Obama: $12 billion new federal loan guarantees for renewables

I agree. Renewable energy is hugely expensive, and it requires massive taxpayer subsidies. But even that is not enough to support it. The “war on coal” has resulted in shutting down dozens of power plants, forcing electricity users to pay for whatever is available.
Coal power costs 6¢ – 9¢ a kwh. Alternative energy costs exceed 25¢/kwh.
This giant scam is based on the totally discredited idea that a rise in the trace gas CO2 from 3 parts in 10,000 to 4 parts in 10,000 over the past century is bad.
But there is no evidence whatever that more CO2 has caused any global harm – or any measurable global warming. In addition, agricultural productivity has tracked the rise in CO2. So the only evidence we have is that more CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
Mr. Hornblower says:
…believe me the country is much better now than years ago.
It is. But it would be in much better shape without the massive government interference caused by subsidizing expensive alternative energy, prematurely shutting down dozens of our power plants, and replacing them with very costly, unreliable alternatives.

Mike J says:
…there is no reason to suppose that human inventiveness will fail in future.
Exactly right. The apparently unstoppable horse manure crisis in the 1890’s was solved completely by new petroleum technology, which also saved the Right whales from extinction .
The average horse defecates ≈9 tons of manure annually; that’s about 35 pounds of manure a day, plus up to 10 gallons of urine — all of which had to be picked up and carted away by an army of sanitation workers. Alarmist predictions were being made at the time that industry would grind to a halt. And 25% of agricultural output was required simply to feed all the horses.
The Erie Canal was built based on the argument that farms supplying big cities could not be farther than 200 miles away, since a horse being fed from the wagon of grain it is pulling will run out of food in 200 miles. (Canals tripled this distance, but they only lasted about ten years before railroad technology made canals obsolete.)
Human ingenuity will solve energy problems just like it solved pollution emissions from coal plants using by scrubbers. Now, the only emissions from those power plants are CO2 and H2O — both are beneficial, and necessary for all life on earth. Neither is pollution, despite EPA politics.
To the extent that government meddles in the economy, human inventiveness is smothered. Money is mis-allocated into inefficient and wasteful projects. Government subsidies make individual progress difficult because it allows subsidized companies to undercut the true costs of power generation. Unsubsidized products and inventions cannot compete, when $12 Billion is funnelled into competing power sources. The result is unreliable power at a very high cost to consumers. That is what’s going on now.
So why does it happen? The answer is obvious: a small minority of the population financially benefits at the expense of everyone else. That is the same basic problem with the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ scare. A small clique of rent seeking scientists, politicians and bureaucrats are sticking it to the public for their own self-serving interest.
I can almost not blame them. At least they have a reasonable motive, even if it is dishonest. What astonishes me are the legions of true believer lemmings; people who gain nothing, and who will lose money like the rest of us — and still they try to convince everyone that there is measurable MMGW, and that it’s a problem. They have no credible data, all they have is their quasi-religious belief. MMGW has become a matter of faith to them, and they proselytize endlessly.
At least they give my ocular muscles a workout, because every time I read a comment by one of them, I do a reflexive eye roll.