Campaign '08: After the coldest April in 11 years, John McCain offers a "market friendly" approach to global warming — saying we "have a genius for adapting, solving problems." But shouldn't the problems be real?

McCain is the last politician we'd accuse of pandering. His honesty, steadfastness and independence have earned him the right to call his campaign the Straight Talk Express.

So we were disappointed when, at an Oregon wind turbine manufacturer on Monday, he seemed to embrace the shaky environmentalist position on global warming.

Saying the costs of our reliance on fossil fuels "have added up now in the atmosphere, in the oceans and all across the natural world," he proposed that by 2050, the U.S. should reduce CO2 emissions to a level 60% below that emitted in 1990. The question is, why?

Cold water was thrown on the climate-change disaster hypothesis by the National Climate Data Center's recent announcement that last month was the coldest April in more than a decade and the 29th coolest since record keeping began 114 years ago.

The average temperature was 1 degree cooler than the average April temperature of the entire 20th century.

A few weeks ago, as North America was emerging from one of its coldest and snowiest winters in decades, the climate center issued a statement saying that snow cover on the Eurasian land mass had been the most extensive ever recorded, and that this March had been only the 63rd warmest since 1895.

On April 24, the World Wildlife Fund published a study, based on last September's data, showing that Arctic ice had shrunk from 13 million square kilometers to just 3 million. What the WWF omitted was that by March the Arctic ice had recovered to 14 million square kilometers and that the ice cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska was at the highest level ever recorded.

In fact, the United States already leads the world in both energy efficiency per unit of GDP and control of CO2 emissions. We recently pointed out that, according to the 2008 Index of Leading Economic Indicators, U.S. emissions grew by 6.6% from 1997 to 2004, vs. 18% for the world as a whole and 21.1% for those nations that signed the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases.

The U.S. reduced carbon emissions from natural gas and petroleum by 1.7% and 1.5% from 2005 to 2006 and coal emissions by 0.9%. Energy intensity (energy consumed per dollar of real GDP) fell more than 4% as total energy declined 0.9% and the U.S. economy expanded 3.3%.

We were pleased that McCain endorsed nuclear power as a pollution-free source of energy that can help us toward energy independence while reducing emissions. But the fact is that we will need more energy, not less, by 2050, from all sources. Both economic and technological growth will demand more.

The nation that first split the atom should first stop splitting hairs and revive nuclear power. We should also be taking more American oil out of our soil. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. McCain is right about our ability to solve problems. The nation that put men on the moon can find a way to burn coal cleanly.

We definitely should not subsidize burning food in our gas tanks. McCain heroically opposed ethanol subsidies in 2000, running third in the Iowa caucuses, and he rightly opposes them today. And we have nothing against wind and solar, if they are economically competitive.

 

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We are setting at $3.65 a gallon for unleaded in Texas. Our imports are at an all time high and so are our oil prices. Ethanol has been a disaster. The dollar slide has been a disaster. The economy is contracting and the 3 remaining candidates (and most politicians) are talking of solving global warming. Global Warming if it exists can not be solved by governments or men. Goofy liberal government policies caused the energy crisis.

It’s a simple problem. We have oil and natural gas. It costs more to extract it than it did 30 years ago. But it’s here offshore the U.S., Alaska and on Federal lands. How much more pain can you stand before force our leaders to unleash the power and mite of the private sector to find, produce and refine the energy our economy needs?

Are you ready to tackle problems you can solve and let God handle the rest?

Energy: In their ongoing war against U.S. oil producers, Senate Democrats say they'll slap Big Oil with a windfall profits tax and take away $17 billion in tax breaks, among other punishments. This is an energy plan?

The planned 25% tax on windfall profits would be imposed on oil company earnings above what the Senate's wise members decided was "reasonable." Never mind that what's "reasonable" to one person might be punitive to another.

Senators also want to impose steep penalties on "price gouging" — despite the fact that some 17 separate studies have found it doesn't exist. The plan amounts to little more than an attempt to impose price controls — a socialist tool dressed up in populist garb.

Democrats hailed their new measure as an attack on "the root causes of high gas prices." That's one of the more laughable comments to emerge from the Senate in some time.

As any student who's taken Econ 101 at the local junior college can tell you, higher taxes don't encourage production; they discourage it. But Senate Democrats apparently played hooky the day taxes were discussed. They should at least have read the report from their own nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in 2006.

It shows that from 1980 to 1986, the last time the U.S. had a windfall profits tax on oil companies, the results were disappointing. As the chart shows, oil companies were hit hard by the tax. And in line with basic economic theory, they produced less oil, not more.

"Over the entire 1980-1986 period," the study said, "the (windfall profits tax) reduced domestic oil production from between 320 million barrels . . . and 1,268 million barrels."

