Chinese and US airlines not happy about joining the EU Emissions Trading Scheme

From the start of next year, the European Union plans to make all airlines using European airports pay for their carbon "pollution" under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). However, the Chinese and the Americans are not not just happily joining the EU airlines in this new showcase of European Union climate madness, which will considerably increase the costs for already hard hit airlines:

On 6 June, the China Air Transport Association (CATA) said that it would back legal action to prevent the ETS from being applied to the 16 Chinese airlines which have the right to operate between China and Europe.

A legal challenge by a US air industry group is also due to be heard by the EU Court of Justice on 5 July.

Particularly the Chinese reaction has got both the German and the French governments worried, because the Chinese - with big Airbus orders -

Chinese threats of trade retaliation against European airlines has now got both the French and the German government as well as Airbus (with China as a major customer) worried:

Germany and France have both complained to Brussels about an escalating row over bringing foreign airlines into the EU's cap-and-trade scheme. Diplomats say Berlin will not rule out a challenge to the flagship EU legislation involved.

The Danish EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard is still playing tough:

"If nations and regions do not defend their legitimate right to legislate," Hedegaard says, "it would send an extremely unfortunate signal and create problems not just for the global climate but also for European companies and businesses".
Signed by Commissioner Hedegaard, the letter was also approved by Transport Commissioner Kallas and Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht, and it was supported by Commission President José Manuel Barroso, Valero said.

Commission officials believe that if Brussels backs down on the third and most critical phase of the ETS, its flagship policy will lose momentum, and it will lose international respect.

Read the entire article here

PS

The main argument of the EU bureaucrats seems to be that backing down would mean that their climate change "flagship policy" will "lose international respect"! It is difficult to see how this bogus global warming project could lose any international respect, because it never had any respect in the real world. On must hope that the Chinese and the Americans will be able to postpone - or still better - to prevent this new climate madness from ever being introduced!

Enviro-fundamentalistic "cult of fear" behind Germany´s decision to phase out nuclear plants

Poland and other EU countries should not let German enviro-fundamentalists stop future shale gas exploration in Europe

Dr. Frank Furedi (professor of sociology at the University of Kent) has written an interesting background article about the German government´s hasty decision to phase out its nuclear power plants by 2022. Furedi points out that the anti-nuclear movement has old roots in Germany and that the now so powerful  German green movement grew out of the anti-nuclear protests in the 70´s. During the last two decades the green ideology has dominated public life in Germany. All political parties - including Merkel´s CDU and the Social Democrats - have internalised the core values of environmentalism:

Since the 1970s, protests against nuclear power have enjoyed considerable support from a heterogeneous coalition of students, youth-activist movements, trade unions, far-left and communist organisations and rural conservative lobbies.
Anti-nuclear power sentiment has become normalised to the point that it is difficult to encounter any German who does not subscribe to the popular slogan Atomkraft? Nein danke! (Nuclear power? No thanks!)
It is important to recall that the powerful modern German environment movement grew out of the 70s anti-nuclear protests.
Unlike any other cause upheld by radical protesters, hostility to nuclear power resonated with the mainstream of German society. Public opinion regarded nuclear power and the NATO nuclear missiles sited on its soil as merely different forms of the same threat.
By the end of the 70s the term nuclear had become the focus for German existential insecurity. Hostility to nuclear technology resonated with the traditional German idealisation of nature and its romantic cultural imagination. The historic valuation of nature as something that is morally good in its own terms drew a significant section of the conservative intelligentsia and political class towards an anti-nuclear standpoint.
At the same time the German Left, particularly its more radical section, regarded this issue as an opportunity to overcome its own isolation and gain public influence. One reason the German Green Party has succeeded in gaining so much prominence is because from the outset it succeeded in bringing together a coalition of otherwise hostile constituents.
In Germany the significance of the Greens should not be seen merely in electoral terms.
During the past two decades their ideas have dominated public life. Their influence in education, the media and cultural life is palpable. Public relations companies rely on green messages to sell their products and companies insist that the environment is their principal concern.
The CDU, similar to its Social Democrat and Liberal counterparts, has internalised the core values of environmentalism: the sacralisation of anything natural, aversion to risk and the celebration of precaution and of safety.
These values validate the fear-mongering that has erupted in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake.
Merkel has always played the green card. Last year she argued for maintaining nuclear power stations to realise a cleaner and greener future. Her argument was that this technology would help save the planet because nuclear plants did not emit any CO2.
Merkel took the view that the fear of global warming would trump anxieties about nuclear power.
For a while, at least, it appeared that a risk-averse environmentalist consensus obsessed with climate change would come around and accept this argument. However, our culture of fear is still surprisingly pragmatic. It tends to privilege nuclear phobia over apocalyptic visions of planetary destruction in the distant future.
The main beneficiary of German nuclear hysteria could be France, whose growing nuclear power industry may well be exporting energy to its very green neighbours. And the Germans will be unlikely to say, "Nein danke."

