New picture gallery

Every six months or so I put up a picture gallery consisting of what I think are the "best" pictures that have appeared on my various blogs. The January to June, 2012 gallery is accessible here. Greenies get some prominent mentions.





Greenland's ice sheets 'less vulnerable than feared' claim scientists as stunning new pictures reveal ice loss has slowed

"Poof" goes another scare. That the climate goes through cycles always seems to surprise Warmists. They mostly seem to live in a world where only the present is real. Getting them to look at history is like pulling teeth

Greenland's ice seems less vulnerable than feared to a runaway melt that would drive up world sea levels, according to a study showing that a surge of ice loss had petered out.

'It is too early to proclaim the 'ice sheet's future doom' caused by climate change', lead author Kurt Kjaer of the University of Copenhagen wrote in a statement of the findings in the journal Science.

An examination of old photos taken from planes revealed a sharp thinning of glaciers in north-west Greenland from 1985 to 1993, the experts in Denmark, Britain and the Netherlands wrote.

Another pulse of ice loss in the area lasted from 2005 to 2010.

The discovery of fluctuations casts doubt on projections that Greenland could be headed for an unstoppable meltdown, triggered by manmade global warming. Greenland contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 7 metres (23 ft) if it all thawed.

'It starts and then it stops,' Kjaer told Reuters of the ice losses. 'This is a break from thinking that it is something that starts, accelerates and will consume Greenland all at once.'

However, Kjaer noted that the ice sheet did not get bigger in the pause between the pulses of ice loss.

He said satellite data of Greenland's ice only dated back to about 2000 and the use of aerial photos had extended the records of the remote Arctic region back another 15 years.

The cause of the surge in ice loss in the 1980s was unclear but might have been linked to a shift in ocean currents. The underlying cause of a change in currents was unknown.

Nasa said last month that almost the entire surface of Greenland had been thawing in a rare warm spell [lasting only 4 days!] that it said might happen only once every 150 years.

And an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan recently broke off the Petermann glacier, to the north of the area studied by Kjaer's team.

Lack of historical data is a problem for climate scientists studying Greenland and the far bigger Antarctic ice sheet, which would raise sea levels by about 60 metres if it ever all melted.

The U.N. panel of climate scientists says manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, will cause ever more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

It projected in 2007 that sea levels could rise by 18-59 cms by 2100. Many experts since then have projected bigger rises and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon once said seas could gain up to 2 metres this century in the worst case.

Kjaer said experts would have to be cautious in projecting an acceleration of sea level rise, now at a rate of about 3 mm a year or 30 cms over a century.

Sea level rise is a threat to people from New York to London, from Bangladesh to Kiribati.

The Danish-led team of scientists also published data in May indicating that ice in the south-east of Greenland had shrunk in a previous warming period in the 1930s.

They now had a database of 160,000 photos of Greenland, including U.S. surveys in the 1940s. "That's something to be working with," Kjaer said.

SOURCE




Everyone Freaks Out About Two New Climate Change Studies

Beware sarcasm below. Ronald Bailey gives below an intelligent and useful summary of the Watts and Muller BEST papers but he is a libertarian writer and seems to take an "on the fence" view of global warming. He fails to note the vast hole in the Muller BEST paper: Absolutely NO evidence that the slight warming in due to man. I suspect that the fence Bailey is sitting on is going to give him a very sore butt soon. I think it is a picket fence

How fast is the planet warming? Two new not-yet-peer reviewed studies were published online earlier this week that suggest somewhat different answers. The first agrees with earlier findings about the pace of global warming, while the second argues that half of the recent warming in the U.S. is artificial.**

The first is from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project run by physicist Richard Muller. That paper, "A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011," reported that “the rise in average world land temperature globe is approximately 1.5 degrees C in the past 250 years, and about 0.9 degrees in the past 50 years.” The BEST group concluded that the increase in carbon dioxide emissions from humanity was the likely cause of the increase in global average temperature. In its study, BEST claimed to have taken into account “issues raised by skeptics, such as possible biases from urban heating, data selection, poor station quality, and data adjustment. We have demonstrated that these do not unduly bias the results.”

At the same time, Anthony Watts and his colleagues published their new study, "An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends," which found “for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data.” The press release for the new Watts study suggests that weather station quality would be a significant issue that undermines the higher global average temperature trends implied by the data reported in Global Historical Climatology Network and in the BEST network.

As is usual in the debates over issues in climatology, the online discussion was measured and polite. Left-wing climate blogger Joe Romm over at ClimateProgress calmly headlined the new BEST study, "Bombshell: Koch-Funded Study Finds ‘Global Warming Is Real’, ‘On The High End’ And ‘Essentially All’ Due To Carbon Pollution." With regard to the new Watts study, the folks over at the right-wing site Breitbart.com serenely reported, "New Study Crushes Global Warming Data Claims."

So there you have it—a crushed bombshell!

The Watts study applies a nifty new classification system for the quality of weather station siting devised by French researcher Michel Leroy and adopted by the World Meteorological Association. For example, in order to be considered a class 1 or 2 station no artificial surfaces like parking lots or brick walls must be within 100 meters or 30 meters respectively. Such surfaces spuriously boost the amount of warming that a weather station thermometer would detect. For years, Watts has tirelessly analyzed the quality of weather stations in the United States to identify how their siting might bias their data. In his new study, Watts and his fellow researchers report that U.S. class 1 and 2 weather stations find that temperatures are increasing at a rate of +0.155 per decade in the continental U.S. Poorly sited stations (classes 3, 4, and 5) show a +0.248 per decade trend.

In an email, Watts additionally noted, “We identified the most representative thermometers for climate trend capture are the well sited, non-airport, Class 1 and 2 rural MMTS stations, which have a superior instrument shelter, an electronic memory to capture the high and low, and are removed both from the siting issues as well as urban heat island and airport growth and instrumentation problem effects.” Other considerations include alterations to how the land in rural areas [PDF] is used by people. The trend for those stations is +0.032 C per decade. Watts added, “The value is not much greater than zero.”

Over the years, the folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have tried to adjust the temperature data from the U.S. Historical Climatology Network to take into account many factors—urbanization, station and instrument changes, airports—that could affect the accuracy of the temperature record. Watts and his fellow researchers claim that while the well-sited stations show an overall trend of +0.155 C per decade and the trend at poorly sited stations is +0.248 C per decade, NOAA adjusts the data so the reported trend is +0.309 per decade. Watts reckons that the problem is that NOAA researchers use temperature data from poorly sited stations to adjust upward the data from the well-sited stations.

“This disparity suggests that a combination of siting issues and adjustments are creating a spurious doubling of the U.S. surface temperature record for the 30 year period of this study,” concludes the Watts paper. Via email, Watts generously observes, “I don’t believe the errors associated with NOAA adjustments are deliberate, but simply a case of confirmation bias. They expect to find global warming because a popular theory says they should.”

Specifically with regard to the BEST study, the Watts study notes, “Given that USHCN [U.S. Historical Climatology Network] stations overlap and are part of the GHCN [Global Historical Climatology Network], the siting issue should be examined for all the GHCN and BEST sites.” Translation: The BEST data very likely include a spurious warming trend of which they have not taken adequate account. Via email, Watts also points out that BEST study lumps class 1, 2, and 3 sites together as OK. “Only stations classified as 1 and 2 are acceptable,” Watts argues. “I expect that errors such as these have contributed to the failure of all BEST papers in peer review.”

Meanwhile, Muller and his colleagues report that their analysis of temperature data shows that the globe has warmed +0.87 degrees C over the past 50 years. Via email, Elizabeth Muller, co-director of Best with her father observes that they “have not looked at the new analysis by Watts in great detail,” but add “as near as we can tell we are in agreement with his results. He is critical of our methods, but reached the same conclusions we did—that station quality does not unduly bias the temperature record.” When they get around to looking in more detail, they will find that Watts and his colleagues do think station quality problems have in fact significantly biased their temperature records. In any case, Muller notes that an earlier study by BEST analyzed temperature data from only stations that are far from urban areas. “We found that in these very rural areas, there was the same amount of warming as for the global land,” she writes.

