First World Problems

Via Brutally Honest

Pointed and brutally honest.  A must see.

xtnyoda, shalomed

Our 3rd Great Awakening

Perhaps a little different perspective on a Spiritual Awakening?
The 1st Great Awakening, 1720-1750. The pulpits of Colonial America flared with the message of Freedom in Christ. The social outcome of that awakening in the church was what we call the Revolutionary War. The church awakened from her slumber and declared that they would no longer be slaves to Britain.

The 2nd Great Awakening, 1850-1870. Again the pulpits of America resounded the liberating message of Freedom in Christ. The church awakened from her slumber and declared that we would no longer own slaves. The social outcome was what we call the Civil War.

We are currently in the 3rd Great Awakening. The pulpits of America will again resound the message of Freedom in Christ and the church will awaken from her slumber and realize that we are again slaves, and that God would have us slaves to no man. "Slaves" you may ask? Yes indeed, we are slaves to the lenders of the world. The hounds of debt are crushing the church of God in the western world, destroying our marriages, and crippling the labors of the Great Commission. When the church awakes to the awful condition of our bowing to the idols of "prosperity" she will once again shake herself and free herself of this entrapment.

This will not be a war fought with sword and spear, but a war waged in the life of every individual Believer as they follow the Spirit of Christ into the freedom of gratefulness for what God has provided instead of longing for the next desired object dangled in front of our eyes that will drive us deeper into the slavery of the borrower.

If you would have told a citizen of the Colonies that they were in the middle of a Great Awakening they would probably have called you a fool. They would have said, "These are the worst of times with British troops on our soil confiscating our goods and property at will and levying exorbitant taxes!"

If you would have told a citizen of Atlanta in August of 1864, as General Sherman was gathering his troops on the outskirts of Atlanta preparing for the assault on their fair city, that America was in the middle of the 2nd Great Awakening they would have called you a fool. They would have said that these were the worst of times.

Historians look back and recognize Great Awakenings. In the middle of one it seems like anything but an Awakening. Awakenings are not the result of evangelism. Evangelism might be the result of an Awakening but not the cause of one. Awakenings are when the church wakes up to the message of Freedom in Christ, and then moves to free herself.

 

Rise up oh Church of God ... free yourself!

xtnyoda, shalomed

Inflation: Not as low as you think

Did you receive an 8% pay raise this year? If not the reality is that you received a reduction in salary ... and this according to CBS Money Watch.

Forget the modest 3.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index, the government's widely used measure of inflation. Everyday prices are up some 8 percent over the past year, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.

The not-for-profit research group measures inflation without looking at the big, one-time purchases that can skew the numbers. That means they don't look at the price of houses, furniture, appliances, cars, or computers. Instead, AIER focuses on Americans' typical daily purchases, such as food, gasoline, child care, prescription drugs, phone and television service, and other household products.

The institute contends that to get a good read on inflation's "sticker shock" effect, you must look at the cost of goods that the average household buys at least once a month and factor in only the kinds of expenses that are subject to change. That, too, eliminates the cost of housing because when you finance your home with a fixed-rate mortgage, that expense remains constant until you refinance or move.

The group maintains that this index better measures the real-world impact of price changes, particularly for people on a budget. And, largely as the result of the recent run-up in gas prices, this "everyday price index" (EPI) suggests that Americans are being pinched far more tightly than the official inflation measure would have you believe.....

CBS actually does a pretty good job of explaining the real time effect of our current economic condition. Our "dollars" are able to purchase less and less ... yet we are told that the economy is improving.

There is a disconnect here somewhere friends.

xtnyoda, shalomed

Joe Bastardi hammering Warming Alarmists

Joe Bastardi, of Weatherbell Analytices, formerly of The Weather Channel, has had a belly full of the lies and coverup by the global warming alarmists.

I strongly suspected that Joe's growing concerns over the lying alarmists was a major reason for his departing The Weather Channel a year or so ago, and this new release by Joe adds to that feeling. He gets pretty down right explicit in his revelations about what is going on with the economy and the mess coming out of the EPA and Washington, and the tremendous negative economic impact on our nation and the world.

Of course the poorest people are the ones that are being most severely hurt by all of this, the least of these, as Christ would say.

