Big Green helps Big Wind hide bird and bat butchery

Why do taxpayers have to subsidize this? Why do environmentalists give it a free pass? 

By Ron Arnold 

It uses tons of fossil fuels every day, emits a greenhouse gas that's like CO2 on steroids, can’t do the job it’s made for, costs taxpayers exorbitant fees, and makes the federal government look mentally ill for giving it outrageous subsidies. It also chops up birds, bats and scenery with roads and monstrous 400-foot-tall machines. “It” is wind power, of course.

These harsh facts were condensed into a preliminary draft study of wind subsidies by researcher Teresa Platt, who circulated it to specialists for vetting. I obtained a copy of the extensively footnoted working draft, which gave chilling reality to the truth behind wind industry claims.

“Every year since the 1980s,” Platt’s study said, “the 5,000 turbines at NextEra’s Altamont Pass in California kill thousands of slow-reproducing red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls, kestrels, as well as iconic golden eagles, and bats.” The birds Platt mentions are raptors – birds of prey – particularly valued for their agricultural role in killing mice and other crop-damaging rodents. Eagles, both golden eagles and bald eagles, have long impressed Americans for their majesty, and the bald eagle was selected by our Founding Fathers as our national emblem.

I asked Bob Johns, spokesman for the American Bird Conservancy, about wind farm eagle mortality. He confirmed Platt’s study and told me the Altamont operation alone has killed more than 2,000 golden eagles. But that’s not all. “Nationwide, the wind industry kills thousands of golden eagles without prosecution,” Johns said, “while any other American citizen even possessing eagle parts such as feathers would face huge fines and prison time.” 

Huge is right. Violate either the Migratory Bird Treaty Act or the Eagle Protection Act, and you could get fined up to $250,000 or get two years imprisonment.

Not a single wind farm operator has yet been prosecuted for killing birds, yet in 2009 ExxonMobil got whacked with a $600,000 fine for killing 85 common ducks and other birds that flew into uncovered tanks on its property. Other similarly outrageous revenge-style penalties have been assessed on oil companies by the viciously ideological anti-fossil fuel Obama administration.

So Big Oil clearly doesn’t have an Obama Big Wind Get Out of Jail Free card. This unaccounted wind industry bird-killer subsidy reveals a federal multiple personality disorder that must be cured.

Domestic oil and gas production is setting records – thanks to fracking on state and private lands, despite efforts by Obama, Cuomo, Brown and environmentalist lunatic groups to slow or stop it, and despite Obama and Comrades continuing to shut down ANWR, OCS and other federal drilling opportunities. 

We could totally end reliance on Middle East oil, if we would drill more here and permit Keystone XL pipeline. Instead, Obama is still pushing wind and solar, and working with “green” industry to minimize or conceal impacts, while subsidizing renewable energy to the tune of $11.4 million per permanent job. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hedges its annual windmill bird death estimates at between 100,000 to 444,000 dead birds. That smells like political appointees and staff biologists had both insisted on publishing their numbers – and too many staff biologists promote Big Wind, don’t want bird butchery to hurt Big Wind’s “eco-friendly” image, and don’t want to cross swords with subsidy-hungry politicians.

This body count issue has become a genuine data war, with experts hurling “my data are better than your data” cudgels at each other in the press and scientific literature. For example, a 2013 report by K. Shawn Smallwood estimates that in the U.S. in 2012, some 573,000 birds (including 83,000 raptors) were killed by wind turbines, at a rate of 11 birds per MW of installed capacity. 

That’s ridiculously low-balled, says Jim Wiegand, California raptor specialist and Berkeley-trained wildlife biologist. I asked Wiegand what the real number was. “At least 2 million birds per year,” he told me, “and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if over 10 million birds were killed each year by wind turbines.” 

Wiegand is an on-the-ground, count-the-corpses type of wildlife biologist who does not take anyone’s word for the facts – a basic requirement of real science. Wiegand’s motto could be “Go and look.”

Therein lies Wiegand’s most potent argument for the Smallwood study’s underestimation: The wind industry has adopted bird-death counting standards that limit counts, so the results look lower than reality: Counters go and look only every 30 to 90 days – letting scavengers remove and devour large numbers of dead birds, artificially lowering the body count. Counters examine only a very small footprint around the windmill tower base – artificially lowering body counts.  Rotor blade tips can be whirling at 200 miles per hour, enough to whack an unfortunate bird “out of the ball park” – far beyond the little counting circle, out where nobody looks, artificially lowering body counts even more. Some critics accuse counters of simply burying some troublesome corpses – the old “slice, shovel and shut up” routine.

Rebutting Smallwood’s report, Wiegand told me, “In my opinion, there are at least 35 bird deaths per megawatt per year across the country. Some turbines kill several hundred birds per megawatt, depending on their location. In high bird use areas like the Kenedy Ranch turbine site in Texas, I believe proper studies on would easily show several hundred bird deaths per megawatt per year.”

