An Obama promise that has come true!

Watch him make the promise here.  And people voted for him!  The power of a dark skin in a nation brainwashed into guilt by the Left

In contrast to the steep decline in the gasoline price index over the past year (which led to a decline in the overall Consumer Price Index), the seasonally adjusted electricity price index hit an all-time high in January, according to data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In January, the seasonally adjusted price index for electricity was 212.290. That was up from 210.489 in December, which was the record up until then. Before that, the high had been the 209.341 recorded in March of last year.

The annual electricity price index set a record in 2014 of 208.020 up from 200.750 in 2013.

In January, the average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity also hit an all-time high for that month of the year.

According to BLS, a KWH of electricity cost an average of 13.8 cents in January 2015, which was less than the 14.3-cent cost in June, July and August of 2014 (and 14.1-cent cost of September 2014) but more than the average cost of a KWH in any month—including the summer months—of 2013. In that year, the average price of a KWH peaked at 13.7 cents in the months from June to September.

The rise in the electricity price index ran counter to the gasoline price index, the overall energy price index, and the overall Consumer Price Index, all of which declined in January as well as over the past twelve months.

“The gasoline decrease was overwhelmingly the cause of the decline in the all items index, which would have risen 0.1 percent had the gasoline index been unchanged,” said BLS.

The BLS’s price indexes measure relative change in prices against a baseline of 100. The seasonally adjusted monthly electricity price index exceeded 100 between September and October of 1983, when it rose from 98.9 to 101.0.

Historically, increasing electricity prices have not been inevitable in the United States. From 1913 to 1946, the electricity price index trended down from 45.5 to 26.6. By 1974, it was still only 44.1, which was less than it had been in 1913.

SOURCE  





After the collapse of Communism, global warming is the next great hope of the far Left -- in their hunger for global mastery

Interview summary

Lord Christopher Monckton says the “climate change” issue is really a way to gain control of the world.  Lord Monckton, former award winning journalist who was once an advisor to Margaret Thatcher, contends, “This is a story that has been grossly, I mean grossly, oversold.  They have exaggerated beyond all reason.

Just this week, I’ve had a major paper published in the Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Science which gives the reasons why they got it wrong.  We went into their wretched climate models and took them apart.  We’ve found what they did wrong, and we exposed it.  The left have gone ballistic.”

Lord Monckton goes on to say, “What seems to be happening is the communist, in particular the hard left, have taken up these climate cudgels in a very big way, and they are the ones that are really driving this agenda.  Why are they doing this?  That is the first question.  The reason, of course, is they have long wanted to set up what used to be called the socialist international.  It’s a single giant global communist tyranny.

Of course, you get Obama, whose father was communist.  His chief mentor was communist.  His rhetoric is communist.  He has taken this up in a big way.  The State of the Union Address was really rather pathetic. . . . I never thought I’d see the United States electing a communist as President.”

Lord Monckton also points out, “These people are totalitarian.  These are people who want global government. They want to be part of a regime of total control. . . . This is what the hard left has always wanted.  It was the same in Hitler’s Germany. . . .Now, you got the communist party in the United States, but now they are calling it the Democrats.”

The co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, has made public statements that say there is “no scientific proof” humans are the cause of global warming.  Lord Monckton, who knows him personally, says, “Patrick Moore has made a very moving speech about how he tried to set up a genuine environmental organization.  Its intention was to make the world a better place, to leave a smaller environmental footprint on the world. . . . He is heartbroken.  I can’t tell you how sad he is at the perversion of the organization he founded.

Goofy teenagers are giving it money and going around collecting money, not realizing that what they are actually collecting money for is not an environmental organization anymore.  It is a communist front.  It is there solely to bring in a world government to put its people in charge, using the environment just as Hitler used it as the excuse for additional totalitarian control.

Let’s not forget, it was Hitler who first founded the green movement and first used the environmental movement, not for the basis for genuine concern about the environment, but as a basis for getting control over every detail over people’s lives so they couldn’t argue back.  That’s what this is really all about. . . .  I get criticized all the time as to why I don’t just stick to the science.  I say somebody has to tell the truth, not only about the science, but also about the politics.”

Lord Monckton believes there is climate change, but he does not believe man has anything to do with it.  Lord Monckton says science will ultimately back up that claim.  Why the recent push on climate change that is also called global warming?  Lord Monckton says, “I think they are panicking because they know that this process  . . . cannot be kept going for very much longer because . . . it’s been 25 years since the UN produces a report saying we were all doomed, and since then, the rate of warming has been half of what they predicted and well below their entire range of estimates.”

Also, former Vice President Al Gore predicted the polar ice caps would be melted by now.  Just the opposite has happened, as Lord Monckton points out, “If you took the Artic and the Antarctic together, global sea ice was the greatest it’s been throughout the 35 years of the satellite era.  It is greater than it has ever been before.”