To get some idea of the magnitude of the trends over which the argument is being conducted, let’s do some rough calculations. The BEST trend is +0.87 C over the past 50 years. That implies a temperature increase of +0.174 degrees per decade. The satellite record from the University of Alabama Huntsville researchers John Christy and Roy Spencer finds a per decade increase of +0.14 C. The new Watts study looking only temperature trends for the continental U.S. of +0.155 C per decade.

Admittedly, these very rough calculations are a bit like comparing peaches to nectarines. For example, the satellites measure the temperature of the lower troposphere not the surface. But looking at the Watts study one finds that according to the satellite data, the U.S. tropospheric temperature trend is +0.24 degree C per decade. Watts notes that surface warming is typically amplified in the troposphere by a factor of 1.1 to 1.4, which implies surface temperatures “in the range of 0.17 to 0.22, which is close to the 0.155 degrees C per decade trend seen in the compliant class 1 & 2 stations.” (A puzzlement: if Watts’ best-sited stations exhibit a trend of +0.032 per decade and the amplification factors are applied, that would imply a U.S. tropospheric temperature per decade trend of +0.035 to +0.045, yet the satellite trend of +0.24 is more than five times that.)

The good news is that both Watts and BEST have been completely transparent about their calculations and their data. This should make it possible for each to check each other’s work and get back to the rest of us with their results. They both are aiming to have their work published in peer-reviewed journals as well. In the meantime, I fully expect that the public conversation over climatology will continue to remain as just civil as it always has been.

SOURCE






Urban Wind turbines in Britain drive bats bats



SMALL wind turbines can halve bat activity in the immediate vicinity of properties, according to new research.

Academics from Stirling University looked at the small wind turbines, which are becoming an increasingly popular means of power generation at individual homes.

The research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, involved halting microturbine movement at 20 sites across the UK and examining the effect on bird and bat activity.

The results revealed bird activity was not significantly affected but bat activity was 54% lower in close proximity to operating turbines compared to those which were stopped.

Dr Kirsty Park, senior lecturer in Ecology at Stirling who led the research team, said: "Reducing our carbon footprint is important, but we also need to understand the implications of renewable energy technologies for wildlife conservation.

"Based on our results, we recommend turbines are sited at least 20 metres away from potentially valuable bat habitat."

The research, to be published in the American journal PLoS ONE, was conducted by Dr Jeroen Minderman from the University's School of Natural Sciences.

Mr Minderman said: "Previous studies have shown birds and bats can be killed by colliding with large turbine blades or wildlife may avoid the surrounding environment, leading to effective habitat loss. "To date, studies have focused solely on large-scale wind farms."

SOURCE




The Pixie Dust Energy Source

Solar is the power of the future and the power of the past. What solar isn’t, is the power of the present. That’s because using solar power to generate electricity is expensive. Still. And that’s not going to change anytime soon, no matter how many political fundraisers are held by solar advocates.

According to Bloomberg, recent price decreases in solar equipment have driven costs from about 25 cents per kwh to 17 cents per kwh for photovoltaic (PV) powered solar energy, the least expensive form of solar power deployable at scale. But that’s a far cry from the average retail price for electricity as of June 2011. In May, according to the US Energy Information Agency, customers paid 9.70 cents per kwh for electricity generated by conventional means, nearly half of solar’s cost.

For decades, solar’s advocates have predicted that economies of scale, technological advances and pixie dust will soon kick in allowing the world to hold hands, sing songs and enjoy the “free,” and limitless power of the sun.

The amount of energy available through solar is astonishing and bewitching, true. Because of the huge mass of energy available through solar, there’s no doubt that solar has potential to solve many of the earth’s energy problems. It just doesn’t do so right now. Nor will it ever be “free.” Heck, it might not ever even be cheap.

The sun does provide quite a bit of energy. According to NASA we use an equivalent of 1/10,000 of the sun’s available energy here on earth in fossil fuels. While 30 percent of solar energy that reaches us is reflected back into space, what’s left over is more energy in one year than all the energy that can be created by fossil fuels combined, ever.

Capture, conversion, storage and transmission of solar energy at costs close to fossil fuels however remains elusive.