Read the entire article in the Australian here

PS
Probably the French nuclear power generators will be able to benefit from the German nuclear phase out, but the greatest winner is Russian state owned energy giant Gazprom. Already now Gazprom provides 30% of Germany´s natural gas. In the future this dangerous dependence will grow considerably. Instead of relying on Russian gas, Germany should, of course, by all means encourage the exploration and future production of shale gas, both in Germany and in neighbouring Poland, where the government with the assistance of  US companies is actively promoting shale gas. The present danger is that the German enviro-fundamentalists in co-operation with the Russians will try to prevent European shale gas exploration on bogus environmental grounds. Poland and the US must not let German and other European misguided green fanatics stop Europe´s unique chance to diversify its energy future!

Gasland director admits hiding facts in his shale gas documentary

Josh Fox, the director of the "Gasland" documentary has admitted hiding facts that contradict his scaremongeering about shale gas exploration:

Josh Fox has responded to valid journalistic questions about his documentary Gasland by stifling the freedom of the press.
I travelled to Chicago for a Q&A where Fox admitted hiding facts from his documentary that contradicted his scaremongering about drilling for natural gas.
And Fox's response when we posted the video on YouTube - he got his lawyers to have YouTube pull it down.
That's right - he has tried to use lawyers to silence journalist from asking difficult questions and putting his answers to those questions on the Internet.
Fox's excuse is a breach of copyright. In a video that is 3:10 minutes long we used 26 seconds of Gasland only to show how Fox was being unethical and misleading. It is a classic case of "fair use" of someones work for the purpose of criticism and is totally legally allowed if not encouraged under fair use law.
But Fox does not want any criticism. He does not want any freedom of speech.

Watch the video now on Vimeo here

Global warming and last year´s grain harvest in Russia - new facts

Flashback: Putin announces ban on grain exports in August 2010

Last year world media were full of reports linking the Russian summer heatwave and the reduced grain harvest to global warming:

Since summer, signs of severe food insecurity — droughts, food riots, five- to tenfold increases in produce costs — have erupted around the globe. Several new reports now argue that regionally catastrophic crop failures — largely due to heat stress — are signals that global warming may have begun outpacing the ability of farmers to adapt.

Read the entire article here

Government officials are pointing to the drought and wildfires in Russia, and the floods across Central and East Asia as consistent with climate change predictions. While climatologists say that a single weather event cannot be linked directly to a warming planet, patterns of worsening storms, severer droughts, and disasters brought on by extreme weather are expected as the planet warms.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has put a ban on grain exports from Russian in order to keep prices low domestically until 2011. Putin's announcement aggravated fears of a global food crisis as wheat prices have almost doubled since June.

On Thursday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told a Russian Security Council meeting, "Everyone is talking about climate change now. Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past. This means that we need to change the way we work, change the methods that we used in the past."

Read the entire article here

Now it turns out that the reports about the sharply reduced grain harvest were exaggerated:

Russia grain losses exaggerated by up to 6m tonnes

 Farmers and officials in Russia may have exaggerated drought losses of grains last year by up to 6m tonnes to cash in on compensation packages, implying the country may have more of the crops to export than had been thought.

