Category Archives: Education

Senate Bill 3 Strikes Again

The mandates contained in Senate Bill 3, the NC Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard enacted in 2007, have prompted another North Carolina energy company to make a new commitment to a foolish solar energy investment that ratepayers will eventually have to fund.

The announcement by Duke Energy was reported yesterday in an article published in NC Tech News, from which I have selected this excerpt:

Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) today announced a $500 million commitment to a major expansion of solar power in North Carolina.  This culminates the company’s request for proposals (RFP) issued in February 2014 for new solar capacity.  It will help Duke Energy further its commitment to renewable energy, diversify its energy portfolio and meet North Carolina’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS).  It also provides customers greater access to renewable energy in a cost-effective manner.  The company will acquire and construct three solar facilities – totaling 128 megawatts (MW) of capacity – including the largest solar photovoltaic (PV) facility east of the Mississippi River.  The three facilities will be located in Bladen, Duplin, and Wilson counties.

Duke Energy also signed power-purchase agreements with five new solar projects in the state, representing 150 MW of capacity.  Together, the eight projects will have a capacity of 278 MW.  The $500 million commitment includes the investment in the three facilities and the value of the five long-term power-purchase contracts.

“This is Duke Energy’s largest single announcement for solar power and represents a 60 percent increase in the amount of solar power for our North Carolina customers,” said Rob Caldwell, senior vice president, Distributed Energy Resources.  “We are bringing large amounts of renewable energy onto our system in the most cost-effective way possible.”

For those so inclined, the full article is HERE.  Others may be interested to know that the planned “largest solar photovoltaic facility east of the Mississippi River” refers to a facility to be built near Warsaw.

And finally, there is THIS related news on the USDA’s federal loan guarantees being issued for 22 solar projects within North Carolina’s borders.

NC’s Voter ID Will Govern the 2014 Fall Election

The Federal court for North Carolina’s Middle District ruled on Friday that the NC Voter ID law will remain in effect for the upcoming November elections.  The suit brought against North Carolina and Governor McCrory by the US Department of Justice, the NC-NAACP, the NC League of Women Voters, and various religious groups is to be heard in Federal court sometime in July of 2015, but the Justice Department, the NC-NAACP, and their allies wanted the court to enjoin the implementation of the new law so that it’s provisions would not be in effect until the trial ended.

From the text of the Court’s opinion, HERE, the core ruling:

After careful consideration, the court concludes that Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings should be denied in its entirety.  Plaintiffs’ complaints state plausible claims upon which relief can be granted and should be permitted to proceed in the litigation.  However, a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy to be granted in this circuit only upon a “clear showing” of entitlement.  After thorough review of the record, the court finds that as to two challenged provisions of SL 2013-381, Plaintiffs have not made a clear showing they are likely to succeed on the merits of the underlying legal claims.  As to the remaining provisions, the court finds that even assuming Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits, they have not demonstrated they are likely to suffer irreparable harm – a necessary prerequisite for preliminary relief – before trial in the absence of an injunction.  Consequently, the motions for preliminary injunction and the United States’ request for federal observers will be denied.

Sweet.  For more commentary on this opinion, check out THIS post at PJ-Tatler.

What is crude, but sweet, and with a lightness of being?

No, not me, silly, but thanks just the same.  I’m actually referring to the crude oil being extracted from the Bakken reserves in North Dakota and elsewhere along the Canadian border by means of hydraulic fracking.

The left in our country vehemently opposes any explorations by American oil companies aimed at expanding the proven petroleum reserves in the United States, any improvements in extraction technology that will tend to produce more oil more cheaply, and the creation of any infrastructure (such as a new pipeline) that will expedite the movement of that crude oil to the epicenter of U.S. refining capacity.  Consequently, in order to diminish the perceived value of the newly proven reserves, they denigrate the quality of the petroleum being pumped out of the Bakken formation at every turn.

However, Tessa Sandstrom is setting the record straight.  Ms. Sandstrom is Communications Manager for the North Dakota Petroleum Council and an expert on all things Bakken.  Earlier this week, she wrote an interesting and enlightening article to dispell many of the myths that have been spreading about Bakken Crude.  The article is HERE.

Kay Hagan, Penny-Focused and Pound Foolish

You may have heard that NC Senator Kay Hagan is running for re-election this fall.  In an obvious ploy to curry favor with one of the most liberal demographics, single women, a statement came from Senator Hagan in which she said that:

she is hopeful a federal bill requiring employers to offer contraception in their insurance plans can be resurrected in the U.S. Senate — despite a Supreme Court decision partially rejecting such coverage.

Hagan has no problem with a trillion dollars of spending on ObamaCare, but she gags at requiring women to buy their own contraception meds?  Anyhoo, of the bill Hagan refers to, the article goes on to say this:

The bill is meant to offset the Supreme Court’s decision last month involving the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts company.  The court’s ruling allowed some religiously oriented businesses to opt out of the federal health care law’s requirement that contraception coverage be provided to workers at no extra charge.

Birth control is used by women for a variety of reasons outside of planning pregnancy, including preventative care for ovarian cancer and other diseases, Hagan said.  “Employers who make their employees pay out-of-pocket for contraceptives just aren’t imposing their personal beliefs,” she said.  “They’re also making it much more difficult for women to access important, potentially lifesaving medical prescriptions and medical treatment.”  [ my boldface added. ]

Aww, c’mon, Kay.  My expenditures for my birth control meds, so far, have come to exactly zero.  However, I have read at multiple sources that women can easily purchase them for about $9 per month.  Nine bucks.  Nine bucks per month seems pretty reasonable to me, about the same as I would pay for a manly meal at McDonalds.

But if the poor womenfolk can’t shoulder this modest economic load, I am confident that they can always shanghai the necessary funds from their guys’ wallets.  I believe this because, soon after they became available, back in the early sixties, I drove my then-girlfriend to the clinic to get a prescription, and then to the drugstore to get the birth control pills.  I can’t say that I remember which of us paid, but I know that I would have been deliriously happy to pay if that was what it took in exchange for the piece of mind that the pills gave us both.

The full article, from the Greensboro News & Record, is HERE.

World War One was Triggered a Century Ago in Bosnia

Tomorrow will mark the 100th anniversary of Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination by a Serbian nationalist, an event which rapidly escalated into the start of the first World War.  Of course, until World War Two actually happened, the first world war was known simply as the Great War, the very bloody Great War.

Earlier this week, author and retired Army Reserve Colonel Austin Bay published an educational account of the conditions that existed at the time of the assassination, and draws some parallels to show how today’s situation in the Middle East could develop along similar lines.  A short excerpt:

In 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has proclaimed jihad in Syria and Iraq.  The ISIL wants to re-combine political and religious rule.  Re-establish a global Sunni Muslim Caliphate.  The ISIL’s pitch is utopian.  The ISIL’s Caliphate will secure God’s favor, and Muslims will rule the world — Muslims led by the ISIL’s political, self-interested commanders.

In summer 1914, political instability, institutional decline, fear and bitter grievance gripped Europe.  In 2014, the same afflictions vex the globe.  Perhaps World War One isn’t over; it is just entering another phase.

The full article, on the military blog Strategy Page, is HERE.

The Benghazi Video: Deceiving the Nation in the service of the Hildebeast’s Presidential Aspirations

I have not read it, but Edward Klein, author and erstwhile editor-in-chief of the New York Times Magazine, has written a new book centered on the uneasy political relationship between the Clintons and the Obamas.  The word I use in the title to this post (Hildebeast) is an alternate spelling to the “Hildebeest” moniker that Klein, in one of the several book Hillary_2_ItWasTheVideoexcerpts he published this week at the New York Post, HERE, says Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett came up with to disparage Hillary Clinton in their numerous discussions of Hillary and former President Bill Clinton.

To me, the most disturbing of Klein’s revelations, based on another of his book excerpts, HERE, is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided, after consulting with Slick by telephone in the late hours of September 11, 2011, that she would collude with President Obama in an enormous and prolonged deception of the American public, with the personal goal of furthering her 2016 Presidential aspirations.  Some crucial excerpts that, in my mind, lead inexorably to that conclusion:

She had no doubt that a terrorist attack had been launched against America on the anniversary of 9/11.  However, when Hillary picked up the phone and heard Obama’s voice, she learned the president had other ideas in mind.  With less than two months before Election Day, he was still boasting that he had al Qaeda on the run.  If the truth about Benghazi became known, it would blow that argument out of the water.

