The Clean Energy Scam

Yes, another TIME magazine cover on ethanol.

But this time it’s a different tune.

Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they’re serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group. Renewable fuels has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie catchphrases, as unobjectionable as the troops or the middle class.

This is what happens when you let politicians determine what happens in the market. We see it over and over again and yet we somehow believe that this time it will be different.

The small print you can’t read in the cover shot above reads,

Politicians and Big Business are pushing biofuels as alternatives to oil. All they’re really doing is driving up food prices and making global warming worse–and you’re paying for it.

As always, isn’t it?

The subtitle to the article, which is hard to find online says,

Hyped as an eco-friendly fuel, ethanol increases global warming, destroys forests and inflates food prices. So why are we subsidizing it?

Why indeed?

Next, and in fact already happening, environmentalists will bemoan increased mercury levels from broken and trashed energy saving bulbs. Recently mandated by our government.

Sound familiar?

The mighty microbe

Buried at the bottom of JSOnline.com (was it that way in the paper also?)

While scientists have determined that humans probably are warming the world, it’s Earth’s microscopic inhabitants that may have even bigger climate clout.

It’s the increased breathing of these innumerable organisms as Earth warms that worries scientists.These bacteria live in the soil, which stores an enormous amount of carbon, according to Christopher Kucharik, an associate scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.

“Globally, soils store twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does. It’s a pretty huge storage tank to be messing around with,” he said.

Interesting.

Global warming task force proposes wind turbines

In the Wednesday’s Freeman

Wisconsin should consider erecting wind turbines on the Great Lakes and reward utilities for cutting energy use instead of building power plants, according to a new report.

We can’t build oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, but we can put wind turbines on the lake? I’m thinking this one’s not gonna fly.

Other ideas,

The interim report before the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming asks the state to study the possibility of pumping carbon dioxide from power plants into the ground or sending the gas by pipeline to other states.

Maybe we could make a trade; if they take our carbon dioxide, we’ll give them some water.

Doyle formed the panel a year ago and asked it to come up with recommendations to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050.

Is smoking bad?

First of all,

According to the World Health Organization 100 million people died worldwide from tobacco use in the past century and another 1 billion are expected to die this century.

There are an estimated 5.4 million smoking-related deaths a year worldwide, and that number is expected to continue to rise dramatically if no actions are taken, said Dr. Douglas Bettcher, director of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative.

The report said nearly two-thirds of the world’s smokers live in 10 countries, with China accounting for 30 percent of them, India 10 percent and the rest divided among Indonesia, Russia, the United States, Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany and Turkey.

OK, one billion less people than there would be, 40 percent in China and India. Can this be all bad? A billion less people have got to improve the environment.

Oh, then there’s this,

Dutch researchers have confirmed what fat smokers have waited years to hear – that healthy people are actually a greater burden on the state, because they live longer and oblige the taxpayer to deal with the cost of “lingering diseases of old age like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s”.

That’s according to the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and Environment, which found that while “a person of normal weight costs on average £210,000 ($417,000) over their lifetime”, a smoker clocks up just £165,000 ($326,000) and the obese run up an average £187,000 ($371,000) bill.

As the headline says, “Healthy? You’re a burden on the state.”

2008′s first Waukesha Carnival

This is number 18 in my weekly (more or less) looks at blogging in Waukesha county. With more bloggers per capita than any Wisconsin county (by my completely objective estimate), here is a look at this week’s most interesting posts to me.

First off, we’re losing two political bloggers. Cindy Kilkenny is suspending posts to her blog, Brookfield City News. But she went out with this gem,

When I checked in with the candidate line up just now I nearly lost my biscuits. The thought of outgoing school board candidate Patrick Murphy backing Brookfield pyromaniac and adolescent tail bone cracker Dave Marcello is more revolting than I could have ever imagined. With any luck Marcello will lose, but it’s still pretty disgusting.

Politics, it’s not for the faint of heart.

The other blogger is Tim Rock, who is not giving up blogging at The Other Side of My Mouth, but is switching to baseball, specifically Strat-o-Matic baseball. The name of the blog is now BRASS (Bloomington Rotisserie and Strat-O-Matic Society) League. Tim and I have our disagreements politically, but any one who is into baseball, especially the Strat-0-Matic game, can’t be all bad.

David at Carrick Bend Thoughts posts on the pork of three other Democratic candidates for president, Biden, Kucinich and Dodd.

Jessica McBride shared her Thoughts on Iowa. A couple of points from her post,

Note to the MSM: When you trash a Republican candidate, Republican voters like that person more. While you were laughing at Huckabee for playing a negative ad to reporters, he was thinking: “Please keep laughing at me. Thanks!”

One could add some commenters on the Right to that. Another point,

The Huckabee candidacy is all wrong for the general election. He’s right on all of the issues that won’t play to independents and conservative Democrats (the social ones), and he’s wrong on all of the issues that do. The opposite is true of Giuliani.

In another post on the presidential election, Troy Fullerton of Rendezvous with Destiny asks, Who Benefits from McRomabee Battle? I’ll have more on Fred’s chances in a future post.

Moving on to other things, Dad29 points out more government cost over-runs, this time Wisconsin’s collection lawyers. Are you surprised?

Pete Fanning shares information at his blog peterepublic.com on those new energy saving light bulbs that we’ll soon all be using. They may cause migraines.

Lisa at Sequentially Speaking links to the 2007 Darwin Awards. You gotta read it.

Huckleberry Dumbbell at the Spring City Chronicle, always looking for a good retirement state, eliminates New Hampshire.

Yorick’s Persiflage had a couple things on my radar but the one that interested me was a post he linked to about college.

It is a witty little piece about how we pay too much money to go to schools where education seems to be the least of the university’s concerns. A college education has become some sort of bourgeoisie ideal for all of middle-America. It’s about status and not education.

That’s it for this week. As usual, if you have a post you’d like to include, you can e-mail it to me or post it in the comments.

Help for global warming?

Kangaroo farts

That’s all I’m sayin’.