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"We reject the application because we find that the Manzana Wind Project is not cost-competitive and poses unacceptable risks to ratepayers. We find that the proposed cost of the Manzana Wind Project is significantly higher than other resources PG&E can procure to meet its RPS program goal. Moreover, it will subject the ratepayers to unacceptable risks due to potential cost increases resulting from project under-performance, less than forecasted project life, and any delays which might occur concerning transmission upgrades and commercial online date. As a proposed utility-owned generation project, ratepayers would pay a lump sum cost rather than a performance based cost for the Manzana Wind Project. Therefore, ratepayers would be at risk if the project underperforms. In particular, if the Manzana Wind Project fails to achieve production as expected for any reason such as construction delays or curtailments as a result of a collision with a California condor, shareholders face no risks while customers could incur increased costs. In contrast, under a power purchase agreement, project owners rather than ratepayers bear the risk of project performance....
"In short, although the project would contribute to the California renewable generation goals, given the availability of other lower-priced renewable projects in the competitive market that could impose far less risks on ratepayers, PG&E has failed to demonstrate a need for this project."
So you've got every problem with wind energy in one judgment: high costs, unreliability, underperformance, and bird-battering. This runs counter to what environoiacs and alternative energy schemers tell us on a daily basis. What's that matter -- can't California and the federal government find enough taxpayer dough to subsidize this boondoggle too, to make it "feasible?" A wind farm of this size should be the environmentalists' dream.
The answer probably is, the government doesn't want to be seen providing giveaways of this nature to the big bad utilities. They'd rather give subsidies to the renewables dealers -- the little gremlins with the Green jobs -- and then make the utilities buy the sporadic energy from them. And whatever you do, don't tick off the ratepayers with higher electric bills, lest they discover the truth about alternative energy.
Originally posted at American Spectator.
The Academy Award nominations were announced this morning, and among those chosen for best documentary was "Gasland," the Josh Fox propagandizer about the alleged dangers and abuses by the natural gas industry. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that an association of Hollywoodites, who in the past have honored error- and lie-riddled films by Michael Moore and Al Gore, would give Fox similar superlative consideration.
For a reminder, you can find out the facts behind some myths promoted by "Gasland" in Commonwealth Foundation's Policy Brief last June on natural gas, and a few more debunked by Energy in Depth.
Originally posted at American Spectator.
My American Tradition Institute colleague Chris Horner calls attention to developments in Massachusetts, where government "investment" of taxpayer dollars in alternative energy didn't work the way lawmakers and bureaucrats expected:
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON - Evergreen Solar Inc., once a poster-company for Gov. Deval Patrick's green-jobs agenda, announced plans on Tuesday to shutter its Devens manufacturing plant and move more than 800 jobs elsewhere after accepting $58 million in state subsidies to expand in Massachusetts.
The solar panel manufacturing plant cited the low cost of manufacturing in China as the primary reason for closing the plant little more than two years after accepting significant state inducements for expanding....
Patrick announced the expansion of Evergreen Solar at the former Army base in Devens to great fanfare in 2008 when the company pledged to the double the size of the manufacturing plant it was constructing and triple its workforce to 1,000 employees.
The company accepted $58.6 million in grants, loans, land, and tax incentives over the last few years as incentive to expand in Massachusetts and add at least 350 new jobs to the economy.
There are usually "clawbacks" to these things, but how much time and taxpayer money that are also wasted on pursuit of these frivolous ventures is never accounted for. Besides the fact they cannot survive without government subsidies -- take them away and they die.
Now that the 2011 House is in session, members are lining up to co-sponsor a repeal of the Fred Upton "Too Much Heat, Not Enough Light" Incandescent Light Bulb Ban.
Except, heh-heh -- you dunderheads -- it's not really a ban on incandescents, as a smarter-than-everyone-else reporter from The News & Record of Greensboro, NC explains:
GREENSBORO - U.S. Rep. Howard Coble is among those urging colleagues in Congress to turn off the lights on a controversial provision of the 2007 energy bill.
The Greensboro Republican is a co-sponsor of a bill to repeal what some refer to - erroneously - as the incandescent bulb ban....
