On Energy, Obama’s Full of Hot Air
President Obama’s State of the Union address last week left a lot to be desired. Lisa Fritsch summed it up well on this site, writing, “Obama’s speech […] was focused far too much on lofty goals than the nitty-gritty we need to refloat our ailing ship of state.” In fact, in two specific areas his soaring rhetoric belied reality and misrepresented our nation’s future security.
First, in calling for the “reinvention” of our domestic energy policy, the president issued a challenge rooted in ideology rather than grounded in a clear understanding of America’s current and future energy needs. This is especially troubling because his goal flies in the face of science and the free market. He called for voters to “join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources.”
He did hedge in that call by including both nuclear energy and natural gas in his list of “clean energy sources” — good, but not enough to satisfy the all-or-nothing adherents to the remainder of his list: wind, solar, and clean coal. (In fact, even the clean coal entry is dismaying to some.) So until our government officially opines as to what energy sources it deems “clean” and which it doesn’t, we can expect a lot of political wrangling and economic uncertainty when it comes to investing in new energy sources. Those things make it hard to jump aboard when the president requests that we all “get behind this innovation” of “clean” energy.
A quick review of current statistics and future projections, moreover, offers a stark contrast to the president’s wish.
According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), overall energy demand worldwide will increase by 49 percent by 2035. Given this fact, renewable energies such as solar are far too expensive — and their technological applications still far too cumbersome — for them to even come close to meeting the president’s challenge. The EIA affirms that “most renewable generation technologies are not economically competitive with fossil fuels over the projection period” of 2007-2035.
Plus, one of the only two renewable energy sources deemed viable up until then is hydropower. But the president didn’t even present it as an option, and many environmental hard-liners want us to dismantle hydropower dams, not build more of them. Furthermore, by the time we get to 2035, the world will demand roughly 110.6 million barrels of oil per day — far more than the roughly 88 million barrels we currently consume every day.
The president also seeks to undermine our energy and economic security in the coming years; once again (as in his campaign and his budget last year) he called on Congress “to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies […]. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.”
The shortsightedness of his “request” cannot be overstated. Because his tax changes target American companies only, they impede domestic investment and damage American competitiveness. Here’s how.
Specifically, the administration is continuing to push to eliminate “dual capacity” tax treatment for American oil and natural gas multinationals. This wonky term refers to specific tax provisions that allow these firms to deduct from their U.S. income taxes the taxes they have already paid to host-governments on the earnings generated in those countries. We’re the only country in the world that is considering such double-taxation on domestic companies. If these new taxes are enacted, nations such as Britain, France, and the Netherlands — not to mention China, Russia and Venezuela — would not be subject to them; they would receive a big boost at the expense of American businesses and consumers.
He’s also full of hot air on science!
Obama’s War on Science
Our president is waging an undeclared war against “inconvenient” science.
Evidence of Obama’s subversion of apolitical scientific inquiry became apparent last summer with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
NASA’s preeminent role as America’s scientific leader has been undisputed for over half a century and NASA has rewarded the nation and the world with phenomenal accomplishments including the Apollo moon program, Skylab, the International Space Station, and the Hubble telescope Space Telescope, not to mention developing Tang.
It’s been speculated that had not the United States wasted trillions over the years on useless and unproductive social boondoggles, America could already have visited and even established colonies on other planets but politicians preferred to buy votes rather than explore the universe, but that issue is tangential to Obama’s war on science.
NASA’s mission statement incorporated plans to “pioneer the future in space exploration and aeronautics research.” That was then, this is the Obama administration.
Last July, NASA’s new civilian administrator, Charles Bolden, let the cat out of Obama’s bag of tricks during an interview with Al Jazeera, the Arabic language news network, that his “foremost” mission is to improve relations with the Muslim world. He was ordered to forget all that pioneering and scientific research: “Obama wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science. . . and math and engineering:” http://tiny.cc/b5oa0
Granted, Muslims achieved great breakthroughs in mathematics, science, and medicine during Islam’s Golden Age. However, that gild was applied between five and eight hundred years ago and Islam’s chief advancement since then has been perfecting much more practical creations such as ied’s and land mines designed to kill and maim in its bloody worldwide jihad.
America’s greatest scientific enterprise thereby took a backseat to Obama’s twisted political expediency and bizarre effort to make Muslims “feel good” about themselves as if building up their self esteem would make them nicer people.
Obama’s attempted destruction of NASA–Bolden subsequently retracted his statement which meant he had either lied to Al Jazeera or the president had lied to him–hasn’t worked. Yet.
The bitter irony in the president trying to divert the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s scientific mission into becoming Islamic cheerleaders is highlighted by the president’s lofty words on science spoken in March, 2009 when he said, “Let’s be clear: promoting science isn’t just about providing resources–it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists . . . do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient–especially when it’s inconvenient.”