The wind power industry must also share responsibility for bird deaths caused by super-long high-tension lines from distant turbines to cities. A 2007 report estimated the number of such mortality due to collisions on the wing to be at least 130 million, possibly as high a 1 billion, birds per year. 

And these numbers are just for birds. We don’t often think about bat benefits, but the U.S. Geological Survey estimates bats are worth $74 in pest control costs per acre – and windmills may have killed more than 3 million bats by last year. A small bat eats about 680,000 insects a year, so 3 million dead bats means 2 billion mosquitoes and other insects that shouldn’t be here are still flying around. 

Those numbers are likely way too low, as well. Windmill-caused bat mortality statistics, like bird death numbers, are hotly contested with estimates running into the multi-millions every year. 

Wind is usually touted as using no fuel, particularly no fossil fuel. That’s a clever deception. Windmills don’t work when it’s too hot or too cold, or when the wind blows too hard or not at all. So they need a backup, which is usually a coal- or oil- or gas-fired power plant.

Also, every windmill comes with a power line, which comes with a maintenance road, which comes with CO2-emitting traffic. Nobody’s counting that. Why not?

Then there’s SF6, sulfur hexafluoride, the most potent greenhouse gas evaluated by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with a global warming potential 22,800 times that of CO2. It’s used to insulate equipment inside wind turbines, their related infrastructure and transmission lines. It may leak during installation or maintenance. or from damaged, aging or destroyed equipment. 

Speaking of which, the average service life of a windmill is between 10 and 15 years – not the 20 to 25 years claimed by turbine operators, says a 2012 study by Britain’s Renewable Energy Foundation.

Falmouth, Massachusetts has the right idea. The town voted 110-91 to remove its two 400-foot industrial wind turbines for health and nuisance reasons. The only problem is paying the $15 million price tag for removal. They need to borrow $8 million to get the job done.

Maybe some powerful Big Green group – think the Sierra Club or Natural Resources Defense Council – will step forward to save Falmouth? Fat chance. They’re in love with bird and bat butchering turbines. 

Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Portions of this report appeared originally in the Washington Examiner and are used by permission.

How to get out of a traffic ticket

I may have written on this subject in the past; but was reminded by an entry on Facebook of the many excuses given police officers.  This particular entry had to do with a bumper sticker plastered on the back of a car.

“I’m only speeding because I gotta poop!”

As far as bumper stickers go, that ranks right up there with, “Stop the Violins and bring me Whirled Peas”.

A friend of mine said his sure fire way of getting out of a ticket, claims it works every time; pick your nose while the cop is walking up next to your window and wipe it off on your shirt.  I suppose being disgusting might work; don’t count on it.

I’ll share one officer’s unofficial policy, something given me when I began working as a rookie cop.  My senior officer had years of experience and shared some of that wisdom, a philosophy which put things in perspective.  He went on to explain that traffic laws need to be enforced; but remember, it’s only a traffic ticket.

“If you stop someone for a minor traffic violation on their birthday and they have a driver’s license, let them go and wish them a Happy Birthday”. 

That made pretty good sense, public relations and law enforcement combined; but my senior partner’s next piece of advice was the real page turner.

“If you stop someone for a minor traffic violation and they tell you a story that you’ve never heard before…cut them loose; never mind if you believe it or not, cut them loose too.”

That thought process made for some interesting moments over my twenty years of service.  I suppose this is another reason I’m against camera issued traffic tickets; no room for conversation with a mechanical device that acts as judge and jury as it sends you an envelope to mail back your fine.

I should start off by explaining there are certain things that don’t work, or at least they don’t work most of the time when it comes to trying to get out of a ticket.  You might want to jot this down for future reference…

If you’re a moderately attractive female in your late teens or early twenties, don’t expect to get out of a ticket by flashing a little extra skin.  Then, and this is important, if the officer isn’t impressed with the flash of skin; don’t say something really dumb like, “You can’t write me a ticket, my uncle is Judge Soandso”.

If the officer continues to write the ticket and hands you the form to sign, don’t throw the ticket book along with the officer’s pen out the window followed by a temper tantrum there on the side of the road.  Kicking the door of your car for effect is not advised; attempting to kick the nice police officer is also a poor choice. The officer will probably explain that such behavior could end up with a trip to jail.

Never, under any circumstances, tell the officer, “You can’t take me to jail”, or “You can’t put those handcuffs on me”.  These short sentences will only make the nice police officer smile or perhaps even salivate. 

Okay, enough about misguided youth leaning things the hard way.  Here are some of the excuses which actually have been used while attempting to get out of traffic tickets; some worked, others did not.

“Officer, I just finished washing my car and I was trying to blow the water droplets off to keep them from leaving spots on the paint job”

This one actually worked the first time, my being an enthusiast of car maintenance and efforts required to keep them nice and clean.  It didn’t work the following week when luck would have me pulling over the very same fellow; gotta’ trust in lady luck some times.

“Officer, I called the bus barn to let them know my brakes were out and they told me to bring it right in.”

