W

hen your local neighborhood environmentalists wax poetic about alternative energy, remember that they really hate viable alternative energy solutions because they represent progress and man exerting his will over nature.

You scoff.  I prove it.

Last Friday, the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity and Sierra Club cleared a major hurdle in our campaign to defeat the Sunrise Powerlink, a controversial transmission line proposed for Southern California, when the state’s Public Utilities Commission proposed two decisions opposing the project’s current plan. The administrative law judge’s proposed decision would totally deny San Diego Gas & Electric’s request to build the 150-mile-long transmission line, planned to stretch from the Imperial Valley desert to San Diego and cut across Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, as well as many other protected parks and preserves. This decision, if adopted, will mean a complete victory for the Center, the Sierra Club, and Southern California, halting a project that would ravage species habitat, contribute to global warming, and pose a significant wildfire threat.

What the CBD coyly and dishonestly doesn’t say in its email (which you can sign up for here) is that the Sunrise Powerlink is more than a “controversial transmission line” - it’s a transmission line dedicated wholly to carrying “Save the Earth” solar and geothermal power from plants in the desert to power users in San Diego.

It would not “ravage species habitat” - power lines go through species habitat throughout the region and, in fact, the habitat that’s protected around these lines creates wildlife movement corridors that enhance species populations.

It would not “contribute to global warming” - it would reduce reliance on California’s oil-burning electric power plants.

It would not “pose a significant wildlife threat” - few birds a year might die from electric shocks. That’s insignificant (unless you’re a wildlife absolutist).

The enviros forced measures through our legislature requiring electric utilities to rely more and more on alternative energy sources, but when the utilities actually try to do this, they face this kind of litigation and obfuscation from the greenies.

I see them as hypocrites, but it’s important to remember that there’s one word that describes them much better:  Fundamentalists.  And their aggressive adherance to their belief system is more akin to the Islamist jihadists than it is to the Christian fundamentalists they so often ridicule.

Sunday Scan items are published as each is completed; most recent at the top, so be sure to click through if you see the “continue reading” note at the bottom of the post. This note will be removed after the last item is posted, so if you’re reading this, please come back for more.

Palin Packs ‘Em In

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ere’s the report from Shawn Steele (fomrer Cal. GOP chair) from last night’s Sarah Palin event in SoCal:

Not since Ronald Reagan’s final campaign rally at Orange County’s Mile Square Park on the eve of the 1984 election, have thousands of Californian Republicans gathered. Neither Bush could do it. None of last year’s Republican presidential candidates could fill the Home Depot Tennis Center.

The Center has 13,000 court side seats. All those seats plus the suites were filled to capacity. Still thousands more were slowly streaming into the stadium quickly filled up the court yard. Thousands more found standing room around the rim of the stadium. Over 20,000 people were there to celebrate, shout and scream.

SNL can continue to poke fun at Palin, but real people get her and want to get close to her. If you have any doubts what she’s done to the ticket, check out who introduced her:

Shelly Mandell, the current President of Los Angeles National Organization for Women [NOW] — in the Republican OC suite several of us were scratching our heads— introduced Sarah Palin. It was an awkward introduction. . Mandell, stated she didn’t agree with Sarah on everything, that she is a democrat, that she Mandell supported the failed Equal Rights Amendment campaign but the crowd exercised tolerance. Ms. Mandell will get a lot of angry calls from the hard left, but she embraced the moment and stood with Sarah Palin.

The OC Register also covered the event:

“Electrifying,” “genuine” and “inspiring” were a few of the adjectives that Orange County voters used to describe Sarah Palin after her rally at the Home Depot Center in Carson on Saturday.

The lead of the LA Times story was a bit different:

You can’t say she didn’t warn them.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced herself to the nation with a now-famous joke about lipstick being the only difference between a certain dog breed and a hockey mom. On Saturday, the Republican vice presidential nominee unleashed her inner pit bull, accusing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of being someone who would “pal around with terrorists.”

The reporter let us know that in her opinion (yes, yes, it was a news story, I know) Palin’s new tone was “abrasive.” That’s a fine alternative for “truthful,” isn’t it?

I

n California, we have Proposition 7 on the ballot in November, which would require the state’s utilities to use 50% alternative energy by 2025, up from our already difficult to achieve goal of 20 percent by 2010.

Nearly all of the money given in support of Prop 7 has come from one man, Peter Sperling, who’s given $7.5 million of mostly Daddy’s Money (Daddy founded the University of Phoenix). Sperling is another of those tedious heirs with a cause. Quite an heir, actually, America’s 301st richest individual.

The SacBee story tells us nothing more than the University of Phoenix hook; Forbes (linked above) tells us a bit more:

Father, John: Cambridge-educated humanities professor at San Jose U. Left academia to start for-profit University of Phoenix 1970s. Became Apollo Group; public 1994. Today enrolls more than 300,000 students in more than 100 programs for associate, bachelor’s, master’s degrees online or in classroom. Peter serves as senior vice president. Company faced numerous lawsuits; allegedly violated Higher Education Act by paying its recruiters based on number of students they enrolled; fined $10 million. Securities fraud: estimated $270 million damage award against company for misleading investors recently overturned. (emphasis added)

Sperling, who is so very concerned about California’s carbon footprint, owns more than 30 homes, says Ballotpedia:

In November 2002, Sperling paid $32 million for a home in San Francisco (right) -the record price at that time for a San Francisco home. The home was later placed on the market for $65 million, after approximately $18 million was spent to improve it. As of 2007, no one had lived in the home. News reports indicate that Sperling owns more than 30 homes throughout the world.

Speaking of carbon footprints, what do you suppose the carbon footprints of these Peter Sperling enterprises might be?

Sperling is also the Chairman and a founder of Communication Services, Inc., a Phoenix, AZ-based full-service communication engineering and construction firm serving the U.S. Coast Guard, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. commercial wireless industry. In addition, Sperling is Chairman of Ecliptic Enterprises, a Pasadena, CA-based provider of integrated space imaging and telemetry and payload deployment systems for NASA, JPL, the NRO and the commercial satellite industry, and he is also a principal in Daedalus Real Estate Advisors, a developer of commercial office and industrial property.

(OK, it’s not all Daddy’s money; that’s why I added the “mostly” above.)

Despite the dubiousness of Sperling’s efforts to force Californians to be more carbon-light than he is himself, SacBee appears to be as close to Sperling as Gwen Ifell is to Obama. Here’s how the article described opponents of the bill:

The state’s biggest utility companies, PG&E and Edison International, are opposing the measure and have donated more than $27.5 million to the cause. Sempra, an energy company, has contributed another $104,000.

You cannot live in California and not know that every major environmental group in the Golden State is vehemently opposed to Prop 7, including the California League of Conservation Voters, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club California and Union of Concerned Scientists. Also opposed are solar manufacturers by the dozens. Their point:

An unprecedented and diverse coalition of solar, wind and renewable energy companies, consumer, taxpayer, senior, labor, small businesses, local governments and environmental organizations all oppose Proposition 7 on the November ballot. Prop. 7 was placed on the ballot by an Arizona billionaire with no expertise in renewable power issues. The measure purports to increase the percent of renewable power utilities must purchase. However, it is so poorly drafted that renewable energy and environmental experts warn Prop. 7 will not achieve its goals and, instead, will actually “slam the brakes” on renewable energy development in California, result in significant increases in our electric bills and could result in another energy crisis. Prop. 7.

By making the utilities the only stated opponents, the SacBee article will drive many to support Prop. 7. Is the SacBee guilty of incredibly shoddy or incredibly biased reporting? It’s got to be one or the other.

Super Nan Readies For Denver Showdown

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est you think this week’s Democratic convention in Denver will be just a showcase for the pontificating and grandstanding leaders of the party that knows what’s good for us even if we don’t, Nancy Pelosi stands ready to set you straight. This is no small deal.