Here was his kicker: ”It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda–and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”
Such outrageous hypocrisy!
An article on RedState.com, “Obama Administration Covering Up Abortion Data,” begins by citing the above quotation . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3550)
The whole purpose of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress is to use “science” to promote new taxes to pay for their planned social programs. Those programs always have “unintended consequences” which require fixes and additional programs requiring additional taxes. That’s the reason that Obama and the Democrats have never been concerned about deficit spending, which was to be reduced or eliminated by always higher and higher taxes on the rich, energy, corporations and sin products such as tobacco, salt and sugar. The deficits themselves were also to be used as justification for higher taxes. The EPA, NASA and NOAA have been compromised by subscribing to the leftist agenda for pushing higher taxes and cap and trade on global warming, climate change or climate disruption, whatever the description of the day. These entities, full of scientists, are funded by the government and will dance to Obama’s tune.
In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made the following comment during his “Military-Industrial Complex Speech”:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society”.
Unfortunately, today too many scientists have sold their souls to the devil for the benefits that government can provide at the expense of freedom. What we have is “green” (politicized) scientists working in concert with a leftist government, supported by the media, to promote a socialist agenda.
Let us not forget that Obama’s early life was saturated with the ideas and gossip and activism of folks who hoped to rule the world via what Lenin called ‘scientific socialism’.
Well,he’s full of something….but it isn’t hot air…him and anAL GOREtentive both,if that tells you what they are full of
Obama will, through the EPA and NOT Congress, raise taxes on energy so much that we will be reduced to burning wood. But then he’ll probably slap on a wood tax, too. This man is a far-left menace and will not be satisfied until we are as poor as Kenya. Only then will he be pleased that final “social justice” has been achieved. This has been the worst presidency since 1976 and Jimmy Carter and I think the American people are beginning to wake up to that fact.
It will take years just to find all of these people and projects that O’Sputnik and his minion have been planting throughout the Government. If something as obviously as stupid as using NASA for Muslim outreach was let slip just imagine what projects they have had enough sense to hide. The EPA needs to be abolished making sure none of the enviro-wackos and other lefties find their way back into any part of the Government.
What I’d like to know is how moving toward wind and solar, both highly inefficient energy technologies, is going to take us into the future. Neither technology is well-suited to provide the energy needed by a growing population with ever-increasing power needs – they’re inconsistent in nature and due to their inefficiency they rely on large masses of capture sites covering huge tracts of land in order to capture meaningful amounts of energy.
For all his “Sputnik moment” talk, why didn’t he make an impassioned speech challenging Americans to tackle fusion power creation in ten or fifteen years? Why didn’t he propose the formation of an international fusion power research consortium including the other nations which have advanced fusion research efforts, in essence pooling our resources with them to crack the puzzle of fusion power generation?
Oh wait, I know – it’s because he didn’t have any big donors in the fusion research field whom he could reward with massive grants of taxpayer money.
What a short-sighted grubby politician he is.
“Oh wait, I know – it’s because he didn’t have any big donors in the fusion research field whom he could reward with massive grants of taxpayer money.”
Good post, Martin. That’s why Obama and the Democrtats are subsidizing wind power, solar and biofuels to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars per year. As inefficient as ethanol is, the Democrats and corn-state Republicans have recently passed a bill allowing 15% ethanol mixture in gasoline. That’s like putting corn in your tank. No wonder corn and meat prices have risen so high. The ethanol industry is also being subsidized by the feds to keep less expensive Brazilian sugar cane ethanol from competing with corn ethanol.
Not to mention the ban on drilling and shut down of new coal fields.
Having spent forty years in energy engineering, a score of nukes, two score fossil power plants and a decade assessing advanced technology (superconductivity, nanotechnology, tribology, ultracapcitors, etc.), I have come to some horrible conclusions. There has been no survivable energy policy, under both parties, since circa 1975. People, like President Obama, speak nonsense. They do not comprehend energy balance, market forces, talent organization, or just basic horse sense. I shudder when storms, such as we have just experienced, pass over our nation. Consider the state of the union if one of our major grids collapsed, not for hours, but for years. How much power can you get from a wind mill coated with 2″ of ice? None. From square miles of solar panels covered by 2 feet of snow, in a blizzard? None. Can they survive the loads without being destroyed????
The US energy situation can be summarized as follows. We have built so little, for so long, that the requisite professional talents no longer exist. What father encourages his bright teen to study nuclear power? Coal fired power plants? Examples: high temperature thermodynamics, creep, containment design, coal handling technologies, or reactor physics. When has anyone listened to an Professional Engineer, who has built anything that works, on the Sunday talk shows discussing the policies on any technical subject? I induce that 100% of the TV noise comes from glib lawyers, journalists, and a few life scientists.