Lord Monckton closes by saying, “God Bless America, and in light of what’s to come, if we don’t stop it, God Bless us all.”

SOURCE  





More Ice on Great Lakes Now Than During 2014 Polar Vortex

 The total ice cover of the Great Lakes is currently 88.3 percent, or 2.3 percentage points more than it was at the same time during last year’s polar vortex, when 86 percent of the lakes’ surfaces were frozen solid, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The ice accumulation is also much higher than the 51.4 percent long-term average since 1973. However, it is still short of the record of 94.7 percent, which was set on Feb. 19, 1979.

Lakes Erie, Huron and Superior are almost completely frozen over, according to NOAA’s Great Lakes Surface Environmental Analysis (GLSEA). Three quarters of Lakes Michigan and Ontario are also covered in ice.

Ice cover on the Great Lakes currently runs from a high of 96.18 percent on Lake Huron to a low of 71.16 percent on Lake Michigan, Lt. David B. Keith, public affairs officer at the U.S. National/Naval Ice Center (NIC), told CNSNews.com.

As of Sunday, the ice cover on each lake was:

Lake Huron: 96.18 %
Lake Erie: 96.01 %
Lake Superior: 94.14 %
Lake Ontario: 76.13 %
Lake Michigan:  71.16 %

There is so much ice on Lake Erie that the Arthur M. Anderson, a 767-foot freighter, got stuck in it for five days late last month. The Coast Guard ice breaker Bristol Bay also got stuck in the 8-to-10-foot thick ice itself while on a mission to rescue the stranded freighter. Both vessels were finally released by the Griffon, a Canadian Coast Guard ice cutter.

Imagery from NOAA’s polar-orbiting satellite is used to take daily readings of the surface temperatures of the Great Lakes. NIC produces a twice-weekly overview of current conditions during the winter months.

According to the National Weather Service’s 30-day outlook for March, which was released on Feb. 28, below-average temperatures are predicted in the eastern half of the United States this month:

“The update to the March temperature outlook indicates an increased probability of below-normal mean temperatures over a more extensive area of the Eastern U.S. covering most regions east of the Rocky Mountains with the exception of the Southeast.”

However, NOAA does not believe that the Great Lakes ice record set in 1979 will be broken this year.

"I'm not expecting to break the record this year as we've got a ways to go (record is 94.76%, sounds closer than it actually is) but we may still see an increase of ice later this week with another cold push into the upper Midwest,” said Brian Jackson, NOAA’s Great Lakes ice analyst.

“Our maximum ice extent this year, so far, occurred on Saturday, Feb. 28, when we hit 88.75%. This puts this year in 5th place on record (since 1972).

Record: 94.76% - 1979
2nd: 92.19% - 2014
3rd: 90.7% - 1994
4th: 90.06% - 1977
5th: 88.75% - 2015

“It may be possible to move into 3rd or 4th place into this weekend, depending on how much the ice shifts and melts ahead of the colder air moving in," Jackson noted.

But Joe D’Aleo, co-founder of the Weather Channel, thinks that the record could be broken. During “the next 5-10 days, cold temperatures will help challenge the record,” he said in a blog post.

SOURCE





Obama’s claim that Keystone XL oil ‘bypasses the U.S.’ earns Four Pinocchios

“I’ve already said I’m happy to look at how we can increase pipeline production for U.S. oil, but Keystone is for Canadian oil to send that down to the Gulf. It bypasses the United States and is estimated to create a little over 250, maybe 300 permanent jobs. We should be focusing more broadly on American infrastructure for American jobs and American producers, and that’s something that we very much support.” – President Obama, interview with WDAY of Fargo, N.D., Feb. 26, 2015

President Obama, seeking to explain his veto of a bill that would have leapfrogged the approval process for the Keystone XL pipeline, in an interview with a North Dakota station repeated some false claims that had previously earned him Pinocchios. Yet he managed to make his statement even more misleading than before, suggesting the pipeline would have no benefit for American producers at all.

The Fact Checker obviously takes no position on the pipeline, and has repeatedly skewered both sides for overinflated rhetoric. Yet the president’s latest comments especially stand out. Let’s review the facts again.

The Facts

As we have noted before, when the president says “it bypasses the United States,” he leaves out a very important step. The crude oil would travel to the Gulf Coast, where it would be refined into products such as motor gasoline and diesel fuel (known as a distillate fuel in the trade). Current trends suggest that only about half of that refined product would be exported, and it could easily be lower.

A report released in February by IHS Energy, which consults for energy companies, concluded that “Canadian crude making its way to the USGC [Gulf Coast] will likely be refined there, and most of the refined products are likely to be consumed in the United States.” It added that “for Gulf refineries, heavy bitumen blends from the oil sands are an attractive substitute for declining offshore heavy crude supply from Latin America.” It concluded that 70 percent of the refined product would be consumed in the United States.