“We’ve got a planet to save. Nothing less is at stake other than civilization as we know it today.” (source)

Thank God we’ve got a proven, capable Dem savior like Barack Obama to get us through the fight with the super-nemesis, Maverick Man.

And Joe Biden? The perfect sidekick for The Mighty O and Super Nan, sez Madam Speaker:

“Joe Biden is the all-American boy.”

I’m sure he looks great in tights, too.

hat-tip: Urgent Agenda

T

o listen to Nancy Pelosi, the GOP is fixated on drilling and drilling only, while the Dems want a healthy smörgåsbord (oxymoron alert!) of energy options. I’ll translate: She’s fabricating the GOP policy and the Dem smörgåsbord is all kinds of oil, as long as it’s grossly over-regulated and negatively incentivized, and all kinds of alternative fuels - except nuclear - as long as they have zero environmental impact and don’t raise the price of arugula.

For all the hoopla on wind - which overlooks the Dem constituencies that fight wind installations - it will never be ready for prime time, says Dr. Robert Zubrin of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:

Simply to replace the 18% of our natural gas we currently import would require multiplying the nation’s current total wind power tenfold; to free up enough domestic natural gas to replace half our gasoline would require a thirty-fold wind power increase. The feasibility of doing this is very doubtful, not merely because of the size of the project but because wind power is intrinsically unreliable. When the wind speed drops in half, power output drops by a factor of eight, so wind simply cannot provide the baseload power.

And remember: Enviros will sue to stop the windmill farms (can you say “Kennedy?”) and the construction of new transmission lines to carry solar- and wind-generated electricity from the deserts and plains to the cities (Why, it’s the Sierra Club!) .

To solve the energy crisis America needs to get real. Aggressive responses will require environmental impacts, but those impacts will be regulated and excesses will be penalized by laws already in place. And the Enviros will have to forfeit their desire to save every bunny and bush from any contact with evil humans.

Torture, Torture, Torture! It’s The American Way

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e Americans just have to swallow hard and admit it: Abu Ghraib just reflects our national loving fixation with torture. We’re just a torturing bunch. Why, we can even buy sophisticated Tortureware® for our own happy use! So sez the UN:

TASER electronic stun guns are a form of torture that can kill, a UN committee has declared after several recent deaths in North America.

“The use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture,” the UN’s Committee against Torture said. …

The UN committee made its comments in recommendations to Portugal, which has bought the newest Taser X26 stun gun for use by police.

Portugal “should consider giving up the use of the Taser X26,” as its use can have a grave physical and mental impact on those targeted, which violates the UN’s Convention against Torture, the experts said.

Pornography is supposedly hard to define, despite the “I know it when I see it”‘ definition that works for most of us. Pansy bureaucrats who concern themselves with a Quixotic quest for a perfect world are telling us that torture is too hard for us to know when we see it, and by defining more and more practices as torture, they’re just playing into the hands of the bad guys.

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wo weeks back, the non-Council entries in the Watcher’s Council reading list included Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap from The (UK) Register, in which physicist David MacKay pretty much decimated any hopes of a clean, energy efficient world that has a standard of living approximating what we (and I mean that as the big “we,” not just America) are used to. Particularly compelling was this:

Skipping one bath saves a much energy as leaving your TV off standby for over six months. People who wash regularly, wear clean clothes, consume hot food or drink, use powered transport of any kind and live in warm houses have no need to worry about the energy they use to power their electronics; it’s insignificant compared to the other things.

Ever since reading it, looking at our household laundry has depressed me. Being Americans means we are B.O.-adverse (that’s Body Odor, not Barack Obama, but we’re B.O.-adverse in the political sense at the Pearce Plaza, too), so we tend to wash our clothes after one or two wearings, and to get the job done, we use “a witches brew of chemicals,” to lift a phrase from any nearby environmental reporter.

Worse, having had four females in the house, we actually have two sets of washers and dryers, and there have been days when they’ve been working full-time to keep us all looking and smelling like our fine, fine selves.