So, the reality of the sun’s “free” energy continues to fall far short of the promise year after year despite rosy predictions. Devotees from Bloomberg New Energy and the IEEE have predicted that soon solar energy will compete with coal-the cheapest of all the energy sources- in price. Even assuming sunshine and salad days for solar, BrightEnergy.com says that “[b] y 2050, it is expected that solar PV will provide 11 percent of global electricity production, corresponding to 3,000 gigawatts of cumulative installed capacity.” That seems like a pretty modest target for an energy source that competes with coal for price. And it underscores the uncertainty of solar’s future.

The truth is that no one really knows what the future for solar is, in part because government is muddying the waters.

Take, for example, the world’s biggest publicly-traded solar company, First Solar, with a market capitalization of roughly $1.4 billion as of August, 2012. Last year at this time, the company was worth $6 billion.

First Solar makes photovoltaic solar panels and does a very good job of it. Their revenues have climbed from $500 million to $3.12 billion since 2007. But the stock has tumbled from a high of over $300 as Obama was elected to around the $17 range by the end of July. Why would a company that has seen its revenues grow six-fold, see its share price tumble $283?

Mostly the stock price volatility reflects on-again-off-again government support for solar company winners and losers. Europe has cut back subsidies while the federal government continues to muck up its loan guarantee program. First Solar won’t be as attractive to investors in the marketplace without generous subsidies provided by governments, especially those governments in Europe.

"We believe that First Solar remains well positioned to flourish in a market with low or no subsidies once the market consolidates,” says brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, “and we suggest that investors wait for a more opportune time to accumulate shares."

Consolidation is broker-eese for “a lot of these companies are going out of business.”

Government money has been put into converting customers to solar rather than into primary research aimed at brining costs down so that the marketplace can convert customers on the basis of economics. That because it’s been cheaper for solar companies to beg for government money than it has been to do research; and in the sort-term government money has been much more lucrative to shareholders and to consumers lucky enough to cash in on subsidies especially in Europe.

As to jobs? Forget about it. It’s a net negative.

“In principle, tens of thousands of jobs have been created in the German PV industry,” says the leftist UK Guardian, a supporter of solar, “but this is gross jobs, not net jobs: had the money been used for other purposes, it could have employed far more people. The paper estimates that the subsidy for every solar PV job in Germany is €175,000: in other words the subsidy is far higher than the money the workers are likely to earn. This is a wildly perverse outcome. Moreover, most of these people are medium or highly skilled workers, who are in short supply there. They have simply been drawn out of other industries.”

That isn’t to say that research into cost cutting and innovation isn’t being done by solar companies today. But no one really knows how the solar market will survive if the governments- Europe, US, China- cut off life-support.

The patient might survive or it could be brain dead already. It’s time to pull the plug solar and find out.

SOURCE






Armed forces sucked into Greenie waste

If America had a “Spend Like a Drunken Sailor Award,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus would win hands-down, for blowing $12 million on biofuel for Navy ships.

Even as the armed services face drastic budget cuts under “automatic sequestration” and other proposed reductions, further undermining our national security, Mabus and President Obama clearly believe “it’s only taxpayer money.”

“Beat GSA” may have to replace Navy’s “Beat Army” football battle cry.

In fairness, Secretary Mabus’s “Great Green Fleet” of ships and fighter jets performed well during recent military exercises off Hawaii, burning blends of 50% biofuels and 50% conventional fuels. But the price tag makes the fleet a poster child for wasteful government spending.

The exercises cost the Navy nearly $27 per gallon for 450,000 gallons of biofuels produced from algae and waste grease and animal fat – versus around $3.50 a gallon for standard petroleum fuels.

The only way the Navy fiasco looks good is by comparison to the Air Force spending $59 a gallon for alcohol-to-jet fuel and $67 per gallon for camelina-based F-22 Raptor fuel – or the Navy’s 2009 purchase of 20,000 gallons of renewable diesel for $424 per gallon!

