Electricity Cost by Power Source

The 21 July 2008 issue of Forbes has a table on p.37 giving the share of U. S. electricity output and the cost per KWH for a number of fuel sources. Note that nuclear, wind, geothermal, and solar costs are after government subsidies and no information is provided on the cost without the subsidies. The table says:

Coal 50% 6.2 cents/KWH
Natural Gas 20% 6.8
Nuclear 20% 6.3
Hydroelectric 6% NA
Biomass 1% 8.1
Wind 1% 6.2
Geothermal <1% 7.4
Solar <1% 28.9

Even with subsidies, it is clear that solar energy, so beloved by the socialist elements, is in left field with respect to being competitive as a power source for electricity generation plants. Each of the socialist solutions to our future energy needs now provides 1% or less of electrical power, so a huge growth of usage is required before any of them will be capable of replacing a significant portion of the power supplied now by coal, oil, or nuclear plants. It is likely that this will take many years, if it ever happens at all.

Meanwhile, of 114 proposed coal-fired plants, 67 are still awaiting permits. The Peabody Energy 1,600 MW Prairie State Energy Campus in Illinois was projected to cost $2 billion and take 4 years to build. Legal battles with the Sierra Club ate up 6 years and now the plant will cost $3.5 billion to build. Electricity users will just have to pay more for their electricity.

Federal Government Civilian Worker Salaries

According to Will Wilkenson, Cato Institute Research Fellow, the average federal civilian worker in 2005 was compensated at over $106,000. This is double the average compensation of private workers and falls in the top 5% of personal incomes. In 2005, the average wages for a federal employee rose 5.8%. In the private sector, the income increase was only 3.3%.

Isn't it rather miraculous that private sector workers are so productive that the U.S. is the world leader in productivity, despite every effort these well-paid federal employees make to create roadblocks for their creative energies? We should assume that the government pays such high salaries because it wishes to lure the very best roadblockers into its employ.

An Evaluation of What Americans Think About Energy

As we saw in the last post, most Americans are angry about high energy prices. They should be. However, the important thing is for them to understand who they should be angry at. They could be angry at the inefficient national oil companies in most of the oil-exporting countries, but there is little they can do about that. The most constructive anger is anger directed at Congress for setting up obstacles to oil and gas production in the United States. They have prevented the drilling for oil in ANWR for 13 years, thereby making at least 10 billion barrels of oil unavailable to us now. Off-shore Alaskan waters near AMWR hold at least another 19 billion barrels of oil. Until further development of these fields is undertaken, we will probably underestimate the amount of oil in them. There are thought to be a conservative 90 billion barrels of oil on the continental shelf that Congress has put off-limits.

Meanwhile, those in Congress who oppose drilling say that the oil companies already have leases they are not producing oil from. True, leases are often bought before anyone is sure whether they have oil on them or not. If they do, the leasing company has to figure out whether there is a way to retrieve it profitably after a big investment is made to get at it. With oil prices as high as they are now, much oil which could not be recovered at $30/barrel prices can be economically produced, but the investments are huge and one also has to know that the price of oil will not again be $30/barrell one year from now. In addition, there are huge costs in satisfying the EPA about pollution protections and the process can take many years to work through. Congress could expedite the time to production by speeding up the EPA approval process.

One might say there is some price gouging by OPEC on oil, but then we set them up to be able to do it by minimizing our own drilling for oil. We chose to make them the only major source for oil in the world market. The best plan is to pursue as much oil drilling, gas production, and alternative fuel production as possible in the U.S. and the remainder of the world. We can also do better in insulating our homes, installing more energy-efficient furnaces and refrigerators, making engines more fuel efficient, and pursuing many other wise personal choices in light of the present high cost of energy. Such choices will either bring the prices of fuel down or at least keep them from continuing to grow. It is interesting to note that Americans have been putting engines into their cars which have much higher horsepower ratings in recent years and that this uses more additional gasoline even than the SUVs on the road. There are many reasons why Americans should be a bit angry at themselves as well as at Congress!

The criticism that the federal government is not doing enough is more heavily leveled at the President than it should be. It is primarily Congress that has not done enough. But Congress' role is to get off the backs of those who want to produce energy. It should not be for them to pick winners and losers. They should not be subsidizing solar and wind, while restricting coal, oil, and gas. This would be especially foolish given that solar and wind are likely to remain secondary sources of energy for decades yet. They are too seasonal and irratic in their output within a given day or week to be counted upon for large portions of our energy needs. At the present time, their total output is minuscle compared to coal, oil, and gas, or even compared to nuclear, despite no new nuclear power plant having been built in the U.S. in 30 years. Wind, solar, and geothermal power will all add to our total available power generation capacity over the next few decades, but they are very unlikely to overtake coal, oil, and natural gas.

The idea of the 5-year moratorium on coal-fired power plants is a great one if you want to live with random, rolling black-outs of power. That will surely happen unless instead we have a massive effort to build nuclear power plants. I expect it will happen unless we build many of both coal and nuclear power plants. The population is growing and people are buying more and more plasma TVs, which use four times as much power as a conventional TV did. Curiously, these same people are convinced that the U.S. should lead an effort to reduce the use of energy to prevent a catastrophic global warming which is not even occurring.

So, are those who want improved home-efficiency standards going to impose the added initial cost upon new home buyers only or are they going to have government inspectors inspect every home in America and condemn it unless it is brought up to some new energy-efficiency code within a short period of time? What on earth are they thinking here? Will grandmothers be thrown out of their homes and into the streets? Will children live with their parents until they are 30 years old as they try to scrounge up the added money to qualify for the down-payment on a much more expensive home? New business start-ups will be hit by higher first and last month rent payments due to the added insulation costs, though in time they will save money on their energy bills. Commercial building companies will have some larger construction costs and insulation upgrade costs on older commercial buildings.