But now MacKay’s burdened me with laundry guilt. I’m not about to go around like Michael Moore in stained (and I presume smelly) old shirts, so what am I to do?

I have predicted here at C-SM that Greenie hand-wringing about this manner of dread is all for naught; human ingenuity solves all problems, and it certainly should be able to lift laundry depression! And it can! Witness, from Jamie Merrill, writing in The (UK) Independent:

Scientists working for the US military have used self-cleaning fabrics to create T-shirts and underwear that can be worn for weeks without washing. The garments, which use nanoparticles and chemicals to repel water, oil and bacteria, cost £14m to develop and have been licensed to Alexium Group in London for civilian use. Available soon.

Nano-technology to the rescue! We’ll be tossing that washer and dryer in no time! Not only that, but in a household where the female demographic is somewhat overwhelming, we may even by generating our own uniquely feminine power soon. From the same article cited above:

It turns out that the physics of breast motion has been studied closely for the last two decades by a gamut of researchers – most of them women. LaJean Lawson, a former professor of exercise science at Oregon State University, has been researching breast motion since 1985 and now works as a consultant for companies such as Nike to develop better sports-bra designs.

Lawson is enthusiastic about [harnessing breast motion to generate power for a runner's iPod], but warns that it will be tricky to execute. You would need the right breast size and the right material, she explains, and the bra itself would have to be cleverly designed. “It’s just a matter of finding the sweet spot, between reducing motion to the point where it’s comfortable but still allowing enough motion to power your iPod,” she says. Lawson explains that breasts move on three different axes: from side to side, front to back, and up and down. The most motion is generated on the vertical axis. Naturally, the bigger the breast, the more momentum it generates. “Let’s face it – if you’re a double-A marathoner, you’re probably not going to get that iPod up and running,” Lawson says.

Here’s an idea that could work particularly well in SoCal, land of breast enhancement, since we learn that a D-cup in a bra with low-support characteristics (the kind preferred by most men, but shunned for some reason by most women) can travel as much as 35 inches up and down during an exercise session, while a B-cup in a high-support bra barely moves an inch.

Perhaps Congress could pass a law giving an energy tax credit to women who upsize their chestal region.

Sophomoric humor aside, all this is why I’m an optimist instead of a screaming banshee of doom. God gave the human mind an nearly infinite capacity to be curious and to solve problems. We haven’t even convinced ourselves that global warming is a problem, but already we’re recruiting permanently clean skivvies and juice-generating bras into the solution!

H

ow quickly the fickle heart of the liberal, green democrat changes! It seems like only yesterday they had nothing but nice things to say about ethanol - it’s renewable, it’s good for our planet, look how much better Brazil is than our stinky, inept country!

And now, you need not go any farther than lib columnist Paul Krugman to see that ethanol hasn’t just been dumped, it’s been trashed - charged with murder, even:

And meanwhile, land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.

And rising oceans will soon engulf New York! Writing in Car & Driver, Patrick Bedard snuffs this bit of liberal lying from the lexicon:

Your enduring columnist has always maintained that corn ethanol is a political fuel, not a sensible one. But the gloomsters are tossing up despearately silly arguments in their anti-ethanol screeds. As for starvation in Africa, U.S. corn exports are up this year to that continent where they’re use overwhelmingly as animal feed.

Ethanol is made from field corn, not the sweet corn of our dinner tables or the white corn of tortillas - and not only that, it’s made from the starch portions of field corn, so the protein and oil is still available for animal feed. Each 56-pound bushel of corn, Bedard tells us, yields about 2.8 gallons of ethanol and 16 to 18 pounds of feed.

Bedard dispenses with the idea that ethanol caused an increase in food prices - in anything ethanol probably kept a lid on increases because the real culprit was oil. He quotes a Fed report:

Historically food prices have surged during times of higher crude … a 10-percent gain in energy prices could contribute 5.2 percent to retail food prices.

