Thanking Mark Udall for the Gas Price Pain that Keeps Many Home This Fourth of July

An important holiday weekend is almost upon us, so you won't see much more posting here between now and next Monday. But here's something unpleasant to think about, especially for those Coloradans planning to travel in celebration of the long Independence Day weekend:

Record high gas prices likely await motorists this Fourth of July weekend.

Nationally, regular unleaded gasoline averages $4.092, an all-time record according to AAA. That's more than $1 above the price a year ago.

In Fort Collins-Loveland, the average price Wednesday was $4.017, just below the record of $4.018, set Sunday. The average price a year ago was $3.136, according to AAA.

High gas prices will likely keep many motorists home this year, AAA predicts.

If you're one of those who has opted for the "stay-cation" because of high gas prices, you still need to remember your manners. Be sure to drop a thank-you note to Boulder liberal Mark Udall for the chance to stay home and spend more time with those close to you. If you're feeling generous, you could also congratulate Udall for finally achieving the goal of inflicting intense consumer pain at the pump that fits the radical agenda of his environmental interest group friends.

You see, Mark Udall and company don't mind imposing some poverty on hardship and families as they impose their will on society. Some middle-class families' belt-tightening includes passing up the opportunity to travel around Independence Day. Are Mark Udall and his environmentalist friends trapped near their homes - be it Boulder, Eldorado Springs, Denver, or Aspen?

The rest of us would like to see an increase in domestic energy supply to tide us over until truly affordable and usable renewable energy is available. I'll let new blogger Civil Sense sum up, since he does it so well:

One of the reasons America is so free is the nearly limitless personal mobility that the automobile allows. Tomorrow’s technology will solve the energy problems of tomorrow. Today, we need to develop our own domestic oil resources to keep energy prices lower until these new technologies are ready to compete at a larger scale on the energy markets.

That's Bob Schaffer-style common sense, so much at odds with the painful Mark Udall experiment in social engineering. Enjoy your long weekend at home!

A Bleak Future

Today, the Rocky Mountain News has a guest editorial celebrating a vote by the Fort Collins city council opposing uranium mining in its vicinity. The goal of the activists isn't just to stop uranium mining near Fort Collins, it is to stop it everywhere:

We encourage other communities in Colorado to take a long and hard look when uranium mines are proposed in their areas...

On Dec. 4th, the city of Fort Collins made history by opposing this mine, but what it also did was help write a new history of Colorado. Instead of the history our generation inherited - one dotted with mines, endless pollution and endless Superfund clean-up costs - the next generation might inherit a cleaner, greener Colorado, one that protects both the economy and the environment.

We expect Mark Udall to jump on this bandwagon, not because it is good policy, but because he is reflexively anti-nuclear power.

No one in the environmental community, let alone Mark Udall, seems to realize that we will eventually outrun our ability to produce enough renewable power to meet our needs. Our population won't stop growing. If we want to break our dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear energy must have a place at the table.

If we, as a state and nation, cannot accept and act on that simple fact, our children and grandchildren will have a bleak future. Worse, it will be artificially and needlessly bleak. Doubtless there was a lot of back slapping and self congratulations in Fort Collins outside council chambers, but it was terribly misplaced.

Renewable Science Uncertain

Al Gore claims that the science is settled, but is it?

Using biofuel instead of gasoline in cars is generally considered to cut carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, although some scientists say greenhouse gases released during the production of biofuel could offset those gains.

And new studies question the impact on water quality.

More scientists are looking at the entire corn-to-fuel life-cycle of ethanol production and trying to assess the impacts. Researchers at the National Research Council are concerned that growing more corn for ethanol production could harm local water quality, according to a new report released in October

From MIT:

“Agricultural shifts to growing corn and expanding biofuel crops into regions with little agriculture, especially dry areas, could change current irrigation practices and greatly increase pressure on water resources in many parts of the United States,” the committee said in its report. “The amount of rainfall and other hydroclimate conditions from region to region causes significant variations in the water requirement for the same crop.”

The report also urged big agriculture to adopt new technologies that can increase crop yield while conserving water and reducing negative environmental impacts, such as soil erosion and runoff pollution.“We must recognize that the current state of the U.S. agroecosystem is not sustainable,” said Entekhabi, an hydrologist who studies land-atmosphere processes and is director of MIT's Parsons Laboratory for Environmental Science and Engineering.

