etc.
Wow the “BO” speaks and I flip mega negative.
bummer. Hurry up november.
ElmerF says at 8:29 PM:
[SNIP: This really is too far. Drop it. -REP]
Chill out, Elmer. You’ll live.
Reminds me of Obama’s campaign in Florida.
In 2007, he first talked about delaying the space program. “The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years…”
When he learned he could lose Florida, he “changed” and loved the Space Programs with his first Space Policy speech in August 2008. “He endorses the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020, as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars”
In 2010, he cancelled the Constellation Space program.
“We announced our support for a new one in Oklahoma that will help get more oil down to refineries on the Gulf Coast.”
This is the lower part of the Keystone XL pipeline
Thanks for a comprehensive presentation of the energy/political landscape. It would appear that the current administration is intent on strapping the American public with ruinous energy prices regardless of a factual record that indicates such draconian measures are unnecessary. One can only ponder the question: “why”?
I’ve been snipped! FINALLY I said something that went too far. I’m a new man!
[REPLY: Congratulations. In my commenter persona I’ve been snipped numerous times. Welcome to the club. But please, even in jest, that stuff is not getting through. Thank you for your good humor and understanding. -REP]
Combustible carbon is a finite resource. Perhaps there is enough combustible carbon in the Earth’s crust to convert all the oxygen in the atmosphere to CO2, but I doubt that it could be easily extracted for that purpose. With tar-sands and oil shale, the problem is Energy Return on Energy Invested, (EREOI) that is the energy left over after energy has been expended in its extraction. There is a big difference in the amount of energy recovered from a gushing oil well and that which remains after cooking a barrel of oil out of tar sands. That ‘cooked’ oil may just end up being too expensive for the common man.
I find the statistic that we are now producing six times as much petroleum as we are finding new to be an inescapable indication that we have used a major fraction of the Earth’s affordable petroleum. Perhaps this is not half as some fear, but enough so we can no longer double production on the same periodic basis as before. I expect that the main impact of this will begin one or two generations down the line.
Some have said that the sub-prime mortgage crisis was caused by the failure to double petroleum production, as these loans were issued assuming a growth rate that depended on ever-expanding production.
While some are pushing for advanced green energy harvesting for future energy needs, I believe that these green or natural energy projects are nothing but a shortcut return to the stone-age lifestyle predicted by the ‘Olduvai Theory,’ as most advanced techniques of this type depend on diminishing resources or products of the petroleum industry.
So far, I see no viable working, next generation, alternative energy production scheme now in use that does any more than hold the wolf at bay for a few centuries. Safe thorium nuclear and fusion power seem to be promising; however, no practical power plant has ever been constructed using these techniques. In the case of thorium nuclear, this seems to be the result of a political decision to halt this effort without ever seriously trying to make it work. There has been no lack of effort to develop a fusion power process.
Based on the time it took steam to replace sail for ships, it may take forty years before a pilot plant for a new energy technology is replicated to general use.
As a reference, the 35-minute YouTube video cartoon with the alarming title: “There’s No Tomorrow” seems to be the best quick comprehensive presentation of the ‘Peak Oil’ theory I have seen. It also explains why growth cannot keep doubling on a finite planet. As for ‘Peak Oil,’ the only question appears to be ‘when’ it will happen. (I do suspect that some of the support for these ‘Peak Oil’ videos comes from precious metal investment groups.)
“There’s No Tomorrow,” Peak Oil Documentary
In the early days of the 2008 campaign, then Sen. Obama was cosponsor of a bill that promoted the conversion of coal to liquid fuel. As it became apparent that his momentum was building, he quietly withdrew his name from the bill. He may be a watermelon, but his rind is paper thin.
Torgeir Hansson says:
March 19, 2012 at 9:39 pm
“Hey guys! Isn’t it great to see that the Administration already is coming off its CAGW stance? I predicted this at least two years ago. Mr. Obama should be welcomed to the fold, not reviled as a liar. He is a politician standing for reelection for crying out loud. Of course he is going to back away gracefully.”
Why did he block the Keystone XL pipeline, then? His employee Hansen keeps on saying that if all oil sands are used it’s game over for the climate. This doesn’t make sense.
Spector says:
March 19, 2012 at 10:11 pm
““There’s No Tomorrow,” Peak Oil Documentary”
They show a lot of graphs in that film.
None of the graphs has numbers on the y scale.
It’s a propaganda film. They pretend to have data when they have none.
If they had data, they could put numbers on the scales.
Torgeir Hansson says:
March 19, 2012 at 9:39 pm
blather, blather, bs……..
The same goes for the Keystone XL pipeline. It was pushed through far too quickly. 60 days to approve it? Come on, that’s irresponsible…….blather, blather, bs ……
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Lmao….. who do you think you’re addressing? Some adolescent green mushheads willing to believe everything they’re told?
The fact is the state dept. had studied it for 3 years and was going to approve it, when the administration took the authority from the state dept. And, it was then Obama declared he was going to dither about it, likely until after the election. A few months later is when the law was passed giving him 60 more days to make a decision.
The prices are tied to the speculative nature of the business. The supply and demand are just fine. It’s the jitters from having much of our supply coming from an unstable part of the world. North America has enough oil to become oil independent. The U.S. is the largest consumer of oil. You guys and gals really need to quit pretending we don’t have it within our power to significantly effect oil prices. Combined with shale oil we’re sitting on over a trillion barrels of oil. More than anyone else.
So, now I have a question. Are you misguided or are you intentionally misleading people? BTW, your idiotic blathering about condoms is another complete and utter falsehood. Typical leftist.
lol, Malthusians are out and about tonight. Peak oil!!! Dear God, do you people listen to yourselves? Read up ….. heck read the damned post. We’re not out of oil, we’ve got plenty of oil, well enough to last us centuries. And, much of the world’s reliance on it will be diminished by the nat gas that we’ve found.
Read geologists and economists. Read something other than your dystopian fantasies.