But the shrill, defeatist voices of the environmental left can’t be bothered with mere facts:

Barely beneath the words of these gloomsters is the anti-growth agenda they dare not utter. But Ted turner has no fear, and he flat said it in an April interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose. “We’re too many people,”‘ he said. “‘We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff … in 200 or 40 years … most of the people will have died, and the rest of us will be cannibals.”

They really want to believe this stuff. They really need to be the messianic force of change, the saviors of the world. Why? Because every wretched thing they’ve predicted since the 1970s hasn’t come to pass, so it’s looking to them that their entire belief system just might be false. Rather than switch beliefs, they become more and more strident, like the street preacher whose rhetoric gets more inflamed each time Jesus doesn’t return as predicted.

No Fireworks In Gualala

A couple weeks back, I wrote about a particularly worrisome matter of the Cal. Coastal Commission issuing a cease and desist order against a 4th of July fireworks show planned in the No. Cal town of Gualala. It is, I think, the foothold the Coastal Commission has been seeking in a larger effort to stop these patriotic displays all along the California Coast.

How crazy is that? This crazy: One of the Gualala Gaeans said in a comment on the post that the damage of a 15 minute fireworks show would be permanent and unmitigatable. My gosh, if the earth were really that fragile, if would have dissolved into dust long ago.

The Gualala Patriots Day Committee (the good guys) appealed the decision and lost, so there will be no fireworks show this year. But the fight goes on; the judge merely failed to overturn the cease and desist; he did not rule on the underlaying matter. Says the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the Patriots Day group:

“The legal fight goes on against this abuse of power by the California Coastal Commission. Although the fireworks won’t happen this year, our lawsuit goes forward. We’ll be litigating to bring the fireworks back in future years – and to have the courts instruct the Coastal Commission on the proper limits of its power.”

For a PLF summary on the case, click here.

The Inevitable In Zimbabwe

The despotic leaders of the multitude of thug-ocracies of the world can breathe a sigh of relief — the popular uprising against their role model hero, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, has been crushed.

This was a close one, with Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change actually winning a popular election. But Mugabe froze the election results and started a campaign of intimidation … which may be too faint a word. Remember what Mugabe’s supporters did to the wife of Patson Chipiro, a MDC regional leader?

They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window. (BBC)

Preceding the MDC announcement it was not going to participate in the new election was this, also from BBC:

On Sunday, the MDC was due to stage a rally in Harare - the highlight of the campaign.

But supporters of Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF occupied the stadium venue and roads leading up to it.

Witnesses reported seeing hundreds of youths around the venue wielding sticks, some chanting slogans, and others circling the stadium crammed onto the backs of trucks.

Some set upon opposition activists, leaving a number badly injured, the MDC said.

It said African election monitors were also chased away from the rally site.

Sounds like exactly the sort of election Jimmy Carter would deem to be fair.

Another Reason To Vote For McCain

Buried deep in a WaPo story on hate groups and rising racism that’s very short on stats and figures and verrrry loooong on opinion, we find this:

“One person put it this way: Obama for president paves the way for David Duke as president,” said Duke, who ran for president in 1988, received less than 1 percent of the vote and has since spent much of his time in Europe. “This is finally going to make whites begin to realize it’s a necessity to stick up for their own heritage, and that’s going to make them turn to people like me. We’re the next logical step.”

Keep Duke in Europe! Vote McCain!

Alternative Energy Dreamin’

There’s another horse in the alternative energy race … but this one seems unlikely to generate even one horsepower. But what the heck! Don’t stop believin’, hold on to that feelin’:

Scientists from Europe’s Atomic Energy Commission, in Grenoble, France, have shown that vibrations from raindrops landing on a certain type of plastic can generate enough energy to operate some low-power wireless sensors, like battery-powered outdoor thermometers.

Leonardo diCaprio, take note!

Plenty Magazine offers an “In Depth” feature on the new technology, gushing about how it could be used to power climate sensing devices that now need batteries, so that we get a continuous flow of data to feed into the electricity sucking beasts we call computers.