“Hillary was stunned when she heard the president talk about the Benghazi attack,” one of her top legal advisers said in an interview.  “Obama wanted her to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned the Prophet Mohammed.”  This adviser continued: “Hillary told Obama, ‘Mr. President, that story isn’t credible.  Among other things, it ignores the fact that the attack occurred on 9/11.’  But the president was adamant.  He said, ‘Hillary, I need you to put out a State Department release as soon as possible.’”

and, after thoroughly discussing her options with her husband, former President William Jefferson Clinton, they both realized that:

Obama had put Hillary in a corner, and she and Bill didn’t see a way out.  And so, shortly after 10 o’clock on the night of September 11, she released an official statement that blamed the Benghazi attack on an “inflammatory (video) posted on the Internet.”

To both the Clintons and the Obamas, the end justifies the means, and no malfeasance is too great if it serves those ends.

So, Don’t Hear Much About “Peak Oil” These Days

The notion that there was a finite amount of oil reserves in the world, the vast majority of which mankind had already discovered, and a much smaller portion of which could ever be economically extracted, was known as the “Peak Oil” theory.  The theory was developed in 1956 by Marion Hubbert, a geologist who worked in the Texas research facilities of Shell Oil.  Hubbert died in 1989, but not before seeing the realization of his fundamental prediction, which was that worldwide petroleum production would “peak” in the late 1960s and steadily decline thereafter.

It recently occurred to me that there are some similarities between the liberal left’s attitude on Peak Oil in the 1970s and their attitude now on AGW/Climate-Change.  In the seventies and eighties, before AGW alarmism began to overshadow it, Peak Oil was the catastrophe that the left relied upon to panic the populace into thinking that, whatever the economic and/or inefficiency drawbacks of doing so, the nation must immediately launch into a monstrously expensive, government-coerced adoption of green energy.

I have a good friend who used to believe in the Peak Oil theory strongly, and he, along with his environmentalist friends, would use it as a justification for advocating vigorous governmental action to move the American citizenry away from the consumption of fossil fuels.  Nowadays, of course, they rely on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), or Anthropogenic Climate Change, or whatever the currently favored terminology happens to be.

But you don’t hear much these days about Peak Oil, because the discovery and exploitation of shale oil deposits since the late 1990s has made almost everyone understand how foolish the notion was to begin with.  And just this spring, another development in the Williston Basin (graphic at right, click to enlarge) along the Canadian border with Bakken_FormationMontana and North Dakota has reinforced that realization.

The basin, named for and surrounding the town of Williston, North Dakota, contains multiple layers of oil-bearing rock.  The top-most layers constitute the well-known Bakken formation, but recent discoveries are somewhat deeper.  These deeper layers are referred to on the U.S. side as the Three Forks formation, after Three Forks, Montana, and on the Canadian side as the Torquay Formation, after the seaside resort town of Torquay on England’s southern coast. 

The oil producers in the region are now “cracking the code” on the best drilling techniques and practices for the Three Forks and Torquay formations, and are coming up with incredible economic returns.  These wells cost, on average, less than four million dollars each including equipment and drilling expenditures for a one-mile horizontal well, but the yield is so great that the producers are recovering that investment in as little as one year, sometimes even less!

This kind of return on investment has re-invigorated the Canadian side, and on the US side, the production of the Three Forks wells is causing the industry to leap-frog estimates of the amount of recoverable oil available in the basin, by numbers ranging from 50% to 100%!  And this scenario, to one degree or another, is being repeated above the sites of shale oil deposits all over the world.

It is true, of course, that the earth is not growing any more dinosaurs, so the TOTAL reserves of petroleum are, indeed, finite.  However, for the immediate future, the proven reserves are growing at a rate that seemed incomprehensible a half-century ago when Marion Hubbert’s ideas were the prevailing wisdom.

For the WikiPedia page on “Peak Oil”, click HERE.  For the recent article in the industry journal Oil Voice, on which this post is partially based, go HERE.  And for the WikiPedia page on the Williston Basin, click THIS link.

D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Seventieth Anniversary

During World War II, Samuel A. L. Marshall was a U.S. Army Colonel serving as a combat historian, and that continued to be his assignment until he retired as a Brigadier General in 1953.  By then, his research and focus on WW2, and on the Normandy invasion in particular, made him about as knowledgable about D-Day and the allied landings as anyone who has ever written about the events of that date.  For the November, 1960 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Marshall used his notes to write a riveting account of that horrific first day.

The account can be accessed via the Education / Historic Events menu, or simply by clicking HERE.

The Dambuster Mission — 71 Years Ago

This weekend marks the seventy-first anniversary of one of the more famous operations of World War Two, the British attempts, over the course of two nights, to destroy the three main dams supplying hydroelectric power to Nazi Germany.  The mission was code-named Operation Chastise, and the objective was not only to deprive the German economy of electrical power, but to cause massive disruption of the German war machine as a result of flooding in the Ruhr and Eder Mohne_Damvalleys.

The mission succeeded in inflicting severe damage on two of the three dams (image at left of the Mohne dam), but in the final analysis it resulted only in delaying the Nazi war machine, as the Allies had not yet established air superiority over the German heartland, and so Hitler’s engineers were able to quickly repair the damage.

The mission has been highly publicized in the decades since the war ended, with at least one movie (“The Dam Busters”, from 1955, HERE), several books, and many articles and television shows.  Since it was only marginally successful, the interest in the mission was centered around the unique bomb that was used.  It was an unconventional design, based essentially on an explosive-packed 55-gallon steel drum laid on it’s side, that was dropped from a British Lancaster bomber only after a reverse “spin” had been imparted to the drum, and from a very, very low altitude.

The spinning (or bouncing, or skipping) bomb concept was necessary to defeat the defensive measures that the Germans had devised to protect the dams.  The had essentially hung a submarine net some distance away from the inside (impoundment) face of each dam, the idea being to snare any conventional bomb or torpedo before it could get close enough to inflict significant damage to the submerged dam wall.  To overcome this, the chief British designer, Barnes Wallis, came up with the idea of a bomb that would skip along the surface of the water until it hit the impoundment face of the dam, then would sink straight down until it reached a pre-determined depth, at which time it would detonate like an anti-submarine depth charge.  The force of the explosion would be contained and magnified by the pressure of the water, and by the close proximity to the dam wall.

Aside from the herculean task of designing, perfecting, and transporting these bombs through Germany to the heavily defended dam sites, there was also the problem of the altitude.  After much testing, the British realized that the only way to get the bombs to skip when they hit the surface of the water, rather than to immediately sink, was to drop them from a height so low that they would have much more horizontal momentum than vertical momentum.  The optimum height was eventually determined to be sixty feet.  SIXTY FEET!  At night, at about 240-mph, and with German anti-aircraft fire saturating the airspace!

The Lancaster crews initially intended to rely on their aircraft altimeters, but they soon realized that at sixty feet the altimeters were erratic and Dambuster_Bomberunreliable.  They finally came up with a simple and ingenious solution illustrated by my crude graphic, at right.  They mounted a spotlight at each end of the Lancaster bomber, and angled the projected beams until they would intersect at exactly sixty feet below the plane’s fuselage.  As the plane descended over the impoundment behind the dam, the bombardier would watch the two spots on the surface of the water through the open bomb bay doors.  When they converged into a single spot, he knew to tell the pilot that the altitude was perfect.

For more on this fascinating episode, the WikiPedia page is HERE, and a great article on the mission posted this week by the Royal Canadian Air Force is HERE.

Sarah Palin Shares Taylor Griffin Picture

As is widely known by now, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin Sarah_2endorsed Taylor Griffin earlier this week for his campaign to replace Representative Walter Jones as TaylorGriffin_inCedarIsland_Fishhousethe Republican representative from North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District.  Governor Palin has now posted to her Facebook page, HERE, the photo at right, which is of Griffin on one of his trips down east to talk to the voters.  This image was taken at a fish house in Cedar Island earlier this spring when Griffin was meeting with some commercial fishermen.

When Election Advocacy Morphs Into Prevarication

Now that we are in the closing week of the primary campaign for the NC 3rd Congressional District, the pitch of election advocacy is rising, sometimes to the point of prevarication, but quite often to the point of deception.  I therefore wish to clear up some of the more outrageous things being said of Taylor Griffin in his effort to unseat the incumbent, Representative Walter B. Jones.

Amongst our fellow Tea Partiers, the CCTPP is known for the degree of research we put into vetting the candidates that will appear on our local election ballots.  We put a lot of effort into determining which aspirants have the political ideology and policy prescriptions that are most closely aligned with the Crystal Coast Tea Party Patriots, and with Tea Party organizations nationwide.