Finally, I love the 56% of Americans who believe that steps taken to curb global warming will create new jobs and investment. Of course they will! But,....the big question is will they produce as many new jobs as they will destroy? Will they create more new investment and wealth than they will destroy? The answer is that they will not create as much as they will destroy, because government action is only required when one intends to destroy rather than create. The people acting as individuals are the path to efficient creation. Government is the path to destruction. The usual inducements to making money will create whatever energy is needed, if the destructive power of government does not climb upon the backs of the individuals who would create that wealth of power. Subsidies from government are always inclined to become the boondoggles such as the ethanol subsidies have become. Decades of government sponsored research into alternative energy sources has done little to produce significant power capacity using alternative energy.

There is no forseeable path to energy independence for America. Our best policy is to pursue many sources of energy both by type and by source. We need to develop more oil and gas fields within the United States and wherever else in world there is oil or gas to be found. We need to start building nuclear power plants again and to continue to build coal-fired power plants, using suitable stack cleaning processes, but not worrying too much about CO2 production, because it does not much matter. Wherever wind, geothermal, tidal, and solar power production make economic sense, then the free market should be allowed to install such power plants, even though they will amount to only minor contributors to our total power needs. Meanwhile, people do tend to under-insulate their attics, to buy bigger car engines than they have a need for, to brake late rather than take their foot off the gas earlier, and forget to turn out lights they are not using. There are many ways to conserve expensive energy, but these are best left to the free market, rather than some government coercive programs.

What Americans think about energy

The Civil Society Institute working with the Citizens Lead for Energy Action Now conducted several polls to establish what Americans think about energy. I will summarize the results here, based on an editorial in the 7 July 2008 Washington Times, and then in a later post I will discuss what I think about these opinions. The results of the polls were:

• 76% of Americans are very angry or somewhat angry about the price of gasoline and expect to pay $5/gal. by Labor Day.
• 89% of the Americans angry about gas prices believe there is a great deal or some price gouging.
• 62% said rising gasoline and other fuel prices were their chief economic concern.
• 90% say the federal government is not doing enough to bring down energy prices and to decrease American dependence upon Middle East energy sources.
• 90% believe an energy policy that promoted clean power would encourage innovation, create new jobs, and make the economy stronger. The U.S. would also be able to reduce interactions with unstable and hostile countries while reducing greenhouse gases.
• 90% said that energy-related issues such as gasoline prices, home heating oil prices, global warming, and energy independence will be important when they vote.
• 90% say we should phase out use of fossil fuels and replace them with clean, renewable energy, such as wind and solar electricity and use hybrid and clean diesel technologies for cars.
• Three out of four Americans would support a 5-year moratorium on building new coal-fired energy plants if there were increased investment in clean, safe renewable energy such as wind and solar and improved home energy-efficiency standards.
• 82% believe the U.S. should lead on the issue of global warming.
• Only 15% believed that steps to reduce global warming would hurt the U.S. economy. 56% thought it would create new jobs and investments.

These results show a considerable degree of confusion on the part of Americans on issues relating to energy and its use.

Chapman -- Pursue (and seize) happiness

Steve Chapman's commentary in the 7 July 2008 Washington Times by that title is about a global survey that shows that people are happier in countries with a greater measure of freedom and money. He notes that "There is no such thing as a rich totalitarian country, as even the onetime totalitarians in Beijing finally realized. So in a very real sense, freedom is the key to happiness." The survey was conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. People in 97 countries were asked just two questions:

• "Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, or not at all happy?"
• "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?"

Of the 97 countries, the poll has been previously taken in 52 countries for the last couple of decades. The percentage of people giving upbeat answers rose in 40 of these 52 countries. As China and India have grown freer, their peoples have become happier. This was also the trend in the advanced world, with the exceptions of Great Britain, Germany, Austria, and Belgium. The people of the United States, France, Canada, Denmark, and Japan became happier.

Chapman notes that only America was founded on a right that sounds rather eccentric even today: the right to the pursuit of happiness. But this perception of the writers of the Declaration of Independence has served as a very good model for countries who want their people to be happy.

Big Oil U

Merrill Goozner and Eryn Gable of the Center for Science in the Public Interest published a report entitled "Big Oil U" in January 2008. The June 2008 issue of Academic Sourcebook reproduced the executive summary, with the subtitle "Corporations large and small are attempting to influence academia. These attempts are not isolated, and they are increasing. This is a threat to academic freedom."

The summary claims that "As the scientific consensus surrounding climate change has solidified, the oil, gas, coal, and electricity industries have reluctantly recognized the inevitability of political action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Most energy companies are distancing themselves from campaigns to discredit global warming science." The summary then bemoans the fact that some energy companies are funding research programs at universities and attaching conditions that have the potential to compromise the integrity of the research. Nowhere does this summary discuss the possibility that government funding ever does anything of a similar nature.

The study complains that nine such university-energy business programs have some of the major limitations on academic freedom due to:

• Company representatives on governing boards
• Industry sponsors have intellectual property first rights
• Industry sponsors play a role in deciding which projects are funded
• Industry review of research prior to publication
• Industry may delay publication

There are almost always some industry executives on university governing boards. Universities want them there as potential donors, for their executive advice on running a large organization, and because they have some insight into what skills students need to prepare themselves for jobs in industry, which whether academics like it or not, is where most of the product of a university winds up. However, this article takes the consistent viewpoint that universities are to be run for the sake of the faculty and their research interests, not for the sake of providing an education to students. There is no mention in this summary of any aspect of concern for the university function of educating students. This is very consistent with the way universities are largely run, not to mention public schools. Universities have two concerns: one for the research and publications of the faculty and one for the indoctrination of students with socialist and radical environmentalist propaganda. Universities more and more are disinterested in providing students with skills and knowledge which will enable them to be productive in industry. They would much rather that students took government, non-profit, and academic jobs.