Some growers who reported their crop has a wipeout to claim from disaster relief funds in fact achieved some harvest, even if only of 0.2-0.3 tonnes per hectare, US Department of Agriculture attaches in Moscow said.

"Analysts point out that reliable, unbiased data on grain production is still absent in Russia," the attaches said in a report.

The under-reporting may have resulted in the actual harvest being some 3m-6m tonnes higher than the official estimate of 61m tonnes.

Read the entire article here

PS

This piece of news will almost certainly not get any attention in the alarmist mainstream media, because it does not fit into their global warming gloom scenario.

Is Pope Benedictus a closet euro-sceptic?

In September 2009 Pope Benedict spoke about liberty and Europe´s Christian heritage in Prague

TheVatican has during recent years rightly criticised the European Union for failing to recognise Europe´s Christian heritage (there is no mention of it e.g. in the EU´s constitutional treaties). Now Pope Benedict XVI has voiced some more general criticism of the EU, which is interesting:

 

In a conversation with reporters who accompanied him on a June 4 flight to Croatia, Pope Benedict XVI said that Croatia’s entry into the European Union should help to reinforce the sense of Europe’s Christian heritage.

“European identity is precisely an identity of the richness of diverse cultures, which converge in the Christian faith,” the Pope said. “It seems to me that it is one of the missions of the Croatians who enter in now: to make this visible and efficient.”

Answering a reporter’s question about the growing skepticism toward the European Union, the Pope said that attitude was understandable in light of “a central bureaucracy that may be too heavy, or of a rationalistic culture which does not take history sufficiently into account.” He said that Croatia, with its deep roots in Christian faith, might help to counterbalance “a certain abstract rationalism.”

Read the entire piece here

PS

The Pope is, of course, right:  The EU´s central bureacracy is much too heavy, and it is scandalous that the EU failed to recognise Europe´s Christian heritage in its constitutional treaties. On can only hope that Pope Benedict will return to these, and other, eurocritical themes in the near future. Anyway, welcome to the informal club of  eurocritical observers, Your Holiness!

The energy revolution: The real world versus Ban Ki-moon´s world

While the United Nations is busy scaremongering about "climate change", condemning the free market system, celebrating the official "Mother Earth Day" and discussing Bolivia´s draft treaty to give "Mother Earth" the same rights as humans (including a Ministry of Mother Earth, and providing the planet with an ombudsman whose job is to hear nature’s complaints as voiced by activist and other groups, including the state!) things are happening fast in the real world.

In several earlier posts we have described the US-led shale gas revolution. Shell has recently announced the arrival of another revolutionary natural gas development:

This is how Shell´s  Malcolm Brinded (Executive Director, Upstream International) describes the world´s first off-shore facility to produce and liquefy gas:

We will be deploying this revolutionary technology first in Australian waters, over the Prelude gas field, where it will cool the produced gas into a liquid on the spot. Ocean­going carriers will then offload the LNG as well as other liquid by-products for delivery to market.

This is big, ladies and gentlemen. Not just the decision to build the FLNG facility but also the facility itself. From bow to stern, Shell’s FLNG facility will be 488 metres. That’s almost half a kilometre! It will be the largest floating offshore facility in the world – longer than four football fields laid end to end. Almost as long – or so I’m told – as three MCGs end to end. When fully equipped, and with its storage tanks full, it will weigh around 600,000 tonnes – roughly six times as much as the largest aircraft carrier.

FLNG will change the rules of the game. It will allow us to access stranded offshore gas fields that otherwise would be too costly or difficult to develop, because it avoids the need for long underwater pipelines and new coastal infrastructure.
It also enables LNG projects to go ahead more quickly and with less certainty about the volume of the gas resources being tapped, since an FLNG facility can be reused elsewhere at the end of a field’s life.

Mr. Brinded´s speech is at least a thousand times more important than all of Mr. Ban Ki-moon´s empty propaganda lectures put together when it comes to eradicating poverty in the world, because you cannot improve the lot of poor people without giving them the energy that is required for real progress.

