GAO: Obama Puts Politics Ahead Of Science

Same story, different day, different target. A recent Government Accountability Office report declares Obama put politics ahead of science in his hasty closure of Yucca Mountain. Ed Morrissey writes:

Quick — which presidential candidate pledged to restore science to its “rightful place” in government policy? If you’ve forgotten, well, so has Barack Obama and his administration, according to the GAO. The watchdog agency reports that the White House rushed to shut down the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal facility for political rather than scientific considerations, and that Obama’s manipulation will cost taxpayers billions of dollars and set back the nuclear industry by decades
…
There are even bigger problems that the GAO report uncovered, not all having to do with the Obama administration. Thanks to the hasty closure, another disposal site must be found. However, the GAO estimates that even if a decision on a new site was made today, the permit process for its use would keep it off line until … 2045. It will take 34 years to get full approval on the next waste-disposal site, and that’s if the site avoids “cost delays” and “garners public acceptance.”

Due to federal over-regulation, we have not built a new nuclear plant or oil refinery in the US in over 30 years. And now, thanks to the Obama administration playing politics instead of going with the science, has basically guaranteed we won’t open a new nuclear waste disposal facility for more than 34 years. But, hey, when Obama has an agenda, nothing gets in his way.

Coal power has been on Obama’s hit-list since before he was President. And he knew his goal would necessarily make electricity costs skyrocket and bankrupt large portions of the coal industry.

The Obama administration sought and got expert opinion regarding deep-water drilling after the Gulf disaster. Then the Obama administration lied about what those experts signed off on. You see, the experts signed a 44-page document that did not say “shut ‘er down” and then added two “shut ‘er down” paragraphs into the document after it was already signed. That’s fraud. That’s intentionally misrepresenting what the experts said. That’s placing expert signatures on something the experts did not sign.

Then a federal judge ordered an immediate halt to the moratorium. And the Obama administration ignored the federal judge’s order. Of course, Obama thinks he’s above the law. He’s ruler of the USSA, after all. But the judge didn’t see it that way. He found the Obama administration in contempt of court. Ed Morrissey wrote about that in February of this year.

When Judge Martin Feldman ordered the federal government to end its moratorium on deep-sea drilling, he actually meant it. In a ruling earlier today, the federal judge in New Orleans has held the Obama administration in contempt for its “defiance” in reimposing the moratorium through other means:

The Obama Administration acted in contempt by continuing its deepwater drilling moratorium after the policy was struck down, a New Orleans judge ruled.

Interior Department regulators acted with “determined disregard” by lifting and reinstituting a series of policy changes that restricted offshore drilling, following the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, U.S. District Judge, Martin Feldman of New Orleans ruled yesterday.

“Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman said in the ruling.

“Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re- imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt,” Feldman said.

Shortly after Obama became President, he canceled oil shale leases in Utah.

The truth is, ever since Barack Obama took office the President has been making it more difficult to exploit our own energy resources, one of his first actions was having the Secretary of the Interior cancel leases to exploit our shale oil reserves in Utah. It seems as if President Obama’s energy policy consists of making America more dependent on foreign oil.

Obama has been very busy grabbing up energy-rich land ever since he took office. And Michelle Malkin has been busy documenting it.

I’ve been reporting on the stealth Obama land and ocean grabs for the past year now. Quick review: Last August, I told you about the “Great Outdoors Initiative” to lock up more open spaces through executive order. This came on top on top of a separate, property-usurping initiative exposed by GOP Rep. Robert Bishop and Sen. Jim DeMint earlier this spring. According to an internal, 21-page Obama administration memo, 17 energy-rich areas in 11 states have been targeted as potential federal “monuments.” The Obama War on the West is a War on Jobs that extends from land to sea based on politicized junk science by executive fiat and czar evasion. In November, I noted the expansive Interior Secretary Ken Salazar/NLCS designation. And in February, I mentioned the federal wild lands grab slipped through by Salazar during the Christmas season lame duck session.
[nine links in that paragraph, follow the above link to find them]

Obama wants energy costs to skyrocket. It’s part of his plan.
Lock up land that can produce energy.
Shut down off-shore drilling by using a fraudulent document.
Blatantly refuse to obey a federal judge’s order.
Kill oil jobs and put oil-related businesses out of business.
Declare desire to bankrupt the coal industry (which produces 48 percent of our electricity).
Set the nuclear energy sector back 34 years at a minimum for political reasons, ignoring the science, at a cost of billions of tax-payer dollars and many high-paying jobs.

