Despite the hot air, windmills are not the answer

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions… Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).

Flemming Nissen, the head of development at West Danish generating company ELSAM (one of Denmark’s largest energy utilities) tells us that “wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that “Germany’s CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram,” and additional coal- and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery…

Industrial wind power is not a viable economic alternative to other energy conservation options. Again, the Danish experience is instructive. Its electricity generation costs are the highest in Europe (15¢/kwh compared to Ontario’s current rate of about 6¢). Niels Gram of the Danish Federation of Industries says, “windmills are a mistake and economically make no sense.” Aase Madsen , the Chair of Energy Policy in the Danish Parliament, calls it “a terribly expensive disaster.”

Centrist Dems working on alternative that would kill U.S. exports more slowly than cap and trade

With the Senate cap-and-trade bill on ice for the foreseeable future, a key bloc of Democrats is agitating for a Climate Plan B: an existing energy policy bill they say would put the US on the path to a clean energy future. Make that a road to nowhere. The bill in question lacks any kind of cap on carbon, and contains so many concessions to the oil, coal, gas, and nuclear industries that one environmental group has dubbed it a "flashback to Bush energy policy."

For months, a gaggle of centrist Democrats has tried to convince the party's leaders that they should abandon their push for a cap-and-trade scheme and instead settle for passing the energy measure that was approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June. When Republican Scott Brown seized Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat in an upset victory, these Plan B proponents saw their chance. Since then, they've been vigorously arguing that capping carbon is a huge political risk that Democrats can't afford to take in an election year. "They're using uncertainty over the Obama agenda as a whole to reinvigorate their push," said Joe Mendelson, director of global warming policy at the National Wildlife Federation.

The Plan B crowd includes Democratic senators Jim Webb, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Mark Pryor, and Blanche Lincoln. It could also potentially pick up the Republicans who voted the energy measure out of committee: senators Lisa Murkowski, Sam Brownback, Bob Corker, and Jeff Sessions.

Abominanble Obamanomics: 85 % of clean energy stimulus stimulated foreign firms

Of the $1 billion in clean-energy stimulus money spent since the beginning of September, $850 million has gone to foreign wind companies. It doesn't take a bunch of experts at a hastily planned "jobs summit" to discover this isn't the way to bolster employment in America.

Indeed, the 11 U.S. wind farms that received stimulus money from the Treasury have imported 695 of the 982 wind turbines to be installed, creating 4,500 jobs overseas. That's far more overseas work than the stimulus money has created in the United States.

On Oct. 29, a joint venture of American and Chinese companies unveiled plans for a new $1.5 billion wind farm in West Texas consisting of 240 Chinese-made turbines. The project is seeking 30 percent of its funding in government stimulus dollars. At best, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars will create a grand total of 30 permanent jobs. That's $15 million for each job if the project gets the expected level of federal funding.

Meanwhile, vast oil deposits lie undeveloped offshore and in North Dakota

Over the next three years, Americans will be required to replace nearly all their traditional light bulbs with cooler, more energy-efficient bulbs under a 2007 bill signed by President Bush.

But almost all of the 100 production lines needed to churn out new bulbs are expected to be built overseas. Similar scenarios are likely to play out for wind turbines, solar cells and other parts of the emerging global market for clean energy.

That's the gloomy prospect faced by federal officials and business leaders alike as they confront the twin challenges of combating climate change and trying to keep the U.S. competitive in the multitrillion-dollar race to develop and sell new energy systems.

My take: It is truly breathtaking to see and hear a government that bungles every task it assigns to itself now claim the wisdom to guide the gigantic American economy along the proper path to prosperity.

We are struggling through a government-made recession worsened by the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars on government-chosen make-work projects that produced few new jobs.

Now, in the name of creating a vital new industry, President Obama is pushing clean energy, which has done a marvelous job of creating new jobs in other countries.

The American public is turning thumbs down on the global warming alarmists. The cap and trade bill, which would impose new costs on American industry, is all but dead in the U.S. Senate.

There's a wise old definition of a fanatic: a person who recoubles his seffort once he's lost sight of his objective.