The study also concluded: "The effect of reducing domestic oil production was to increase the level of imported oil."

At the time, the U.S. imported about 30% of its oil; today, we import about 60%. In part, that jump in oil dependency was due to the huge tax advantage we gave foreign oil companies in the 1980s — and to the continuing advantage we give them today by refusing to let our oil companies produce more crude from our own reserves.

The Democratic Party's bad energy policies in the 1970s hit poor Americans hardest, while delivering our energy future into the hands of OPEC's unelected poobahs. Now they want to do it again.

By the way, if they try to sell you on the idea that this will be a deficit-cutting move, don't believe it. Revenues from the windfall tax were far less than expected, because producers pumped less and nontaxed imports flooded our market. Compared with a forecast of $393 billion in windfall tax revenues from 1980 to 1988, Congress got a mere $80 billion.

In short, the windfall profits tax is a loser — on every level.

Likewise, the Senate's proposals for new penalties on "price gouging" are also fated to fail. This we know because when Jimmy Carter tried price controls, they resulted in massive shortages, blocklong lines at gas stations and, ultimately, gasoline rationing.

Perhaps the worst lie uttered in defense of price controls and higher taxes is that the less well-off will benefit. Don't believe it.

Even as Democrats mouth pieties about "bringing down the price of gasoline" for the poor, they will in fact be hitting working Americans with a big tax hike. "A windfall profits tax on big oil companies may sound good in theory," the nonpartisan Tax Foundation said last week, "but it will be paid by individuals." Big Oil doesn't pay the tax; you do.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized President Bush for offering "two ways of dealing with the energy crisis — drill and veto." But that's a far better plan than anything the Democrats have offered.

Tapping the hundreds of billions of barrels of oil that we have on land and offshore makes sense. It would add supply and lower the price. Every Democratic plan now on the board — every one — would do the opposite.

Barack Obama's Fuzzy Gas-Tax Math

Energy Policy: Barack Obama thinks a federal gas-tax holiday is a political ploy. But when he was in the Illinois Senate, he voted for a state holiday three times. These days, he prefers a holiday on gasoline production.

In an ad that aired before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, candidate Obama said: "I'm here to tell you the truth. We could suspend the gas tax for six months, but that's not going to bring down gas prices long-term. You're gonna save about 25, 30 dollars, or half a tank of gas."

Speaking in Indianapolis before the ad was aired, Obama threw different numbers to a swooning crowd. "I know it polls well," he said, "but here's the truth: It would save the average family 30 bucks over the course of three months — $28, or more precisely, 30 cents a day — which is less than (a) cup of coffee at the 7-Eleven."

If that's his idea of math, we don't want him in charge of the federal budget or U.S. energy policy. So which is it — $30 over three months or over six? And he must think we don't drive very much.

The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents a gallon, so accepting his 30 cents a day figure, he must think we use a little more than a gallon and a half a day, including weekends, driving to our jobs, to the mall, to our kid's soccer games, even to the 7-Eleven.

If he's talking $30 over six months or 180 days, he's talking about 16 or 17 cents a day, which means he thinks the average American family uses less than a gallon a day.

Obama took a different view on the issue when he was an Illinois legislator, voting at least three times in favor of temporarily lifting the state's 5% sales tax on gasoline. The tax holiday was finally approved during a special session in June 2000, when Illinois motorists were furious that gas prices had just topped $2 a gallon in Chicago. Seems he was for a gas-tax moratorium before he was against it.

Today he opposes it because he thinks those evil oil companies will simply raise prices and pocket the 18.4 cents themselves. Apparently it's better for American consumers to outsource their money by paying Hugo Chavez $120 a barrel while we leave oil in the ground. That's a tax on consumers Obama doesn't itemize.

At least the oil companies would take that 18.4 cents and use it to find more oil in the few places Obama and his ilk have not placed off-limits. As we've noted, according to Ernst & Young, from 1992 to 2006 the U.S. oil industry spent $1.25 trillion on long-term investment vs. profits of $900 billion.

The man who had a Che Guevara poster in one of his campaign offices doesn't mind if Cuba, with Chinese assistance, explores for oil 45 miles off Florida while U.S companies are blocked from further Gulf of Mexico production.

Congress has also put off-limits vast areas in the Gulf, Alaska, the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere. The Arctic Wildlife Refuge contains more than 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Its output would equal 5% of current U.S. oil use, or enough to replace 15 years of imports from Saudi Arabia.

The Chukchi Sea, a vast area off northwestern Alaska, is estimated to contain 15 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota and Montana is conservatively estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to contain 3.65 billion barrels of oil.