Taylor Griffin first appeared before the members of the CCTPP meeting in early October of 2013.  Because several of our officers had other obligations to meet later in the evening, the meeting was very short, only about an hour.  Griffin spoke only briefly to introduce himself, and the meeting was adjourned with little opportunity for Q-and-A.  The general impression was that his conservative views were solid, but that he would need to improve his public speaking skills to make his effort viable.

Since then, Griffin has appeared before our group three more times.  Each time, the interest of our membership in his candidacy grew, and with it the intensity of the scrutiny we applied to his political ideology, to the positions he had publically taken on the issues of the day (mostly via his website), and to his policy prescriptions on issues that we deemed relevant, but that had not garnered much focus in the media.  The Q-and-A of our members was augmented by the research that I, as webmaster for the group, did to undergird the several posts I put up on our website in support of his candidacy.  With the exception of the opposition research professionals hired by the respective campaigns, I doubt that anyone can be more comfortable in their assessment of a candidate than I am about Taylor Griffin.

Now to the various deceptions and prevarications:  MORE …

NEWSFLASH !! Sarah Palin endorses Taylor Griffin

 

From his campaign headquarters in New Bern, Taylor Griffin released this statement on the morning of Tuesday, April 29th:

Taylor Griffin’s congressional campaign got a big endorsement today from an old friend.  Former Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her husband Todd Palin Sarah_2endorsed Griffin’s run for the Republican nomination in North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District.  Griffin worked with Governor Palin and Todd in 2008 during Palin’s Vice Presidential campaign.

“I am incredibly honored to receive the endorsement of Governor Sarah and Todd Palin.  I consider Governor Palin to be the epitome of a principled conservative and her endorsement reinforces my message that I will give Eastern North Carolina the conservative representation we deserve.”  Griffin said after receiving the news of the endorsement.

Griffin also added the endorsement carries with it a great responsibility.  “When a local veteran or commercial fisherman tell me I have their support, I feel the responsibility to represent them in a manner befitting their trust.  I feel the same way about the endorsement of Governor Palin and Todd.  I can assure them and the people of Eastern North Carolina that my conservative principles will not waiver after I get to Washington.”

Earlier in the campaign, Griffin had written this to Governor Palin and Todd requesting their support for his candidacy:

“I chose to launch my campaign last year because in my time in politics and government I have watched our country, and at times my own party, veer so far off course from the fundamental constitutional values and free market ideals that made our country great.  My time working with you and your family in Alaska was one of the most important experiences of my life.  Like Alaskans, Eastern North Carolinians believe that the solution to our nation’s problems lie in its people rather than in ever expanding edicts from Washington.”

Palin responded yesterday with the following note:

“Taylor – Thank you for your note and for putting your name on the line to help restore our country.  Todd and I are happy to honor your request and support your candidacy.  In Washington, we need you to stay true to your beliefs of smaller government, protecting life, and furthering conservative principles.  America needs fighters in Congress – go to DC remembering the good patriots of Eastern North Carolina who put their trust in you to fight for them.  You have our support – we have directed SarahPAC to make a financial contribution to your campaign today.  Thank you for your patriotism and commitment to our cause!  – Sarah Palin”

The imprimatur of former Republican Governor and 2008 Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is an important development in the vetting of Taylor Griffin’s conservative credentials, second, of course, to that of the Crystal Coast Tea Party Patriots.

My Assessment of the 3rd Congressional District Contenders

One week ago, I put up a post that enumerated much of the personal history, conservative credentials, and policy prescriptions of Taylor Griffin, who is one of the three candidates and a second challenger for North Carolina’s 3rd District Congressional seat currently held by Representative Walter B. Jones, Jr.

The third candidate (and second challenger) is Al Novenic.  Although Novenic has appeared before our group and seems like a likable guy, he is a political novice, and his ideology, though basically conservative, is heavily tinged with Populism.  For that reason, I believe him to be an unlikely contender and he will not be included in this assessment.

That leaves the incumbent, Walter B. Jones, Jr.  As many readers know, Jones first ran for office as a Democrat, following in the footsteps of his father, Walter B. Jones, Sr.  The younger Jones served in and was re-elected to Congress until he lost the 1992 Democratic primary election to Eva Clayton, who went on to win the general election, forcing Jones into a two-year hiatus.  In the run-up to the 1994 mid-term elections, astutely assessing the rising Gingrich-engineered wave that swept so many conservatives into the House of Representatives, Jones switched parties.  Running as a Republican, he was elected to the seat for North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District, in which he will soon complete ten consecutive terms for a total of twenty years, and with no primary challenge in the first seven of those ten terms.  In fact, he has had a primary challenger only twice before, by Joe McLaughlin in 2008 and by Frank Palombo in 2012.  He is now, in 2014, being challenged for a third time by Griffin, who is Jones’ third primary challenger out of the last four election cycles.

Since Jones did not have any primary opposition in his first seven terms, and since primary challengers tend to appear when the voters are getting restless, it seems fair to ask why the Republican voters have become so dissatisfied with him in the last eight or so years.  What is different?

I suggest that the answer lies in Jones’ shifting ideology.  Although he seemed to be sufficiently conservative in the earlier years, he has gradually moved toward a more Libertarian view as opposed to a conservative Republican view.  To examine that process, let’s look first at the voting records.

VOTE SCORING BY SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

Project Vote Smart (PVS) maintains the ratings for a number of special interest groups that wish to track and score the congressional voting records of elected officials, and I looked at the PVS records for several of them.  I looked first at the scoring of the National Rifle Association (NRA) from 1994 to the present, and found that Walter Jones had an overall lifetime rating of 92% on the issues that were scored by the NRA (see the NRA column in the table below).  This sounds impressive, until you make comparisons to other members of congress.  I picked 2004, the last year of lifetime ratings, and counted how many congressmen were rated in what brackets.  Of the 209 incumbents that were rated, 90 (or 43%) were in the 92% bracket (including eight Democrats), which was by far the largest single grouping.  There were only five that made the 100% bracket.  Based on this, my assessment is that Congressman Jones is somewhat above average on Second Amendment issues, but not outstanding.

I next looked at the PVS records for the scoring of the National Journal (website is HERE), a non-partisan weekly magazine that reports on political events and trends, and one that, according to their WikiPedia page, HERE, is “mostly read by members of Congress, Capitol Hill staffers, the White House, Executive Branch agencies, the media, think tanks, corporations, associations, and lobbyists.”  National Journal has been scoring Congressional voting for many years, but is has only been since 2005 that the vote scoring has been comprehensive and consistent.  Since then, they have scored all members of Congress (House & Senate) in the three areas of economic, social, and foreign policy.  In addition, they also compile a composite score that averages the scores from the three specific policy areas.  I included these composite scores in the table below.  Walter Jones’ scores for the nine years from 2005 to the present started out low, climbed to their zenith of 66% in 2008/2009, and have been low since.  By comparison, Jones’ scores are considerably lower than the nine-year average scores for NC Republicans Richard Burr (81.5%), Howard Coble (74.1%), and Patrick McHenry (87.6).

Project Vote Smart also administers a Political Courage Test, derived from the public positions taken by elected officials on the key issues of the day.  The test measures a candidates “… willingness to provide citizens with their positions on key issues.”  When I looked up Walter Jones’ score, the page, HERE, said that “Walter Jones, Jr. refused to tell citizens where he stands on any of the issues addressed in the 2012 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart, national media, and prominent political leaders.”

Beginning in 2012, the Heritage Foundation has maintained voting records at their Heritage Action Scorecard site, measuring votes, co-sponsorships, and other legislative activity, and their composite scores are updated weekly when Congress is in session.  The page for North Carolina congressional members, HERE, rates all fifteen members of the NC delegation, including the five Democrats.  For 2013, of the ten Republicans, Walter Jones ranks sixth at 73%, roughly midway between Representative George Holdings’ 89% and Representative Howard Coble’s 51%.  His two-year average is 67.5%, about the same as Burr (68.5%), better than Coble (57%), but worse than Patrick McHenry (74%).  Not bad ratings, to be sure, but not particularly impressive.