Global temps in a Crash as AGW proponents Crash the Economy
By Joe Bastardi, Weatherbell Analytics

When the PDO turned cold, most of the meteorological and climate community understood that the pattern was turning very similar the last time of the PDO reversal, the 1950s, and it was a matter of time before the global temperatures, which have leveled off, would start falling in the same herby jerky fashion they had risen when the PDO turned warm at the end of the 1970s. I am not going to rehash the sordid details of how the AGW crowd simply ignores the major drivers of a cyclical nature. We all know that. Nor am I going to question them as to why they believe a trace gas like co2 (needed for life on the planet) with a specific gravity of 1.5 as compared to the atmospheres 1.0, was going to mix with air in a way to affect the earth’s temperatures. Instead I am going to drive home points I have been making since 2007 and are now dramatically validating.
....
Currently, with gas so high because we are being handcuffed by an administration that won’t drill (if gas was a 1.50 lower, it would be worth a half trillion dollars to the economy) and an EPA that is causing untold economic damage (I would conservatively etiolate a half trillion dollars, from jobs lost to burdensome regulations) along with a 100 billion dollar subsidy to fight global warming world wide, it is costing each ACTUAL TAX PAYER close to 7000 dollars (1.1 trillion divided by 150 million tax payers).

One has to wonder, how even the most dogmatic of them don't look at the actual facts, how they can continue to carry on their denial while the results of such things handcuff the American economy and cause untold misery for many as our wealth is not only redistributed, but dwindles. One can only conclude this is being done on purpose, and with purpose.

Go read the full PDF by Mr. Bastardi, complete with graphs ... then ponder the evil madness of the global warming alarmists, and the damage they are committing to those least able to help themselves.

H/T Mr Bastardi!!!

xtnyoda, shalomed

Climate Research Shakedown

The cat is escaping out of the global warming bag ... and the money shake-down of the American tax-payer is coming to light ... and the ruse of Frankensteinian scientists gone bad is becoming more and more apparent to even casual observers.

Climate research,” the New York Times confidently assures us, “stands at a crossroads.” This means that a lot of research scientists are standing at the crossroads, holding out paper bags like trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, standing in line for taxpayer largesse to fill ‘em up.

These specialists in shakedown “science,” who speak only in hyperbole, are calling the weather of 2011 the worst in history, or at least in memory, or maybe a decade, and say they could have found useful links between disasters and global-warming “science” by now if only they could shake down tightwad taxpayers for a few more millions.
.......
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that 70 percent of the various species on the planet will be wiped out if global warming continues at the predicted rate. Floods, droughts, hurricanes, blizzards and other bad stuff will do us in.

The solution, the panel says, lies in either mitigation, to finally do something about the weather, or adaptation, to make the best of the bad news.

Mitigation relies on regulation, and naturally the worthies of shakedown science prescribe mitigation first. Regulation will require many studies, written in the language of academics that no one else can understand, to be read at elaborate conferences, always held at luxury resorts that a shakedown scientist could never afford on his own dime. The conclusion of the learned shakedown artists is invariably about how to milk the governments of the West for more handouts.

The director of NOAA tells the New York Times that with the pressure on the U.S. government to cut expenses and save taxpayers money, “it’s going to be more and more challenging to devote resources to many of our research programs.”

Science, which has replaced religion as the source of faith in certain circles, has otherwise always been skeptical of certitude. Science has always held that nothing is so settled as to be beyond questioning. This held until the propagation of the gospel of global warming. Skeptics are called “deniers,” their arguments mocked, and held up to public ridicule.

It’s a particular conceit of man to imagine that he is both the author and the center of the universe, that whatever happens to the stars is the work of his hand. “We are changing the large-scale properties of the atmosphere,” declares Benjamin D. Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. “You can’t engage in this vast planetary experiment — warming the surface, warming the atmosphere, moistening the atmosphere — and have no impact on the frequency and duration of extreme events.”

Or not. “Everybody talks about the weather,” Mark Twain said, “but nobody does anything about it.”

Follow the dollar.

xtnyoda, shalomed

Cronyism in America?

The Chevy "Volt" ... a pretty expensive taxpayer adventure ... mandated by the federal government.

Analyst: 'This might be the most government-supported car since the Trabant'

Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government.

The Volt subsidies flow through multiple companies involved in production. The analysis includes adding up the amount of government subsidies via tax credits and direct funding for not only General Motors, but other companies supplying parts for the vehicle. For example, the Department of Energy awarded a $105.9 million grant to the GM Brownstown plant that assembles the batteries. The company was also awarded approximately $106 million for its Hamtramck assembly plant in state credits to retain jobs. The company that supplies the Volt’s batteries, Compact Power, was awarded up to $100 million in refundable battery credits (combination tax breaks and cash subsidies). These are among many of the subsidies and tax credits for the vehicle......