My partner and I thought it odd a Metro Bus driver might be trying to make a run to avoid being stopped as he ran through a few of red lights at the edge of downtown.  Eventually the slow speed chase coasted to a halt.

The bus driver might not have been the sharpest pencil in the box as he trembled and shook off his fears.  Now I would have let the idiot go under Part B of the aforementioned unofficial policy and simply called for a heavy duty wrecker; but my partner had no problem whipping out his ticket book and issued several red light tickets.

I know I’ve shared the next one more than a few times; but it still holds First Place in my twenty years, the best excuse I ever heard bar none. 

I was set up at the corner of Commonwealth and Westheimer and observed a garbage truck bust through a red light by several car lengths.  The fact that he didn’t get somebody killed was a miracle as I engaged pursuit and quickly pulled him over.

Upon walking slowly up to the driver’s side window, a very dark skinned black fellow handed me his license, perspiration dripping off his forehead looked like beads of oil. 

“Could you write fast, Officer, I’m on an emergency run.”

I let that sink in for a moment, handing him the license back and trying not to laugh at the ridiculous excuse of an excuse.  That might have ended the exchange except for the fellow in the passenger seat of the garbage truck.

“Can you believe…he bought ‘dat sheiittt!”

I have to admit, I nearly lost it as I continued walking toward the patrol car, my back to these two fools thinking I was gullible enough to buy into such a wonderfully composed lie.  I must have told that story a hundred times over the years; still my favorite ticket that never was written.

A bee in their bonnet

Anti-pesticide activists falsely blame new pesticides for bee colony problems

By Paul Driessen 

Chemophobic anti-pesticide groups are at it again. This time they’re attacking a widely used and safe new insecticide, but their assertions and real agendas are nothing new. 

Radical environmentalism rose to ascendancy on opposition to pesticides, specifically DDT. “If the environmentalists win on DDT,” Environmental Defense Fund scientist Charles Wurster told the Seattle Times in 1969, “they will achieve a level of authority they have never had before.” Using Rachel Carson’s often inaccurate book Silent Spring to drive a nasty campaign, they succeeded in getting the Environmental Protection Agency to ban US production and use of DDT in 1972, leading to a de facto global ban even to combat malaria. 

Trumpeting illusory or manufactured dangers of DDT and callously indifferent to the deaths of millions from this horrible disease, radical greens still battle its use, even to spray only the inside walls of primitive homes to keep most mosquitoes out, and keep those that do enter from infecting people. 

Attacking a new class of insecticides for equally spurious reasons is thus no big deal, even if the chemicals are safe and vital for modern agriculture. Their real goal is to raise more money and acquire more power. As Saul Alinsky taught, they have picked their new target, personalized and polarized it, and attacked it relentlessly.

The target now is a widely used new class of safe pesticides – neonicotinoids – that Beyond Pesticides, Pesticide Action Network, Sierra Club and other “socially responsible” groups are blaming for bee population declines in various countries. But the real danger is a phenomenon called “colony collapse disorder,” which poses a serious threat to bees, crop pollination, flowers and food crops in many areas. 

CCD and other bee die-offs are not new. What we now call colony collapse was first reported in 1869, and many outbreaks since then have turned scientists into Sherlock Holmes detectives, seeking explanations and solutions to this mysterious and scary-sounding problem. Fungi, parasitic mites and other possible suspects have been implicated, but none has yet been arrested or convicted.  

That’s created a perfect Petri dish for anti-pesticide groups. They’re pressuring the United States and other countries to ban neonic pesticides, by blaming them for bee population declines. Their fear-mongering assertions are pure conjecture, but that hasn’t stopped activists – or news outlets – from promoting frightening stories implicating the chemicals. 

“Neonics” are derived from naturally-occurring nicotine plant compounds and have been hailed as a low-toxicity pest treatment. They are often applied to seeds or on soils during planting, become part of the plants’ physiology, and work by giving treated plants internal defenses against invasive pests. That means neonics are toxic only to insects that feed on crops, which dramatically reduces the need to spray entire fields with other, less safe pesticides. It also curtails risks to farm workers and beneficial insects.

Claims that these insecticides could kill bees appear plausible at first blush, and laboratory studies have shown that high doses can affect bees in minor ways. However, doses that bees receive in lab studies “are far above what a realistic field dose exposure would be,” says Dr. Cynthia Scott-Dupree, environmental biology professor at the University of Guelph. The difference is akin to an 81 mg aspirin tablet versus a full bottle of 200 mg tablets, or light rainfall on a bee versus throwing it into a bucket of water.

Scott-Dupree helped coordinate a Canadian field study that compared hives exposed to neonics to those that weren’t exposed – and found no difference in colony health between the two groups. Another study by Britain’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs reached the same conclusion.

The DEFRA evaluation of studies purporting to link neonics to bee harm found that the lab work was conducted under extreme scenarios which would not occur under real-world conditions. “Risk to bee populations from neonicotinoids, as they are currently used, is low,” the scientists concluded. 