The American Conservative Union (ACU) “… tracks a wide range of issues before Congress to determine which issues and votes serve as a dividing line to help separate those members of the U.S. House and Senate who protect liberty as conservatives and those who are truly liberal.”  The overall ACU ratings are incorporated into the table below (below left, click to enlarge), but beginning in 2012, the ACU also began compiling a House WBJ_VoteScoringTableConservatives list each year that enumerates all the House members who have attained an average score of 80% or more.   In the graphic at right (click to enlarge), the two most recent years are depicted.  Note that ACU_80percent_4WJWalter Jones made the 2013 list, but did not make the 2012 list.  Jones’ nineteen year average (1995-2013) is a respectable 83.9%, but the most notable thing about the ACU ratings is how Jones has become progressively less conservative over the course of the nineteen year incumbency.  For the first twelve years, his average score was 92.2%, but for the most recent seven years, his average score has been only 69.7%.  This is plain evidence, I think, of Jones’ movement away from a strictly conservative ideology.

For the last several years, since 2005, the Club For Growth (C4G) has conducted “a comprehensive examination of each lawmaker’s record on pro-growth policies and computed an Economic Growth Score on a scale of 0 to 100.”  Again, the scores for Walter Jones are incorporated into the table above, but C4G also ranks members of the House based on where they fall in the rankings.  Jones lifetime ranking is 76, meaning that there were 75 members with better lifetime rankings, and 352 with rankings either equal to Jones’ or worse.  His actual vote scoring by the C4G was consistently low for the first seven of the nine scored years, but have improved dramatically in 2012 and 2013.

FALTERING SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL

Many conservatives, myself included, would argue that President Obama has been the least supportive of Israel of any U.S. President since the nation of Israel was founded in the aftermath of the 1948 war with the Arab states in the Middle East.  In a post from last week entitled “Ranking the RINOs”, the blog at OpenSecrets.org noted, HERE, the increased funding by Israel support groups of efforts to unseat members of Congress who are seen as being non-supportive of Israel.  An excerpt:

Jones’ bid for reelection became a lot more competitive after he was hit by a $78,000 ad buy from the Ending Spending Fund, a super PAC backed by hedge fund multi-millionaire John Ricketts and mega-donor casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.  In total, the fund has spent $197,230 in its efforts to toss Jones from office.

The Emergency Committee for Israel has also weighed in with a $151,075 ad hitting the congressman for being the only Republican to vote “present” on a 2012 resolution that reasserted the Obama administration would continue to furnish Israel with military supplies amid the American withdrawal from Iraq.  It appears his offenses also include a vote against the Republican budget plan devised by Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

A few days earlier, Breitbart published an article, HERE, that also noted the new television ads paid for by the Emergency Committee for Israel, and elaborated on the disillusionment that many Israel supporters have experienced with Jones.  Here are some excerpts from that article:

The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) dropped a brutal new television ad against Representative Walter Jones (R-NC), the first time the group has waded into a primary that has become something of a proxy battle in the Tea Party war against the establishment.

The ad, backed by a “six figure” buy, takes Jones to task for his liberal views on foreign policy, including opposing sanctions on Iran and refusing to back a non-binding House resolution expressing support for Israel’s right to defend itself in 2012.

and

Jones has an unusual record in the House.  A former Democrat, he is deeply conservative on spending issues but has veered far to the left on foreign policy in recent years, joining libertarians like former Representative Ron Paul and current Representative Justin Amash as part of a small group of dissidents on many votes.

Jones was removed from a plum committee assignment in late 2012 and participated in an ill-fated coup attempt against Speaker John Boehner.

In the vote against the Israel resolution, for example, Paul was the only Republican to vote no, while Jones was the only Republican to vote present.  Democratic Representative John Dingell voted no and eight Democrats joined Jones in voting present.

JOINED THE DEMOCRATS IN URGING MORE NEGOTIATIONS WITH IRAN

In mid-February of 2012, Jones joined Muslim Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), along with three North Carolina Democratic representatives (G. K. Butterfield, David Price, and Melvin Watt) and thirty-two other congressmen as signatories to a letter sent to President Obama, which stated, in part:

We have supported your Administration’s efforts to unite the international community to bring about the strongest sanctions on Iran to date. Now, we must redouble our diplomatic efforts to achieve robust transparency measures that can verify Iran’s nuclear program is strictly a civilian one.

and

We strongly encourage your Administration to pursue bilateral and multilateral engagement with Iran. While we acknowledge that progress will be difficult, we believe that robust, sustained diplomacy is the best option to resolve our serious concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, and to prevent a costly war that would be devastating for the United States and our allies in the region.

While no sane person would want war when there is a alternative way to achieve a good outcome, the foolish persistence by the Obama administration in continuing these interminable negotiations with an Islamic state, Iran, that sees negotiations much like North Korea sees them, as only a tactic to forestall action on the part of it’s adversaries while it pursues it’s private goals, may come at a high cost to Israel if Iran succeeds in producing nuclear weapons.

MISCELLANEOUS

On the Budget:  On April 15, 2011, Jones was one of four Republican members of congress to vote against The Path to Prosperity, which was the Republican Party’s budget proposal for the United States federal government in the fiscal year 2012.  In December 2012, Jones was one of four House Republicans removed from their committees by Speaker of the House John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor for defying party leadership.  Jones was removed from the Financial Services Committee, a plum seat for fundraising, as reprisal for not raising money for the Republican Party.  [Wikipedia, WBJ]

On the War In Iraq:  He contends that the United States went to war “with no justification.”  <snip>  On June 16, 2005, he joined with three other members of Congress (Neil Abercrombie, Dennis Kucinich, and Ron Paul) in introducing a resolution calling for the start of a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq to begin by October 2006.  [Wikipedia, WBJ]

Loss of Sub-Committee Assignment:  Jones’ views on the war in Iraq did not ingratiate him to [President George W.] Bush or to the Republican leadership, which prevented him from succeeding the late Jo Ann Davis as ranking Republican on the Readiness Subcommittee of the Armed Forces Committee.  He was passed over for Randy Forbes when the 110th Congress convened because the full committee’s ranking member, Duncan Hunter of California, didn’t agree with Jones’ change of heart on the war.  He had been approached by some Democrats about bolting the GOP and either becoming an independent caucusing with the Democrats or switching back to the Democratic Party outright.  [Wikipedia, WBJ]

Caucus Memberships:  Jones serves on the Liberty Caucus, a group of libertarian-minded Republican representatives in the House.  However, he never joined the Tea Party Caucus, first launched and chaired by Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on July 16, 2010.  The caucus was dedicated to promoting what it considered fiscal responsibility, adherence to the movement’s interpretation of the Constitution and limited government.  The idea of a Tea Party Caucus originated from Kentucky Senator Rand Paul when he was campaigning for his current seat.

IN SUMMARY

While it is true that Walter Jones served us well in his earlier years, his ideological drift has all to often put him at odds with conservatives in his recent terms.  It is time, I think, to look for a more traditional conservative, a candidate who is willing to go out of his way to express his alignment with the values and ideology of the Crystal Coast Tea Party Patriots.

A Brief Recap of the regularly scheduled Morehead City CCTPP Meeting of April 1, 2014: Part 3 of 3 (Taylor Griffin)

The Morehead City faction of the Crystal Coast Tea Party Patriots held their regular weekly meeting Tuesday evening.  The agenda was packed, and the meeting room was near full with a couple of dozen members in attendance, all of whom were attentive to each of the scheduled speakers.  Since there was considerable interlocution with all three candidates for office during the meeting, this recapitulation will be broken into three posts, one each to address the policies and performance of each candidate.  

Third up was Taylor Griffin, who is also, like Al Novenic, a third candidate and a second challenger for North Carolina’s 3rd District Congressional seat currently held by Representative Walter Jones.  Griffin presented no prepared remarks, as this was his third appearance before a meeting of the CCTPP, and he is already known to the members as a man who presents as a more consistently conservative candidate than incumbent Jones.  In his previous visits, he has stated his support for and his belief in a smaller government, less federal spending, small business and the free market, tax simplification with lower marginal rates, defeating the liberal assaults on the Second Amendment, a strong military, and a cautious and piecemeal approach to the problem of illegal immigration, an approach that leaves no room whatsoever for a blanket amnesty.

This appearance was for the purpose of addressing any and all questions that the attending members might have about him, his experience in Washington, his associations, and his policy positions and prescriptions.  The following summarizes the questions asked and the responses given, in no particular order.

On the list of the usual suspects was the subject of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.  Griffin admits that it is a sticky issue, as there is a genuine need for the type of low skilled, low paid labor that illegal immigrants are thought to satisfy, including many jobs in NC’s agricultural sector and elsewhere.  A related problem is that, in exchange for any proposals the Republicans might offer to improve border security or to otherwise dis-incentivize more illegal immigration, the Democrats in Congress will demand a pathway to citizenship for those illegals already in the country.