Example: By US law, the DOE was charged to store 70,000 tons of spent fuel from all US civilian power plants starting in 1998. They have not taken a pound. Yet the DOE have spent almost $40,000,000,000 on this effort, taken from every person who pays a light bill. President Obama is directly responsible for this debacle. He says the problem is science, safety. I say that is sophism, political science, Harry Reid hot air. The real result is that no one believes either engineers, scientists or politicians. Thus we have no energy policy, and without something that works, our nation will fail.
I’ve almost as much experience in the energy business as Mr. Hails and back up his comments 100%.
Our “ruling class” has been selling us smoke and mirrors, pipe dreams really, about energy for decades.
I would add that even though Obama wants to sound like a supporter of nuclear power, his administration has blocked new nuclear plants at almost every opportunity.
As to “energy break throughs” – there are none visible on the horizon. One can hope that something turns up, but hope is not a plan and it certainly isn’t a useful policy.
Every President and Congress since Jimma Carter that did not address this crisis on oil should be put in jail.We have stupid leaders that have allowed this go in for at least 40 years. DRill Damn it and build new refinneries.
The Obama Administration is heavily infiltrated and supported by the eco-Marxists who hate all forms of fossil fuels and won’t continue to push for their elimination regardless of the destructive impact to our economy and nation. Where is the Liberal’s compassion for the poor? Those most harmed by “necessarily skyrocketing” energy prices will be the poor. Not only will basic energy cost more but since everything we purchase takes energy to produce and deliver the price of all goods and services will increase. This will produce widespread business failures and unemployment as those with limited incomes stop spending on non-essentials.
Obama and his fellow socialists are causing intentional harm to this nation and they must be stopped and their policies rolled back.
Their compassion for the poor will come about through subsidies, entitlements and other give-aways. It will be spun that the big, bad energy companies are causing “grandmom to burn her dog food for heat” and that Congress must act to stop this “holocaust” on the weakest (i.e., minorities, the elderly, and women) amongst us.
According to the Oil Companies they don’t need or really want Federal Monies from the Tax Payer to drill or explore, however the double Taxation is a big deal and that alone would drive them away from doing business here unless they find away to transfer there holdings to a foreign substitute to avoid the double taxation and I wouldn’t hold it against them to do this or something remotely close to such a thing if that is what they felt was necessary to stay alive in the competitive world we currently live in.
Obama still want Americans’ utility bills to “necessarily skyrocket.” How any sentient being could have voted for him after that statement remains a mystery.
His fealty to the radical environmentalists who have set our national energy policy of “No!” is proof that he has no intention of allowing us to keep up with other nations energy efforts. His continuing moratoriums in defiance of court orders should be grounds for legal action against this administration.
As we all should know by now, we are being held hostage by our own government when it comes to true energy independence. The current situation (rolling blackouts during a fierce winter storm due to a lack of capacity) should be a wake-up call. There is no need for this type of mismanagement of our energy resources. We should have been building new power plants and oil refineries for years. How many more Americans need to suffer or die because of this administrations’ belief in the lie of global warming?
Folks, last Novembers’ elections were just the beginning. We still have a lot to do to rid our country of the poison of progressivism.
Obama’s address was not about the state of the union, rather it was a fanciful campaign for utopian open society ideals and the next election. Green energy, bullet trains, and a million electric cars are about pie in the sky and promises of a better future. Hopefully, the American voter can recognize distrations and delusions when they hear them. There is no energy policy that the government can produce short of rationing. It is not their business, except for taxes and regulations which are counter productive.
Obama and his regime stated at their very beginning that their intention was to destroy the system as we knew it. Obama openly threatened to shut down the coal industry, the oil industry and the nuclear industry in no uncertain terms. How is that people are just realizing that his plan is now in operation. Obama, Gore and the Clintons and the rest of the rich Americans who own the government and the education industry are well into their war against American prosperity. Reduce all Americans to the living standards found in the African village; that is their plan. Of course they will continue to live large on their ill gotten billions while the rest of us starve.
To see this joke of POTUS stand up there spinning unicorn dreams of windmills as he actively urges the EPA to destroy the American energy system is beyond criminal. Each day I am perplexed as to whether Obama is this stupid or just plain evil. His Sputnik moment could have been the announcement of a drive toward American energy independence on all fronts: coal, oil, natural gas, fission, fusion and yes, throw a bone to wind and solar research even though anyone with any vision can see that ultimately the energy solution of the future will be nuclear fusion.
Obama and his cronies, may be legislating against fossil fuels, but, they will not curtail their own use of them. The way it’s playing out, they will be the ones to burn the last gallon of fuel in one of their jets.