“The use of energy-intensive and industrially produced fertilizers and pesticides are finding their way into water and food supplies for humans and animals. Soil erosion and loss of soil fertility is continuing unabated. U.S. agriculture needs to shift to more ecologically sound and sustainable conditions.”

Udall Committing a Crime Against Humanity?

Cornfusion isn't the only problem with corn ethanol:

A U.N. expert on Friday called the growing practice of converting food crops into biofuel "a crime against humanity,'' saying it is creating food shortages and price jumps that cause millions of poor people to go hungry...

The world price of wheat doubled in one year and the price of corn quadrupled, leaving poor countries, especially in Africa, unable to pay for the imported food needed to feed their people, he said. And poor people in those countries are unable to pay the soaring prices for the food that does come in, he added.

''So it's a crime against humanity'' to devote agricultural land to biofuel production, Ziegler said a news conference. ''What has to be stopped is ... the growing catastrophe of the massacre (by) hunger in the world,'' he said.

OK, it is time to put some names to these perps. Who would have guessed that Mark Udall, Ed Perlmutter, Ken Salizar, John Salazar, Bill Ritter and Diana DeGette would stoop to commit a crime against humanity-against the poor in Africa and South America?

One wonders if, when they go to the dock to answer for their crimes, they will use that famous and unsuccessful defense used in Nuremberg "We were just following orders - this time, the orders of the environmentalist lobby."

[ Jean ] Ziegler, a sociology professor at the University of Geneva and the University of the Sorbonne in Paris, presented a report Thursday to the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee saying a five-year moratorium on biofuel production would allow time for new technologies for using agricultural byproducts instead of food itself.

A Nobel Prize "Co-Winner" Speaks Out

Best Destiny has an excellent essay on John R Christy, and we suggest readers who are not mind numbed by environmentalist propaganda read it. Of course, Mark Udall, who many think believes he is a high priest of environmentalism and thus is entitled to his own facts will want to skip both the Best Destiny and the Christy WSJ article, "My Nobel Moment." Christy writes:

I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time...

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"

We recently wrote about the high relative costs of wind power, but Rossputin put our essay to shame when he published an item which illuminates the costs of ethanol. We are spending $128 Billion to avoid importing 2.3 billion in oil.

Christy notes:

My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."

Gazette: Mark Udall's Handiwork "Excessive"

Once again, Mark Udall's handiwork got mentioned in The Gazette without that paper mentioning his name.

But the House version calls for an excessive 15 percent of U.S. electricity to be generated from subsidized “renewable” sources by 2020, even though only 3 percent today is provided by bio-fuels, solar and wind power. Utilities that fall short of the imposed goal would be fined.

It’s no secret to our readers how we feel about renewable mandates, whether imposed by voters or government officials. We don’t object to the use of renewable energy sources; the more varied sources of energy we have, the less likely consumers will be held hostage by suppliers. It’s the idea that consumers will buy renewables only if they’re forced to. We’d rather see proponents of renewable energy educate consumers in an effort to persuade them to ask utility providers to use renewables.

And while we’re objecting to subsidies and tax breaks for energy providers, let’s include those benefits given to traditional sources, too. Subsidies and tax breaks hide the true cost of energy and don’t allow consumers to make truly informed choices.

We think that if The Gazette feels as strongly as it seems to that a 15% renewable energy mandate by 2020 is "excessive," it has an obligation to tell its readers that Mark Udall wanted the mandate to be 20% and inserted an amendment into the energy bill to that effect.

In one more year, the electorate will be deciding who should be Colorado's next US Senator. Voters are entitled to all the information about who is authoring policies that the Gazette calls "excessive" and "extremist."

The Real Cost of Wind Farms

Today, the Denver Post published an editorial celebrating the wind and solar power initiatives in Colorado. In the process, they appear to have let the cat out of the bag on the costs of these enterprises.

This author left a simple math comment at the bottom of that editorial questioning the Post's math. The Post claimed that it cost $166 thousand per megawatt to build a wind power plant in Weld County. The author misplaced a decimal, meaning that the cost was actually $1.6 million.

Worse, the wind only blows about 30% of the time, meaning that they built a 90 megawatt (less simple and more accurate math) equivalent power plant for $500 million. That works out to $5.5 million per megawatt in construction costs.

A conventional coal plant, again according the the Denver Post, costs $250,000 per megawatt to build. That is less than 1/20th of the price of this wind farm.

Consider that the Colorado legislature has just mandated that by 2020 20% of utility power must come from "renewables." How many $500 million plants that only intermittently produce power will it take to meet that goal? Many more than Colorado can afford.