Candidate Griffin believes that a pathway to citizenship would likely result in Democratic electoral majorities for decades to come, and that conservatives must not allow the amnesty / pathway scenario to further advance in Congress.  The most realistic approach for Republicans, he asserts, must be to:

1]  Secure the border by a combination of high-tech methods and equipment coupled with Border Patrol boots on the ground.  This will not be easy, and there will be funding issues, but it is vital.

2]  Strengthen the E-Verify system and it’s participation rate by making it easier for small employers to use, and by enforcing the penalties against those employers who willfully avoid it’s use.

3]  Reduce the dis-incentives to work in our current unemployment benefit and welfare benefit structure.

Griffin was also asked to elaborate on his RELEVANT EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS, so:

1]  he began by confirming that, after college (at Appalachian State) he had worked first in the office of NC Senator Jesse Helms, then in the administration of President George W. Bush in the White House and later in the Treasury Department.  While at Treasury, he also spent time working on developing measures to track and disrupt terrorist funding sources.

2]  In 2008 he moved on to work with the campaign staff for Senator John McCain’s bid for the presidency.  Soon after Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was named as McCain’s VP pick, Griffin was one of the staffers assigned to the tasks of helping Governor Palin deal with the media and fend off the efforts of her adversaries in Alaska to bring her to heel by means of frivolous lawsuits.

3]  In 2010 he co-founded Hamilton Place Strategies (HPS), a public policy consulting firm in Washington, DC.  HPS was a small business which eventually grew to having about twenty employees and a payroll to match.  After selling his share in the firm, he moved back to North Carolina, and now lives in New Bern.

4]  In a follow-up query, Griffin was asked about whether he had ever been a lobbyist.  Griffin said he had not, and that he thinks that rumor may have gotten started because, back in 2010, on behalf of Hamilton Place Strategies, he had filled out the registration form that the Federal government requires of lobbyists.  He had done so out of caution, just in case the Feds were to misconstrue any of his consulting activities to be lobbying.  The firm, he says, never earned a dime for any lobbying activities.

The next question related to Griffin’s views on recent INSIDER TRADING scandals, to which he replied that he thought the laws against it should be made stronger by amending the STOCK Act of 2012 to address the problem of short sales by members of Congress, to expand the disclosure requirements, and to make the penalties for shadow trading more serious.

About his view on TAX REFORM, Griffin said that he favors a simplified tax structure that does not distort the economy in the way that ethanol subsidies and most other green energy preferences do.  He also advocates for lower marginal rates, both for individuals and corporations, and for policies that could entice corporations to bring their monetary profits and reserves back into the U.S. where they could be available to help capitalize our economy.

On his SUPPORT FOR THE MILITARY, he promised to equal or exceed the support attributed to Representative Walter Jones on military issues, and even drew the questioner’s attention to an instance in which Jones’ voting had been inconsistent with his rhetoric on the issue.

On FOREIGN AID, candidate Griffin believes that there is some room for cuts to the foreign aid budget, but since expenditures are only $37-billion out of a budget in excess of $3,400-billion, it is not our most pressing fiscal problem.  He added, however, that he was, unlike President Obama, a strong supporter of Israel and would usually be in their corner when it came to dealing with the Palestinians and other adversaries in the Middle East.  Moreover, he thinks that the Israel portion of our foreign aid budget is justified.

Asked about his view of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory activism during the Obama administration, Griffin stated that he opposes much of their agenda, particularly their regulations dealing with carbon (cap-&-trade) and carbon gases (carbon dioxide), and would work to constrain the agency’s regulatory excesses.

Asked also about his view of certain NSA activities authorized under the Patriot Act, Griffin affirmed that it is necessary for the Feds to have access to telecommunication meta-data in order to thwart or pursue terrorists, but that the government need not have custody of the records.  Also, he thinks it imperative that there be independent oversight of the NSA’s access to the data.

Chairman Bob Cavanaugh asked Griffin what COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS he would pursue if elected, and Griffin responded that he would most want to be on the House Armed Services and Marine Fisheries committees.

For additional information, readers may wish to visit Taylor Griffin’s website, HERE.

Israel is no longer the only Middle Eastern state with no petroleum deposits

Its true.  From the full article, HERE, at the online Commentary Magazine:

Tamar sits 56 miles off the coast of Israel, an offshore gas platform rising up from the Mediterranean like a white steel beacon whose roots reach down 1,000 feet to the seabed. Named for the natural-gas field beneath the sea floor, Tamar is the symbol of a bright future for Israel if Israel is ready for it: as the newest energy producer and exporter in the Middle East, and potentially the most important.

Energy From Algae — The New Foo Fighters

Douglas Elliott, a spokesman for the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL, located in Richland, WA) has announced a new and more efficient process for converting algae into petroleum products.  Algae fuel research has been going on for years, but the processes developed to date have been inordinately expensive, mainly because the algae had to be thoroughly dried before the ensuing steps began, and because expensive chemicals were used, particularly hexane solvents.  Additionally, the former processes were all batch processes, which made for too much down-time.

The new procedure yields a continuous flow of viscous crude oil liquid that can be further processed into gasoline, diesel fuel, and other consumables.  The by-products are water containing  nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium — the key nutrients for growing more algae with which to continue the process.

From the announcement:

PNNL scientists and engineers simplified the production of crude oil from algae by combining several chemical steps into one continuous process.  The most important cost-saving step is that the process works with wet algae.

“Not having to dry the algae is a big win in this process; that cuts the cost a great deal,” said Elliott.  “Then there are bonuses, like being able to extract usable gas from the water and then recycle the remaining water and nutrients to help grow more algae, which further reduces costs.”

the PNNL team works with the whole algae, subjecting it to very hot water under high pressure to tear apart the substance, converting most of the biomass into liquid and gas fuels.  The system runs at around 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit) at a pressure of around 3,000 PSI, combining processes known as hydrothermal liquefaction and catalytic hydrothermal gasification.

For the entire article, go HERE.

Obama Gotta Have His Renewable Energy

MillPondPost_LogoBreitbart’s Robert Wilde is reporting today on the intent of the Obama administartion to weaken the regulations protecting our national symbol, bald eagles, particularly from deaths due to wind turbine farms.  This hazard was responsible for the recent $1M fine that Duke Energy had to pay for deaths resulting from birds flying into the deadly turbine blades at their wind farms.

The proposed new rules —

… will give wind farms thirty year permits for the “non purposeful take of eagles-that is where the take is associated with but not the purpose of, the activity.’’ The take of eagles is also a euphemism for the slaughter of them.

The wind farms fulfill Obama’s ambitious pursuit of developing renewable energy sources. Unfortunately, some bird species being destroyed by the turbines are not renewable. As a result, Obama finds himself wedged between the ire of opposing green groups. In July, wildlife groups met with administration officials and lobbied against the granting of 30 year permits for energy companies that own the wind farms.

Wildlife groups are advocating shorter leases and insist that a 30-year free pass for eagle “taking” is too long. They argue that before we are stuck with three decades of the rule, there are still some unanswered questions about how to prevent the destroying of the birds.

The text of the rule is on the OMB site, HERE, and from The Hill Blog, the full story is HERE.

Making Fuel From Food — Dumbest Idea Ever?

As a former farm boy and a guy who still owns an itty-bitty amount of tillable acreage in eastern NC, I have always thought that the ethanol fuel mandate was the height of idiocy.  It drives up the cost or corn, thus driving up the cost of beef and pork and lots of other food items, it causes farmers to favor corn over other crops in the competition for the available crop land, and it pushes up the true cost of motor vehicle fuel by diluting the miles driven per gallon of gasohol versus gasoline.

This and lots of other ramifications are exposed in this comprehensive ARTICLE, written by Dina Cappiello of the AP, encouraging me to believe that at least some members of the MSM are coming around to my view.

Obama Finally Delivers

In 2008, Obama promised to “stem the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.” On June 25, 2013, he finally delivered his plan. The piece below is from John Droz. Check out the links provided for more information.