In most of the cases discussed in which industry played a role in deciding which projects were funded, the role was less than that usually played by a government agency. Only at Georgia Tech did the industry partners make the decision by themselves.

The industry review of the research may play a very good role, since the scientists and engineers of the major oil companies know a great deal about energy. If they abuse their role, then the university can simply turn to government to fund the programs instead. The complaint that publication may be delayed can be handled the same way. There are cases when government funded research is also reviewed before publication and when publication may be delayed as well.

Apparently, the fact that the university generally has intellectual property first rights is less of a threat to academic freedom than a company having such a right. This entire article assumes that universities and industry are and ought to be at loggerheads. It totally fails to recognize that our wealthy society can only afford to pour money into these universities in amounts that consistently grow at rates even higher than the economy as a whole because of the incredible productivity of industry. It states that with more industry involvement "there is less space to perform research that is critical of industry or that challenges the conventional wisdom." Wow! Industry research funding for universities is swamped by government research funding for universities. Does this uncritical susceptibility of university researchers mean that they are much discouraged from criticizing government because of that funding. If so, and many of us recognize that this is very much so, then universities have a far more serious conflict of interest on their hands than that of accepting money from industry. Surely it is also the function of university elites to warn the great masses of dumb Americans of government excesses, mistakes, failed policies, impossible goals, frauds, inefficiencies and other problems which we know them to systematically ignore. Is it not the case that much of this tendency to ignore the limitations of governments is due to university dependence upon government funding? Of course it is!

As for discouraging a university from challenging conventional wisdom, I thought that they were in the business of creating the conventional wisdom and implanting it in their students with religious zeal. Long ago, they gave up on the ideal of teaching students to think critically for themselves and to close observe reality. Now they teach the tenets of tired and false socialism and anthropogenic global warming. Socialism has had nothing but obvious collosal failures and global warming never lived up to its billing even when there was a bit of warming and now there has been none for 10 years! No, the universities are one of the primary sources of myths in America today.

There is further admission that the commitment to truth is weak among university faculty members in this summary. Sheldon Krimsky of Tufts University observes that "It's when they ask, 'Can you write the research in a certain way?' that it takes away the autonomy of the researchers, and many researchers are perfectly willing to trade that away so that they can get funding." He is talking about the role of corporations in biomedical research, but if they are so susceptible to dishonesty in that mode of funding, surely they are equally or more dishonest when dealing with government agency funding sources.

The summary says there is an inherent conflict between the interests of universities and the interests of corporations. The summary states "University research is supposed to work toward the common good. Corporate research is primarily aimed at maximizing profits." Wow, what a self-serving assessment. If corporation research is aimed at maximizing profits it does so by producing better product, or cheaper product, or whole new kinds of products that people buy freely in their pursuit of their own happiness. This we know in a capitalist society with free markets to be phenomenally effective in serving the common good. Universities supposedly exist primarily to educate students, which, if it is done well, serves each student well and then has great benefit for the common good. More and more, in order to have good faculty who will put up with educating students, many of whom are not so interested in being educated as in partying, universities hold them by making research a priority, which also has been contrived to give the university itself great prestige, even if the students are poorly educated. So, if we are to put the role of universities in a pejorative way, we can summarize their purpose as get government funding, publish or perish, never offend the government, and always ally oneself with government to expand its role and power. This comes much closer to a truthful assessment of their purpose than it should.

Now there is a very funny twist in this summary. It proceeds to note that carbon-dependent industries have only funded modest programs with modest goals in universities. One is tempted to ask how such modest funding is supposed to pose such a great threat to the universities. Indeed, university research in total dwarfs the entire R&D budget of the oil and gas industries. Given the widespread animosity of the universities to industry in general and to the oil industry in particular, it is clear that it is the oil industry that is most in danger, not the universities. Indeed, it is precisely because government funding of so many university researchers has bribed most of them into participating in the global warming alarmist scandal that the oil companies have been trying to fight their image as evil-doers by funding these university energy programs, which the summary notes is done to protect themselves.

The summary also bemoans how little the oil companies are investing into research of alternative energy compared to what they spend on exploration and the exploitation of new oil reserves. There is a reason for this. The alternative fuels do not offer sufficient return for these large companies to make a profit and to continue in business. Furthermore, finding new oil and developing it is becoming rapidly more expensive, even as the non-national oil companies, such as those funding the university programs complained about, are at or almost at their peak in production. They are almost certainly all on a downward production path. Alternative energy cannot solve the problem. Spending too much R&D on alternative energy will only make matters worse for the oil companies, since any possible return on investment is much too far into the future.

The universities want to take the toy from the little boy next door and then refuse to share it. This makes them look rather childish. Meanwhile, these university purists claim the oil companies are the wolf to their Little Red Riding Hood's grandma, even as the naked grandma climbs merrily into bed with the government wolf.

Sustainability on Campus

In a publication called Academic Sourcebook, the lead article of the June 2008 issue is entitled "Sustainability on Campus" by Skip Derra of Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. It describes a program in sustainability at Arizona State University. He begins with "One convert at a time is a noble goal for any altruistic endeavor, especially sustainability, which has long laid low in the grassroots of society." Convert, noble goal, altruistic endeavor, grassroots of society are words and phrases ringing of religious zeal and selfless, underdog struggle for the sake of society at the expense of self, following paths well pioneered by many religions and all forms of socialism.

ASU's president Michael Crow has made sustainability a university-wide priority. He also was much involved in creating the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. This is a man with a deep commitment to the politically correct worldview. So, ASU has the first freestanding, degree-granting School of Sustainability in the United States. Jonathan Fink, director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and ASU's sustainability officer says that "We work with government agencies to make sure the problems we are working on are the ones that actually will have an impact." Yes, this is a good strategy to be close to the sources of government funding and stroking the egos of the bureaucrats in them. It is also an admission that the universities are not able to discern the important problems and must turn to government, which has a long track record of not being able to prioritize problems of any sort or of providing practical solutions to those it tackles. This is the blind leading the blind, big time.