The 2007 bill sets energy efficiency standards for light bulbs. It doesn't specifically ban incandescent bulbs, but it would phase out the cheap, 50 cents-a-piece (22 cents-a-piece at Wal-mart - PC), single-filament model based on Thomas Edison's century-old design.
The rationale behind the bill had to do with cutting down the energy Americans use by making lighting fixtures more efficient. Rather than ban possession or use of any one bulb, it prohibits retailers from selling the less energy-efficient models, phasing in the new rules between 2012 and 2014.
One of the most common complaints about the bill has to do with the cost of alternatives to the energy inefficient bulbs.
Newer incandescent bulbs that would meet energy efficiency guidelines can cost $8 or more at retailers such as the Home Depot or Amazon.com.
Got that? It's not really a ban, except for retailers, and for people who want to pay 32 times what they used to pay for the Edison bulbs. So get over it.
Originally posted at American Spectator.
The new House is expected to pass a bill that prevents EPA from regulating greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act. Today Politico examines the prospects for passage in the Senate. This may be a fruitless exercise considering the likelihood of a presidential veto, but no less important in symbolism than votes on Obamacare repeal.
Politico splits the Senators into four categories: those supportive of EPA regulations; those opposed; those on the fence; and those who lean in favor of a two-year delay that has been proposed by West Virginia Democrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller. From the report:
Any congressional attempt to limit regulatory authority is always difficult to achieve, an industry lobbyist told POLITICO. But given the sluggish economy and the long list of moderate Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2012, "the chances are better than ever" for a vote to limit EPA's authority....
Administration officials have said President Barack Obama would veto a bill to strip EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases. But while the president would almost certainly veto a stand-alone measure to limit EPA rules, it could get more complicated if the measure is attached as a rider to a major spending package. That could also increase the likelihood of a deal for a one- or two-year wait....
The eight senators seen as fence-sitters on legislation to block EPA all opposed a measure by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) last June that would have broadly upended the agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas legislation, but they may be willing to support something narrower - such as a two-year delay - this time around.
Five of the lawmakers in play are swing-state Democrats facing reelection battles in 2012: Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Jon Tester of Montana, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.
But the Senate's radicals sound like they will fight a deal:
A group of Senate Democrats intends to hold weekly meetings to discuss plans to fend off attacks on the EPA, said Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). The meetings will center on "protecting the public, to make sure that they don't do anything to weaken the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act; to make sure that they don't stop the states from their work in protecting the public from carbon and other pollutants."
So don't expect people who are clearly detached from reality, and can't differentiate between what we exhale and real airborne toxins, to back off their views that they must control every aspect of our lives.
Originally posted at American Spectator.
As Chris Horner blogged yesterday, the Environmental Law Center at American Tradition Institute (where I am executive director) has requested under the state's Freedom of Information Act that the University of Virginia turn over documents and emails related to public grants sought by "hockey stick" scientist Michael Mann, who moved over to Penn State University a few years ago. UVA has been resisting (spending about $500,000 on outside lawyers for the effort) a similar, previous request by Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who is investigating Mann under the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.
One of the Washington Post's Virginia Politics bloggers posted a report about our FOIA yesterday, and obtained a response from Mann:
[ATI]'s senior director of litigation, Christopher Horner, has written two books on why he believes global warming is a hoax and gives frequently speeches on the subject. He is also a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
In a statement, Mann noted that the think tank receives funding from ExxonMobile (sic) and other corporate groups.
"Industry-funded lobbyists like Horner have been using precisely the same tactics for decades to intimidate scientists whose scientific findings proved inconvenient to the vested interests they represent such as the tobacco, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries," he said.
"There is substantial case law defending scientists and academics against such thinly-veiled attempts to suppress scientific inquiry by harassing individual scientists. I suspect that U.Va, as other great universities have in the past, will respect that tradition and stand up against these transparent attempts not just to bully me, but to thwart the progress of science," Mann said.
You might remember we learned after Climategate that Mann showed himself to be a believer in the preservation of public institution emails:
Penn State global warming scientist Michael E. Mann regrets he did not instantly object when a fellow climatologist asked him in 2008 to delete e-mails subject to Freedom of Information requests.