 

 

[T]he President revealed his climate & energy plan this afternoon [June 25, 2013].
Unfortunately there was no surprise, as it was entirely a political speech, essentially devoid of any real science.
[Note that their newest PR tactic was on display: since citizens have already been flogged into insensitivity with the end-of-the world malarky, their focus now is that it’s your kids at stake!]
He is also quite proud of the fact that he is largely bypassing Congress (the elected representatives of the people), and acting contrary to the wishes of US citizenry. Additionally the fact that his unilateral actions will likely result in widespread economic harm to the country, thousands of net jobs lost, and a reduction of our security — are also taken as a badge of honor.
This makes perfect sense once one fully grasps that this is a religious campaign, and the main tenet of this secular belief is: “The End Justifies The Means.” Put another way: a lot of casualties are a necessary byproduct of war.
Marc Morano wrote a good summary: “President Obama is still parading his ignorance on climate science, linking bad weather to ‘global warming’, claiming a mythical 97% consensus, and implying that his executive actions can alter the globe’s temperature and lessen extreme weather events. The President has descended into the realm of medieval witchcraft by claiming he can combat global temperature rises and weather patterns through administrative action.”
CEI issued an insightful commentary: “President’s Climate Plan Undemocratic, Bordering On Authoritarian“. They rightly characterize his proposal as “all pain, no gain.” Other good observations from several independent experts can be found here.
The Good The Bad and the Ugly (which includes two PDF documents: 1) the President’s plan and 2) the White House “fact sheet” for climate policies for both new and existing power plants.
To understand the Big Picture of our concern here, please carefully look at ScienceUnderAssault.info.
What can you do? Despite his blatant attempt at an end-run, Congress still has some say here — for instance they control the purse strings of government agencies. So please do call your Representative and Senator to express your views: 1-866-220-0044.
regards,
john droz, jr.
PS — If you’d like to dig a little deeper, here’s more. Thanks to Bob Ferguson (president of SPPI) for most of the following summary:Claims that CO2 emissions are “contributing to higher rates of asthma attacks and more frequent and severe floods and heat waves” not only lack scientific and observational validity, but the growing body of literature across a broad spectrum of related fields of research often contradicts such claims.
A search of these web resources by the Center for the Study of CO2 and the Science and Public Policy Institute returns ample review papers of CO2 and climate related research:
Sample papers and summaries:

Update on NC H298, Affordable and Reliable Energy Act

This is a progress report on the NC H298 bill: Affordable and Reliable Energy Act. 

Yesterday (Wednesday) there was a Commerce Committee hearing on this bill. It was well-attended, and there were numerous inputs. At the end, the committee voted to pass the bill. There are now three committees left to be dealt with, but it was generally acknowledged that the Commerce one would be the most difficult.
For those who did not attend, here is a video of that Commerce Committee hearing.
The next hearing for H298 is scheduled to be the House Environment Committee. I have not yet heard about the schedule for the Environmental Committee. Right now that Committee has 12 other bills already on the docket to review, so it’s hard to say when H298 will come up. My guess, though, is that it will be expedited. An official place where the schedule will appear is here.
To be prepared for all options, I wrote this report as a comprehensive, eye-opening Environmental Assessment of H298.
 
In it I provide some rarely reported information — like the problematic consequences of Rare Earth Elements (each turbine uses some 4000 pounds of REEs!). Few people are aware that one investigation concluded that wind turbine manufacture produces more radioactive waste material than results from the operation of a comparable nuclear facility!
 
There is also a superior new NC map by the US Fish & Wildlife Service (US F&WS), showing how almost all of the NC wind “suitable” locations are environmentally problematic. On top of that I superimposed the low-level flight paths of three major NC air bases. The result is that there is essentially zero “suitable” NC land left.
 
I also listed the annual agricultural cost due to turbine bat deaths for each NC county — which just on their own usually exceed the unguaranteed promises made by wind developers. Etc…
 
I think that you will find this document to be a wealth of information, so please pass it on to other interested citizens.
 
 
Please let me know any questions on any of this — or any suggestions you have for improvements.
 
There are now over a dozen organizations actively supporting H298 and we would appreciate your help.
regards,
john droz, jr.

Science Under Attack

The slide carousel below is essentially the same as that presented by Morehead City physicist John Droz before a group of legislators from the NC General Assembly on February 6, 2013.  It explains why decisions on science should be based only on real science.

[slideshare id=9692210&doc=wppresentation-locke-111014053128-phpapp01]

Science versus AGW/Climate-Change Religion in North Carolina

The following essay (slightly edited) was written by John Droz, Jr. a well-known physicist and environmental advocate from Morehead City, North Carolina, on June 11, 2012.  It focuses on the application of pseudo science with respect to the projections of Sea Level Rise along the Atlantic seaboard in general, and along the North Carolina coast in particular.

What’s been happening recently in North Carolina (NC) is a microcosm of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) story: politics versus science, ad-hominems versus journalism, evangelists versus pragmatists, etc.

The contentiousness is over one of the main AGW battlefields: sea level rise (SLR).  NC happens to have a large amount of coast line, and has become the US epicenter for this issue.  In brief, this began several years ago when a state agency (Coastal Resource Commission: CRC) selected a 20± member “science panel” to do a scientific assessment of the state SLR situation through the year 2100.  This could have been a very useful project if there had been balance in the personnel selections, and if the panel’s assessment adhered to scientific standards.  Regrettably neither happened and the project soon jumped the rails, landing into the political agenda ditch.

In their 2010 report the panel concluded that NC should expect a 39-inch SLR by 2100.  Their case was built around a 2007 paper by Stefan Rahmstorf, and was not encumbered by a single reference to a perspective different from Rahmstorf’s.  Shortly after the report was released, state agencies started making the rounds of NC coastal communities, putting them on notice that they would need to make BIG changes (elevating roads and bridges, rezoning property, changing flood maps for insurance purposes, etc.).

As an independent scientist, I was solicited by my coastal county to provide a scientific perspective on this report.  Even though I wasn’t a SLR expert, I could clearly see that this document was a classic case of Confirmation Bias, as it violated several scientific standards.  But to get into the technical specifics I solicited the inputs of about 40 international SLR experts (oceanographers, etc.).

I compiled and edited their responses to the CRC panel’s report into what I called a Critique.  This 33 page document discussed how real science works, and then went through the 16 page CRC document, essentially line-by-line.  In doing so numerous specious claims, unsupported assumptions, and questionable models were pointed out.  It wasn’t pretty.

It was during this time that I was solicited to work with a small coastal organization called NC-20 (so named because there are 20 NC coastal counties).  Since they were interested in promoting science-based solutions (my agenda also) for NC coastal issues, I agreed to be their Science Advisor and a board member (both non-paying, volunteer positions).

Initially we had hopes that the CRC panel’s report could be fixed, so we met with the head of the CRC, explained our concerns and handed the Critique to him.  He appeared to be receptive and we were optimistic that this important matter could be straightened out.  That proved to be an illusion, as none of the CRC panel members ever contacted us about fixing any of their mistakes, or about doing a more balanced assessment.  Shame on them.  We subsequently asked that the Critique be posted on CRC’s SLR webpage, but they refused to do so.  So much for presenting the facts to NC citizens.

On the positive side of things, due to our objections the state did (temporarily anyway) back off from the rules and regulations with which they had threatened coastal communities.  [By the way, NC-20 is NOT disputing that there will be Sea Level Rise.  The amount of NC SLR is unknown, so a genuine scientific assessment of the NC SLR situation should be undertaken.  What such an assessment entails is explained in Part I of the Critique.]

By all appearances it seems the CRC assumed that the prestige of their science panel would win the day against the NC-20 upstarts.  To help assure that outcome they engaged in an intensive PR campaign to pervert this into a science versus real estate developers issue (with them representing the science side, of course!).

It was during this time that a CRC Panel member wrote me saying that they agreed with the Critique, and apologized for signing off on the Panel’s report!  The member stated that the Panel was driven by a few activists, and that everyone else simply went along.  This was no surprise, but that an individual had the good conscience to apologize was refreshing.

Anyway, the CRC panel’s disinformation campaign didn’t work, as we didn’t go away.  Further, almost everyone who actually read the Critique ended up being on our side.  One legislator who liked it asked us to make a presentation to interested state legislators in November 2011.  We took that opportunity and it was well received.

Not long after that the CRC panel changed their tactics.  Their new plan was to issue an Addendum to their 2010 report, and then claim that all of our concerns were answered.  If only that were the case! Their nine page document was prepared with zero contact with us – which tells you all you need to know about the sincerity that they had in any scientific resolution.

My response was to follow the successful earlier pattern, so I passed the CRC panel’s Addendum on to my network of international SLR experts for their commentary.  Again they were forthcoming, so I was able to compile and edit a detailed 18 page response that I called a Commentary.  We again sent this directly to CRC, asked them to put it on their SLR website – but posted it ourselves on our own site.  [We received no response from CRC, and they have yet to post our document.]