I thought you might want to know.

xtnyoda, shalomed

The Government Can!

A Few (of the new) Juicy Climategate Emails

It is heating up for the global warming hucksters .... just not exactly how they might wish.

They validate EVERYTHING the skeptics have been saying. Viva les sceptiques!

“Climategate 2.0 is here!” says Steve Milloy at JunkScience.com. “We’ve covered juicy ones in the posts listed below. More on the way. Read ‘em all.”

Here’s a sample:

Department of Energy involved in hiding temperature data?

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

“The technical term for this sort of conversation would be “conspiracy,” says Milloy.

Milloy has done such a good job of compiling these that I’ve simply copied his page. Since every one of the following links take you back to his website, I think that’s fair......

Ice Age Now has several direct links to different aspects of the global warming fraud (28 actually) ... links to the fraudsters themselves.

Go take a look at the overt lies being perpetrated on the world citizenry, then feel the righteous indignation ... as when our Christ overturned the money changers tables. Our "whip" is next years voting booth.

xtnyoda, shalomed

Why Your Tax Bill Might Surge Next Year

Are you ready for about a $3,500 dollar surge in your taxes next year? According to this report from Yahoo News this is exactly what is going to happen to many Americans.

Is congress forewarning you about the coming rather dramatic increases?

In a recent tax planning meeting with one of our clients, we shocked them with what their income tax future looked like for 2013 if Congress continues to do nothing to provide a long-term permanent set of tax laws (and it looks as if lawmakers are headed down this track).

They had no idea what tax breaks were expiring this year and next year, and how much it would cost them personally in extra income tax. But they aren't alone, many Americans and even tax professionals aren't aware that their tax bill could rise dramatically next year.

These clients are your average American family and their situation is a good example of the law changes that will affect all of us. Here's their tax situation with a table summarizing the expiring tax laws that are scheduled to occur in 2011 and 2012.

Meet the Smiths: 26-year-olds Bill and Joan have been married for five years and have two young children. Bill earns about $65,000 a year in sales and Joan has gone back to work and earns about $35,000 annually. Bill owes quite a bit on his college student loans and will pay about $3,000 in interest on them in 2013. With Joan working again, they are paying $3,000 for year-round child care. Joan inherited some AT&T stock from her grandmother, which pays her $1,000 in dividends every year. Finally, counting home mortgage interest, they have about $20,000 in itemized deductions.

The first big change affecting the Smiths will be a combined increase in income tax rates, and a tightening of tax brackets as a result of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. We estimate this will cost them $960 in 2013.

Bill will lose the complete deduction of his student loan interest in 2013, costing about $840. The pair's allowable deduction for child care will drop to $2,400 from $3,000, and they will also see their credit for children drop in half, costing another $1,000.

The marriage tax penalty will come roaring back to hit the Smiths in 2013, costing an estimated $500. The tax on their dividend income will go increase to $280 from $150, adding another $130. Finally, although we did not calculate the effect, without Congressional action to once again "fix" the alternative minimum tax, the Smiths could owe this ugly tax as well!

Luckily for the Smiths — but not for many Americans — other major changes for 2013, which do not personally affect them, include a phase out of itemized deductions and personal exemptions if their income starts to climb.

In summary, because of tax laws expiring this year and next, we estimate that the Smiths will owe $3,598 more in income tax in 2013 than in 2011 with no change in their income.

Major Individual Income Tax Benefits Expiring 12/31/2011:

• Personal tax credits applied against income tax no longer apply

• Higher alternative minimum tax exemptions revert back to extraordinarily-low thresholds

• $250 school teacher expense deduction ends

• Mortgage insurance premium deduction expires

• State and local sales tax deductions expire

• Tuition and related fees deduction end

• IRA to charity tax-free transfers stop

• 2% Social Security tax reduction ends

Major Individual Income Tax Benefits Expiring 12/31/2012:

• Marriage penalty equalization ends

• Dividends taxed at capital gains rates removed, taxed at regular rates now

• Capital gains low tax rates expires

• Removal of itemized deduction phase out for higher income Americans

• Removal of personal exemption phase out for higher income Americans

• Child care deduction limit of $3,000 reverts to $2,400

• Child credit reduces from $1,000 per child to $500 per child

• Low 10% tax bracket for low income Americans is eliminated

• Lower income tax rates and smaller brackets expires

• Refundable adoption credit and reduced deduction

• American Opportunity college education credit expires

• Major reduction in earned income credits and refunds

• Income tax exemption for debt forgiven on home foreclosures and repossessions

• Deduction for student loan interest ends

• Education IRA limit drops from $2,000 to $500

Bob Jennings is a CPA, EA and CFP and author of "Understanding Social Security & Medicare."