"I wish in retrospect I had told him, 'Hey, you shouldn't even be thinking about this,'" Mann told The Morning Call in his first interview since the university last month launched an investigation into his conduct. "I didn't think it was an appropriate request."
And recall that when there was a post-Climategate investigation of Mann by Penn State, he said:
"I would be disappointed if the university wasn't doing all [it] can to get as much information as possible" about the controversy, Mann tells the Daily Collegian.
So what has changed for Mr. Transparency? We are now asking for different emails, from when he devised the hockey stick, which makes us all-the-more curious about what's in them.
Originally posted at American Spectator.
Originally posted at American Spectator.
Thanks in part to new House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, 100-watt incandescent light bulbs will no longer be sold in the U.S. after Jan. 1, 2012, with a ban of 75-, 60- and 40-watt bulbs to follow in the subsequent years. But in Europe this process began already , and has now inspired a bit of innovative business marketing, as Reuters reported recently:
Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs -- by producing them in China, importing them as "small heating devices" and selling them as "heatballs...."
Rotthaeuser studied EU legislation and realised that because the inefficient old bulbs produce more warmth than light -- he calculated heat makes up 95 percent of their output, and light just 5 percent -- they could be sold legally as heaters.
On their website, the two engineers describe the heatballs as "action art" and as "resistance against legislation which is implemented without recourse to democratic and parliamentary processes."
But alas, Rotthaeuser's heatballs sold out and customs has seized his resupply shipment of them. He wrote to a local public official:
The public authorities were informed about the protest action, but nevertheless had the District Governement of Cologne has on the grounds of product safety ordered that 40,000 Heatballs be witheld by the customs in Cologne Bonn.
This behaviour is a clear act of censorship. The measures that the admininstration have taken lack all legal basis. There has been no written comment from the District Government. Only verbal statements have been available. One has to conclude that there are no plans for legal clarification. The District Government has had samples of the goods for more than 6 weeks (see attached receipt). But the decision on whether to clear or further withhold the goods is still missing.
Keep stockpiling.
Originally posted at American Spectator.
The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., over the weekend ran two letters to the editor in response to my op-ed that called for new elected leadership to repeal Pennsylvania's Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard. Predictably, one was written by a troubled alternative energy industry lobbyist who can't even tell the IRS the truth, much less opinion page readers.
The lobbyist, Jan Jarrett of the environmental group PennFuture, chose to ignore the substance of my commentary, which highlighted the increased costs caused by renewables mandates while delivering no overall benefits, environmental or otherwise. Instead she delivered her own flawed data points:
Ironically, the same day The Patriot-News ran Chesser's opinion, the Philadelphia Inquirer was reporting the fact that electricity customers in the PECO service territory will be able to buy 100 percent renewable electricity at a price that is 6 percent lower than PECO's standard price.
Of course I went to the Inquirer article to see where Jarrett was fudging the facts, and I found this:
The best fixed rates offered for a one-year term are about 8.9 cents per kilowatt-hour, roughly 10 percent below Peco's price to compare. A typical residential customer who uses 750 kilowatt-hours a month would save $90 a year....
But at least two suppliers are offering 100 percent renewable power at fixed prices for one year: BlueStar Energy Solutions, an Illinois supplier, is offering 9.348 cents per kilowatt-hour - almost 6 percent less than Peco's default rate. And the Energy Cooperative Association of Pennsylvania, a nonprofit group, is offering 9.79 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Both rates have conditions. BlueStar will assess a cancellation fee for customers who opt out early - $10 for each month left in the contract. And the Energy Cooperative requires a $15 annual membership fee.
So in her letter to the Patriot-News, Jarrett compared the one-year lock-in commitment rate of two renewable electricity providers to the basic off-the-shelf rate (no one-year lock-in) provided by PECO. But if she was honest and made an apples-to-apples comparison, Jarrett would have instead cited (see Inquirer excerpt above) the "best fixed rates offered for a one-year term" provided by PECO (8.9 cents per kilowatt-hour), which beat the one-year renewable rates by .45 cents and .9 cents per kilowatt-hour, respectively.