That’s hardly surprising. Plant tissues contain only tiny amounts of neonics, bees are not feeding on the plants, and pollen contains barely detectable neonic levels. 

Nevertheless, several beekeepers and activist groups have sued the Environmental Protection Agency, demanding that EPA immediately ban all neonicotinoids. 

The lawsuit is not merely ill advised. By blaming pesticides, activists are ignoring – and deflecting attention from – a very real and serious threat to bees. The aptly named parasitic mite “Varroa destructor” threatens honeybees directly, while spreading and activating previously dormant or harmless bee viruses, which then become dangerous.  The mites are not easy to eradicate.

“You can imagine how hard it is to kill a bug on a bug,” says John Miller, President of the California State Beekeepers Association, and sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Treating Varroa requires insecticides that can be toxic to bees at levels high enough to be effective. Well-intentioned apiarists trying to combat Varroa can accidentally overdose hives with miticides. 

Various neonicotinoids are widely used in Canada to protect its vast canola fields, and Canadian bee populations are thriving, notes science writer Jon Entine. Varroa-free Australia is likewise one of the world’s prime users of these pesticides, and its bee colonies are among the planet’s healthiest. By contrast, bee populations have been severely impacted by Varroa mites in areas of Switzerland where neonics are not used. 

Multiple studies point to still other factors that explain why bees are struggling. They include bees developing resistance to antibiotics, funguses like Nosema, multiple bee viruses and parasites, bacterial infections like foulbrood, exposure to commonly used organophosphates, bee habitat loss, and even long-term bee inbreeding and resultant lack of genetic diversity. 

Activists aren’t asking for investigation into these problems – which calls their science, sincerity and integrity into question. Their track record on DDT and malaria underscores this modus operandi. The activists get money, publicity, power and phony solutions – and end up hurting the very things (bees and people) they profess to care so much about. 

Right now, no one knows why bees aren’t thriving. Studies have shown that neonicotinoids are innocent, and reflexive bans will harm farmers, whose crop yields will fall; consumers, whose food bills will rise and food safety will decline; and environmental values, as older, more toxic insecticides will have to be reintroduced to protect crops. The detective work needs to continue, until real answers are found. 

The prudent, precautionary approach would be to avoid eliminating vital, low-toxicity neonicotinoids, while continuing to study their potential effects on bees, and other potential causes of die-offs and colony collapses. Right now we don’t have an equally low substitute for neonics. Sound, replicable science – not pressure group politics – must underpin all pesticide policies, or the unintended consequences will be serious, far-reaching, and potentially devastating to agriculture and food supplies.

We need to let science do its job, not jump to conclusions or short-circuit the process, as the media did in accusing Richard Jewell of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.

This time – as always – we need answers, not scapegoats.

______________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

A Bird in the Hand...

There’s an AP story out of Converse County, Wyoming, which explains that under the Obama administration wind energy companies are not held to the same rule of law as are oil, gas or electric generation companies when it comes to killing protected bird species such as Golden Eagles.  Key words in that opening salvo are ‘rule of law’; that firm foundation upon which society depends in order to maintain order and equity.

“More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country's wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.”

Don’t get the wrong idea; I’m not one of those whacko environmentalists who thinks we should give up driving automobiles that use carbon based fuels.  What bothers me is an uneven approach to enforcement of laws.  If there’s a law on the books it should apply equally to everyone; either that or take the law off the books. (think Obamacare and those who have exempted themselves from it)

Certain endangered bird species are protected by law and heaven help you if you kill one, either intentionally or by accident.

“Each death is (a) federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines. No wind energy company has been prosecuted, even those that repeatedly flout the law.”

{…}

“Nearly all the birds being killed are protected under federal environmental laws, which prosecutors have used to generate tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements from businesses, including oil and gas companies, over the past five years.

“What it boils down to is this: If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK," said Tim Eicher, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent based in Cody, Wyo.”

In a similar vein, Jim Wiegand’s article posted to Family Security Matters back on March 22^nd of 2013, Hiding the Slaughter, exposed the Obama administration’s double standards when enforcing environmental laws and giving wind energy producers a free ride.

“Since the early 1980s, the industry has known there is no way its propeller-style turbines could ever be safe for raptors. With exposed blade tips spinning in open space at speeds up to 200 mph, it was impossible. Wind developers also knew they would have a public relations nightmare if people ever learned how many eagles are actually being cut in half – or left with a smashed wing, to stumble around for days before dying.

To hide this awful truth, strict wind farm operating guidelines were established – including high security, gag orders in leases and other agreements, and the prevention of accurate, meaningful mortality studies.

For the industry this business plan has succeeded quite well in keeping a lid on the mortality problem.  While the public has some understanding that birds are killed by wind turbines, it doesn’t have a clue about the real mortality numbers. And the industry gets rewarded with subsidies, and immunity from endangered species and other wildlife laws.”