Doesn't look like good news to me, and for the most part, it isn't news at all, at least as far as congress reporting this to our citizens is concerned.

xtnyoda, shalomed

Counting "Real" Money (not good news)

The Borg Conspiracy has been doing a little home-work ... and what he has found about what we hold in "real money" is not good.

America leads in Gold Reserve

So.....even with gold approaching $2000 an ounce, we remain hopelessly in debt beyond our wildest dreams.

Rank Owner Tonnes Share of Foreign Reserves

Ranked #1 United States 8,133.5 78.3%

The United States holds the largest gold reserve in the world. With 8,133.5 tonnes, U.S. gold holdings are worth approximately $269.67 billion. This massive gold reserve represents about .9436 an ounce for every person living in the country.

Stop for a moment and think about the truth of scripture that states that the borrower is a servant to the lender.

Let me ask a question. How much real money do you possess?

Another question. How much debt do you possess?

Now ... what do you "own" and who "owns" you?

Food for thought. You need to find the answer to these questions, for, a collection day is coming, in this life.

xtnyoda, shalomed

U.S. Winter May Be Coldest in Decade, Commodity Weather Says

Bloomberg business is reporting forecasts of a colder-than-normal winter for the US. Good news for commodity traders ... bad news for average citizens and global warming alarmists.

By Brian K. Sullivan

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The coming U.S. winter may be the coldest in more than 10 years, Commodity Weather Group LLC said in its seasonal forecast.

Temperatures will range from 1 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 to 1.7 Celsius) below normal across much of the U.S., according to the forecast. The period from November to March is expected to be 2.4 percent colder than last year, said Bethesda, Maryland-based CWG.

“This would be the coldest winter since 2000-01,” the company said.....

Do prepare for a harsh winter ... and don't miss the sight of Yahweh, once again, demonstrating that humanity cannot control itself ... let alone control the climate of the earth.

xtnyoda, shalomed

the "Occupy Wall Street" song

GoRemy has a song about the Occupy Wall Street stuff. Funny and filled with truth.



You GoRemy!

xtnyoda, shalomed

A Stewardship story

Following is an interesting and encouraging story about a pastor and wife that found themselves buried in non-secured credit card debt.

And, they and the Bible are correct of course, the borrower is servant to the lender. Go read the whole story when you have a minute ...

The U.S. government can learn a lot about shedding debt from Jerry and Sue Bailey.

The Jackson, Mich., couple paid off $92,000 in credit card debt in 5-1/2 years. "I still can't believe it when I hear the amount. I don't wish this on anybody," Sue Bailey says.

The couple's massive debt reduction earned them the Clients of the Year award from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, a nonprofit association of credit counseling agencies that help consumers manage their finances and get out of debt. The winners were announced this week at the group's annual meeting in San Francisco.....

Now join me in praying that the church will wake up, shake herself, and set herself free from the bondage of the world's financial debt mentality.

xtnyoda, shalomed

Tax ‘Small Business’ So BIG Government Doesn’t Shrink

This really says it all about our current economic and governmental crisis ... the Treasury Secretary openly says that American 'business' exists for the sake of government.

(CNSNews.com) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.” ....

CNS report

So much said and revealed in so few words.

Thanks Tim for telling it like it is.

xtnyoda, shalomed

And/or Work Longer

The American Dream of "Retirement" is quickly being "Retired" ... we are now being told to "embrace the rat race."

Market Watch report following

We all think it’s a panacea. If you don’t have enough money saved for retirement, you’ve got a few ways to close the gap between what you have and what you need in your nest egg: Save more, invest more aggressively, and/or work longer.

Well, it turns out that working longer is indeed an option, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute latest study. The only problem is that the latest research shows that you’ll have to work much longer than you anticipated. In fact, many Americans will have to keep on working well into their 70s and 80s to afford retirement, according to the study, titled “The Impact of Deferring Retirement Age on Retirement Income Adequacy.”