There can be no other explanation. Obama wants US energy costs to go through the roof. And that will destroy the economy. Working poor and middle class hardest hit.

Something’s Not Right

They’re having a sale! Dresses half off! That’s right half off!

Ummm, something’s not right here. Shouldn’t they be, like, all the way on?

Ethanol: An All-Around Bad Idea

There are large numbers of politicians on both sides of the aisle who love their corn alcohol.

They think it’s a good idea to put it in your car but that’s because they’ve been too busy drinking it. The numbers just don’t fit. At all. Popular Mechanics explained what it takes to make ethanol, and it ain’t pretty.

Let’s start with the math. Corn doesn’t grow like a weed. Modern corn farming involves heavy inputs of nitrogen fertilizer (made with natural gas), applications of herbicides and other chemicals (made mostly from oil), heavy machinery (which runs on diesel) and transportation (diesel again). Converting the corn into fuel requires still more energy. The ratio of how much energy is used to make ethanol versus how much it delivers is known as the energy balance, and calculating it is surprisingly complex.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory states that, “Today, 1 Btu of fossil energy consumed in producing and delivering corn ethanol results in 1.3 Btu of usable energy in your fuel tank.” Even that modest payback may be overstated. Skeptics cite the research of Cornell University professor David Pimentel, who estimates that it takes approximately 1.3 gal. of oil to produce a single gallon of ethanol.

If the benefits are in doubt, the costs are not. It would take 450 pounds of corn to yield enough ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV. Producing enough ethanol to replace America’s imported oil alone would require putting nearly 900 million acres under cultivation—or roughly 95 percent of the active farmland in the country. Once we’ve turned our farms into filling stations, where will the food come from?

There’s a simple reason that ethanol is popular with politicians: money. Substituting corn ethanol for a large fraction of the gasoline we burn will mean sluicing gushers of cash from more populated states to politically powerful farm states. And a lot of that cash will wind up in the pockets of the big agribusinesses, like Archer Daniels Midland, that dominate ethanol processing—and whose fat checkbooks wield enormous influence in Washington.

(Look at that. Big Business in bed with Big Government. Go figure.)

“Producing enough ethanol to replace America’s imported oil alone would require putting nearly 900 million acres under cultivation—or roughly 95 percent of the active farmland in the country.” But that was before the government killed California’s rich central valley farmland, so some of the active farmland is no longer. And of course, turning all your food into fuel means you don’t get to eat. It could take 1 gallon of oil to make 1.3 gallons of ethanol or 1.3 gallons of oil to make 1 gallon of ethanol. I could say 1.3 – 1, ethanol loses, class is over. But let’s say 1 – 1.3, small gain for ethanol, sorta. On to the next article.

Edmunds compared the fuel economy of E85 with gasoline and I don’t like what they saw. They went out on a 667-mile road trip from San Diego to Las Vegas and back. The trip on gasoline used 36.5 gallons and cost $124.66. The trip on E85 used 50 gallons and cost $154.29. Using the “1 gallon of oil produces 1.3 gallons of ethanol” formula, it takes 38.5 gallons of oil to make 50 gallons of ethanol. Since 50 gallons of E85 contains 7.5 gallons of gasoline, let’s just call it square. 36.5 gallons to make 50 gallons. No oil savings at all. But it cost the consumer more.

[T]he net effect is that a person choosing to run their flex-fuel vehicle on E85 on a trip like ours will spend 22.8 percent more to drive the same distance.

Okay, so we’re using the same amount of oil but paying more for it and eliminating loads of food in the process, raising the price of food. The end. Or not. The same Edmunds article continues.

By relating our observed fuel economy to CO2 emission figures found in the EPA’s Green Vehicle Guide we determined that our gasoline round trip produced 706.5 pounds of carbon dioxide. On E85, the CO2 emissions came to 703.1 pounds. The difference came out in E85’s favor, but only by a scant 0.5 percent. Call it a tie. This is certainly not the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions we had been led to expect.

Here’s the trick with that. And watch very carefully. Using gasoline, the carbon dioxide production is 706.5 pounds, but when using E85, the carbon dioxide production is 706.5 + 703.1 = 1,409.6 pounds. Did you catch that? It takes burning that petroleum to create that E85 to burn. So the only proper way to examine the CO2 output is to combine the two. And that means using E85 is far more “polluting” than merely using gasoline.