Digging deeper, these artificially low rates for renewables clearly represent loss leaders for Energy Cooperative and BlueStar. They are operating similar to the way cable and satellite television companies do: They lock you into a contract at a low rate, and then when the introductory phase is over, the rates go up with the hope that customers don't go to the trouble to switch to a competitor.
Also, Energy Cooperative is primarily a heating oil provider, while the renewable energy they sell is a comparatively small portion of their overall sales. According to their most recent 990 tax return available on Guidestar, the nonprofit reported $8,730,042 in heating oil sales and commissions. Meanwhile electricity sales were $1,658,058 and wind energy sales were a meager $3,079. Membership dues taken in were $31,955.
So looking at Energy Cooperative's revenue mix, while considering that only a fraction of its electricity sales were attributable to renewables (they also have a 20 percent renewable/80 percent traditional fuels electricity sales plan), the coop can easily absorb the loss that their 100 percent renewable electricity plan would cost.
And what is subsidizing Energy Cooperative's losses on renewables? Their heating oil sales, which continue to belch those greenhouse gases that Jan Jarrett so despises.
Originally posted at the Commonwealth Foundation's Policy Blog.
They all support EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse gases, even though that circumvents the citizens' right to have their elected representatives make U.S. laws. More on the Obama Administration overreach and his crony corporatists support at the National Legal and Policy Center blog today.
That's what I wrote yesterday in an opinion piece for the Patriot-News, about Pennsylvania's Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, which requires utilities to purchase 18 percent of their electricity generation from renewable resources like wind and solar. The increased costs are passed on to residential and industrial customers. Why is this any more acceptable than government forcing you to buy health insurance? Repeal of AEPS ought to be automatic for Gov.-elect Tom Corbett and the new General Assembly.
First it was the cuddly polar bears (Warning: Polar bears only look cuddly from a distance. They are not really. Should you by chance have a close encounter with a polar bear, do not attempt to cuddle with it) and the cute little penguins, and now USA Today reports that reindeer are endangered by climate change:
Thirteen of the Arctic's 23 largest migrating herds are now in decline, according to the 2010 Arctic Report Card by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A Canadian study last year found that global reindeer populations have fallen 57% from their peak over the past two decades.
"Arctic herds in particular are challenged by climate change, just like polar bears are," study author and University of Alberta ecologist Mark Boyce told Mother Nature Network's Russell McLendon. "It's in the Arctic that climate change is happening faster than anywhere else on the planet."
Can Santa's workshop and the elf population (herds?) be far behind?
Originally posted here.
An Iowa-based company that helps farmers buy and sell agricultural carbon credits is making plans to shut down, following the closure of the Chicago Climate Exchange. Dave Miller is Chief Science Officer for Agragate Climate Credits Corporation, based at the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.
Miller says the company is winding down operations as the market for voluntary carbon credits never took off as expected with congress failing to take steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. "Congress did not pass that legislation, and the current political climate does not provide any optimism or foresight if you would, that a program that would be regulating carbon in a cap and trade scenario is any time in the near future," Miller says.
Farmers earn the credits by adopting conservation practices. Miller says the company can't wait any longer for the situation to change. "For many of us in the program it's been nothing but expenses for the last year and a half, two years. There's been very little revenue generated out of carbon credits in the last 18 months," Miller says.
Is there any doubt that if these attempts to sell worthless paper were not government-backed schemes, that state attorney generals would be investigating them as scams?
Originally posted here.Or I guess you could say her French fans are victims, which in keeping with how the media likes to report these things, makes it more catastrophic and therefore more newsworthy.
Originally posted here.
Clearly there is an organized effort by the Left to discredit Fox News' "hard news" reporting credibility -- most recently on global warming. Last week Media Matters and others criticized the network's Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, for a memo he sent to his reporters that told them to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question." In other words, telling them to objectively report the facts. The Leftosphere is in a tizzy.