Get up Hillary, Get Up- Hit Him Again

BRAZIL SHOWS OIL NOT ALCOHOL IS KEY TO ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

In recent years, analysts have touted Brazil as an example the United States should follow on the path to "energy independence."  Brazil's success is often attributed to its thriving ethanol market, but this is at most only a small part of the story, says H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Consider:

• Brazil uses much less gasoline and diesel than the United States; while Brazil consumes 20 billion gallons of ethanol, gasoline and diesel combined each year, the United States uses 182 billion gallons a year, or over 9 times as much.
• Brazil's climate is suited to growing sugarcane, which requires half as much land as corn per gallon of ethanol produced and it provides 800 percent more energy than the fossil fuel used to make it.

While Brazil's embrace of ethanol doesn't have much to teach the United States, its policies with regard to domestic oil and gas production do provide an instructive lesson, says Burnett.  In the 1980s, despite huge subsidies Brazil began experiencing ethanol shortages.  As a result, it started promoting policies to boost domestic oil production.  Indeed, increased production and new oil discoveries played the biggest role in liberating Brazil from dependence on foreign energy.

For example:

• Brazil increased domestic crude oil production an average of more than 9 percent a year from 1980 to 2005, to 1.6 million barrels of oil per day.
• Most notably, in 2007, Brazil announced a huge oil discovery off its coast that could increase its oil reserves by 8 billion barrels, or 40 percent.
• By contrast, from 1980 to 2005, U.S. crude oil production fell about 2 percent a year or 40 percent overall.

Source: H. Sterling Burnett, "Brazil Shows Oil Not Alcohol Is Key to Energy Independence," KERA, May 7, 2008.

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Weather Channel In Sex Storm

On block, cable network seeks cloak on anchor harassment details

MAY 6--As The Weather Channel's owner negotiates a multibillion-dollar sale of the cable outlet, the network's lawyers are angling to keep secret the details of a blistering arbitration ruling in favor of a former anchorwoman who charges that she was subjected to unrelenting sexual harassment by her male co-anchor, who was "romantically obsessed" with her and frequently made crude remarks like, "Will you lick my swizzle stick?" Hillary Andrews, 38, contends that the cable network's brass turned a blind eye to the harassment because her co-anchor, Bob Stokes, was popular with viewers and scored high ratings. According to recent court filings, Andrews won her arbitration case three months ago and the final ruling was "highly critical of conduct by both Stokes and TWC management." The network is now seeking to keep details of the arbitrator's 17-page report secret, while Andrews wants to publicly file the document in a lawsuit she has brought against the 50-year-old Stokes in a Georgia state court. In an April 24 federal court filing, an excerpt of which you'll find below, Andrews reported that "TWC fired Stokes the day after" the arbitration award was issued on January 31 and is now "understandably eager to assure that the Arbitrator's findings and conclusions never see the light of day." Stokes did not respond to a phone message left at his home and his attorney, Jeff Kent, declined comment on the court actions. Court records show that Andrews was paired with Stokes after her September 2003 hiring, and that she replaced a female "on-camera meteorologist" who had worked with Stokes for three years. According to Andrews's lawsuit against Stokes, the prior anchor was abused daily by him and "routinely hid in the women's dressing room in between shifts to avoid contact with him." The woman, Andrews alleged, was forced out of TWC after repeatedly complaining to management about Stokes's harassment. Andrews claims that "history quickly repeated itself" when Stokes began harassing her, though his behavior was "worse for [her] than for her predecessors because Stokes was sexually attracted to her and romantically obsessed with her." Stokes, she claimed, made crude sexual remarks to her, leered at her chest, and followed her into the women's dressing room. He also allegedly questioned her "over and over again, non-stop" about her sex life, and once noted, "It tortures me when you wear those heels and skirt." When she rebuffed his advances, Andrews charged, Stokes's "hostility and volatility became a constant" and he sought to "sabotage" her on-air performance and even resorted to insulting her during live shows. Though initially "loath to complain" about Stokes for fear of "career suicide," Andrews eventually reported his behavior to TWC officials and sought a reassignment with a new co-anchor. Instead, Andrews alleged, she was relegated to a series of undesirable assignments, including "the overnight shift--the same assignment [TWC] had given Ms. Andrews's predecessor after she complained about Stokes." Andrews filed her arbitration claim shortly before her three-year contract expired in August 2006. According to recent press accounts, The Weather Channel's owner, Virginia-based Landmark Communications, has been accepting bids for the network, which it optimistically values at $5 billion. Suitors for the cable channel (and its popular weather.com web site) reportedly include a Who's Who of media giants, including CBS, NBC Universal, Time Warner, Comcast, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."

C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."

Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.

Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.

Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them."

In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."

Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong.

In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.

In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association: There's a 1,000- to 2,500- year supply.

Here are my questions:

In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of man-made global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?

When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome?

In 1939, when the Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken?

Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to man-made global warming?

Here are a few facts:

More than 95% of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit.