Free Republic

Green activists today are among the most virulently anti-Jewish. The Green Party mayor of Aachen, Hilde Scheidt, has just waged a media campaign against Israel. Prominent German author Henryk Broder called her a “Green anti-Semite,” after she defended a cartoon depicting a man sporting a Star of David on his bib as he devours a young Palestinian boy with a fork draped in an American flag and a knife with the word “Gaza” written on it. Back in 1991, German Green Party’s spokesman Hans Christian Stroebele defended Saddam Hussein’s rockets on Tel Aviv because “Iraq’s attacks are the logical, almost...

Just when it seemed like things couldn't get worse, Indiana received more bad news on the electric vehicle front Wednesday as another promising hopeful announced it would call it quits. Bright Automotive, which had plans to deliver 300 manufacturing jobs to Indiana by 2012 pending the outcome of a loan from the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, announced Wednesday it has withdrawn its DOE application and will wind down operations in Indiana. In a scathing letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Bright Automotive Chief Executive Reuben Munger and Chief Operating Officer Mike Donoughe described an overly bureaucratic...

Dear BP couldn’t clean up an oil spill in the Gulf. How in the world will Shell do it in the Arctic? The Obama Administration has given Shell tentative approval to explore for oil in Alaska’s Polar Bear Seas. Tell Secretary Salazar to deny Shell the final permits it needs to begin drilling this summer! The Obama Administration is now paving the way for Shell to begin drilling this summer in both of our nation’s “Polar Bear Seas.” We must not let Shell roll the dice with America’s Arctic, where a blowout and spill could devastate populations of polar bears,...

Obama's Energy Plan -- Algae By Susan Jones February 24, 2012 (CNSNews.com) - "The American people aren't stupid," President Obama said on Thursday -- as he insisted that drilling for more oil on U.S. territory is "not a strategy to solve our energy challenge." The president's solution? Algae, for one. There are no quick fixes to the nation's eneergy problem, the president said, dismissing Republican calls for more drilling as a "bumper sticker." "We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance -- algae," the president said at...

Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers. Obama’s program to invest federal funds in start-up companies — and the failure of some of those companies — is becoming a rallying cry for opponents in the presidential race. Mitt Romney has promised to focus on Obama’s “record” as a “venture capitalist.” And in ads and speeches, conservative groups and the Republican candidates are zeroing in on the administration’s decision to extend $535 million to the now-shuttered solar firm Solyndra and...

President Obama and his West Wing aides ignored a subpoena of documents pertaining to the Solyndra loan guarantee even after congressional investigators met with White House officials to negotiate the scope of the subpoena, according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "The White House's failure to comply with today's document deadline is a sad milestone on the path chosen by this administration to obstruct and delay our investigation rather than cooperate and help deliver answers for taxpayers," committee chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee chairman Cliff Stearns R-Fla., said in a statement this evening. House investigators...

I discovered an interesting fact while reviewing the 2011 IRS form 8936 used for the $7500 EV tax credit. While under most circumstances it is the wealthy purchasers of Chevy Volts and other high priced plug-in vehicles that get the taxpayer-funded handout, it appears that General Motors' dealerships that sell the vehicles to government entities are benefiting by being able to claim the credits. These dealers are able to double-dip into the seemingly endless pool of taxpayer funds designated for cronies of the Obama Administration under the guise of green initiatives. Not only do taxpayers pay for Chevy Volts...

Mark Levin talked about this last night. You can hear it right here. This comes from the first hour of his show. In the LA Times, October 22nd, 1989, David M Graber, a research biologist with the National Park Service, wrote the following: Mother Nature as a Hothouse Flower : THE END OF NATURE by Bill McKibben (Paragraph 9)There is no chalk line between man and nature that we have crossed. We contaminated the planet with atmospheric hydrocarbons and metals beginning with the Industrial Revolution. The Atomic Age wrote another indelible signature in radioisotopes on every bit of the Earth's...

Peter H. Gleick, a water and climate analyst who has been studying aspects of global warming for more than two decades, in recent years became an aggressive critic of organizations and individuals casting doubt on the seriousness of greenhouse-driven climate change. He used blogs, congressional testimony, group letters and other means to make his case. Now, Gleick has admitted to an act that leaves his reputation in ruins and threatens to undercut the cause he spent so much time pursuing. His summary, just published on his blog at Huffington Post, speaks for itself. SNIP---- The Heartland Institute had already signaled...

Rick Santorum says President Barack Obama is pushing a radical environmental agenda that unwisely limits energy production and turns its back on science. Santorum told voters in eastern Ohio on Monday that science is on the side of those who want to aggressively produce more oil and natural gas in America. He said the notion of global warming is not climate science but "political science."

It was recently announced that yet another green energy firm supported by massive amounts of US taxpayer money had gone bankrupt. Ener1, which Vice-President Biden once incorrectly, but perhaps presciently, called “Enron1” filed for bankruptcy. Only a year ago, Ener1 received $118 million in stimulus funds...

The Auburn Hills, Mich., company filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit after it was unable to come to terms on an out-of-court deal with its convertible bondholders, according to Michael E. Schostak, director of business development at Energy Conversion Devices.

People who claim that “the science is settled” on global warming have to be pretty unsettled by the science news in the last week.“Setttled science”, of course, means that we are inevitably headed toward a disastrous warming of surface temperatures as forecast by some computer models, and we therefore need an international carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, pronto.Settled science would know all of the important “forcings” and “feedbacks” in the climate system, such as the sensitivity of surface temperature to changes in carbon dioxide (a forcing) and the behavior of clouds, which could either enhance or counter warming (a feedback).Now...

Even the worst of presidents cannot stop the best of times, and it's beginning to look as if an unprecedented energy boom just might save President Barack Obama's re-election, despite his undying efforts to thwart energy development. He's worked hard at it, you know, and few things I've read sum it up better than a Wall Street Journal article by Stephen Moore. He interviewed Harold Hamm, an oil-company CEO who first discovered the Bakken oil fields in Montana and North Dakota, which was a bit like discovering gold in California in the 19th century but more than that. This is...

In the final days of Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s tenure, the state Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth trumpeted the success of green jobs created in the solar industry. “Total job creation projected of 21,592” the April 12, 2010, DELEG presentation claimed. Almost two years later, the large majority of those jobs never saw the light of day. Even if they had come to fruition, they would just be a small part of the entire Michigan economy, says James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. For example, the state of Michigan created 218,137...

STOCKTON - The city has a tentative plan to combat climate change, more than three years after reaching a legal settlement with the Sierra Club and then-Attorney General Jerry Brown. It wouldn't be cheap. If adopted by the Stockton City Council later this year, the plan could cost the city $28.5 million and could cost the private sector $240 million, the document says. The plan itself acknowledges it would require "substantial effort on the part of the entire Stockton community" at a time when people are struggling to pay their bills and keep businesses open.

Fisker Automotive, an electric car maker that received a half-billion-dollar loan from the federal government, said Monday that it has laid off workers in Delaware and California. The layoffs include 26 workers at a former General Motors plant in Wilmington that Fisker is retooling to manufacture its Nina plug-in hybrid sedan. Another 40 contractors and employees who were working in design and development of Fisker’s Karma luxury car in Anaheim, Calif., also have been cut. The layoffs come as Fisker is seeking to renegotiate its loan agreement with the Department of Energy. Fisker has received $193 million of the $529...

The program has shown poor results, and the agency that oversees training has stopped referring people. Government-funded training for so-called green jobs has come to a near standstill in Snohomish County, having produced lackluster results. Nationwide, about $500 million in Recovery Act funds were allocated to train nearly 125,000 people for green careers. Nearly a year and a half later, the audit found, only 52,762 people had been trained and 8,035 had found jobs. The program's underwhelming success rate, both nationally and locally, has people worried. The modest success rate of green training programs didn't come as a surprise to...

Snips from excerpt website: Japanese solar company Sanyo plans to lay off about 140 employees in California, or about 40 percent of its manufacturing workforce in the United States, as it shifts its strategy in order to compete with large rivals, particularly those from China. The company, which is part of Panasonic, is buiding a large factory in Malaysia that will make wafers and turn them into solar cells and then panels. Panasonic plans to invest 45 billion yen (about $580 million) in the new factory. A fellow manufacturer in Japan, Sumco, announced Friday it would get out of the...

Good afternoon. David's friend and chief meteorologist of the Power of 5 weather network at WEWS Cleveland, Mark Johnson, has recently been drawing fire for his claims, “Earth hasn’t warmed in 15 years” story on newsnet5.com (http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/weather/weather_news/United-Kingdom-Meteorology-Office-declares-Earth-hasnt-warmed-in-15-years). The group, “thinkprogress.org”, began the criticism. The group “Forecast the Facts” on Facebook, (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Forecast-the-Facts/290379014343508) also joined in the crusade. Just when things were just staying on one meteorologist, they decided to go after another Cleveland meteorologist, WJW FOX 8 weather, Andre Bernier. Andre’s story related to the same topic titled, “Serious global…COOLING?” (http://andrebernier.com/?p=430).