So, ASU is providing free bus passes to all faculty, staff, and students in the name of sustainability. Sounds like a nice perk. They are renting cars on a Flexcar program to encourage alternative methods of commuting. I have no idea how that saves energy, though possibly it does reduce the need for parking lots, providing the Flexcars are used enough. They have a program requiring the purchase of recycled products, though many recycled products cost more energy to produce than the original manufacture did and others offer reduced product specifications, such as recycled paper products. They have a commitment to solar energy and have a goal to provide 15% of their 4 to 7 MW of power from solar energy. I am not sure whether the 4 to 7 MW range means that they are unsure of their energy usage, unsure how much energy they will be using when they achieve their 15% goal, or this is an annual rate projected from their winter usage versus their summer usage. They are also growing some of their food on campus, planting citrus, date, and nut trees. They are also growing herbs. A picture shows a narrow strip of garden plowed next to a building. It is hard to imagine that the farming of this narrow strip will reach the efficiency of a farmer managing his agro-business. But, it may educate students to recognize a few of the plants whose fruits they eat, at least.

They do talk about the need to conserve water on the desert campus. Certainly if people are going to insist on living in human inhospitable areas such as the Arizona deserts in large numbers, they have some real sustainability problems. Learning ways to economically conserve energy is also a good thing. Finding ways to recycle products that actually make sense economically, such as recycling aluminum cans, makes good sense. But, sense on university campuses is in short supply. These programs of study would make more sense if they were coupled with close interactions with businesses other than those seeking subsidies from the government for sustainability programs.

There is a sidebar describing programs in sustainability at Stanford University, at Rochester Institute of Technology, at Portland State University, and at Berea College in Kentucky. Rochester Institute of Technology is the university at which my youngest daughter Katie is entering her senior year in a biotechnology degree program. The Galisano Institute for Sustainability there focuses on research and education in sustainable design, pollution prevention, remanufacturing, and alternative energy development. Such a program may have merit, if it is carried out as a matter of rational investigation and education, rather than as the all too popular religious and socialist crusade.

1776 Federal Subsidy Programs

No, this is not a post on the Federal Subsidy Programs in place in the great year of 1776, one of whose chief events, the Declaration of Independence, we are going to celebrate tomorrow.

How ironic that the nation that rebelled over an issue of minuscule taxation, much of whose proceeds supported and subsidized an aristocracy, has been found to have 1776 federal subsidy programs in 2007. Chris Edwards, Director of Tax Policy Studies of the Cato Institute published a record of federal subsidy programs since 1970 in a Tax and Budget Bulletin called "Number of Federal Subsidy Programs is Soaring," which covered programs through late 2006. He has just updated the count for 2007 and made that result available in "Independence in 1776 to Dependence on 1776."

These subsidies have state governments, businesses, non-profit groups, and individuals as beneficiaries. Edwards counted the subsidy programs by examining the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, which lists all federal aid and subsidy programs, including grants, loans, insurance, scholarships, and much more.

If you examine the chart by Chris Edwards, there was an increase of programs of 11% from 1975 to 1980, most of this period being the Carter presidency. From 1980 to 1985, President Reagan remarkably cut the number of subsidies by 10%, but by 1990 they had grown in number by 16%. From 1990 to 2000, the number grew 21%. Under President Bush, they grew from 1,425 in 2000 to 1776 in 2007. This is a 25% increase. President Bush's reluctance to use the veto and his lack of commitment to reducing the size and power of government has had direful consequences!

Patrick J. Michaels -- Hansen Unhinged

Patrick J. Michaels points out in "Hansen Unhinged" that NASA's James E. Hansen is and has been out of control. As I have already pointed out, Hansen has called for having people who spread doubts about future global warming catastrophe "should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature." Among those he wants prosecuted are the CEOs of Exxon-Mobil and Peabody Energy. He violates the Hatch Act routinely, which says that Federal Employees cannot campaign for political candidates. He calls for tax hikes and attacks businessmen.

Presumably when he calls for the prosecution of businessmen who have doubts about a looming man-made global warming meltdown he does so because he knows them to be wrong about this subject. Yet twenty years ago, he testified before Congress that given a certain increase in CO2 similar to that which has happened since, that the global temperature would rise about 1.48 degrees F above the 1951 to 1980 average temperature. Michaels says this is about 33% more than the actual rise, so Hansen is wrong about global warming. Should this not make him eligible for prosecution by the courts by his own criterion that it is a high crime to be wrong about global warming?

Michaels, who really does know the climate and wrote a very useful book, Meltdown, concludes by saying "You have to hand it to him, though: he's a single, scientific outlier, terrorizing the American people."

The Most Fun Place to Be This Week

The Atlas Society is holding its summer seminar in Portland, Oregon this week. It sure would be wonderful to be there.

Unfortunately, Anna did not have enough seniority among the pharmacists of the VA Hospital to get this week off. With Katie at Rochester Institute of Technology and additionally taking summer courses, we cannot afford to be there anyway. I do have plans to visit my sister Leslie and her girls Addy and Katty for the 4th of July weekend, which will be fun.

But, I still wish I were there. I hope you are having a great time friends!

Miss Breeziness -- A Study of the Misanthropic Mind

Recently, I have had the great pleasure of making the acquaintance of a remarkable young lady from New Zealand. She grew up in China, but has become a stalwart individualist, all the while being a very sweet and thoughtful young lady. She has made some recent perceptive comments on some of my postings here and goes by the appellation of Miss Breeziness.