Enviromentalists dismiss IHS as a biased source, but the analysis mirrors the conclusions of the State Department’s final environmental impact statement on the Keystone XL project. This is what is especially strange about Obama’s remarks, as he appears to be purposely ignoring the findings of the lead Cabinet agency on the issue.

“Comments were received throughout the review process speculating that WCSB heavy crude oil supplies carried on the proposed Project would pass through the United States and be loaded onto vessels for ultimate sale in markets such as Asia,” the State Department said. “As crude of foreign origin, Canadian crude is eligible for crude export license as long as it is not commingled with domestic crude. However, such an option appears unlikely to be economically justified for any significant durable trade given transport costs and market conditions.”

The report added:

“Once WCSB [Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin] crude oil arrives at the Gulf Coast, Gulf Coast refiners have a significant competitive advantage in processing it compared to foreign refiners because the foreign refiners would have to incur additional transportation charges to have the crude oil delivered from the Gulf Coast to their location….  Gulf Coast refineries have the potential to absorb volumes of WCSB crude that go well beyond those that would be delivered via the proposed Project. On this basis, the likelihood that WCSB crudes will be exported in volume from the Gulf Coast is considered low.”

Finally, note that Obama said Keystone was just for Canadian oil, and “we should be focusing on American infrastructure for American jobs and American producers.” But actually, Keystone would help U.S. oil producers in North Dakota and Montana. TransCanada, the builder of the pipeline, has signed contracts to move 65,000 barrels a day from the Bakken area –and hopes to build that to 100,000. That’s nearly 10 percent of the region’s production.

The Congressional Research Service in 2013 estimated that about 12 percent of the pipeline’s capacity had been set aside for crude from the Bakken region. Of course, delays in the Keystone project have sent oil producers in search of other methods of transport, potentially making this link less relevant, but the president can’t argue the project was not proposed without U.S. producers in mind.

Moreover, as we have noted before, U.S. companies control about 30 percent of the production in Canada’s oil sands region. Thus, contrary to Obama’s suggestion, it is not strictly Canadian.

We have poked fun at TransCanada for suggesting the pipeline would reduce reliance on foreign energy — when in fact Canada is a foreign country — but that does not give Obama license to suggest there is no possible American benefit from the pipeline.

(Incidentally, while the president spoke of 250 to 300 permanent jobs, the State Department report actually says 35. But this is a construction project. How many construction projects result in very many permanent jobs?)

The White House declined to provide an on-the-record defense of the president’s statement. That certainly suggests officials are unwilling to make a public case contradicting the State Department findings.

The Pinocchio Test

When Obama first started making the claim that the crude oil in the Keystone pipeline would bypass the United States, we wavered between Three and Four Pinocchios — and strongly suggested he take the time to review the State Department report.

Clearly, the report remains unread.

The president’s latest remarks pushes this assertion into the Four Pinocchios column. If he disagrees with the State Department’s findings, he should begin to make the case why it is wrong, rather than assert the opposite, without any factual basis. Moreover, by telling North Dakota listeners that the pipeline has no benefit for Americans, he is again being misleading, given that producers in the region have signed contracts to transport some of their production through the pipeline.

Four Pinocchios

SOURCE






Making the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

by JANET LEVY   -- a BOOK REVIEW  of "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels" by  Alex Epstein

In the anti-fracking film Gasland, producer Josh Fox proclaims that the process of extracting previously inaccessible oil and gas from shale pollutes water supplies, increases the incidence of cancer and leads to higher levels of seismic activity, despite ample contrary evidence. This self-proclaimed environmental watchdog and anti-fracking crusader has led extensive efforts to end or prevent fracking throughout the United States by obfuscating the truth and stopping communities from reaping the benefits of America's shale boom. Josh Fox and others like him are uninterested in looking for improvements in fracking technology and safety. Instead they seek to shut down shale exploration and other fossil fuel extraction altogether.

In his recent book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein challenges the ethical bias of environmentalists who oppose fossil-fuel use and deftly argues that fossil fuels have vastly improved the planet and the lives of its human inhabitants. He contends that a human-centric moral value that supports the well-being and prosperity of human beings ranks on a higher ethical plain than the utopian, environmentalist ideal of a "wild" earth or environment absent little or no human impact. Epstein's moral position is that man should serve human beings, not nature, and that it is wrong-headed and misguided to view man as a destructive force meriting punishment for cultivating the environment for his benefit. With fossil fuels, limiting their use creates reduced economic prosperity, higher levels of human starvation, lower life expectancies and higher rates of infant mortality.

To environmentalists, any transformation of nature is inherently bad and man bears primary responsibility for negatively impacting nature in the quest to develop and utilize resources. Epstein counters this view with the assertion that man's very survival depends on transforming the environment and that the goal should be responsible resource use, not lack of human impact. Fossil fuel use should be embraced for the many ways they improve our lives, he contends.