What’s more, it’s even worse for low-income workers, according Jack VanDerhei, one of the co-authors of the study. Those who earned (on average over the course of their careers) less than $11,700 per year, the lowest income quartile, would need to defer retirement till age 84 before 90% of those households would have just a 50% chance of affording retirement. ....

Friends ... that is adding nearly 20 years to one's working life before retirement ... and for the "little guys" it will never come according to the report.

Seriously ... is this the "hope and change" that Americans have been promised?

I don't think so.

xtnyoda, shalomed

Amazing Admission from "Salon" on Fossil Fuels

A pretty remarkable admission from the rather "liberal" publication Salon.

Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong
By Michael Lind

Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming.

What if the conventional wisdom about the energy future of America and the world has been completely wrong?

As everyone who follows news about energy knows by now, in the last decade the technique of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," long used in the oil industry, has evolved to permit energy companies to access reserves of previously-unrecoverable “shale gas” or unconventional natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these advances mean there is at least six times as much recoverable natural gas today as there was a decade ago.

Natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal, can be used in both electricity generation and as a fuel for automobiles.

The implications for energy security are startling. Natural gas may be only the beginning. Fracking also permits the extraction of previously-unrecoverable “tight oil,” thereby postponing the day when the world runs out of petroleum. There is enough coal to produce energy for centuries. And governments, universities and corporations in the U.S., Canada, Japan and other countries are studying ways to obtain energy from gas hydrates, which mix methane with ice in high-density formations under the seafloor. The potential energy in gas hydrates may equal that of all other fossils, including other forms of natural gas, combined.

If gas hydrates as well as shale gas, tight oil, oil sands and other unconventional sources can be tapped at reasonable cost, then the global energy picture looks radically different than it did only a few years ago. Suddenly it appears that there may be enough accessible hydrocarbons to power industrial civilization for centuries, if not millennia, to come.

So much for the specter of depletion, as a reason to adopt renewable energy technologies like solar power and wind power. Whatever may be the case with Peak Oil in particular, the date of Peak Fossil Fuels has been pushed indefinitely into the future. What about national security as a reason to switch to renewable energy?

The U.S., Canada and Mexico, it turns out, are sitting on oceans of recoverable natural gas. Shale gas is combined with recoverable oil in the Bakken "play" along the U.S.-Canadian border and the Eagle Ford play in Texas. The shale gas reserves of China turn out to be enormous, too. Other countries with now-accessible natural gas reserves, according to the U.S. government, include Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, France, Poland and India.

Because shale gas reserves are so widespread, the potential for blackmail by Middle Eastern producers and Russia will diminish over time. Unless opponents of fracking shut down gas production in Europe, a European Union with its own natural gas reserves will be far less subject to blackmail by Russia (whose state monopoly Gazprom has opportunistically echoed western Greens in warning of the dangers of fracking).

The U.S. may become a major exporter of natural gas to China -- at least until China borrows the technology to extract its own vast gas reserves.

Two arguments for switching to renewable energy -- the depletion of fossil fuels and national security -- are no longer plausible. What about the claim that a rapid transition to wind and solar energy is necessary, to avert catastrophic global warming?

The scenarios with the most catastrophic outcomes of global warming are low probability outcomes -- a fact that explains why the world’s governments in practice treat reducing CO2 emissions as a low priority, despite paying lip service to it. But even if the worst outcomes were likely, the rational response would not be a conversion to wind and solar power but a massive build-out of nuclear power. Nuclear energy already provides around 13-14 percent of the world’s electricity and nearly 3 percent of global final energy consumption, while wind, solar and geothermal power combined account for less than one percent of global final energy consumption.

(The majority of renewable energy consists of CO2-emitting biomass -- wood and dung used for fires by the world’s poor, plus crops used to make fuel; most of the remainder comes from hydropower dams denounced by Greens.)

The disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima have dramatized the real but limited and localized dangers of nuclear energy. While their initial costs are high, nuclear power plants generate vast amounts of cheap electricity -- and no greenhouse gases. If runaway global warming were a clear and present danger rather than a low probability, then the problems of nuclear waste disposal and occasional local disasters would be minor compared to the benefits to the climate of switching from coal to nuclear power.