Many years ago when assigned to a foot beat in downtown Houston my partner and I were placed in an awkward situation by our supervisors; issue parking tickets to all violators except certain vehicles parked in front of a particular hotel because those folks are above the law.  That’s not exactly how they explained it; however, each ticket issued to the vehicles owned by that hotel eventually found their way into a supervisor’s hand and were voided as a political favor to the hotel.

Eventually our supervisors got tired of voiding tickets and approached us on the street to express their desire that we stop making things difficult.  What followed was an ‘inappropriate response’, formally classified as insubordination; do I have to spell it out?  It wasn’t as crude as Dick Cheney’s recommendation to Sen. Patrick Leahy during their heated exchange of words, all the same it had long term ramifications; the Department tried to have us fired.

I received a 40 day suspension for insubordination, insubordination which included my remarks all the way up the chain of command to include 3 deputy chiefs who didn’t like being told to ‘shove it where the sun don’t shine’.  Those supervisors were unable to justify their attempts to enforce the rule of law unevenly and my natural sense of right and wrong had a short fuse; not much different than today.

I haven’t brought up the latest scandals involving the Obama administration, the IRS targeting Tea Party groups, Eric Holder’s Justice Department ignoring voter intimidation by the Black Panthers, Fast & Furious being swept under the rug as if it never happened or that other fiasco…Benghazi where lying and deception at the highest levels seems to be expected daily. 
   

‘We The People’, deserve better from our government.  The rule of law is important.  It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about something as insignificant as a parking ticket or the slaughter of an endangered Golden Eagle; laws need to be enforced equally or done away with.

I should note, curiously; today marks 21 years to the day that I celebrate my retirement from the Houston Police Department in spite of my insubordinate nature.  I bet Dick Cheney would have a line for that too.

Support drilling, fracking, Keystone … and exports

We don’t need to restrict oil or gas exports. We need to open more lands to leasing and drilling. 

 

By Paul Driessen 

The interminable war on drilling, fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline has taken some bizarre turns. Now it’s getting worse, as opponents grow more desperate, and the moon again grows full.
.

Deepwater drilling, 3-dimension and 4-D seismic (the ability to visualize 3-D over many years), deep horizon horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and other technological marvels have obliterated environmentalist claims that the United States and world are running out of oil and gas – and therefore we need to switch to subsidized, land-hungry, job-killing wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels.

Thanks to free enterprise innovation on state and public lands – and no thanks to President Obama, who has made nearly the entire federal onshore and offshore estate off limits to leasing and drilling – US oil and natural gas production has set an all-time record. The world is on the verge of doing so, as well. 

Long-running geopolitics have been turned upside down, as OPEC, Russia and other oil superpowers wonder what hit them. Plastic and chemical manufacturers, steel makers, bus and fleet vehicle operators, and now long-haul truckers are already cashing in on the natural gas bonanza. So are electric utilities, especially with EPA continuing its war on coal, with more unnecessary heavy-handed air and water rules. 

Global warming / climate change hysteria is also foundering on the rocks of reality. Average global temperatures haven’t risen in 16 years, seas aren’t rising any faster than 100 years ago, and storms, floods and droughts are no more frequent or severe than over multi-decade trends during the past century. 

Evidence and reality simply are not cooperating with IPCC and Mann-made climate models. “Trust the computer models!” the alarmists plead. “If reality doesn’t comport with our predictions, reality is wrong.” 

The US State Department has (yet again) said the Keystone XL pipeline poses few environmental problems and should be approved, to bring Canadian oil sands petroleum to Texas refineries – creating thousands of construction and permanent jobs, and billions in economic growth and government revenue. 

Unacceptable! rants the Environmental Protection Agency. “State underestimated KXL’s potential impact on global warming and needs to do its studies all over again,” says EPA. Never mind that oil sands production would add a minuscule 0.06% to US greenhouse gas emissions and an undetectable 0.00001 degrees C per year to computer-modeled global warming, according to the Congressional Research Service. Do it over, until you get the answers we want, demand EPA and environmentalist ideologues. 

Some 70% of Americans and 60% of Canadians support Keystone – and energy security (and jobs) outrank greenhouse gas reduction as a national priority by a 2-1 margin among Americans – says Canadian pollster Nik Nanos. 

However, haters of hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty are not ready to surrender. They’ve launched a blitzkrieg flanking attack. This time they are outraged that some Keystone oil could be refined into diesel and other products and exported! to Europe or Asia – while some frack-based natural gas might be converted to LNG and likewise exported! around the globe. 

Well, yes. When US refiners transform crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, asphalt, waxes and petrochemicals, they ship some of these products overseas. Since Americans use less diesel than refineries manufacture (some parts of each barrel of crude can be converted only into diesel), refiners also export their excess diesel to Europe, which uses more diesel than gasoline, and Europeans ship their surplus gasoline to the USA, mostly to East Coast consumers. It’s a win-win arrangement that will be buttressed and safeguarded by Keystone pipeline transport of Canadian oil.