To counter the fallacy of environmental harm from fossil use, Epstein reviews past predictions of resource depletion and planetary destruction that never came to pass. In 1972, the Club of Rome and ecologist Paul Ehrlich, then still a Stanford University faculty member, declared that we would run out of oil, natural gas, and certain essential minerals by 1993. In 1970, Life magazine reported that within a decade that city dwellers would need to wear gas masks to survive rampant air pollution, that sunlight reaching the earth would be greatly diminished and that hundreds of thousands of people would die.  Of course, none of these dire predictions came to pass and our air and water are cleaner than ever.

Epstein applauds fossil fuels' many benefits in developed countries and contrasts impoverished societies with their unreliable and low levels of fossil-fuel resources and utilization and the resulting poor sanitation, rampant disease, limited food production, and minimal transportation of goods. A poignant example is a hospital in Gambia, where infant mortality rates are extremely high due to lack of electric power for ultrasound machines to diagnose in-utero problems and incubators to save the lives of premature babies.

Epstein cites data showing that the more fossil fuels are used, the fewer deaths occur from droughts, floods, storms and other climate-related disasters. He compares undeveloped nations with low fossil-fuel use to developed nations and concludes that the latter have higher levels of safety because of better transportation for relief efforts, sturdier buildings and higher agricultural yields. Fossil fuels have enabled us to turn unusable water into usable water and eradicate disease through mass production of pharmaceuticals and vaccines and improved sanitation facilities. Plus, fossil fuels give us the opportunity to move to other climates or change our existing environment to be safe and comfortable despite climate challenges. The machines that run on fossil fuels have transformed the hazardous natural environment to a healthier human environment, Epstein says.

The author also examines the argument that renewable resources can augment or replace fossil fuels entirely. He notes, first, that not a single, independent free-standing wind or solar power plant exists anywhere in the world. He then delineates the problems with renewable energy. Compared to fossil fuels which are cheap, plentiful, reliable, easily extracted and naturally stored, renewable energies, solar and wind, are not plentiful, accounting for under two percent of our energy usage; cannot be naturally stored; and are not reliable because they depend on the vagaries of weather. While fossil fuels are intrinsically concentrated, solar power is diffused and requires many additional resources to concentrate its energy. Plus, it relies on fossil fuel-powered backup systems for off-peak periods.

Although wind farms release no emissions, rotating turbines kill and injure more than a million birds and bats annually and cause pollution from extraction of rare-earth minerals needed to manufacture the turbines. Both wind and solar power require extensive land use and aesthetically degrade the landscape.

Further, wind-energy production causes noise that many find disturbing. Epstein concludes that fossil fuel exploration actually impacts the environment far less than the renewables favored by environmentalists.

 Today, dire predictions exist that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels will cause climate catastrophe within a few decades. The truth, Epstein writes, is that, although significant warming has not occurred for a few decades, humans actually thrive with warmer temperatures and plant life proliferates. Both conditions led to drops in climate-related deaths in the past, Epstein says, citing data to back up his claims from the UN Environment Programme's, Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (CRED/OFDA).

Amidst the hysteria surrounding claims of global warming and campaigns to stop fossil fuel use, the question should be raised, "What ultimately benefits human life?" Far from being a danger to the planet, fossil fuels have vastly improved the quality of human life. Our real concerns should be about policies based on unsubstantiated and fallacious claims that would ultimately restrict our use of traditional energy resources that have served us so well. Ultimately, we should focus on how to continue improving the planet for human beings and not on saving the planet from human beings

SOURCE




Venezuela Uses 'F Word' to Discredit Fracking

ALL oil producing nations are probably cursing American ingenuity at the moment


A socialist president who still seems to like his pomp and circumstance

Venezuela is not mincing words with a new exhibition titled "F---ing Fracking" that denounces the environmental toll of hydraulic fracturing in the United States.

"Today at 4pm .... Inauguration of the educational exhibit #FuckingFracking ... Don't miss it," ruling Socialist Party official Ernesto Villegas said on Twitter.

The event features speeches by an economist and oil expert, and will wrap up with a play, according to a half-page advertisement in newspaper Ultimas Noticias. The ad depicts a fractured heart dripping with black oil with dried up leaves coming from the arteries.

President Nicolas Maduro has for months alleged that the United States is deliberately flooding the market with shale oil to sink prices and destabilize his OPEC nation, as well as Russia.

The decline in oil prices has slammed his increasingly cash-strapped and unpopular government in the midst of a deep recession and ahead of important parliamentary elections.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves injecting water and chemicals deep underground to break up rock and release oil and gas.

Environmental groups have expressed concern about risks linked to the process, such as chemical leaks into groundwater and disposal of waste water produced in the process.

SOURCE

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