The arguments for converting the U.S. economy to wind, solar and biomass energy have collapsed. The date of depletion of fossil fuels has been pushed back into the future by centuries -- or millennia. The abundance and geographic diversity of fossil fuels made possible by technology in time will reduce the dependence of the U.S. on particular foreign energy exporters, eliminating the national security argument for renewable energy. And if the worst-case scenarios for climate change were plausible, then the most effective way to avert catastrophic global warming would be the rapid expansion of nuclear power, not over-complicated schemes worthy of Rube Goldberg or Wile E. Coyote to carpet the world’s deserts and prairies with solar panels and wind farms that would provide only intermittent energy from weak and diffuse sources.

The mainstream environmental lobby has yet to acknowledge the challenge that the new energy realities pose to their assumptions about the future. Some environmentalists have welcomed natural gas because it is cleaner than coal and can supplement intermittent solar power and wind power, at times when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. But if natural gas is permanently cheaper than solar and wind, then there is no reason, other than ideology, to combine it with renewables, instead of simply using natural gas to replace coal in electricity generation.

Without massive, permanent government subsidies or equally massive penalty taxes imposed on inexpensive fossil fuels like shale gas, wind power and solar power may never be able to compete. For that reason, some Greens hope to shut down shale gas and gas hydrate production in advance. In their haste, however, many Greens have hyped studies that turned out to be erroneous.

In 2010 a Cornell University ecology professor and anti-fracking activist named Robert Howarth published a paper making the sensational claim that natural gas is a greater threat to the climate than coal. Howarth admitted, "A lot of the data we use are really low quality..."

Howarth’s error-ridden study was debunked by Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations and criticized even by the Worldwatch Institute, a leading environmentalist organization, which wrote: "While we share Dr. Howarth’s urgency about the need to transition to a renewable-based economy, we believe based on our research that natural gas, not coal, affords the cleanest pathway to such a future."

A few years ago, many Green alarmists seized upon a theory that an ice age 600 million years ago came to an abrupt end because of massive global warming caused by methane bubbling up from the ocean floor. They warned that the melting of the ice caps or drilling for methane hydrates might suddenly release enough methane to cook the earth. But before it could be turned into a Hollywood blockbuster, the methane apocalypse theory was debunked recently by a team of Caltech scientists in a report for the science journal Nature.

All energy sources have potentially harmful side effects. The genuine problems caused by fracking and possible large-scale future drilling of methane hydrates should be carefully monitored and dealt with by government regulation. But the Green lobby’s alarm about the environmental side-effects of energy sources is highly selective. The environmental movement since the 1970s has been fixated religiously on a few "soft energy" panaceas -- wind, solar, and biofuels -- and can be counted on to exaggerate or invent problems caused by alternatives. Many of the same Greens who oppose fracking because it might contaminate some underground aquifers favor wind turbines and high-voltage power lines that slaughter eagles and other birds and support blanketing huge desert areas with solar panels, at the cost of exterminating much of the local wildlife and vegetation. Wilderness preservation, the original goal of environmentalism, has been sacrificed to the giant metallic idols of the sun and the wind.

The renewable energy movement is not the only campaign that will be marginalized in the future by the global abundance of fossil fuels produced by advancing technology. Champions of small-scale organic farming can no longer claim that shortages of fossil fuel feedstocks will force a return to pre-industrial agriculture.

Another casualty of energy abundance is the new urbanism. Because cars and trucks and buses can run on natural gas as well as gasoline and diesel fuel, the proposition that peak oil will soon force people around the world to abandon automobile-centered suburbs and office parks for dense downtowns connected by light rail and inter-city trains can no longer be taken seriously. Deprived of the arguments from depletion, national security and global warming, the campaign to increase urban density and mass transit rests on nothing but a personal taste for expensive downtown living, a taste which the suburban working-class majorities in most developed nations manifestly do not share.

Eventually civilization may well run out of natural gas and other fossil fuelhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs that are recoverable at a reasonable cost, and may be forced to switch permanently to other sources of energy. These are more likely to be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion than solar or wind power, which will be as weak, diffuse and intermittent a thousand years from now as they are today. But that is a problem for the inhabitants of the world of 2500 or 3000 A.D.

In the meantime, it appears that the prophets of an age of renewable energy following Peak Oil got things backwards. We may be living in the era of Peak Renewables, which will be followed by a very long Age of Fossil Fuels that has only just begun.

from Salon of all places!

You mad yet?

xtnyoda, shalomed