Now comes a USA Today report about a survey conducted in November which found that "climate science doubts increase the more you watch Fox News:"
The survey results follow news this week from a leaked memo that a Fox News managing editor instructed reporters to note doubts about global temperature increases last year, and a University of Maryland study found that Fox News viewers were "significantly more likely" to believe falsehoods about the economy, political votes and climate science.
"The more Fox News you get, the less likely you are to trust scientists," says Stanford public opinion expert Jon Krosnick. The November survey of 890 people found that, "more exposure to Fox News was associated with less endorsement of the views of mainstream scientists about global warming, and all of these relationships are statistically significant."
Yes, this was a perfectly objective survey conducted by an otherwise disinterested public opinion expert at Stanford. Who did the project for the university's Woods Institute for the Environment, whose mission is "Creating Practical Solutions for People and the Planet." And Krosnick is is a university fellow at Resources for the Future. Who just so happened to conduct this survey in November, before news broke about the Sammon memo, which implies they were sitting on it as they did their polling and waited until now so they could release a barrage of publicity -- in conjunction with other Leftist groups -- for maximum impact. And as you see above, Krosnick cited the Sammon memo in his survey report.
All of which USA Today found not relevant to report.
Update 2:00 p.m: I should have known better than to run this post without first checking if Marc Morano at Climate Depot had anything on Krosnick or Woods Institute. He does:
Professor Krosnick's polling results are so woeful that both Pew Research Center Survey and Gallup polling recently took the time to harshly reprimand him for his shoddy work.
Polling propaganda Prof. Krosnick slapped down by Gallup Polling! Recent polling 'shows demonstrable drops in Americans' acknowledgment of and concern about global warming'
Krosnick has been skewing polling results on global warming for years and has been getting caught every time.
And then there are the public opinion polls by Rasmussen that have shown increasing public skepticism on global warming -- outnumbering alarmists.
Originally posted here.
The UN Frame-Up Convention on Climate Confabbery in Cancun concluded last week, with an agreement to talk more in South Africa next year about how hopeless it is to write a sequel to the Kyoto Protocol, but at least the food will be good again. Meanwhile delegates in Mexico at least were able to create an unfunded Global Climate Fund, which set up another framework for wealth transfers from developed countries to underdeveloped. Clearly the problem is they have too many frameworkers and no drywallers.
Anyway, over at the National Legal and Policy Center blog, I discuss how big corporations like PepsiCo, Nike and eBay put pressure on the Obama administration to get U.S. taxpayer dollars into the fund. Might happen with the omnibus, as Chris Horner noted at American Spectator yesterday.
Originally posted here.
Well, fracking, well -- environmentalists have suffered an embarrassing loss. Rather than extracting blood, water, and a couple of limbs from Texas-based Cabot Oil & Gas over contaminated water supplies in Dimock Township, Pa., the state Department of Environmental Protection and Secretary John Hanger have agreed to settle on an appropriate pound of flesh. For most of this year Hanger has pushed for the construction of a water line from Lake Montrose to Dimock at an estimated cost of $12 million, despite opposition from local officials. The line would have run about 12.5 miles and remedied the problem for a whole 18 families -- my Commonwealth Foundation colleagues called it the "Pipeline to Nowhere." Cabot and others favored other approaches that would have taken care of the issue.
But environmental groups like PennFuture, where Hanger used to ply his trade, tried to make hay over Dimock by falsely linking their water problems to the alleged dangers of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") -- a safe process used for decades -- to access shale gas. Others such as Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council similarly weighed in with the false claims about fracking in Dimock, in their aggressive campaigns against natural gas exploration. In August PennFuture, in commenting on a proposed rulemaking, wrote to the PA Environmental Quality Board:
PennFuture commends the Environmental Hearing Board (the "Board") for recognizing the need to update the regulations governing oil and gas drilling to address challenges posed by developments in the gas industry, most particularly the introduction of high-volume hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to Pennsylvania. Failing to amend Chapter 78 to meet those challenges will only lead to more disasters like the ones that occurred at gas wells in Dimock Township, Susquehanna County, in early 2009, and in Clearfield County on June 3, 2010.