Of course, rain drop power comes with that bane of all alternative energy: a dearth of economic viability. It takes Penty to the last paragraph to mention this tidbit: The material used to generate raindrop power costs $460 for 1 kilogram, and given the milliwatts produced, a bunch of kilograms will be required. Batteries, on the other hand, cost a buck.

Undaunted, the article ends:

Who knows, April showers may soon bring power.

Of course, not enough power to offset the solar power that’s not being generated due to the rain.

Very nice art: Josh Cochran

Extreme Climate Change

NOAA (named, perhaps, for that ark chap, since the oceans are going to flood us all) has released its newest climate change report, Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. The resulting bad reporting can perhaps be best summarized by two quick cuts.

First, the pocket liner set got their first impression of the report from this Science Digest intro:

Among the major findings reported in this assessment are that droughts, heavy downpours, excessive heat, and intense hurricanes are likely to become more commonplace as humans continue to increase the atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

While the mainstream tuned into this Digg summary …

New report highlights the likely changes in extreme weather and climate conditions under ongoing climate change.

… which in turn generated comments like:

Report: Turning on lamp will light up room.
Report: Pissing into wind will get you wet.
Report: Falling linked to failure to stand upright.

How many of these stories do we need to read before people start seeing this as completely obvious?!

Well, of course, it’s just not that obvious. ICECAP gives us this summary by Roger Pielke Jr., who just happens to believe in anthropogenic global warming:

The report contains several remarkable conclusions, that somehow did not seem to make it into the official press release. They include: over the long-term U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining, nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought, despite increases in some measures of precipitation, there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows, there have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms, there have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters, there are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record.

Pshaw. What’s the fun in reporting boring ol’ stuff like that?

Seismic Mitigation As Art

This amazing piece of industrial art is actually the tuned mass damper at the top of Taipei 101, for now the planet’s tallest completed skyscraper.

The 728-ton steel ball is so massive it couldn’t be lifted into location; rather, it had to be assembled in a cavern carved out of four stories at the top of the tower. Why, you might well ask, put a 728-ton ball at the top of the building?

The simple answer is that Taipei 101 stands just 800 feet from an earthquake fault. More specific: The ball swings counter to motion caused by wind or earth movement, dampening sway.

Deputy Dog, an architecture blog, has a short story on the mass damper, but what really attracts is the video that was shot on May 12, when shocks from China’s massive earthquake hit the tower. Tourists in the building actually flocked up to the viewing area for the damper to see it in action.

Don’t you just love human ingenuity?

Can You Say “Semper Cheese?”

If you don’t understand this, says Blackfive, you’ve never met a Marine.

In his Saturday address, President Bush handed McCain the campaign theme most likely to keep the White House in Republican hands:

The fundamental problem behind high gas prices is that the supply of oil has not kept up with the rising demand across the world. One obvious solution is for America to increase our domestic oil production. So my Administration has repeatedly called on Congress to open access to new oil exploration here in the United States. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal. Now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction.

Delivering the Dem response to the prez’s radio address was Nick Rahall, chair of the Natural Resources Committee, which is the Senatorial power broker in this debate. His response:

This week, President Bush and his Republicans allies rallied behind the oil industry’s political agenda once again and advocated opening more of America’s federal land, including coastal areas, to drilling. This proposal will not bring the type of relief Americans deserve at the pump.

So we’re told that supply and demand for some mysterious reason won’t work with petroleum. Yet we’re told that this same supply and demand does work with the cornerstone of the Dems’ horse in the energy race, alternative fuels: We’ll increase supply of alternative fuels and the price of energy will drop.

Everything the enviros have said since gas prices started spiking — heck, everything they’ve ever said about energy pricing — ignores supply and demand in favor of government controls through incentives, punishments,cap and trade programs and government take-over. It’s not surprising since its basic socialism.

Also inherent in Rahall’s response is a problem over the definition of federal lands. He criticizes Bush for calling for “opening more” federal land (and seas) for resource development. The name of Rahall’s committee is “Resources,” a word the Dems and their green special interest supporters have come to define as “something that should not be touched,” but traditionally means “a source of supply, support or wealth.”