Being thoughtful, she has noticed that there are surprisingly large numbers of people who do not have a very high regard for most people. I have made posts in recent times which have emphasized the fact that the liberals or socialists, particularly the radical environmentalists, often do not care for the interests of man. In discussions of human sexuality in my older posts, I discussed the misanthropy of many conservative and religious persons. In my discussions of benevolence and toleration, I noted problems of misanthropy among Objectivists and libertarians. But, Miss Breeziness has put the entire big picture on misanthropy in all these segments of the political spectrum of viewpoints into one well-written essay called "A Study of the Misanthropic Mind" with her own uniquely gentle, yet incisive style. I highly recommend that you take the time to read her essay.

I hope she will continue writing on such interesting topics, as well as visiting here to comment on my postings and to offer her own insights on the topics discussed here. Thanks, Miss Breeziness!

Alan Reynolds - Scapegoating the Speculators

Alan Reynolds has written another interesting article on energy and pricing entitled "Scapegoating the Speculators." After the Democrats tried to claim that the price of oil had gone up greatly because the U.S. oil companies were responsible for manipulating the price and most of the public did not buy into their arguments, they and others, including John McCain, began focusing more and more on an explanation that the price of oil was higher due to speculators. Alan Reynolds offers some very interesting perspective on this claim.

But first before considering his argument further, why is this an important matter? If, as the Democrats are saying, speculators are driving up the cost of oil or even if they are not but are perceived to be doing so, then the Democrats can address the problem of high gas prices by passing a law to control the speculators. This gives them more power over the financial markets and will result in more campaign contributions from financial people who will want to get on their good side. What the Democrats and their occasional Republican ally (John McCain in part) will not then have to do is to allow U.S. oil companies to drill for more oil and gas. As environmentalist extremists and Global Warming Alarmists, these people do not want to allow more oil and gas to become available. They actually do want the price of oil and gas to go up even more, but they do not want to be seen as the responsible party for that price increase. This is all about perception in the eyes of the public. The Democrats do want to manipulate the supply of oil and gas to make the price go way up, but they do not always, especially with an election coming up, want to be perceived as having done so.

So, what does Reynolds say? Commodities speculators are just as happy to bet that oil prices will go down as to bet that they will go up. They are trying to anticipate the expected relationship of oil supply to oil demand. If next month's oil futures contract is for oil at a higher price, then producers may slow their sales on the spot market and try to wait a bit for the higher price. [This is usually a good thing, since it helps to level out prices by keeping supply and demand on a more even keel.] Refinery's are likely to buy more oil now rather than in the future if the future price is expected to be higher, thereby boosting the present price. But, if this combination of reactions to the higher future price occurs, then oil inventories will increase. At this time, U.S. oil inventories are modest, so this speculative boost to oil prices does not appear to be the case!

He notes that speculation that the price of oil would go up decreased after the price exceeded $100 per barrel. On 11 March, there were 113,307 long contracts (those expecting a future price increase) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. By 10 June, there were only 25,246 long contracts, meaning that there are nearly as many contracts going short (expecting a price decrease) as going long. Off the commodity exchange, one can bet on the future price of oil by investing in the US Oil Fund. Those betting short on this fund outnumber those betting long by a two to one ratio. These speculators are betting on the price of oil going down!

Reynolds says there is no mystery behind the rise in oil prices. There is booming demand for oil and products made from it in India, China, and the Middle East. The supply of oil from the U.S., Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Russia has fallen.

Back to my comments: U.S. oil production is falling because Congress and President Clinton have not allowed more exploration and drilling for oil in the U.S. Production continues to fall in Mexico because their nationalized oil company is run incompetently. Oil production in Venezuela is down because of the tyrannical reign and complete irrationality of Hugo Chavez. Nigeria's production is down due to internal unrest and sabotage. Russia's production is probably down because the oil companies there were taken over by ex-KGB thugs tied in with Putin.

Prices are always determined by supply and demand unless government sets the price. If government does set the price too low, then people stop producing and supplying that good or service. If we want to use oil at a reasonable price, then we have to allow the production of a goodly supply of oil. So, instead of wasting our time and money while we pay far too much for our gasoline, Congress needs to allow the exploration and production of oil on the federal lands in the contiguous 48 states, in Alaska, and in our coastal waters. This will increase supply and that will bring down the price of oil and its products, such as gasoline. Of course, with oil and gasoline as expensive as they are now, people will make greater efforts to conserve them as well. The magnitude of the world's demand increase is likely to run well ahead of conservation efforts alone, so both oil production increases and more efficient usage are the proper response.

Brits Unconvinced Man Caused Global Warming

Ipsos MORI polled 1,039 adults in Great Britain and found that 6 out of 10 agreed that "many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change." Four out of ten agree that they "sometimes think climate change might not be as bad as people say." About 20% answered each question with a refusal to commit response. After years of much worse global warming propaganda in Great Britain even than we are subjected to here in the United States, the British public clearly has major doubts.

Many people did not want to place restrictions on their lifestyles. A small minority claimed to be willing to make significant and radical changes in their lifestyle, such as driving and flying less. More than half did not have confidence in international and British leaders to tackle climate change. Two-thirds want the government to do more, but nearly as many said they saw green taxes simply as 'stealth' taxes. The tax doubters are the perceptive ones.

The Global Warming Alarmists had hoped that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report last year would finally convince the Britons of the Global Warming Crisis. It is said that 2,500 scientists found a 90% chance that humans were the main cause of climate change and warned that drastic action was needed to cut greenhouse gases. Actually, many scientists making contributions to the scientific review portion of the report do not agree with the summary portion of the report written largely by politicians and a few hand-picked scientists. Many critical scientists dropped out of the UN working groups in protest over how their scientific work and assessments were used in previous reports. Some of the public have doubts due to seeing the documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" on TV and due to such books as that of Lord Lawson, a former Chancellor, who questions the consensus on climate change.