And yes, Cheniere Energy and other companies want to ship liquefied natural gas to foreign markets. It’s hardly surprising that anti-fracking activists would seize on this as yet another excuse for opposing this game-changing technology. It is hardly remarkable that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) and other far-Left legislators would sponsor bills to block LNG exports. 

What is shocking is that Dow and Huntsman Chemical, Alcoa Aluminum, Nucor Steel and other companies are joining the no-export campaign. They have convinced themselves that such exports will hurt their own selfish economic interests – and for PR reasons have packaged that notion into assertions that exporting any US natural gas is against America’s and the public’s economic interests. Nonsense. 

America has barely begun to tap its vast shale gas and conventional natural gas deposits. It has not yet touched its methane hydrates. Together, these deposits will likely last a century or more. In addition, other countries are racing to develop their own conventional, shale and hydrate deposits – while still others will eventually recognize the folly of keeping their own deposits off limits. All this will gradually reduce demand for US natural gas exports, slow and prolong extraction, and keep gas prices low. 

This interplay will also help ensure that more factories and power plants in more countries burn natural gas, thereby replacing coal and providing the economic wherewithal to enable China, India and other nations to install modern pollution abatement technologies on their now dirty power plants. That will greatly improve air quality and human health in countless cities, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions and reducing consternation among steadily dwindling numbers of climate alarmists. 

American oil and gas development – and exports – will also provide an opportunity for our nation to “give back” to the world community for all the petroleum that our anti-leasing, anti-drilling policies have caused us to take from the world’s petroleum supplies for decades. All this activity will also spur further innovation in technologies to unlock still more energy. It will spur job creation, economic growth and government tax and royalty revenue collection here in the United States … and abroad.

Some 23 million Americans are still unemployed or underemployed; 128 million are dependent on various government programs, including 47 million on food stamps; and the United States is more than $16 trillion in debt. Unemployment in the construction trades is 14.7 percent. Black unemployment was 12.7% when President Bush left office; it soared to 16.7% by September 2011 under President Obama, and remains stuck at 14% today for black adults – and an astronomical 43% for black teenagers! 

Drilling, fracking and exports can reverse these horrendous, intolerable, unnecessary statistics. 

Misguided industrialists should stop railing against exports. They would do themselves and our nation far more good by putting their lobbyists and public relations staffs to work demanding an end to leasing, drilling and fracking bans that continue to dominate eco-liberal thinking, US energy policy (especially under the current administration). 

Of 1.8 billion acres on our nation’s Outer Continental Shelf, only 36-43 million are under lease. That’s barely 2% of the OCS. Offshore territory equal to 78% of the entire US landmass (Alaska plus the Lower 48) is off limits! Even the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill cannot justify that. 

Onshore, it’s just as bad. As of 1994, over 410 million federally controlled acres were effectively off limits to exploration and development. That’s 62% of the nation’s public lands – an area nearly equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined. The situation has gotten progressively worse, with millions more acres – and vast energy, mineral and economic bounties – locked up in wilderness, park, preserve, wildlife refuge, wilderness study, Antiquities Act and other restrictive land use designations, or simply made unavailable by bureaucratic fiat or foot-dragging. 

Drilling opponents claim to be protecting the environment. In reality, they simply detest hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty. Commonsense policies will rejuvenate our economy, put Americans back to work, and help fund government programs that Messrs. Obama and Reid profess to care so much about – while safeguarding ecological values we all cherish. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

Stepping into our future

This past weekend Lucy and I drove up to our recently purchased property in Buffalo, Texas.  There’s a ‘shell house’ that needs a lot of attention before it can become a residence sitting on three acres of land that has a fifth wheel travel trailer thrown in as part of the deal. 

We took implements of destruction with us in the back of my truck; weed whacker to trim a spot for the truck, generator for electricity, vacuum cleaner and assorted cleaning goods.  The afternoon was spent cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning.  Did I mention we needed to clean the trailer?

We haven’t had the water or electricity hooked up to the property as yet so we carted about 50 gallons in plastic jugs to use for cleaning, as in taking a sink bath, and flushing the toilet; a very necessary process unless you like squatting in tall grass.  The fellow who put the trailer up there also put in a simple septic tank system which simplifies getting rid of waste water.

A couple of hours of serious labor and the dust was off the sofa, floors could be walked on, the surfaces in the kitchen had been wiped down with Mr. Clean and outside air was drifting through to replace stale air that had been trapped inside for who knows how long in there.  We made the bed up with fresh sheets brought from home and wondered if we even needed a blanket and comforter since temperatures made it into the mid 80s.  It did drop down into the low 60s that night so we closed the windows on one side of the trailer.

Lucy took a short nap on the sofa while I took pictures from our ‘center of operations’.  We plan to use the travel trailer like a motel room for when we start finishing off the ‘shell house’ which is on hold until we close the sale of our rent house; hard to pay for new stuff until we have the check in our hands.

Sunday morning we got up with the sun to get ready for church.  The nearest meeting house is thirty miles or so away down in Madisonville; a small branch with about 70 active members.  We were welcomed warmly in the foyer and talked with our new friends, some of whom we knew from our internet connections. 

