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In case you needed any more evidence that President Obama's "all of the above" talking point on energy policy is a joke, Nevada Assemblyman "Tick" Segerblom, D.-Clark County, just wrote an op-ed bragging about how a recent ruling from Obama's EPA will kill coal power. Media analysts from left and right are predicting that the most recent EPA rule-making decision spells the ultimate end of Big Coal as utilities turn to cleaner, cheaper sources for energy. In the five years since the Supreme Court made its ruling, Nevada has moved faster than many other states to accommodate a new regulatory...

Even before he took the oath of office, Barack Obama embraced the financial crisis of 2008.  In the words of his then Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” and Obama saw the recession as an opportunity for him to play investor picking winners and losers with hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars.  This was his moment to “transform” the American economy to match his vision for a brave new world.  Lavishing billions on green technology was high on Obama’s list of favorites.  In just three years, his Administration has pumped $80 billion into...

Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It's hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation. Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space. Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation's and Americans' financial...

When President Barack Obama promised this week to open 75 percent of potential offshore gas and oil resources to drilling and praised the controversial fracking method for extracting untapped oil reserves on land, a collective shudder went through his green constituency. Welcome to election-year rhetoric. The green lobby is learning what other loyal Democratic Party constituencies have learned about being taken for granted. Like blacks and union members before them, the green lobby is discovering that, despite promises to champion their cause, reelection campaign rhetoric commands higher priority. It's safe for the president to offend loyalists. To whom would they...

Federal funds skew business investment during Obama termDisturbing revelations continue to emerge about how more than half a billion dollars of taxpayer dollars were shoveled into the Solyndra solar-panel boondoggle. It is becoming increasingly clear that the only “green” involved in this scandal is money. There is no compelling reason to empower the government to use public funds to engage in risky investments. There also is no reason to believe that government bureaucrats - especially political appointees, not usually known for their business acumen or technical expertise - are smart enough to pick winners in competitive business sectors. Energy Secretary...

A solar power station in space measuring several kilometres in length may sound like something from a science fiction film, but the reality is that this idea could well be operational and supplying much of the worlds energy requirements within less than 20 years. Space based solar power stations are not a new idea, in fact they have been researched since the 1970’s. Back in 2009 the Californian state regulators granted approval to the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Solaren Corp. to start creating a solar based power plant in space. Solaren, founded by veterans of Hughes Aircraft, Boeing...

Three years ago, a winner was chosen to make Rhode Island the nation's first state with an offshore wind farm. Republican Gov. Donald Carcieri made the announcement: Deepwater Wind Inc., -- a well-capitalized New Jersey wind power development company with hotshot lobbyists -- won the contract. Carcieri unveiled the $1.3 billion, 800-job venture in language fit for a legacy: "This is much more than an energy project. This is about creating a new industry in Rhode Island; an industry that puts Rhode Island at the epicenter of the emerging alternative energy market."

President Obama’s war on fossil fuels is adding to instability in a world already racked by international debt, demographic pressures and unpredictable, galloping technological advances. The domestic implications of his policies are increasingly apparent: The closing off of prospecting and drilling is costing tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of jobs. The attempt to choose winners and losers through “green energy” subsidies is producing market distortions, huge losses of taxpayers’ funds and corruption rarely seen since the Soviet Union’s Gosplan. Using executive fiat for arbitrary environmental rulings after Mr. Obama’s “cap and trade” climate plan quietly died in Congress is eroding...

No joke. Here's what Secretary Steven Chu, a top official in the Obama administration who's in charge of the U.S. Department of Energy, claimed today at Sen. Harry Reid's National Clean Energy Summit: So the government played an incredibly intimate role in all the technologies that led to prosperity in the United States, and we must not lose sight of that fact. And if you don't believe he said that — and given how ludicrous that statement is, I wouldn't blame you — here's video of his comment (30:50 mark). Browse through these lists of 10 popular inventions and the top...

Vice President Biden is slated to deliver the keynote address at a Las Vegas energy summit hosted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) later this month. The fourth annual National Clean Energy Summit will also feature remarks from Center for American Progress President John Podesta, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), among others. “The Obama administration has proven time and again it understands the importance of building a competitive 21st-century economy through clean energy investments and policies that are focused on putting people back to work, reducing costs for consumers and...