If Mabus achieves his “goal” and “persuades” the Navy to make half of its fuel “green” by 2020, the higher cost biofuels could add $1.9 billion annually to Navy’s fuel bill, according to a Defense Department study. That extra outlay would pay for a new DDG-51 destroyer and comes as the Defense Department budget faces $13 billion in cuts for Navy shipbuilding over the next four years.

Add to that boatloads of additional taxpayer dollars that would be wasted if the Army, Air Force and Marines also switch from abundant, affordable, reliable, proven petroleum fuels to untested, impractical, unaffordable, unsustainable biofuels. The Pentagon’s green spending spree makes the General Services Administration binge on lavish conferences and entertainment look like chump change.

Worse, on top of paying these enormous sums for biofuels, the Navy and Departments of Agriculture and Energy agreed that each would “invest $170 million directly in biorefineries to kick-start the flagging industry,” Wired magazine reported. The $510 million total nearly equals the Solyndra debacle.

What’s next in the drive to end Defense Department fossil fuel use? Using fuel efficiency to justify “slimming down” armor and armament for personnel vehicles, tanks, fighter jets, aircraft carriers and missile cruisers – making them more vulnerable to enemy fire? Or shrinking the US military to the size and capability of its French, German or Greek counterparts?

Granted, the Navy biofuels program doesn’t turn 40% of the US corn crop into ethanol – sending corn prices to record highs during this year’s prolonged drought. However, our nation does not have enough chicken fat and waste grease to fuel the Navy; collecting and refining this refuse would be a budget-busting logistical nightmare; and camelina and other non-food crops still require vast amounts of land, water, fertilizer, pesticides and fossil fuel energy.

Growing sufficient quantities of algae to meet the Mabus-Obama green fuel pipedreams would require enormous onshore and offshore algae ponds. That would likely send environmentalists storming into courthouses.

Protecting the military from oil price spikes is an equally specious justification. If every $1 in higher oil prices costs the DOD $30 million, as White House climate czarina Heather Zichal claims, a $23 to $63 per gallon price differential between conventional and bio fuel will cost $690 million to $1.9 billion.

As to enhancing supply lines and thus national security, does Secretary Mabus intend to build enough biofuel refineries to equal the conventional refineries and fleet servicing ports worldwide that supposedly do not safeguard supplies? Or perhaps he is planning to commission specialized ships that strain algae from seawater like baleen whales, convert it to fuel onboard, and store it in tankers marked with green crosses that would protect them from enemy fire, as red crosses presumably safeguard hospital ships.

Even ignoring the absence of empirical evidence for catastrophic CO2-driven global warming, it beggars belief that the White House, Congress or DOD would even consider subjugating military preparedness, missions and safety to manmade climate change ideology. Moreover, any net carbon dioxide reductions via DOD biofuels would be more than offset by increases from China, India and other rapidly developing countries.

Fortunately, many in Congress understand that “adopting a ‘green agenda’ for national defense is a terrible misplacement of priorities,” as Arizona Senator and former Navy pilot John McCain aptly put it. House-passed legislation would bar the Defense Department from buying biofuels that cost more than conventional fuels, and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has proposed similar action in the Senate.

Inhofe’s amendment to the FY-2013 National Defense Authorization Act was approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee. However, the amendment faces mostly Democrat opposition in the full chamber, and the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee approved continued biofuels funding.

The usual alliance of hydrocarbon adversaries is just as vehemently opposed to bills to address national security, oil prices and over-reliance on foreign sources in a far more commonsense manner: by producing more of America’s abundant but untapped and off-limits petroleum resources. They oppose hydraulic fracturing for the centuries’ of oil and gas our nation has in its extensive shale deposits – as well as drilling for conventional deposits off our Pacific, Atlantic, Alaskan and Gulf of Mexico coastlines, within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or anywhere in the Western US states.

Rather than ensuring that our armed forces can defend America without wasting billions, President Obama and his alliance prefer to wage war on fossil fuels.

Instead of promoting biofuels, the Navy and Defense Department should be calling on Congress and the White House to increase domestic leasing and drilling in all these areas. Even a drunken sailor would understand this.

SOURCE




Obama's Assault on U.S. Energy

For the second time in two days, hundreds of millions of people across India have been plunged into darkness when its electrical grids collapsed. This is a warning of what could occur here in America.