That claim had earlier been debunked by Hanger's own director of oil and gas management, Scott Perry, at a community forum in Luzerne County:
I will tell you that the Marcellus operators have been building their wells to exceed our current regulatory standards; they're building their wells in a manner that exceeds the [new] standards that we have actually proposed, in many respects....
First of all, it's [hydraulic fracturing] standard operating procedure in Pennsylvania. And it's important to point out that we've never seen an impact to fresh groundwater directly from fracking.
A lot of folks relate the situation in Dimock to a fracking problem. I just want to make sure everyone' s clear on this - that it isn't. What happened in Dimock was that a company was drilling in the Marcellus, and they encountered a shallow gas producing formation ... which is common in this area of Pennsylvania. It wasn't a fracking problem.
Now the media is portraying the settlement as a hit to Cabot -- which it is, as they are paying significant dollars to Dimock residents (and to DEP for the cost of investigation). But the fact is that Hanger is being sent back to Harrisburg with his tail between his legs after he's now abandoned his absurdly excessive idea to address the Dimock water problem. Sure, not everyone is happy with the resolution, but at least residents probably would have seen their money sooner had Hanger not held out for so long. All so environmental extremists could extract their political points.
Originally posted here.
Here's yet another example of nanny-state government know-it-alls who unnecessarily coerce an industry into behaviors simply because they can. This time it's in the name of energy efficiency, which the North Carolina Building Code Council just can't believe is an issue that's better left to decisions made between construction companies and their customers. The News & Observer of Raleigh reports:
After months of debate, the N.C. Building Code Council voted Tuesday to adopt new energy-efficient building rules for commercial and residential construction....
The new rules, in the works for two years, are designed to promote green buildings, lower consumers' energy bills and cut the state's carbon emissions.
They also will increase building costs at a time when the housing market is recovering from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
To spare homebuilders some of that burden, the council voted Tuesday to require a 30 percent improvement in energy efficiency in commercial buildings and just 15 percent in homes.
But don't worry -- the government geniuses are also mandating savings in other construction areas so the energy efficiency requirement costs aren't so bad:
Per the governor's orders, the Building Code Council must also find roughly $3,000 in savings per house for homebuilders within the existing residential code.
"They have to find $3,000 or so in offsets, and they've got a list of things to choose from," (Gov. Beverly) Perdue said.
So what will be compromised in the offsets?
Several members expressed worry on Tuesday that the offsets could mean sacrificing safety for the sake of energy efficiency.
Alan Perdue (not related to Gov. Perdue), director of emergency services for Guilford County, said the way the amendments were presented to the council was "highly irregular...."
One would allow for battery-operated smoke alarms, not hard-wired units, in rooms that are undergoing renovations that require a building permit. Another would remove a requirement for sprinklers in some residential buildings. A third would remove a requirement regarding the adoption of appendages by local ordinance, which affects the ability of fire services to dictate things like the width of roads in subdivisions and the placement of fire hydrants.
Just another in a long line of unintended consequences from "solutions" that environmentalists want to force on everyone else, like low-flow toilets that use more water than normal toilets, and biofuels and wind energy that create more carbon emissions than they save.
Originally posted here.
The Toronto Globe and Mail yesterday reported how vast discoveries of new North American energy sources could "reflect the beginning of the end for U.S. dependence on Mideast oil." According to the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. produced more crude oil in October than it had in any single month in history. And the article explained how the U.S. wlll be a "major natural gas exporter" within a decade, thanks to technological advances:
The two countries signed an accord (the U.S.-China Shale Gas Resource Initiative) last year to reflect this coming U.S. energy reversal. "The United States," the accord notes, "is a world leader in shale gas technology." The accord commits the U.S. to deliver this technology to China - and, by implication, requires China to open further its oil and gas industry to Western companies.
With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world's largest supplier of natural gas. Shale now accounts for 10 per cent of the country's natural gas production - up from 2 per cent in 1990.
Clearly U.S. energy development promises to provide a tremendous boost to the economy in the coming years -- that is, if the perpetrators of lies and myths about hydraulic fracturing, as well as promoters of other made-up dangers of fossil fuels, don't stand in the way.
Hat tip: The Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott.
Originally posted here.