What happened next was a BIG surprise.  We were notified that state legislators were as exasperated as we were with the politicalization of these technical issues – and that they were going to introduce legislation to stop the agenda promoters! Wow!

In this case, SLR legislation (H819) was drafted by a staffer who has a PhD in oceanography.  The main point of the document was that future SLR projections must be made based on extrapolating prior empirical data.  In other words, state agencies would not be allowed to create policies that were based on speculations about some possible acceleration!

As a scientist, I’m always concerned about legislating technical matters.  In this case, though, the evidence is quite clear that certain NC agencies have no genuine interest in real science.  So what to do?  Defunding them is a possibility, but that might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Replacing the agency’s problem people is another option, but the logistics for that weren’t practical.  So putting some constraints on these dogmatists has some merit.

Not surprisingly, the backlash [against the new draft] was immediate.  These evangelists are used to getting their way, and for legislators to actually stand up against their religion was an unexpected development.  In their anguish they lashed out against anyone they could blame for this roadblock in their crusade – including yours truly.  There were numerous rants (some national) lamenting how “good science” was being thwarted by ignorant legislators.  Even the Colbert Report had fun with it.

Of course, the reality that the legislators were actually trying to protect NC citizens from promoters masquerading their agendas as science, was rarely reported.  Such are the times we are living in, where talk is cheap, and few understand what science really is.  What’s worse is that thousands of scientists are off the reservation, and have no interest in adhering to scientific principles or procedures.  The solution (in my opinion) is that such renegades should have their degrees revoked, just as a priest is defrocked for violating his vows.

In mid-2012, H819 passed the NC Senate by a vote of 35-12.  After some weakening amendments were added, the NC House passed it by a vote of 68-46.  The essence of the bill as passed is that it prevents the use of any computer modeling in predicting future sea-level rise. It also prevents the state from taking any action on sea-level rise until 2016.

For a detailed timeline on the subject of this essay and related matters, go HERE.

Wind Energy Survey

Please consider taking a few minutes to fill out this survey about wind energy. It is confidential. If you have any questions, please email Darryl Read (not me) at darrylread@bigpond.com.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

 

If you’d like some background, here is the story of this effort, as he told me over 25+ correspondences:

 

John:

 

My name is Darryl Read and I am a fourth year psychology honors student at the University of New England in Australia. My research project now involves surveying citizens near proposed or established wind developments, worldwide.

 

My interest in this area of research began after speaking with rural residents living in Crookwell, New South Wales (NSW), which has the oldest wind project in Australia. The conversations enabled me to gain an understanding of the range of issues surrounding wind developments. Following those talks I began to read wind articles in the media. It became clear that most of these stories failed to identify the issues and genuine concerns of the residents. After delving deeper (e.g. your EnergyPresentation.Info), I am now getting a better understanding of the enormity of the issues facing citizens who are proximate to wind developments.

 

In the beginning my study was designed to gain an understanding of the structure and strength of both positive and negative attitudes toward wind energy developments. The initial plan was for the survey to be distributed throughout the renewable energy precincts in NSW. Following the launch of the questionnaire earlier this month, the study has caught the attention of various pro-wind organizations and individuals who have attempted to discredit the study. Supporters of the wind industry have also been pushing to prevent the study continuing. To make a long story short, when I presented the questionnaire, the renewable energy coordinators and representatives from the Clean Energy Council (CEC) informed me that they would not support the project because they felt that the study was focusing on the negative aspects of wind energy. (This was probably subconsciously due to my meeting real citizens and listening to their concerns.)

 

When I began the project I had no idea that the issues were so politically motivated. In my view it appears that wind proponents (government, business, and academia) are not prepared to accept any criticism of wind energy. The issues these people had with the questionnaire relate to the questions regarding the possible impacts of wind developments, like property values, noise, environmental impacts, psychological impacts, etc. Despite significant resistance I have decided to continue with the study, and very much appreciate your passing it on to your network of good people.

 

Anyway, due to these developments, my research is now a completely independent project, not funded by the government agencies who support wind energy. This has the advantage that I now have more freedom, as the research is not restricted to achieve a particular outcome. In brief, the aim of my study is now to investigate the range of issues surrounding wind developments, and to provide an unvarnished account of citizens’ attitudes toward wind developments. A number of people I had contacted had expressed their personal stories of how these industrial projects have negatively impacted their lives. I believe I have a duty to tell the citizen’s side of the story and expose the practices of governments, which appear to be driven by political vs scientific agendas.

 

The first aim of the current study is to investigate the attitudes, perceived levels of stress and potential impact on mental health experienced by residents who live in close proximity to wind developments. As a consequence of the differing stages of wind turbine development, it is anticipated that mental health outcomes may be more negatively impacted with progressively more development.

 

The second aim of the study is to identify the factors which contribute toward oppositional behavior. The various negative impacts of wind projects such as perceived influence on property values, effects on surrounding environment, wildlife, effects of noise etc., will be analyzed. Further testing of variables such as place attachment, time perspective, environmental concerns will be conducted to investigate their influence on oppositional behavior.

 

In some media there have been suggestions that those who oppose developments are motivated by factors other than the shortcomings of wind energy. For example, It has been reported that those who oppose wind energy are not concerned by environmental problems, the lifestyles of future generations, or so-called global warming. I believe that such findings are used to discredit the genuine concerns residents have toward developments. It is anticipated that the mediation analyses (see below) will dismiss the myths, and put the focus back on the some of the legitimate reasons residents oppose developments, like noise, psychological impacts, etc. Above all, I want to highlight the fact that those who oppose developments are not psychologically unstable or driven by political interests. Their concerns are real and hopefully my study will highlight this.

 

To enable the findings of my research to be taken seriously the study will require at least 300 participants, but the more the better. Residents who live near existing or proposed wind projects across the world are invited to participate in the study. When completing the survey please click the arrow at the bottom of each page to move to the next. If you have any questions in relation to the questionnaire or if you have any comments you believe may assist the research, please email me at darrylread@bigpond.com. Please feel pass on the survey link to other residents who are near to wind developments.

 

Thank you VERY MUCH for your time and interest.

 

Darryl Read

 

—————————————————————————————————

For those who would like some additional technical explanation of my plans:

 

When I initially began research in this area, like most people I was unaware of the limited capacity of the turbines to produce electricity. It appears that they have become symbols of governments which will do anything to be seen as combating “climate change.” My research in this area will continue over the coming years at PhD level. My PhD will be a comprehensive analysis which will investigate factors such as the inefficiency of the turbines. Unfortunately the current questionnaire does not fully address the scientific deficiency of wind energy.

 

However, I have received multiple emails from residents (an others are welcome to send me their experiences). I will incorporate their views into the discussions section of the current study. Although somewhat limited, the variables I have decided to use will still provide very interesting outcomes. Above all it will shine a spotlight on the multiple concerns residents have and the barriers which they face. My research in this area has only just begun and I am learning everyday.

 

After I get a sufficient number of responses, a number of mediation analyses will be performed to identify the various factors which determine oppositional behavior. For example, place attachment, time perspective, and environmental concerns will be used to test the relationships between attitudes and oppositional behavior. Within the literature there have been suggestions that an underlying factor motivating oppositional behavior are their attitudes toward climate change, that is, lack of belief is contributing to the opposition. If the survey evidence warrants it, I will dismiss this myth and provide evidence that those who oppose developments have been psychologically affected by the presence of the turbines and that their concerns are real and need to be investigated further.

 

To assess the perceived levels of stress and potential impact on mental health experienced by residents who live in close proximity to wind projects, a multiple regression analysis will be conducted. The Dependent Variable (DV) will be the data collected from the Depression and Stress Scales (DASS 21), and the Independent Variables (IVs) will be the proximity to developments. As mentioned before, the main analyses will involve the testing of mediators such as place attachment, time perspective, environmental concerns, belief in climate change, and their relationship between attitudes toward wind developments and oppositional behavior. If I am able to recruit over 300 participants I will perform a statistical technique known as Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The benefits of using this technique as opposed to a simple mediation analysis is that it can analyze the causal processes which can be modeled pictorially to enable a clearer conceptualization of the various relationships.

On Energy, Massachusetts Tilts At Windmills

The following is from an article that appeared at the online Investors Business Daily, HERE, on February 24/2012.  It has been slightly edited for brevity.

In the United States, abundant supplies of environmentally friendly and reliable natural gas are to be found in the vast resources locked up in the Outer Continental Shelf, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska and in the vast shale formations that bless the nation.  A nationwide boom in natural gas production is set to fuel nearly 900,000 jobs and add roughly $1,000 to annual household budgets by 2015, according to a study by HIS Global Insight, a Denver energy research firm.  It is estimated that we have at least a 100-year supply of the relatively cheap, cleanest-burning fossil fuel.