EPA Deputy Administrator Mathy Stanislaus EPA Deputy Administrator Mathy Stanislaus should be given credit for showing up Thursday to an Environment and Energy subcommittee hearing, but may not be returning any time soon.  Let’s just say his performance was cringe-inducing as he spun like a top attempting to deflect the very pointed, and basic yes-or-no questions of Rep. Cory Gardner (R – Colorado).  An exasperated Stanislaus even resorted to a face-palm maneuver to regain his rhetorical footing.  Of course, YouTube video exists…see below.It’s clear that the GOP wants to eliminate the EPA’s current attempt/ability to regulate greenhouse gases (CO2) and,...

Renewable energy is all the rage. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law last week to encourage more of it. The law "encouraged" in the way government encourages everything: Do it or else. Rather than produce a mere 20 percent of California's energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar by the year 2020, state utilities now are ordered to generate a third of it that way. President Barack Obama trumpets similar lofty-sounding goals for the nation, although he's not having as much success, considering Congress isn't as rabidly left-leaning green as California's Legislature. California Gov. Jerry Brown, sitting,...

Just as Japan’s earthquake raises fears of catastrophe from a nuclear meltdown and Mideast turmoil jeopardizes the world’s supply of conventional energy, along comes word of a possible scientific breakthrough that holds out the hope of cheap, abundant power. Cold fusion - discredited and vilified in the past - is back in the news. The potential benefits are great enough that, despite past failures, the technology deserves a fair hearing from the scientific community this time.

Last week the House Energy & Power Subcommittee marked up H.R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act. Today, the full House Energy & Commerce Committee will mark up the bill.Opponents, especially Reps. Waxman, Markey, and Inslee, viciously attacked the bill last Thursday. Their arguments are reviewed in detail at the blog GlobalWarming.Org. The post concludes with this summary of the Waxman-Markey-Inslee argument as follows: We know what is good for America and the world. It’s a future without fossil fuels. We can’t persuade the people’s representatives to support our agenda and turn it into law. Therefore, it is necessary for...

(Reuters) - The United States should "put the brakes on" new nuclear power plants until fully understanding what happened to the earthquake-crippled nuclear reactors in Japan, the chairman of the U.S. Senate's homeland security panel said on Sunday.

Obama's clean energy boondoggle will be expensive for America President Barack Obama uttered not a peep about global warming in his State of Union this year. No dire warnings about climate apocalypse. No calls for cap-and-trade. Has this cold winter convinced him to put his global warming agenda on ice?Hardly. Indeed, even in this age of deficits and debt, the president’s budget is chock full of global warming items—except he wraps them around a new cause: clean energy.And that may be enough to get Republicans to sign on.That "clean energy" is code for "anti-warming" is obvious, given that even Environmental...

Here’s the story: “We can’t control the weather,” Julie Vitek said in an interview from company headquarters in Houston, Texas. “We’re looking to see if we can cope with it more effectively, through the testing of a couple of techniques.”She says the conditions in northern New Brunswick have wreaked havoc on the wind farm this winter.“For us, cold and dry weather is good and that’s what’s typical in the region. Cold and wet weather can be a problem without any warmer days to prompt thawing, which has been the case this year.“This weather pattern has been particularly challenging.”Full article here...

President Obama in his recent SOTU address said that “this is our generation’s sputnik moment” referring to the need to use science and technology to develop cheaper clean energy (among other things). It seems the Chinese were listening because last week they announced a focused effort to achieve technological leadership in thorium molten salt reactors.From EnergyFromThoriumThe People’s Republic of China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology, it was announced in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) annual conference on Tuesday, January 25. An article in the Wenhui News followed on Wednesday (Google English translation)....

Was this part of the inspiration for Obama’s SOTU goal: “by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources”?During last night’s State of the Union Address, president Obama essentially abandoned AGW proponents, and shifted the focus to energy, including uttering the greens most dreaded term: “clean coal”. He also set a bold goal that raised some eyebrows: I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this...

The dumbest criticism the Democrats' media sheep make of Tea Party members is that Tea Partiers don't accept the global warming nonsense that most Democrats and their media sheep have fallen for. Most Tea Party members aren't climate experts, but they are smart enough to recognize a political con when they see one. In business cons, police warn that if something sounds too good to be true it probably is. In political cons, if something sounds too bad to be true it probably is too bad to be true. Like most con artists, the people attempting to continue Enron's global...