We The People will have to rely on rechargeable batteries long before this takes place. And the batteries will be useless because we will not have the energy source to recharge them. Any energy production that emerges as viable, will be used for the government first.
America is on the fast track to a third world economy, thanks to the people that voted for Obama.
You can forget fusion as a source of energy. The elusive “sustainable reaction” will be beckoning for the next grant or appropriation just as long as there are suckers who believe it is achievable . The gimmick has been draining research dollars so long, their pleas have become utterly without meaning.
In itself , that is the industry. Maintaining the careers ,retirement and scientific viability of a quest that is always a few billion dollars short of the breakthrough.
Like an athlete who shows great promise,but never delivers any results it is the great disappointment that forever begs for a few billion more.
The subject may be Energy but the problem is Power. It is about the good feeling green people get by being able to tell Brown, White, Yellow and Red people that they can’t use Energy because the green people have the Power to stop its use.
You are absolutely right…we need to put a stop to this before they take all our money in taxes and give it to the people that would rather not work.
I believe Obama will meet his targeted goal of 80% of U.S. energy produced by “clean energy sources” by 2035. This is how it will work: with his policies necessarily making energy costs “skyrocket,” the federal takeover of millions of square miles of energy rich state lands and subsequent moratoriums placed on those lands, and the continued and ever-expanding federal moratoriums on off-shore drilling (oil and natural gas), domestic U.S. energy production will decrease by about 80% by 2035 and 80% of that vastly decreased production will be from “clean energy.” Thus, although the U.S. will be bankrupted and literally living in the dark, Obama’s prophesy will come true.
For those of you who think the Republicans will change anything, I ask you the following: under GW Bush and almost six years of majorities in both houses of Congress, what did the Republicans do to ease any federal restraints on energy exploration?
This is one of those few opportunities in history where both Right Wing Conservatives and Leftist Liberals agree on the need for better energy policy and would agree on a more coordinated series of actions. Neither side is thrilled with how much of our money goes overseas to pay despotic regimes to spread oil wealth to those who hate us.
So what does this president do? He squanders the opportunity in favor of platitudes. “Clean Energy” is not a goal. Self sufficiency of energy is an achievable goal. Nobody is quite sure what “clean” means. We need investment in new energy sources, energy storage, and more market oriented pricing (some call this “smart grid” though the grid is already quite smart, what we’re really talking about a “smart load”).
Leftist Liberals need to learn that we can not conserve our way out of this problem. Right Wing Conservatives need to realize that unless we make some effort at keeping such technology environmentally friendly that we will rapidly go right back to the bad old days of 1960′s era pollution. However, all sides need to realize that this new infrastructure needs to be more distributed, more resilient, and more secure than what we have now.
Did he go there? No. This community organizer president is waiting for someone to throw a solution at him. As H. L. Menkin once said: “There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”
I am disappointed at the opportunity wasted.
Obama, dose not have a clue when it comes to our energy needs. He just wants to show us stupid people the correct way to use energy. We have been working on alternative energies since before he was born. We have cleaned up our air and water ways, I am not saying stop. Green energy will come when the real need arises and someone can make a buck off of cheap clean energy. Why have we not built more nuclear plants, been drilling for our own oil and natural gas. We have enough coal to last us 500 years and by then somebody will have invented clean energy. Obama sends billions of our tax money to foreign countries so they can drill for oil which then we buy off these countries at a higher cost to the American people. Sad part about this whole energy problem is it is going to hurt the poor a lot more than the rich like Obama, the man who fights for the little guy!
How dare you question this great and deep thinker. And because he thinks it, it must be so. Forget about all economic considerations. And in the case of energy there are profound considerations.
Reminds me of an interview I heard with one of the great basketball players at the time. He was told that another player had proclaimed himself the greatest basketball player ever. When asked for his reaction to this the interviewee mused that a cat can say it is a dog, but that doesn’t make it so. Obama the deep thinker must have missed that interview. Because he believes that because he thinks it it is so. A weakness he shares with many of the professional political class.
Thanks for an excellent article. When he started talking about energy I forced myself to watch and wonder how he would pull off the equivalent of the greatest heist of intellect occurring in the western world. He managed rather well, that is, if you don’t know beans about energy production, distribution and usage. If you do know something about energy/power, etc then you had to be, like me, scratching your head. How much longer can the charade continue?
For anyone wanting to understand more about energy/power consider: “Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future by Robert Bryce.
i would like to thank this government of the united states of america for the 240,000.00 bill that my family of 5 has to pay, to pay on this national debt.not only do i get taxed but have a debt payment.thank you very much.hope you all sleep well at night
I think it’s a simple misunderstanding. If we turn off 98% of the electircal equipment right now, we could get by entirely on Wind and Solar power. You just gotta think outside of the box.