This is all very bad news for those in the UK government who aim to cut greenhouse emissions by 20% over the next 12 years. It is not looking as though the British people are on-board for such personal deprivation for such a dubious rationale.

The socialists have turned to environmentalism as a means to acquire power after their boast that they could provide everyone more worldly goods fell on its face and Capitalism emerged as the clear victor for providing people with more food, better clothing, better housing, better health care, more interesting jobs and entertainment, and a wider variety of personal choices. The only self-consistent collectivist environmentalist is one who wishes to return man to the status of the Noble Savage. For the moment, they are using scientists to provide a rationale for their grab for power. They are buying many of them with generous research money and a huge amount of media attention. As a result, many scientists are playing the Global Warming alarmist game with them. This is a close parallel to the old socialist technique of paying Capitalists for the rope that the socialist plans to use to hang the Capitalist with. When the public catches on that many scientists are leading them down a road of personal deprivation for reasons that are not sound, the public will lose its regard for science. The socialist environmentalists will have used the avarice and desire for attention of many scientists to totally discredit them and science itself.

Once the socialists have the power provided by the claim that they are saving the earth from the depredations of man, they will have no use for science and scientists. It will be enough to lead men suffused with superstition, teased by rumors, and fed and dreaming up conspiracies. Science will only cause problems in this quest to return man to the state of the Noble Savage as it approaches its goal. For now, bribed scientists are a tool to help the socialists to power. Later they are expendable. No, they are an impediment to be eliminated. These scientists have been only too willing to hand the socialists the rope to hang them with. The Capitalist society has been the great provider for science as both have evolved from the philosophy of the Enlightenment. As the socialists make further progress in destroying Capitalism, its destruction will entail the death of science.

Just as the production of goods and services flourishes in a free market place, so do ideas and technical developments prosper in a free market. Socialism is clearly the antithesis of the free market for goods and services. What people understand less well is that ideas and new inventions depend just as much upon the freedom of individuals to make their own choices and to pursue their own happiness. The market place of ideas must be as free as that for goods and services if ideas are to be explored and understanding is to be realized in the life of man.

As a part of the socialist agenda against Capitalism and the market place of ideas, the federal government scientist Dr. James Hanson of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies has called for using the courts to prosecute those politicians who deny the idea that man has caused Global Warming and that this is a disaster. Dr. Hanson is one of the media's favorite alarmists. Another prominent scientist alarmist had already made the same call. This scientist is Dr. David Suzuki, a Canadian scientist who became a producer of environmentalist documentaries and is well-known to the watchers of the CBC. Apparently scientists of the socialist environmentalist persuasion are highly inclined to the elimination of free inquiry and freedom of conscience. This tendency is broadly based in the postmodernist, multicultural, and environmentalist fascist socialist worldview.

Thanks to Robert Bidinotto for directing my attention to the article on the poll of the British people and to the comments of Dr. Hanson and Dr. Suzuki.

The Right to Life and Slavery

Most Americans believe that as human beings one has the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today, I want to revisit a single aspect of our individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There are many ways to look at one's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. There are other ways to look at it which are also right than the viewpoint I am going to take today. But, fundamentally our life consists of all the hours we have lived and our plans for the use of our future hours. Let us oversimplify this further to consider each hour that we have just lived and each hour that we are about to live and make decisions on what we are going to do with it. If an individual had no control over how he just used his last hour, then it is unlikely that that hour added much to his life, it surely did not add to his sense of living in liberty, and he is unlikely to have been very successful in the pursuit of his happiness. Similarly, looking forward to the next hour of our life, we have a decision or several decisions on how to use it. If we can chose to spend all of that hour doing things that we believe will enhance our life, then we are already assured that our life will be better, we will feel free, and we will be pursuing our individual happiness in those ways which uniquely define that happiness to us as an individual, living creature.

So, what shall I choose to do in the next hour? Well, it is Sunday, so I could go home and work on building a new retaining wall for the garden. Let us suppose I do that. I get some fresh air, I get a wee bit of exercise, and I get a nice garden retaining wall. Oh, and my home value goes up a bit and my property taxes go up with it. Of course, I also paid sales taxes already on the wall blocks waiting to be used and on the gasoline used to go buy them. OK, so I guess I will do something else. I could watch TV and listen to the news. How exciting to find out about the latest effects of flooding in Iowa and the new declaration of a federal emergency area to cover the troubles there. And, I learn about how Obama is sure that there is no need to allow the drilling of oil in federal lands, which just happen to cover most of many of our western states. Or, I could hear McCain proclaim that he thinks the north slope in Alaska is pristine and we should leave it that way. I could hear many schemes to make the American medical system like that in Canada, the UK, France, or even Cuba. Yes, even Cuba, but I will not talk about that one, since only the truly insane want Cuba's medical system. So, if I watch TV news, I am frustrated, but, hey, I made the choice, right? But, I did still pay taxes to purchase the TV and I have a room for it in my house on which I must pay property taxes. Still, both choices to work on the garden or to watch TV are relatively lightly taxed and both are relatively free of government expropriating some of my time during that hour or in subsequent hours because I made one of those choices.

