The largest oil spill in the U.S. is not BP’s blown-out Macondo well in the Gulf. The largest oil spill occurred in 1910 in Maricopa, California where a gusher spewed oil for 544 days. All told, it spewed about 378 million gallons of oil.
…but this article which argues that free markets is an ideology of death is close to the dumbest. Here’s just one example of the author’s inability to think. He argues that a laissez-faire free market ideology led to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. That’s pretty ironic because BP, or Beyond Petroleum as they wanted to be called, tried for years to court progressives and liberals—hardly something a laissez-faire company would do. But that’s just the beginning. Read the whole thing if you want to laugh or cry.
Today, however, rare-earth mining is almost nonexistent outside China, which came to dominate the market in the 1980s and ’90s by cutting world prices and now controls as much as 97 percent of the supply of some of the elements. The United States’ only major rare-earth mine, a complex in Mountain Pass, California, that was once the world’s leading producer of the minerals, shut down in 2002.
But the limited supply of the minerals in the marketplace is the result of economics and environmental concerns, not scarcity. Even with iPads flying off the shelves and high-end electric cars on showroom floors, the world consumes only a tiny amount of rare earth — about 130,000 metric tons of it a year, or just over a tenth of the amount of copper produced last February alone. Market forecasters expect the global trade in rare earths to reach $2 billion to $3 billion by 2014, but even that amounts to barely 1 percent of today’s iron market. And rare earth elements aren’t actually worth very much at the mine — most of their market value is added in the refining process.
This video is a compilation of nearly 3 hours of talks at Google about thorium reactors. I thought it was a very interesting. It sounds plausible, but I have no way to evaluate the claims these guys are making.
This is truly amazing. The Obama Administration is prepared to provide up to $10 billion in loans to finance energy development off the coast of Brazil, but it won’t allow additional drilling in America’s waters—drilling that would create American jobs and bring in additional tax revenue?
Obama could allow more energy off the U.S. coast, but so far, his Administration has been committed to reducing domestic energy production. He revoked oil and gas leases in Utah, delayed taking action to open up additional areas for offshore energy development, and halted a program to allow commercial oil shale leasing. All of these programs would have created American jobs without imposing additional costs on taxpayers.
Why is the Obama Administration working to create job opportunities for Brazilians, but not jobs and additional tax revenue for the United States?
Loyd Case, the editor of the soon-to-be shuttered computer-enthusiast website Extreme Tech, recently wrote up his experience “going solar” one year into his experience. He spent around $38,000 to saves $3,000 a year in electricity costs. He mistakenly concludes that this the payback period is 12.5 years. That’s because he doesn’t include the the time value of his money.
If instead of paying for the solar panel up front, financed them with a loan, making payments of $250 a month, it would take 20 years at 5% interest to pay back his loan (if electricity costs and use remain constant). That is a long payback period, especially because solar panels will reduce in efficiency in the future.
Also, Case received a California rebate and Federal Tax Credit because he installed these solar panels. The California rebate probably amounted to $10,000. The real cost of his solar panels were nearly $50,000, making the investment in solar panel a bad deal.
President Obama’s automobile choice shows that he cares about features other than fuel economy, so why is he forcing the American people to choose fuel economy first and foremost?
When President Obama took office, he got a new car—a 8 mile-per-gallon custom Cadillac limousine. The reason the car gets such poor fuel economy is that it is designed to protect the Commander-in-Chief from many threats. The limo’s body is composed of sophisticated titanium, steel, ceramic and aluminum armor to stop projectiles. The armored doors are 8-inches thick and there is a 5-inch thick reinforced steel plate under the car to protect against bombs. The car is equipped with night vision cameras and Obama’s seat features a foldaway desk, laptop, and satellite phone so he can conduct business on the go. Because the car’s armor and accessories weigh so much, the car is powered by a 6.5 liter diesel engine.
President Obama, however, is proposing to limit Americans’ automobile choices and force Americans to buy more fuel economy than they would choose on their own. He is proposing a fuel-economy mandate that cars in 2016 model cars will have to get at least 42 miles per gallon.
Currently there are only three cars that get 35 miles per gallon or better, the Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic hybrid, and the Ford Fusion hybrid. In just over 6 years, automakers need to improve the fuel economy of the entire fleet by 40 percent. This is possible, but it will be costly, limit American’s car choice, and it will be deadly.
A 2002 study from the National Research Council found that the federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy mandate contributed to 2,000 deaths per year. The reason for this death tool is that frequently there is a tradeoff between the size of a car and safety. Cars have become safer, but today’s small, fuel efficient cars are still more dangerous than other cars in two-car frontal offset collisions, even again medium sized cars.
President Obama didn’t have to choose between safety and fuel economy when it came to his limo. He shouldn’t force the American people to be forced to choose smaller, more fuel efficient and less-safe cars.
I love this rant by Nick Gillespie of Reason. It sounds like at some point he had some hope in Obama, but that hope is now dashed.
Gillespie is beside himself with Obama’s silly yammering about high speed rail. Gillespie is correct to point out that high speed rail has almost nothing to do with traffic congestion. High speed rail moves people between cities, but traffic is centered in and around cities. The traffic I drive though in Washington, D.C. is almost exclusively caused by people trying to get from one part of the D.C. metro area to another. When I get in a traffic jam on Sunday afternoon on I-66, it isn’t caused by people who could be taking high speed rail to the sprawling metropolis of Front Royal, VA.
Wasting billions on high speed rail is silly. It can’t be defended. America’s rail transport system is actually pretty good. But unlike Europe’s, which almost exclusively carries passengers, America’s almost exclusively carries freight.
This is my luxury of living in the minority. I get to criticize the Democrats and the Republicans.
Nick Gillespie has some good thoughts for Rep. Kantor’s questions about a stimulus package:
We are living in interesting times. In July, oil hit $147 a barrel. Five months later, oil prices have dropped by $100 a barrel. Not only that, but now it is profitable for people (if they have a few hundred million or a billion laying around to buy crude at today’s spot price, store it for a year, and lock in a profit by selling it forward. Platt’s explains the scheme:
the forward curve for oil is now providing a huge incentive for market participants to store oil. For example, the one-year spread between December 2008 and December 2009 crude is running about $10, and the combination of financing and storage costs aren’t enough to wipe out that profit incentive to buy oil now, sock it away for 12 months and collect the difference in price.
Apparently it is now profitable to rent supertankers and store the oil in supertankers because of the contango.
Usually the contango gets arbitraged away, but the credit crunch is keeping people on the sidelines, allowing the big boys to make money because they have billions in cash.