What we have so far:
It takes as much petroleum to create the ethanol as it does to just skip that step.
It costs more to drive on ethanol than on gasoline.
The CO2 output of driving on ethanol is double that of driving on gasoline.

But wait, that’s not all. From Science Daily:

Patzek is also concerned about the sustainability of industrial farming in developing nations where surgarcane and trees are grown as feedstock for ethanol and other biofuels. Using United Nations data, he examined the production cycles of plantations hundreds of billions of tons of raw material.

“One farm for the local village probably makes sense,” he says. “But if you have a 100,000 acre plantation exporting biomass on contract to Europe , that’s a completely different story. From one square meter of land, you can get roughly one watt of energy. The price you pay is that in Brazil alone you annually damage a jungle the size of Greece.“

Ten years, ten Greece-sized jungles gone. How’s that fit the environmentalist goal?

Where’s the “win” in ethanol? Politicians get elected. Big Business gets a lot of free tax-payer money. Ignorant Liberals, believing the lie, get to feel good about themselves. But as far as pollution, fuel economy, economic cost for the fuel, food inflation, it’s a lose-lose-lose-lose.

South Carolina Wants To Let You Decide

And the Washington DC Ruling Class wants to decide for you.

South Carolina Taking Light Bulb Ban into Its Own Hands (HT Protein Wisdom)

The Ruling Class Liberals in DC decided you’re not allowed to make, buy, or sell incandescent light bulbs coming soon. South Carolina is working on passing a law that will allow South Carolina firms to make and sell incandescent light bulbs within the state borders, which means people will be able to buy those light bulbs inside South Carolina after it becomes illegal in the United States. If it passes, expect immediate lawsuits coming from people who want to make your decisions for you.

The Foundry article cites the Wall Street Journal.

As a result of these and other adjustments, energy savings attributed to PG&E were pegged at 451.6 million kilowatt hours by regulators, or 73% less than the 1.7 billion kilowatt hours projected by PG&E for the 2006-2008 program.

One hitch was the compact-fluorescent burnout rate. When PG&E began its 2006-2008 program, it figured the useful life of each bulb would be 9.4 years. Now, with experience, it has cut the estimate to 6.3 years, which limits the energy savings. Field tests show higher burnout rates in certain locations, such as bathrooms and in recessed lighting. Turning them on and off a lot also appears to impair longevity.

So the energy savings wasn’t what “they” projected it to be. Imagine that “unexpected” result. And the bulbs only lasted 2/3 as long as they were projected to last. Yet another “unexpected” result. But, you see, Big Brother Ruling Class elites know better than you simpletons what’s good for you and you’re gonna like it — whether you like it or not.

The Foundry article points to another decision Big Brother made: cutting the amount of water dishwashers use. The old dishwasher used 9 gallons of water and took 84 minutes. The new one? 7 gallons of water and 120 minutes. The person estimated a water-savings of about a dime per use. I wonder how much more electricity is used to save 2 gallons of water.

Remember the Big Brother Ruling Class decision to force broadcast TV stations across the country to switch from analog to digital? And how wonderful that is? I’m here to tell you it wasn’t wonderful for me. With analog broadcast, I could pick up TV stations 100 miles away with a 10 dollar set of rabbit ears. When the mandated digital started, I couldn’t pick up stations 50 miles away unless I built a tower outside the house and put a big antenna on the tower. Which meant nobody in town could watch broadcast TV using only rabbit ears.

All these mandatory decision-thefts that Big Brother decided are good for you and illegal if you don’t abide by their decisions for you… They’re all “unexpectedly” less efficient, more expensive, more of a hindrance, and altogether nuisances. South Carolina thinks you’re adult enough to decide for yourself. Washington DC thinks you’re too irresponsible to be allowed to make your own decisions.

Liberals like to call Conservatives fascist. But it’s the Liberals who decide what you are not allowed to have in your light socket, how you are allowed to receive your broadcasts, what you have to buy. If it’s “bad for you” Liberals will find a way to outlaw it for your own good. If it’s “good for you” Liberals will find a way to mandate it for your own good. And Liberals get to be the ones who decide what’s “good” and what’s “bad.” Not you. So, who is it that’s fascist again?