PS
It is sad to see that the United Nations has become a playground for all kinds of  leftist enviro-fundamentalists, anti-capitalist crusaders and climate change scaremongers. (Remember: the US pays 22% of the UN budget!). It is also sad, that the liberal/leftist main stream media are mostly quiet about what is going on at the UN. Neither are they properly reporting the great progress that is taking place in the world energy market.

Good news from Greenland: 18 Greenpeace activists arrested

An example of excellent police work:

Police on Saturday arrested 18 Greenpeace activists who climbed aboard an oil rig off Greenland's coast to protest deepwater drilling in the Arctic.
The rig is operated by the Scottish oil group Cairn Energy and drilling has temporarily been suspended due to the protest. Cairn last month won permission to drill up to seven oil exploration wells off the Arctic island's west coast.
Police spokesman Morten Nielsen said activists from Britain, Finland, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands, among other countries, are being taken to Nuuk, the semiautonomous Danish territory's capital, where they will be questioned.
---

Greenland's government has called the Greenpeace action a publicity stunt that comes at the expense of Greenland's "legitimate right" to develop its economy.
Earlier this week, two Greenpeace activists were arrested under the rig, hanging just a few meters from the drill-bit. The protest prevented Cairn from starting drilling for four days.
Greenpeace says it has received a legal summons from Cairn's lawyers for having cost the company up to $4 million for every day it could not drill and could face substantial fines for the security breaches. The lawsuit will be heard Monday in a Dutch court.

Read the entire piece here

PS
Let´s hope that the Dutch court will be as effective as the police in Greenland!

Earth Day: Bollywood fights climate change

Bollywood is intent on beating Hollywood when it comes to fighting climate change. "In lieu of the impending climate crisis, IIFA (the International Indian Film Academy) has been a firm supporter of the environment" and has "taken several initiatives over the years to curb the ever-expanding issues that threaten it", Bollyspice.com reports. Already in 2007 IIFA "launched the concept of a `Green carpet`, replacing the traditional red carpet rolled out at all award shows".
(Hard to beat! NNoN)
Now IIFA is joining the United National Environment Programme in celebrating the "World Environment Day". Indian super star, former Miss World Priyanka Chopra is the top name in the UNEP/Bollywood campaign this year.

Could it be that Ms. Chopra is discussing climate change and global warming with an UNEP representative on this video?:

Compared with Hollywood, the Bollywood approach to fighting climate change seems to be somewhat more down-to-earth, as you can see from this educational video (it is only partially in English, but I think you will get the point):

"Savita bhabhi tells us why she loves Copehagen and why she has recently won an award for contributing to the solution for Climate Change."

Is an Egyptian style popular uprising likely in China?

             It is possible that we are going to see more of this in China

An Egyptian style popular uprising in China has so far failed to materialize. However, things could easily change. Max Fisher has written an interesting article about China´s dilemma in the latest issue of the Atlantic:

Despite their failures, democratic activists are still pressing, subtly subverting the state and spreading their message, and the Chinese government is taking them very seriously. International NGOs and journalists now say that the government crackdown is frighteningly reminiscent of 1989, which culminated with troops killing either hundreds or thousands of civilians at Tiananmen Square. As China increases its repressive measures, it may well quell the activists, but also risks upsetting, by its brutality, many of the urban Chinese who are otherwise indifferent.

China's dilemma is the same one experienced by autocratic regimes across the globe: a too-successful crackdown risks creating only more dissent, which will require even stronger crackdowns, initiating a violent cycle in which both the state and the population are neither willing nor able to back down. Such a cycle, if it continues unabated, has only two foreseeable endpoints: the collapse of the regime, which would be disastrous in a country as large, diverse, and militarized as China; or, more likely, the reversion of the state back to the violently repressive dictatorship of the 1970s. In other words, if the conflict between the state and its people continues to escalate, then the state is forced either to pursue the harshest possible campaign against it people, as it has in the past, or to abdicate.