Lucy was quick to leave printed invitations to the Preparedness Fair that happens in May; never let an opportunity go to waste. 

Just so you know, perhaps hearing it for the first time or as a reminder, the Gospel is true whether you’re in a small branch in Madisonville or travel to Salt Lake City. 

Some friends of ours, the Welch family, spoke on the Plan of Happiness and did a great job of explaining why it’s important for each of us to understand where we came from, why we’re here in mortality and what lies ahead in the eternities. 

“The fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, designed to bring about man’s immortality and eternal life. It includes the Creation, Fall, and Atonement, along with all God-given laws, ordinances, and doctrines. This plan makes it possible for all people to be exalted and live forever with God (2 Ne. 2, 9). The scriptures also refer to this plan as the plan of salvation, the plan of happiness, and the plan of mercy.”

Brother Welch mentioned in his talk that some folks, better than 50% of Americans who claim to be Christians, don’t believe in the resurrection; mortality is all there is.  Their church doesn’t teach the Plan of Happiness or they just don’t believe it.  How sad; the most important aspect of Jesus’ gift has either not been shared or not been accepted.

Zig Ziglar, a motivational speaker, often reminded folks that you have to know where you came from before you can figure out where you’re going.  Zig was directing his thoughts toward achievement in the business world; but it applies equally in every aspect of mortality.  Life is tough enough; having the Gospel to give it purpose puts things in perspective. 

Many sects of organized Christian religions quit teaching about the importance of the resurrection years ago and our schools certainly aren’t teaching Christian principles.  Now we have better than 50% of our population that haven’t got a clue about the Gospel, at least not the most important message; we as individuals are children of our Father in Heaven, have been with Him in the spirit prior to being given a mortal body.  We will shed this mortality for a perfected body and have the opportunity to live with Him once more in the eternities.

In our uncertain world where politicians and leaders interchange lies for truth, evil for good and wrong for right; wouldn’t knowing the basic principles of the Gospel help?

The day you recognize who you are, really (as Zig would have arranged his words); that’s when you can begin making progress towards the individual God wants you to become.  I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to travel to a small branch of Saints in Madisonville, to hear the Gospel spelled out just as it should be throughout the world.     

How rich Rockefellers battle the people’s pipeline

Rockefeller billions vs Canadian energy and sovereignty – and US jobs, security and families 

By Ron Arnold 

Americans concerned about gasoline prices were encouraged by the Pew Research Center’s new poll, whose headline blared, “Keystone XL Pipeline draws broad support.” A score box showed 63% supporting and only 23% opposing the pipeline that would transport oil from Canada’s vast Alberta oil sands deposits through the Plains states to Texas refineries.

“Every one-cent increase at the pump steals about $1 billion from the larger economy that consumers would have otherwise saved or spent on something else,” the Wall Street Journal has pointed out. High gasoline prices thus translate into lost jobs, lost tax revenues and lower living standards. Americans are beginning to understand that, as the Obama “recovery” gives them real-world economic lessons. 

Unfortunately, the Pew report quickly deflated optimism over this support, when it tersely identified who the minority is: “liberals” – stanchions of Big Green’s circus tent. We have seen time and again that the liberal 23% can be a “majority” to President Obama, who wields executive orders to bypass the people.

As his administration approaches a decision, lame-duck politics says he could go either way – even with his own State Department’s second favorable environmental impact report on the KXL’s construction permit. Even with Alberta Premier Alison Redford saying that an Obama rejection would damage U.S.-Canada relations. “Canada relies on the U.S. for 97% of its energy exports,” Redford said, and “sees the new pipeline as critical to its economic well-being.” And even with ten governors and 22 lieutenant governors sending letters to the President, urging pipeline approval. 

What is Obama likely to do? Some 82% of Republicans favor the pipeline, so revenge is not an unthinkable motive for a possible rejection. However, 70% of independents and 54% of Democrats also favor the KXL. Fogging the crystal ball is the ideological split among Democrats: 60% of the party’s conservatives and moderates support building the pipeline, compared to just 42% of liberal Democrats. That considerably flattens Obama’s upward slope toward a potential rejection, but doesn’t level it. 

Obama's decision may hinge on pleasing his base of global-warming advocates. This whole Keystone XL controversy was carefully conceived and organized as a “globally significant response” to global warming. Shutting down Alberta’s oil sands – by blocking both the US-bound Keystone XL pipeline and any other Alberta oil conduit, particularly a proposed link to Vancouver, British Columbia harbors and oil tankers bound for Asia – would supposedly reduce global warming. That’s propaganda, not reality.

As Environment Canada has observed, oil sands production contributes a mere 0.14% of global greenhouse gases, notes, and would add an undetectable 0.00001 degrees C per year to global warming, even if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases really do drive climate change. 

The anti-oil sands campaign – activists call them “tar sands” to evoke ugly images – was devised by the New York City-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund, using earmarked grants to recruit “a network of leading US and Canadian NGOs” and establish a “coordinated campaign structure” to act as its public face, according to a leaked PowerPoint presentation. 