Mark Udall tried and failed to impose that same goal on the whole nation this summer. He was voted down. At some point, taxpayers and ratepayers will start doing the math and realize that Mark Udall and his band of merry environmentalist extremists are much like Hillary Clinton, but with less honesty. At least she admits that she has more ideas than the country can afford.

Words vs Deeds

Since we pointed out that The Gazette called Mark Udall an extremist in two separate opinion pieces, it has avoided naming him in any opinion piece, even when he should be named.

Today, Sean Paige writes about Bill Ritter's trip to Washington this week to promote unreasonable standards for renewable energy. Ritter testified, and so did Mark Udall. In Congress, this is Udall's baby, so it seems unreasonable to leave the man out. We won't.

“If Colorado can do it, so can the rest of the country,” Gov. Bill Ritter told members of Congress on Thursday. But Colorado hasn’t done it, at least not yet, so Ritter was talking through his hat...

He can take credit for endorsing and signing a bill passed by the Legislature earlier this year, which added to the Amendment 37 mandates, in another fit of irrational exuberance. This amounted to doubling down on a long-shot bet.

Whether these even more Draconian standards are achievable, and what they will eventually cost utility ratepayers, won’t become known for years. So Ritter’s statements to Congress were empty boasts...

Ritter’s appearance won’t even slightly influence what Congress does on renewables, of course. It was designed to elevate his national profile and provide a little warm and fuzzy PR for the state. It was a waste of taxpayer money.

The best thing about this opinion piece was a piece of advice for Ritter that should have been directed at Mark Udall. Udall, though, is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Your job isn’t to invite more federal meddling in Colorado, but to minimize Washington’s claim on our lives, our paychecks and, now, even our utility bills.

Rocky: Wrong on the Roan

The Rocky Mountain News, in a soft spoken and polite rebuke of Ken Salizar, Bill Ritter, John Salizar, and Mark Udall said that a drilling ban on the Roan was "wrong."

Like it or not, "old energy" is still economy's lifeblood...

In their public statements, backers of "clean" or renewable energy are often modest about the potential these power sources offer today's consumers. Even the most ambitious legislation, for instance, usually provides for a decade or longer for renewables to make up 15 percent or 20 percent of a utility's energy portfolio.

In practice, however, many of the same people oppose virtually all opportunities for major production of "old energy," such as on the Roan and the Outer Continental Shelf. Such opposition could of course force green technologies to assume a larger role even where they're not yet realistic options to coal, oil and natural gas...

Sen. Ken Salazar pressured the Bureau of Land Management to delay leases on the Roan for at least another four months, as requested by Ritter. And the energy bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month includes a provision from Colorado Reps. Mark Udall and John Salazar that would ban drilling on BLM land at the top of the plateau forever.

...it would be foolish to ban the carefully regulated extraction of natural gas from huge deposits such as the Roan in the hope that the economy can survive unscathed a forced march into a green energy future.

Blame Mark Udall and the Environmentalist Left

Today's Colorado Springs Gazette had a stinging editorial about Governor Bill Ritter's casual attitude toward the destruction of Colorado's Forests:

Half a year after taking the job, Gov. Bill Ritter last week apparently woke to the fact that Colorado is confronting a forest health crisis of massive proportions, with potentially catastrophic aesthetic and economic consequences. But rather than responding with an action plan, and demanding that state and federal agencies do more to save what forests they can, Ritter seemed to shrug it off as an unavoidable natural calamity.

“(Ritter) said the epidemic can’t be stopped, only managed to reduce the risk of wildfires,” reported The Associated Press. “It’s part of a natural cycle that our kids and grandkids will probably experience,” Ritter said...

This natural disaster is man-made, and a scandal that for some reason hasn’t been recognized as such. Blaming it all on natural forces, and writing it off as inevitable, is a sly way of skirting blame for what’s happening and avoiding the responsibility to respond. And that simply won’t do.

The devastation might still be contained if Ritter and other politicians [ Mark Udall ] would stop wringing their hands and take action. It’s rather pathetic for Ritter to be focusing on how thousands of acres of dead trees might fit into his pie-in-the-sky renewable energy plans, instead of preventing more trees from dying.

This is an appeal by the Gazette to Governor Ritter for common sense. Ritter is simply following the path that Mark Udall has blazed with a roadless policy that promotes large scale forest fire after large scale forest fire.

We and others have written about this elsewhere.