This dark scenario may sound unlikely -- it's possible that the activists will simply give up, and the country's growing middle class will accept repression -- but, outside of the large coastal cities where Westerners travel, it is already underway. In the large, Northwestern province of Xinjiang, where reporters of any nationality are rarely allowed, the Chinese government has spent the last two years strangling basic civil rights and tightening markets. This process began after a spate of 2009 protests there, and has only increased since. A similar process has begun in Inner Mongolia, a province to the east, where security forces have waged a steady campaign of violence against dissenters.Read the entire article here

PS
I do not fully agree with Fisher, when he says that there are only two "foreseeable endpoints": the collapse of the regime, which would be disastrous in a country as large, diverse, and militarized as China; or, more likely, the reversion of the state back to the violently repressive dictatorship of the 1970s.
There is - at least in theory - a third option: A development in a more democratic direction could be introduced by a more enligthened communist leadership.

What Trichet wants: An EU finance ministry leading to a federal European state

The outgoing president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet has, in a speech he gave in Germany, suggested that the eurozone could in the future have its own finance ministry:

"Would it be too bold, in the economic field , with a single market, a single currency and a single central bank, to envisage a ministry of finance of the union?"

Of course, Trichet knows that the creation of an EU "finance ministry" is not going to be possible. Harvard and LSE professor Niall Ferguson here explains why.
PS
In the same speech, Trichet also stated his ultimate goal for Europe (which he shares with many of the present political leaders, who do not dare to say it publicly, because they know that the vast majority of  Europeans do not want it):

I think that [eventually] a confederation of sovereign states of a new type, with new institutions to manage the interdependence of today and tomorrow, would be fully in line with such a heroism of reason.

Of course, Trichet´s concept,"a confederation of sovereign states" does not make any sense. A confederation can not consist of sovereign states. Gobachev tried to transform the Soviet Union to a Union of Sovereign States, but we know where that led. So, what Trichet actually wants, is to transform the present somewhat diffuse EUSSR to a more formal federal EUSSR.   
(image by EU photo service)

German chancellor Merkel is not telling the truth about the euro

On March 18 the chairman of the Eurogroup, Luxembourg´s PM Jean-Claude Juncker made the following statement:

The euro is stable and not in crisis, Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker said Friday.
There are debt problems in some member states, Luxembourg's prime minister said at a conference here organized by the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament.
"The crisis is not a euro crisis," Juncker insisted.

Now, German chancellor Angela Merkel has repeated what Juncker said in March:

The euro isn't in crisis, although markets are uncertain whether struggling euro-zone economies can become competitive, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday.
"We don't have a problem with the euro as such," Merkel said in a speech during a two-day visit to Singapore.
"It is a stable currency particularly vis-a-vis the dollar. It is quite strong--sometimes too strong for us as an exporting nation," she said through an interpreter. "We have problems with certain member states and their debts."
The root of the euro-zone "debt problem" is "a competitiveness problem because the competitiveness of the member states in the euro area is too disparate and some of them too weak," she said. To "overcome this crisis," she said. "we need to boost competitiveness and we need to put fiscal responsibility right at the heart of our efforts."

Read the entire article here

Looking at the euro from a very narrow angle you may - as Merkel and Juncker do - be able to pretend that there is no euro crisis. But, of course, both Merkel and Juncker know that the reality of the euro co-operation is quite another matter. Without the euro, the problems of  Greece, Ireland and Portugal would not be Eurogroup problems. When you, as a result of a political decision, squeeze countries, which are economically, culturally and politically in a totally different situation, into a common currency area - without having a common finance and economic policy (which would mean a federal European state that voters do not want), you end up having a crisis.

Therefore, Merkel, Juncker, and all the other leaders, who maintain that there is no euro crisis, are dishonest and deserve to be punished for it at future elections.

"Rich" nations still ready to pay billions for fighting non-existent climate change

                                             Flashback, Copenhagen 2009

The world´s "rich" nations continue to pledge billions of dollars to help "poor" nations "fight" imaginary human caused "climate change":

Earthquake-hit Japan and many other rich nations are reaffirming pledges to give $US30 billion from 2010-12 to help poor nations fight climate change despite budget cuts.

Climate aid has totalled $US16.2 billion since January 2010, according to submissions to the United Nations by a May deadline. Poor nations have said much of the cash is from existing programmes and is not new as promised.
Donors were led by Japan, the European Union and the United States.

"Aid is definitely coming through the pipeline," said Liz Gallagher, an expert at the E3G environmental think-tank in London

Read the entire article here

PS

You may remember that the mega size money transfer deal (100 billion USD a year by 2020) was brokered by president Obama and other leaders at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 as a "compensation" for not being able to agree on anything else. It was one of the most weird - and expensive - pledges in recent years, particularly when one knows that many of the "rich" donors are living on borrowed money. In spite of all this, these same leaders now continue pledging the money they do not have for fighting something that does not exist. Fortunately, much of the money seems to be coming from "existing programmes". Still, the whole thing is an enormous waste of taxpayers´ money.

EU Commission - private jet travel, luxury five-star resorts, parties and expensive presents

              This is the preferred way of transportation for the EU elite


Finally, the truth about the lifestyle of the EU(SSR) elite is beginning to come out.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports:

The Bureau’s latest investigation reveals that the European Commission has spent millions of taxpayers’ money on private jet travel, luxury five-star resorts, parties and expensive presents.
Our investigation shows that Commissioners were travelling by private jet and handing out gifts of Tiffany jewellery to guests as Europeans faced budget cuts and IMF bailouts.

Here are some of  the bureau´s findings:

Over €7.5m was spent on private jet travel for Commissioners between 2006-2010.

President Barroso and eight assistants ran up a bill of €28,000 for a four night stay at the New York Peninsula Hotel, where the delegation stayed in suites costing on average €780 per night.

Over €300,000 was spent on events the EU described as “cocktail parties” in 2009. One bill totalled €75,000 for an event subsidised by the EU’s Research Executive Agency in Amsterdam, boasting a “night filled with wonder like no other…state-of-the-art technology, challenging art, combined with trendy cocktails, surprising performances and top DJs”.

Luxury spending
In 2009 the Commission also held away-days for officials and their families at resorts in Papua New Guinea and Ghana. On one occasion a Vietnamese delegation flew 44 staff to the five-star Palm Garden Resort for an event to “facilitate internal co-operation”.

Read the entire piece here

PS
One can only wonder, why the numerous Brussels MSM correspondents have not reported about these things already long ago. Well, the reason is pretty obvious: Their own opulent lifestyle is in danger, if they would start to dig a little deeper in the Brussels manure.

Putin´s puppet gets tough

Every time there is some good news for Russia on the energy front - e.g. political upheavals somewhere that lead to price hikes in the world markets, or now the German government´s "road map" to dependency on Russian gas - the country´s thugocratic leadership brings out the old Soviet type of tough talk from the Kremlin closet.

Now the president, Dmitry Medvedev, has apparently been told by his master, czar Vladimir that its time to reset Obama´s reset:

After talks with Obama on Thursday, it could take Russia and the United States until 2020 to reach agreement on a European missile shield. On Friday, he said 2020 was the deadline.
"After 2020, if we fail to agree, the real arms race will begin. If we do agree, then the situation will differ dramatically. I would like my partners to keep this in mind," he said.

Read the entire article here

South Korea and Qatar compete for hosting the UN climate change carnival 2012

A nostalgic video flashback from the Cancun climate meeting.
There will be less Tequila in Qatar -  under Qatar's Sharia,
 it is illegal to show alcohol or be drunk in public.
This should strengthen the Korean bid.

While South Africa is preparing to hold the holiest annual celebration of the climate change religion, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, later this year, there is a ferocious behind-the-scenes battle going between South Korea and Qatar about hosting the conference in 2012, reports the New York Times.

If  South Korea is serious about getting this crazy carbon carnival, they should immediately consult the only person in the world who knows how to beat the qataris; Sepp Blatter, the president of  FIFA.

