Greg Burton on Politics: How to solve the US Energy Crisis

How to solve the US Energy Crisis

I've had it.  Obama's new budget is partially being saved by Cap and Trade, one of the lamest bills any US Congress or President has ever concocted, beginning with its reasoning.  I am sick of this.  Why?  Because it's based on an incorrect premise, that A: Global Warming, or rather climate change in general, is mostly man-made, and B: Anything we do can stop or alter its course.
First, let me make this unequivocal statement:  I LOVE the idea of finding alternate fuel sources, and have always been excited about the concept.  I believe that in 10-15 years, we will have figured it all out, and 5 years after we have, we will be able to cut our fossil fuel consumption down to some minimum amount, probably because we will still need oil and natural gas to make plastics and other goods.  But transportation, heating and cooling, and electricity will be taken care of using alternate, mostly replenishable, fuels.  Remember the scene in Back to the Future II when the mad scientist needs more gas for his DeLorean, and he opens the fuel container and puts an aluminum can in?  Okay, we won't have time-traveling cars, but I think we will have some really radical new ways to generate energy.  
BUT:  The current Global Warming thing is a HOAX.  There is no question in my mind that it is, and I'll cite four basic reasons I believe this:
1:  From 1990 to 1998, the period in which the earth had many of its hottest years in he past century, all of the other planets affected by the sun also had the hottest years on record.  This coincides perfectly with a period of increased solar flare activity. Either we have to agree that the sun did it, or we have to agree that the indigenous populations on all the other planets are polluting their planets too.
2:  In all other geologic periods when CO2 increased, those periods came AFTER times of higher than "normal" global temperatures, not before.  This speaks to exactly the opposite causality than our current "Global Warming" models state - High CO2 percentages are caused by higher temperatures, not vice versa.
3:  Two of the three bodies that have been collating and reporting on global warming, England's CRU and NASA, are ideologically biased, and both have been proven to be lying about their facts and conclusions, throwing out colder readings because they didn't fit their models, and literally adjusting other readings upward "because they should have shown higher data".  It was reported last month that the CRU totally ignored 75% of Siberia's temperature readings, beginning about 15 years ago.  Russia comprises about 10% of the earth's land mass.  Do some math, and you realize that the CRU has manipulated 7.5% of the coldest temperatures on earth out of the data!!  The ClimateGate Scandal, which keeps getting worse by the day, has exposed not only the fudging of data, but the political manipulation and strong-arm tactics used by influential scientists, who receive millions of dollars in grants for global warming research every year. 
4:  Anecdotal data:  Is it freezing out there or what?  The past two years, 2008 and 2009, have been two of the coldest in a century.  At this moment, there is more ice and snow at the poles than any time in decades.  The Himalayan Mountains are NOT melting away.  And all this happens to coincide with the first period of decreased sunspots in 35 years.
If we can agree that climate change is NOT anthropogenic, and that its for the most part, beyond our control, we can get to the more important issues of actually poisonous gases and stuff that gets in our ground water, can cause cancer, etc., like CFC's, etc.  These include gases from aerosols, plastic production, the burning of garbage, etc.  Let's get serious about these real threats.
MY CLIMATE SOLUTION:
A:  Drill, baby, drill!  Let's exploit the oil and natural gas we have under our ground and off our shores.  We are running trillion dollar plus deficits, yet we import about half a trillion dollars of fossil fuel a year.  Furthermore, we need to tiptoe around the middle east, lest we upset someone who has oil we need to buy, so we are not only bankrupting ourselves, but we are being held hostage by dictators and aggressive regimes, just because our oil tankers are waiting for oil at their ports.  Let's maximize our development of oiil and gas production here in the US.  This will also help to alleviate our unemployment situation.
B:  Continue to allow accelerated writeoffs of drillling and development costs to oil companies.  The bulk of these go to small oil companies, which is the only way they can afford to drill or develop at all.  These writeoffs exist, but the Left has been calling them "Subsidies", so they can once again paint the big bad oil companies as abusers, and cut off these tax benefits.  This will stop the drilling, which is exactly the opposite of what should happen.
C:  Reopen offshore oil field drilling leases, so our drillers can be out there, off our own shores, alongside the drilling rigs from China, Argentina and Brazil.  *(Yes, they are already using our oil reserves!)
D:  Create an oil field development tax, that acts also as a tax credit toward oil sales in some specified number of years in the future - say five years.  This is how it would work:  For every dollar of market value of oil or gas an oil company takes out of the ground, they have to pay some amount:  Say 5 cents.
This would sit on their books as a tax credit that they can recover in five years, but in the interim, those taxes go to the development of alternate fuels.  I would suggest the establishment of a non-governmental, non-industrial agency manned by top people from labs, universities and industry, mandated to distribute these new development taxes to worthy and promising technologies. 
Furthermore, the oil companies will be allowed to invest more into this fund, or into specific projects located by this new agency, so they can wean themselves off of their oil and gas revenues.  This will also make it profitable for them to promote and distribute these new fuels and technologies.  (Note, because these technologies will be set up as public-private, we won't have the potential burying of patents that can put the oil companies out of business, as some environmental wackos have charged.)
E:  NUCLEAR ENERGY!  This is a given.  Nuclear energy is being used all around the world, except for here in the US.  We should be giving big incentives for companies to develop new nuclear reactors.  We should have all our best minds develop uniform plans for future reactors, and we should build reactors that reuse spent fuel.  We should find ways to either bury, destroy or jettison these spent fuels.  This is a no-brainer.
SUMMARY:
There is no global warming.  There is, always has been, and always will be, climate change.
We cannot control climate, nor should we try.
We should by all means get all poisonous "real pollutants" out of our air and our water.
We should drill, baby, drill.
We should conserve (but not to the point of extreme cost) and reuse our resources.
We should create a production tax./tax credit carryforward system that makes oil producers who are developing and drilling help pay for alternate energy development.
We should make it profitable for oil and gas companies to invest in alternate energy development and distribution.
We should use Nuclear power whenever and wherever possible.

Posted by Greg Burton - at 7:40 AM

Labels: alternate energy, climate change, drill, drilling, gas, gobal warming, nuclear, oil, pollutans, production, recycle, reuse

1 comments:

Bart said...

Some of the best information I've found on the web about Global Warming are (believe it or not) videos on youtube. In my opinion the most interesting videos on the subject are titled "Climate Denial Crock of the Week", by someone named "Greenman3610". All four points you cited for the reasons you believe this Global Warming this is a Hoax have been covered in his videos and nicely explain why you appear to be incorrect.
These videos are very well done and I truely believe that not only will you and the people who read your blog learn a lot about Global Warming, you'll also enjoy watching them.
Check out his latest video, I believe it covers #4 on your list: http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610#p/a/u/0/yDTUuckNHgc

February 3, 2010 3:10 AM

Greg Burton on Politics: How to solve the US Energy Crisis