"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." -- Barack Obama

In a war, some of the first targets are the power plants in order to deny the energy a nation requires to function. Obama declared war on coal during the 2008 campaign and few were paying attention. In 1985 coal accounted for 57 percent of all power generated in the U.S. By 2011, it was down to 42 percent.

A July 28 Daily Caller headline reported that a "Record number of coal-fired generators to be shut down in 2012." Based on an analysis of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the article noted that "coal plant operators are planning to retire 175 coal-fired generators, or 8.5 percent of the total coal-fired capacity in the United States."

"A record-high 57 generators will shut down in 2012, representing 9 gigawatts of electrical capacity, according to the EIA. In 2015, nearly 10 gigawatts of capacity from 6l coal-fired generators will be retired...the scope of this new planned shutdown is unprecedented."

"The coal-fired capacity expected to be retired over the next fire years is more than four times greater than retirements performed during the preceding five-year period."

For those thinking that all those wind turbines and solar farms will make up the difference, it's worth noting they provide less than three percent of the nation's electricity and each must be backed up by a traditional-reliable-power plant.

Virtually all of them are located far from urban centers and require lengthy, expensive power lines to feed the grid and yet last week the Interior Department announced it will set aside 285,000 acres in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah for solar projects! How many multi-million dollar failed Solyndras will it take to stop this rape?

In March 2011 the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report noting that the combined energy resources of the nation are the largest on Earth. They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th), and Canada 6th) combined. Not included in the report are America's shale oil and natural gas deposits.

Sen. Inhofe (R-OK), a ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said at the time that "The Obama administration has made a conscious policy choice to raise energy prices, accomplished in good measure by restricting access to domestic energy supplies." If a foreign nation were doing this to America, we would be at war with them.

The CRS report noted that America's reserves of coal are unsurpassed, accounting for more than twenty-eight percent of the world's coal. It estimated that U.S. recoverable coal reserves were around 262 billion tons. Insofar as the U.S. consumers 1.2 billion tons of coal a year, that represents several centuries of coal use.

And, of course, coal is not the only energy source that has been under attack by the Obama administration. The CRS report estimated there are 163 billion barrels of oil that the U.S. can access, enough to replace oil imports from the Persian Gulf for more than fifty years.

One of the reasons that coal plants are being retired is the emergence of a huge domestic reserve of natural gas estimated to be around 2,047 trillion cubic feet in 2009. That would keep the lights on for a century.

The Obama administration energy policy has been appalling. It invested-and lost-billions in green energy companies and green jobs. Its stimulus package is estimated to have cost $335,000 per job "saved" or created.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been an unmitigated disaster. Before his nomination he said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." And we all know how well that has worked for Europe whose Union is foundering on the brink of collapse. The Environmental Protection Agency is the other blunt instrument of destruction of the nation's energy providers.

The Obama administration has consistently insisted that "greenhouse gas emissions", primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) had to be reduced to offset global warming, but there is NO global warming and CO2 plays NO role in climate change. When the administration tried to push cap-and-trade legislation through based on this hoax, Obama said that, under the proposal, "energy prices would necessarily skyrocket." Does that sound like someone trying to crash the economy? Yes, it does.

Between an oil drilling moratorium-twice declared by the courts to be illegal-and the stalling of the Keystone XL pipeline (which would generate thousands of jobs while costing the U.S. taxpayer nothing!), the war on oil was pursued while the administration offered Brazil billions in U.S. taxpayer money in loan guarantees to build their oil production capacity.

Enormous oil reserves in Alaska and offshore are still unavailable to American use. In addition, crude oil production on federal and Indian lands decreased 13 percent from 739 million barrels in fiscal year 2010 to 645 million barrels in fiscal year 2011. Offshore production on federal lands fell by 17 percent in fiscal year 2011 and is down 40 percent compared to ten years ago.

Four more years of an Obama administration would be-just in terms of energy-a disaster for the nation. The President and his minions are weakening a nation that sits atop some of the world's greatest energy reserves. This must end soon or the consequences are unimaginable.

SOURCE

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