Let us suppose that being a small business owner, I decide to go to my laboratory and work on analyzing a carbon coating said to have been applied to a cubic zirconia gemstone to make it look more diamond-like. The income of an hour of work on that project will have federal income taxes, social security taxes, Medicare taxes, Workman's compensation insurance, and Maryland and Federal unemployment taxes withheld from it. I have no determinative choice in how that money is used and I oppose most of the ways in which it is used. Some of the ways it is used are just wasteful and evil for depriving me of the better things I could do with it, but many of them are for the actual doing of further evil deeds. Because I am a business owner, I have further bookkeeping to perform for replacing any supplies I may use in the laboratory analysis I chose to do in this hour. If I take some part of the money I made and invest it in buying additional laboratory equipment, then I get to pay property taxes on that equipment and do the bookkeeping to keep track of its depreciation over the years. Now, I happen to enjoy finding out such things as the nature of new coating technologies and I have specifically in the area of coatings on gemstones discovered some false claims in advertising. I also like working to be able to add to my laboratory's analysis capabilities by buying new equipment. This is fun, but is there any valid reason why when I make this choice to do productive work, I am taxed many more minutes of the hour with tax payments and with the mandated, unpaid contribution of future time than I would be if I worked on the garden retaining wall or I watched TV?

I think it is fair to say that this is clearly wrong. This is clearly a violation of my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I do not have the liberty to choose to spend the next hour of my life on anything without government taking a part of that hour away from me. This is especially true if I try to do productive work which requires an income to enable me to carry out that work. It costs a lot of money to keep a laboratory working. Most of the income the laboratory makes goes into paying the bills to keep it going. A small part, highly dependent upon the fluctuations in the laboratory income, goes to me in the form of a salary or into buying equipment which enables the laboratory to make more money in the future or at least to keep it up-to-date enough to continue making as much money as it does now. But, each new piece of equipment brings more taxes and more bookkeeping. I may love doing the scientific investigating that I do into the properties of materials and in evaluating the success or failure of various manufacturing processes, but I am forced by governments to pay a heavy price in precious minutes out of every hour that I choose to put into such work. Why? Why do I have less right to an hour of my life put into laboratory material analysis than I do if I put it into building a garden retaining wall or into watching TV?

What gives those who vote for these government policies that discriminate against what I like to do the right to make such forceful demands upon the minutes of each hour of my life? Is it not the case that each such minute they take is one in which they hold me as their slave? For years I have been asking this question. No one ever gives me an answer. Those elitists who believe they know how a man should live his life and that they are the ones to force him to do so according to their values never answer my question. Why should they? They have the power. The force and as-needed violent power of government is in their hands. I am deprived of many minutes of every hour I choose to work by applying my time, my investment of untold thousands of hours in all the technical and scientific knowledge I have acquired, and my investment in the laboratory I have struggled to build and I do not even get an answer as to why.

It is especially wry that many of these socialist elitists controlling governments claim to be egalitarians. This is a fraud. We all have the same number of hours of life in a week, yet they take many more hours in the form of taxes and mandated requirements for our work from some of us than from others. This taking is the taking of the hours of lives. They seek equality of income and property, but the most precious thing that any of us have is the hours of our lives. That, these socialists tax with extreme inequality.

Walter E. Williams wrote a column called "Are Americans Truly Against Slavery" in which he identified excessive taxes as slavery. As I have noted in the past, Williams is very good at getting to the heart of the matter and he does so with an obvious passion. I wrote a comment in reply to this column also at this same website. A number of the other comments are also quite good.

Donald Lambro: Energy charade

Due to the press of work in the lab, I have not commented on some good commentaries I have read of late. I will direct your attention to a fine commentary by Donald Lambro this last Monday, published in the Washington Times, for which he is chief political correspondent. It is entitled "Energy charade." Lambro discusses the total emptiness of the Democrat energy plan which encourages lawsuits against OPEC countries and would put a so-called windfall profits tax on U.S. oil companies, while not allowing the production of additional U.S. oil and gas or the building of oil refineries. He quotes Republican Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Bob Corker of Tennessee, who note the tom-foolery of the Democrat energy plans.

He recounts how Ronald Reagan responded to high oil and gasoline prices by deregulating the oil industry, allowing more oil wells to be drilled, and allowed pipelines to be lengthened. We produced our way out of a high price and shortage situation brought on in good part by Jimmie Carter and a host of restrictions during his presidency. Then Republicans passed legislation to drill in ANWR, but President Clinton vetoed the bill. Sen. Hutchison says that the passage of that bill would have produced the same amount of oil that we import from Saudi Arabia every day.

Democrats use a counter argument that replacing this much Saudi oil would not drop the price of gasoline but a few pennies at the pump. They seem to like false calculations based on simple proportions to calculate savings, but this is not how pricing for gasoline works over short time periods such as we are experiencing now. Right now, most people are not in a position to respond to high prices by trading in vehicles using more gasoline per mile to obtain one using less. The price situation is not quite such that if gasoline doubles in price then everyone will respond by using half as much. But people do respond with some cut-backs even in the short run. Still, the demand is a bit greater than the supply, so the price is being bid up sharply so fewer people can afford to use gasoline and fewer companies can transport goods and services at a profit. Thus, it may only take a modest increase in supply to make a bigger decrease in price in many instances. In addition, there are those who claim that there is much more oil in the North Slope of Alaska than the amount commonly banted about as proven. If the oil companies are freed to develop the oil fields there, they are likely to deliver much more oil than the Democrats say they will.

The Fallacy of Man the Vicious Animal Killer

A great many Americans believe that we are greatly endangering the animals of the United States by virtue of our high technology, mobile, and reasonably comfortable lifestyle. They believe that we have pushed those other animals of North America, which we commonly simply refer to as the animals, as though we were not animals ourselves, to the verge of extinction. Where they are not almost extinct, their survival has become more brutish and nasty than ever before. Cities now cover the continent and there is nowhere for wild animals to live anymore. We build roads everywhere and our mining, lumbering, and oil and gas fields are destroying animal habitats everywhere outside the cities. We have no right to deprive these other animals of their place in the environment and ought to return to the status of the Noble Savage in order to claim no more resources than it is our right to do.