The first slide says, “The Tar Sands Campaign, Michael Northrop, Program Officer, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, July 2008.” Seven slides drive home the message that Rockefeller wants its paid campaigners to emphasize: Oil sands and Keystone represent “a globally significant threat” – with “Global Warming,” and “Oil Addiction” as the two “thought leader slogans” in the parade of old shibboleths that trigger brain freeze in Big Green followers. The rest was a coldly calculated, very practical plan to destroy Canada’s single most important export, with Rockefeller giving $7 million per year to activist groups to do the job. 

Thinking people understand that being “addicted to oil” is like being addicted to breathing, better living standards, improved health and life itself. Just try getting along without it in a world where fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) contributed 82% of US energy use in 2012. The “green alternative” (wind and solar) provided a mere 3.3% of our overall needs in 2012; the rest was nuclear, hydroelectric and biomass (mostly wood). Relying on the “green alternative” is like trying to inhale only 3.3% as much as you usually do. There’s an energy gap there we need to account for. 

Canadian researcher Vivian Krause exposed the Rockefeller funding for campaigns against Canadian energy exports in her October 2010 Financial Post story, “US foundations against the oil sands.” Five US foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, funneled vast sums of money through the Tides Foundation’s Canadian organization, Tides Canada. The Tides family of operations is a notorious California-based funder of left-wing activists. 

 

Krause wrote, “A large part of Tides Canada’s funding comes from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. These are The Big Five. They give away about US$1.2-billion every year.” In a chilling reminder, she concluded, “If these foundations decide to undermine a foreign industry, they probably can.”

 

Later that fall, Krause testified before a Canadian House of Commons committee, prompting an audit of the Canadian arm of the Tides Foundation by the Canada Revenue Agency (Canada's equivalent to the IRS). By Krause’s calculations, Tides, a co-funder of the Rockefeller oil sands campaign, has distributed $19 million to anti-Keystone groups since 2008.

Krause explains that the campaign strategy is intended to foster renewable energy by shifting investment capital away from so-called “dirty oil” and toward so-called “clean energy.” To this end, she said, “they ‘educate’ media, consumers and voters. They stigmatize fossil fuels as bad, thereby facilitating the positioning of renewables as good. It’s basic product positioning and ‘depositioning’ the competitor.”

Not surprisingly, the “education” is slanted. “We get only bad news about fossil fuels and good news about solar and wind,” Krause observes. “We don’t get the whole story.” What gets left out are the advantages of fossil fuels – and the limitations and harmful effects of renewables, like the tiny amount of energy they provide, and the terrible impacts they have on birds, bats and wildlife habitats. “Furthermore, some of the information that is perpetuated is out-dated, and some is plainly false.” 

I asked Krause why the Rockefeller presence behind the anti-XL propaganda campaign was virtually invisible. She told me that it has been done quietly but not secretly. “The grants have been disclosed in online databases for years,” she said. “But nobody bothered to add them up and connect the dots.” Krause connected the dots to the networks of foundations that work together on targeted projects.

She directed me to a revealing but obscure source, “Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming,” which was sponsored by six of “the usual suspects” I have learned to expect to find behind any global warming campaign: the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Energy Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Oak Foundation, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. 

Another source was, “A Strategy Planning Tool for Western Conservation,” prepared for the Hewlett Foundation by the Redstone Strategy Group, a brain pool of Ivy League hotshots not to be trifled with. Their strategy is to create eight massive national parks, each the size of Switzerland, as a way to stop the development of fossil fuels. Just fence industry out with parks – or Antiquities Act designations.  

Anyone who thinks their local grassroots green group just pops up spontaneously in occasional protests needs to read either of these documents. They will find that the “roots” under the environmentalist “grass” are fertilized with bales of hundred-dollar bills. Rockefeller’s actions are quite open, if quiet. Krause said, “The strategy is articulated in discussion papers, but who reads them?” 

Nobody except Vivian Krause, evidently. Her Twitter account, @FairQuestions, says, “I follow the money & the science behind enviro campaigns.” Her research and writing are impressive. Her blog profile states, “I work from my dining room table, using Google, on my own nickel. Not part of any political party, any industry, or any campaign.” Her work deserves more attention in the United States.

Krause’s discovery and exposé of the Rockefeller millions behind the anti-Keystone XL campaign could become a factor in Obama’s pipeline construction decision. It has already created Canadian suspicion of environmental groups dancing on the strings of US foundation money. 

It’s not the money itself Canadians fear. It’s the way bales of US foundation cash can buy pressure by proxy, to impose undue foreign influence over Canada’s national energy policy and sovereignty.

One must hope Mr. Obama does not wish to be suspected of dancing on the same Rockefeller policy puppet strings as the Big Green bigwigs who were recently arrested protesting at his front door.

__________

Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Portions of this report appeared originally in the Washington Examiner and are used by permission.