Without Blatter´s support, the 2022 World Cup would not have been awarded to Qatar. He knows in detail what South Korea must do in order to "facilitate" a succesful bid. However, South Korea should realize that it is not going to be easy - or cheap - to beat the qataris, who already have set out their plan:

"asked at a recent meeting in Hamburg, Germany, about the bid to host the UNFCCC meeting, the Qatar energy institute's executive director, Rabi Mohtar, said, "I believe the push is to get that going as a precursor to the football games."

The fact that Qatar sees the climate jamboree only as a "precursor" to the football games, says a lot about the significance of the event. What reasons Korea might have for wanting to host the conference is more difficult to understand. Maybe their own man at the top of the UN hieararchy, one of the high priests of the climate change religion, Bank-ki Moon, has brainwashed the Korean government on this issue?

Renewable energy is a thing of the past

                                  
Michael Lind (Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation)
has written an article about the U.S. and world energy future that everyone - particularly our political decisions makers - should read. He makes a convincing case for the assumption that conventional wisdom about our energy future is completely wrong.

The arguments for converting the U.S. economy to wind, solar and biomass energy have collapsed. The date of depletion of fossil fuels has been pushed back into the future by centuries -- or millennia. The abundance and geographic diversity of fossil fuels made possible by technology in time will reduce the dependence of the U.S. on particular foreign energy exporters, eliminating the national security argument for renewable energy. And if the worst-case scenarios for climate change were plausible (which they are not), then the most effective way to avert catastrophic global warming would be the rapid expansion of nuclear power, not over-complicated schemes worthy of Rube Goldberg or Wile E. Coyote to carpet the world’s deserts and prairies with solar panels and wind farms that would provide only intermittent energy from weak and diffuse sources.

The mainstream environmental lobby has yet to acknowledge the challenge that the new energy realities pose to their assumptions about the future. Some environmentalists have welcomed natural gas because it is cleaner than coal and can supplement intermittent solar power and wind power, at times when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. But if natural gas is permanently cheaper than solar and wind, then there is no reason, other than ideology, to combine it with renewables, instead of simply using natural gas to replace coal in electricity generation.

Without massive, permanent government subsidies or equally massive penalty taxes imposed on inexpensive fossil fuels like shale gas, wind power and solar power may never be able to compete. For that reason, some Greens hope to shut down shale gas and gas hydrate production in advance. In their haste, however, many Greens have hyped studies that turned out to be erroneous.
In 2010 a Cornell University ecology professor and anti-fracking activist named Robert Howarth published a paper making the sensational claim that natural gas is a greater threat to the climate than coal. Howarth admitted, "A lot of the data we use are really low quality..."

Howarth’s error-ridden study was debunked by Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations and criticized even by the Worldwatch Institute, a leading environmentalist organization, which wrote: "While we share Dr. Howarth’s urgency about the need to transition to a renewable-based economy, we believe based on our research that natural gas, not coal, affords the cleanest pathway to such a future."

All energy sources have potentially harmful side effects. The genuine problems caused by fracking and possible large-scale future drilling of methane hydrates should be carefully monitored and dealt with by government regulation. But the Green lobby’s alarm about the environmental side-effects of energy sources is highly selective. The environmental movement since the 1970s has been fixated religiously on a few "soft energy" panaceas -- wind, solar, and biofuels -- and can be counted on to exaggerate or invent problems caused by alternatives. Many of the same Greens who oppose fracking because it might contaminate some underground aquifers favor wind turbines and high-voltage power lines that slaughter eagles and other birds and support blanketing huge desert areas with solar panels, at the cost of exterminating much of the local wildlife and vegetation. Wilderness preservation, the original goal of environmentalism, has been sacrificed to the giant metallic idols of the sun and the wind

Read the entire Slate article here

PS

Someone should give this article to the German chancellor Angela Merkel and her colleagues in the government, who recently have agreed a "Road Map for the Energy Future" which in reality is a roadmap to energy failure.
PS