To the 36 states that, like Massachusetts, have embraced what are called renewable portfolio standards, they will continue pursuing green energy sources despite their heavy subsidies, uneven and unreliable capacity, and the simple fact that you cannot store wind energy for when the wind is not blowing.

After decades of subsidies, wind provides only 1% of our electricity compared with 49% for coal, 22% for natural gas, 19% for nuclear power and 7% for hydroelectric.  Wind turbines generally operate at only 20% efficiency compared with 85% for coal, gas and nuclear power plants.

With the Green Communities Act of 2008, the Massachusetts state legislature enacted a clean energy mandate requiring that 20% of Massachusetts’ power come from renewable sources by 2025. A prime source of Bay State wind power is to come from the Cape Wind project, an offshore wind farm that was controversial because it threatened to block the ocean view of the 1% ensconced on the shores of Nantucket Sound.

Governor Deval Patrick saw an opportunity to help meet that goal with the proposed merger of two local utilities, NStar and Northeast Utilities of Connecticut.  His administration approved the deal on the conditions that the new utility company must purchase 27.5% of the output of Cape Wind, freeze its rates for the next four years, and distribute a one-time rebate of $21 million to customers.

That rebate turns out to be a one-time check of $13 per capita. Construction on Cape Wind has not yet begun, so a four-year freeze on electricity prices will lapse by the time NStar starts purchasing that 27.5% of Cape Wind power.

As Peter Wilson notes in the American Thinker, Cape Wind has already signed an agreement with another utility, National Grid, to sell electricity for 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh), with a 3.5% increase every year over the next 15 years. This wind power therefore starts out at more than double the average Massachusetts rate of 8 cents per kwh.

Wilson calculates that the 3.5% increase compounded annually means that at the end of the 15 years, National Grid customers will be paying 31.3 cents per kwh, around four times the current rate.  Meanwhile, natural gas prices have plummeted from near $5 per million British thermal units per hour (MMBtu) last summer to around $2.60 per MMBtu.

According to the Energy Department, the energy equivalent of $3 natural gas is $18 per barrel oil. Natural gas would seem to be the obvious choice, not wind.

A 2008 report by the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration reported that in 2007 while the average subsidy per megawatt hour for all energy sources was $1.65, the subsidy for wind and solar was about $24 per megawatt hour.

Daniel Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, said in an interview with Cybercast News Service that “without government subsidies or mandates, none of these energy sources exist, they just simply won’t. … These energy sources are not as efficient as the sources of energy that the marketplace has picked and the consumers have picked to run the country.”

Massachusetts’ energy answer, like ours, is not to be found blowin’ in the wind.

And as the article also says, the “tilting at windmills continues”.  For proof, the reader is referred to the proposed Mill Pond wind turbine farm proposed for Carteret County, NC, by Texas-based Torch Energy.

Statement on the President's Action to Disapprove the Keystone Pipeline

Date:               January 24, 2012

To:                  Valero Employees

From:              Bill Klesse

Subject:          Keystone XL Pipeline Statement

As you know, the Obama administration decided last week to deny TransCanada’s application to ship crude oil via the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Valero has planned to be a shipper and purchaser of that oil since 2008, and obviously we were disappointed in the decision. We issued a statement in response to questions from the media, and I wanted to share it with you in case you get questions from friends or business partners, and so that you would know why Valero supports the Keystone XL pipeline. This is the statement:

Despite the uncertainty and political fighting over the Keystone XL pipeline, Valero has continued to invest in its U.S. refining operation.  In 2011 we spent nearly $3 billion on projects, and for 2012 our capital expenditure budget is over $3 billion. These expenditures are keeping our employees on the job and putting additional people to work.  To reference two of our refineries, at Port Arthur, Texas, we have 1,600 contractors working on an expansion project, and at St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, we have another 1,000 contractors working on a separate project.  We need this kind of economic activity to accelerate to help all Americans.

This illustrates why the federal government’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline is so absurd. There are pipelines in every neighborhood all across America. The administration’s decision was not about pipelines, it was about the misguided beliefs that Canadian oil sands development should be stopped and that fossil fuel prices should increase to make alternative energy more attractive. Instead, we should be impressed with how well the oil sands engineering and recovery technology has advanced, and the economic benefits this development brings.  Having more oil available in the marketplace has the potential to lower prices for consumers.  As an independent refiner, Valero buys all of the oil we process. Due to the administration’s misguided policies, refiners like Valero will have to buy more oil from other sources outside the U.S. and Canada. Consumers will bear the additional shipping cost, not to mention the additional greenhouse gas emissions and political risks.

With all the issues facing our country, it is absolutely unbelievable our federal government says no to a company like TransCanada that is willing to spend over $7 billion and put Americans to work on a pipeline.  The administration’s decision throws dirt into the face of our closest ally and largest trading partner.

The point above is that it is not about pipelines as many pipelines cross the Ogallala Aquifer, in the Great Plains region, and, in fact, there is already significant oil and gas production in the area covered by the aquifer. This is politics at its worst.

Thanks for your support.

North America’s Energy Bounty, By the Numbers

Debunking The Big Energy Lie™

Posted by Steve Maley (Diary)

Friday, December 9th at 4:00PM EST

30 Comments

On Tuesday, the Institute for Energy Research issued its North American Energy Inventory (.pdf link), a report which documents the government’s own estimates of oil, natural gas and coal resources for the U.S., Canada and Mexico. (The IER is a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)3 organization that is dedicated to advancing America’s supply using free market principles.)

In a nutshell, North America contains a vast bounty of energy sources in the form of oil, natural gas and coal. Reports that we are “running out” of energy sources use semantics and terminology to play with the facts. Simply put, we have chosen not to exploit potential sources close to home, finding it more expedient or convenient to depend on faraway sources for our energy.

Based on the ongoing tangible successes in North Dakota and Pennsylvania, one would think that the jobs/growth potential presented by aggressive energy development would tantalize any politician who is truly interested in helping the economy. One would think.

The following video will give you a quick run-down of the key points of the report, but I would encourage anyone interested to download and read the full report. It is extremely well-documented and although it is chock-full of facts and figures, I found it to be an easy read.

 

Excerpt from the report’s executive summary:

The amount of oil that is technically recoverable in the United States is more than 1.4 trillion barrels, with the largest deposits located offshore, in portions of Alaska, and in shale in the Rocky Mountain West. When combined with resources from Canada and Mexico, total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels.

That is more than the world has used since the first oil well was drilled over 150 years ago in Titusville, Pennsylvania. To put this in context, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of oil in proved reserves. For comparative purposes, the technically recoverable oil in North America could fuel the present needs in the United States of seven billion barrels per year for around 250 years.

Moreover, it is important to note that that “reserves” estimates are constantly in flux. For example, in 1980, the U.S. had oil reserves of roughly 30 billion barrels. Yet from 1980 through 2010, we produced over 77 billion barrels of oil. In other words, over the last 30 years, we produced over 150 percent of our proved reserves. …

Proved reserves of natural gas in the United States and throughout North America are enormous, and the total amount of recoverable natural gas is even more impressive. The EIA estimates that the United States has 272.5 trillion cubic feet of proved reserves of natural gas. The total amount of natural gas that is recoverable in North America is approximately 4.2 quadrillion (4,244 trillion) cubic feet.

Given that U.S. consumption is currently about 24 trillion cubic feet per year, there is enough natural gas in North America to last the United States for over 175 years at current rates of consumption.

A key point of the IER report: We have been told repeatedly by our President, liberal members of Congress and our environmental community that the U.S. consumes 24% (or somesuch) of the world’s energy, but we have only 2% (or somesuch) of the world’s proved reserves. It’s just not fair!

However, IER explains how lying liars lie:

RESOURCES AND RESERVES: WHY TERMS MATTER WHEN JUDGING ENERGY POTENTIAL

A frequent source of confusion about America’s energy potential is the terminology used, primarily the enormous yet poorly understood difference between “resources” and “reserves.” The term “reserves” typically refers to a country’s known, proved and presently economic energy supplies, but a country’s resources are much larger, representing a nation’s total potential energy. The debate over whether a country has only a few years’ supply of a particular energy source or centuries’ worth can hinge upon the terms employed. It is merely semantics—not a scientific assessment of what America has the capacity to produce—that allows critics to claim repeatedly that America is running out of energy.