This flies in the face of both simple everyday observation and the observations of many scientists who have studied a wide variety of animals. Since those scientists who do publish or broadcast alarmist claims of the deaths and extinctions, usually possible future extinctions, of the animal kingdom's denizens get far more publicity than do those who report that the animals are holding their own in most cases, let us concentrate on what we ourselves see, if we are observant at all. Certainly the states of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio ought to be among the worst states for animals if they are fairing badly in the onslaught of habitat destruction by voracious humans. I speak of these states because I hear news accounts more regularly about the deer, raccoon, fox, and rabbit populations in this area of the country than in others. I also travel about in them more than in other states over the time period since 1971.

In the 1970s, I lived in Cleveland. In Cleveland, not in one of its bedroom communities. We had rabbits, squirrels, and raccoons in the neighborhood on a regular basis. In 1980 we moved moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, a Washington, DC suburb. In our yard we see squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, mice, moles, and voles. In the woods along the Paint Branch Creek a few hundred yards away, I constantly see deer, as I did last weekend on a bike ride. I have also seen opossums there. In the woods near College Park, home of the University of Maryland, I have seen many raccoons. On my drive to my laboratory in Columbia, MD in the Baltimore - Washington corridor, I constantly see deer and foxes, both silver and red. Of course, I also smell skunks with great frequency. I have seen muskrats on the drive to work. I have had both skunks and foxes in front of my laboratory. I just returned from a bike ride along a bike path through a large residential neighborhood in Columbia and I saw three deer on this ride. When we moved here in 1980, the number of deer was starting to grow and their numbers were way up in the late 1980s. It has only been in the last 10 years that I have made frequent sightings of foxes.

On a trip to Virginia, I saw a coyote in a park east of the Appallachian Mountains. On trips in Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia, I am constantly seeing deer. Twice in Maryland, deer have run into family cars. Just over a week ago, a deer in Rochester, New York ran into my daughter Katie's car. Everywhere we hear and see the evidence of a burgeoning deer population causing more and more car accidents. Yet the deer populations continue to grow. Apparently, as we have become more wealthy and more people move to metropolitan areas, we hunt less and the hunting is apparently more of a factor in decreasing deer populations than is their foolish tendency to run into cars. Perhaps another factor favoring deer population growth in many areas outside the growing metropolitan areas was the long term reduction in the amount of land being farmed. In much of the country, land farmed in the late 1800s and early 1900s has reverted to forest and woodlands. But this has not been a necessary factor in the increased deer or fox populations, since they are growing even in the face of the growth of the Washington - Baltimore high population corridor.

Once upon a time, most Americans did not want to see foxes. They worried that the foxes would eat their chickens, cats, and small dogs. Nowadays, people are clearly more tolerant of them and even of coyotes, whose population is also growing. Reports are that puma and black bear populations are also growing. Apparently, when people are not dirt poor and when farms are better equipped to provide their farm animals with more protected housing, more and more people are not driven to exterminate carnivorous animals or to worry quite so much that the deer might eat a few ears of corn. Generally farmers are making very good money these days.

Maybe humans are not so voracious after all. Maybe they become less so as their lives become more secure and they feel less threatened. Maybe they even acquire some significant joy in seeing other creatures thrive and living well. I do. Yet, we see this happening even in cities and metropolitan areas. If this is the case, should we be so ready to believe that drilling for oil and then producing it and delivering it by pipeline is going to kill off the caribou? Well, that experiment has now been done. The results are in. The caribou herds are growing, not dying off. Similarly, we hear that some future possible few degrees of warming is going to decimate the polar bears. Well, the warming of the 1970s to 1998 did not do that. In fact, the polar bears did just fine. For them, it is not swings of a few degrees of temperature that matter so much as how much they are hunted. Rather the same situation as with the deer or foxes and coyotes.

There is no reason to prevent the exploration, drilling, and production of oil and gas on the Federally owned lands that dominate most of the western states or of the lands and waters of the northern areas of Alaska or anywhere else. We can easily both find and produce oil and have a habitat very suitable for wild animals. Apparently, the animals are more adaptable and sturdy than many give them credit for being. In fact, some animals just love oil fields and pipelines. In the late 1960s I worked in oil fields and on pipelines in the summers to earn money for college. In the oil fields along the south bank of the Red River in Texas, the copperheads and scorpions just loved the pumphouses as a place to live. Along the pipeline in north central Oklahoma and another in west Texas that I worked on, the prairie dogs loved to establish colonies straddling the pipelines. Why? Because the pipelines are heated in the winter to allow the oil to flow better. Prairie dogs are not fools. They like warmth in the winter. Working on the pipelines you had to be careful however. Sometimes, rattlesnakes by the several dozen would move into prairie dog colonies. They really like the ready-made holes and the warmth also.

Many scientists can be bought with research money, and/or with fame, and/or with political correctness incentives. Some courageous scientists will buck such political delusions, but many non-scientists may not be able to or inclined to read their published work and make a critical analysis of it for themselves. However, most Americans do evidence significant analytical capability in their own line of work and this has made them the most productive workers in the world. So, when you see yourself that so many animals are flourishing, as you must see, or smell in the case of the ubiqutious skunk, trust in your own ability to evaluate the claims that man is eradicating the animals and appropriating all the resources of the planet to his own needs and leaving nothing for the other animals. This politically correct thesis is clearly nonsense.

So, do not buy the line that man must not drill for oil and gas in the Federal lands of the west or in the north slope of Alaska. Do not accept the idea that drilling in the oceans will pollute all the beaches and kill the fish. Actually, the fish thrive around the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Do not believe the nonsense when environmentalist radicals claim that the caribou will be eradicated by a single pipeline across Alaska or even by several. Use your common sense. Do not go gently into the night and the dank cave that those who worship the Noble Savage would thrust you into. Demand your use of energy so man can continue to be nobly productive and creative in building a world ever better for man and also for the animals who seem to be thriving even as we thrive.