What exactly is this “America’s federal land” Rehall’s talking about? The Bureau of Land Management has under its jurisdiction 258 million surface acres and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estates. The surface holdings represent about 13 percent of all the US, and BLM states its purpose as management first and conservation second. The land it manages represents just 40 percent of all land owned by the Federal government.

And it’s profitable stuff:

The public lands provide significant economic benefits to the Nation and to states and counties where these lands are located. Revenues generated from public lands make BLM one of the top revenue-generating agencies in the Federal government. In 2007, for instance, BLM’s onshore mineral leasing activities will generate an estimated $4.5 billion in receipts from royalties, bonuses, and rentals that are collected by the Minerals Management Service. Approximately half of these revenues will be returned to the States where the mineral leasing occurred.

These are the lands Bush — and most of the rest of us — are interested in opening up, which is the right thing to do, since it’s the federal land purposed for productivity. The other federally owned land includes military bases, prisons, nuke storage sites, Washington DC — and land owned and managed by the Department of Interior’s wildlife guys for the Dem definition of “natural resources” — critters and plants that just could not survive without our loving protection.

But to Rahall and the special interests he serves (Earth First!, the Center for Biological Depravity … oops, Diversity, etc.), all federal land should be treated as this subset of DOI-managed land: preserved for critters and none of it leased for resources. It doesn’t matter if the impact of production on land is large (as in oil shale) or small (as in drilling); no level of impact to Gaea is allowable.

You can’t blame Rahall and the Greenies for the current energy situation; you can only blame them for part of it. How much is a matter of debate; they would say the impact of their anti-petroleum, anti-nuclear position is minimal, and that it would be less then minimal if only we would get our hearts behind alternative energy.

But our hearts have been behind alternative energy since the gas shortages of the 1970s. Billions of dollars are going into alternative energy and we have little to show for it beyond higher food prices thanks to ethanol production.

McCain, like all savvy politicians is a proponent of alternative energy — after all he can read polls that say 98% (!) of usbelieve a goal of 25% alternative energy sources by 2025 is a good one. (Of course, the poll question didn’t attach a cost to that effort or say reaching the goal might cause some discomfort and displacement.) But he can also read the frustration of voters who are paying over $4 per gallon of gas, and seeing the price raise every week, so he changed his position on drilling. Albeit, not far enough, since he’s still stuck in a no position on ANWR, but unlike the Dems, he changed.

And the left pounced, with the Dem party strutting and crowing about McCain’s Offshore Drilling Flip-Flop: “McCain caves, once again, to the special interest.” We’ve been through the special interest allegation already, but in this particular case, the special interest isn’t the dreaded “Texas oil,” which was guilty of the great sin of helping make America the most powerful, wealthiest, comfortable nation on earth, it’s the people at the pump.

With “flip-flop,” the Dems are trying to paint McCain with a Kerry brush, but they fail. McCain is looking at an economic policy, seeing a changed global condition brought about by soaring demand and stifled production and refining capacity (see this lengthy PowerPoint for a good explanation of all that), and a futures market that’s betting that price increases will continue, and he simply deduced that changed circumstances support changed policy.

Kerry, on the other hand, was looking at an Iraq where nothing was changing — it was early in the war, instable and violent, and potentially could get worse or could get better. What was changing was not the situation, but the power and funding capacity of the anti-war faction of the Dem party. McCain saw a changed world and changed his policy. Kerry saw a changed Dem power elite and changed his.

It boils down to this: $4 gas gives the GOP a glimmer of hope in November because we have the right policy and, finally, a candidate who has signaled that he’s with us on that policy. The Dems have a candidate who appears not to care about the plight of the people; he’ll put the supposed plight of the polar bear first.

Congress, thanks to Bush’s challenge to open up more land for drilling, needs to deal with this. My guess: The Dems will go on August recess without acting. McCain better be putting on his pouncing shoes.