An Energy Smörgåsbord

I have several items for your energy intake today:

First up is an article from former meteorologist Brian Sussman called Drill It, Dam it, Log It: How To Fight Eco-Tyranny In America. Caution: if you have a heart condition, you may wish to pop a nitro before you read this. It’s a solid “8.5” on the Government Outrage-O-meter.

Courtesy of Forbes.com:

In a major press event staged at the rim of the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona (an important swing state that year) Clinton and Vice President Al Gore announced their unilateral executive decision to designate a 1.9 million acre monument in Utah. The instant creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was a major victory for eco-activists, and a great loss to America’s energy portfolio. Portions of area are estimated to contain 62 billion tons of clean-burning, low-sulfur coal, between 3 to 5 billion barrels of oil, and 2 to 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Members of Utah’s congressional delegation were livid, as they were informed of the decision just shortly before Clinton and Gore boarded Air Force One bound for the publicity stunt. 

Over the next four years Clinton and Gore would create over 4 million acres of national monuments, all known for their rich resources.

In 2000, the Clinton administration brazenly stretched the limits of the Antiquity Act further by establishing the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) at the behest of Department of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit (a man beloved by environmentalists for his dramatic DOI press events held in front of dams, in which he would brandish a sledgehammer as a part of his self-proclaimed “sledgehammer tour,” encouraging the destruction of America’s dams). The NLCS gave the president the power to deem a simple landscape as “treasured,” thus taking its resources off the books forever. In 2009, liberal majorities in Congress fashioned an official NLCS law, which President Obama eagerly signed. The legislation, part of an omnibus-spending bill, declared 27 million acres of “treasured landscapes.”

Now, as I disclose in my book Eco-Tyranny, President Obama has been caught in a plan to potentially declare 140-million acres of land treasured. I was one of the first to see a 21-page DOI draft document describing the scheme, which declares the acreage as, “components of larger landscapes, ecosystems, airsheds, and watersheds.” Note that all of the said components are purely subjective in nature.

For a visual depiction of just how much territory the government now owns, I’ll include this from 2004:

Sussman is an excellent writer, and I urge you to read the whole article. Heck, while you’re at it, read his book, too.

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Next up is the 4th installment of Tim Dunn’s 5-Minute Energy Blog, courtesy of Hugh Hewitt’s website. If you aren’t familiar with him, Tim Dunn is CEO of Crown Quest Operating (one of the top oil producers in Texas) and board member of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. And with a title like OIL-HATERS AND ENERGY-CRATS, this installment is in synch with the Sussman piece above, but with a slightly different perspective.

***To read Tim’s previous Energy blog posts, go HERE.

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And, before anyone from the save-mother-earth-blah-blah-blah crowd says, “Hey, neither of those guys is a CLIMATOLOGIST, and the CLIMATOLOGISTS all say drilling is bad, etc, etc….. Why should we care what these authors say?”, please check out one of my favorite articles from waaaay back in 2009, courtesy of the examiner.com:

What is a ‘Climatologist,’ precisely? Let me cut to the chase scene for you: It’s a job title, not an educational path. Translation: You, too, can be a Climatologist!

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I could go through every single paper presented as proof of Algore’s Earth View written by “climatologists” searching in vain for a “climatology” degree. Not there. The reason is because the very first such degree program in the world took students in just 2001.

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Just remember: