Obama and gas prices

As gas prices continue to rise, President Obama is under increasing pressure from both Republicans and the public to take action. Gasbuddy.com, which tracks gas prices, shows an increase of almost 70 cents per gallon in Georgia since Christmas. During the same period, the national average gas price has increased by almost 60 cents. The current national gas price is $3.794 per gallon, while Georgia is a few cents cheaper at $3.703. There may not be any relief in the near future. The Energy Information Administration forecasts that gas prices will stay near $4 per gallon through the summer.

To date, President Obama’s main response has been to blame speculators. In 2011, the president asked the Department of Justice to investigate oil speculators for possible fraud or manipulation of prices. McClatchy Newspapers found the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group, a subgroup of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, has met “only four or five times since its creation.” President Obama ordered the group back to work last week while at the same time saying that it never stopped working.

Speculators are not the problem. OPEC is the cartel of oil-producing countries that sets the price for much of the world’s oil. The OPEC basket price for March 14, yesterday’s close of business, was $124.29 per barrel. Currently, oil is trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange between $103 and $106 per barrel. Oil is actually selling on the commodities market for less than OPEC is charging. This means that the “speculators” are actually bidding the price of oil down.

President Obama and the Democrats maintain that the president does not control the price of oil and therefore should not be blamed for rising gas prices. The Democrats did not feel that the president was so helpless when George Bush resided in the White House, however. Many blamed President Bush’s ties to the oil industry for 2008’s record spike in gas prices.

While it is true that President Obama cannot take action that will swiftly bring gas prices down, it is also true that many of his policies have contributed to the increase in gas prices. The president’s affinity for green energy and dislike for oil has led to policies that are hostile to oil producers. For example, although President Obama has taken credit for the fact that U.S. oil production is at an eight year high, he failed to mention that the increase was due to drilling permits issued under President Bush.

According to the Institute for Energy Research, the number of offshore drilling permits has fallen by more than 50 percent under President Obama. The percentage of applications approved has fallen from a historical average of 73 percent to the current approval rate of 23 percent. Approval time has increased from an average of 60 days to more than 90. The Obama Administration was held in contempt for continuing its moratorium on off-shore drilling after its executive-ordered ban was struck down by a federal judge. Even before the oil spill, one of President Obama’s first executive actions was to cancel 77 Bush-era oil leases in Utah. Further, the Obama Administration has also unveiled new regulation of fracking, the drilling technique that has made the oil and natural gas booms in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Dakota possible. Increased regulation may well lead to fewer permits in these areas as well.

Another high profile decision was President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. Obama killed the pipeline in January after three years of study. In February 2012, the president lobbied Democratic senators to vote down a Republican bill that would have approved the pipeline according to Investor’s Business Daily, killing the bill a second time. The Canadian oil that would have been piped to U.S. refineries will now likely go to emerging markets in China.

The Energy Information Administration cites the closure of three refineries since September 2011 that supplied gasoline to the East Coast as a factor in rising gas prices. An additional refinery may be shut down in July if no buyer is found. The reduced supply has been partially offset by a new refinery in Delaware City, but has undoubtedly contributed to higher prices. President Obama engineered the purchase of Chrysler by Fiat, but has shown no interest in finding new operators for these refineries.

The Federal Reserve has also increased the money supply through quantitative easing, where the Fed buys securities from banks and expands the money supply. According to the N.Y. Times, the Fed has added more than $2 trillion to the money supply since the economic crisis began in 2008. When more money is in the system, each individual dollar is worth less. As supply increases, demand decreases.

As Republicans on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee noted in report detailed in CNS News last year, “Oil is an international commodity that trades in dollars. The value of the unit of exchange, in this case the dollar, plays an important role in determining the ‘headline’ price for the underlying commodity.” The report further notes that the first round of quantitative easing resulted in an increase of more than $17 per barrel of oil. This is approximately an increase of more than 50 cents per gallon of gasoline.

Another major factor in the high price of gasoline is instability in the Middle East caused by the Iranian nuclear program. The Iranian quest for nuclear weapons predates the Obama Administration, but the president has frittered away time with fruitless negotiations while the Iranians worked and used diplomacy as a delaying tactic.

In the meantime, Obama has done everything possible to prevent Israel from launching a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, even after Iran attempted a terror bombing inside the District of Columbia in October 2011. He is right that an Israeli strike would probably result in an Iranian blockade of the Persian Gulf causing oil prices to skyrocket, but he seriously underestimates Iranian Twelver religious fervor and their resolve to destroy Israel. The Iranian leadership believes that a Muslim messiah is coming soon and that their mission is launch a nuclear war to prepare the way for him.

A conventional war in the Middle East would be disastrous for oil prices. A nuclear war in the Middle East (or worse: one that reaches American shores) would be even worse. As the Iranians draw close to becoming a nuclear power, there is less time for sanctions to work and less chance for a peaceful solution. The price of oil includes a risk premium for the possibility of war in the Middle East that Obama’s inaction has made more likely.

Finally, President Obama is a bit disingenuous about wanting cheaper prices for gas and energy. In September 2008, Dr. Steven Chu, the man who later became President Obama’s energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Chu wanted gas prices to increase in order to coax Americans into buying more energy-efficient cars and encouraging shorter commutes.

Barack Obama himself, in a January 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that can be heard on HotAir.com, said as a candidate that “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”  This would have been bad news for everyone, including people driven to purchase electric cars by Dr. Chu if cap-and-trade had passed. Although Congress never passed cap-and-trade, President Obama’s EPA is implementing carbon regulation unilaterally.

President Obama cannot personally control the price of oil, but his policies do have an effect on it. On balance, the president’s policies are contributing to the rising gas prices. The statements of candidate Obama and Dr. Chu are evidence that they knew exactly what they were doing all along.

Originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/obama-and-the-price-of-gas

Meet the candidates: Tim Pawlenty

A newcomer to the Republican presidential race for 2012 is Tim Pawlenty.  Pawlenty, known as “TPaw,” is the two-term governor of Minnesota and has been credited by the Wall St. Journal with offering the “most ambitious reform agenda so far.”

Pawlenty is a native of Minnesota and is a graduate of the University of Minnesota.  He originally planned to become a dentist, but changed his major to political science and then went on to earn a Juris Doctor from Minnesota’s law school.  After graduation, he worked as a labor lawyer and later become president of a software company. 

He got his start in politics as an appointed member of the City Planning Commission in Eagen, Minn.  A year later, in 1989, he was elected to the city council.  In 1992, Pawlenty was elected to Minnesota’s House of Representatives.  He was re-elected four times and became majority leader in 1998. 

In 2002, Pawlenty considered a run for Minnesota governor as well as a run for the U.S. Senate.  Although Minnesota’s GOP leaders preferred a different candidate, Pawlenty chose to run for governor when Vice President Cheney asked that he step aside to allow Norm Coleman to run for the senate seat.  Pawlenty won a three way race in the general election by campaigning on a pledge not to raise taxes, a twenty-four hour waiting period for abortions, education reform, and passage of a concealed carry law for guns.  Pawlenty won re-election in 2006, but elected not to run for a third term. 

As governor, Pawlenty says he balanced Minnesota’s budget without raising taxes.  While he did cut spending, critics charge that his balanced budgets were also the result of accounting tricks such as borrowing from other accounts, increasing fees and accepting federal stimulus funds.  For example, Fox News reports that Minnesota schools are owed more than $1.4 billion by the state’s general fund.  The Minnesota cigarette tax was increased by 75 cents under Pawlenty, although he calls this a fee rather than a tax.  Other taxes were increased as well though without Pawlenty’s approval.  The Democratic legislature overrode his veto of a gas tax increase, voters increased the sales tax, and local government increased property taxes. 

Though Pawlenty is no longer governor, Minnesota is facing a projected $5 billion shortfall, in part because spending cuts that Pawlenty enacted are beginning to expire.  Pawlenty defended his record, telling Fox News, "It's based on a big increase in projected spending — 20-some percent increase — that I never would've allowed."

A controversial aspect of Pawlenty’s tenure as governor involves Minnesota’s sharia-compliant home loan program.  As part of a program to expand home ownership, Minnesota’s state housing agency had set up a program that would allow Muslims to avoid paying interest on home mortgages, which many believe to be prohibited by Islamic sharia law.  Pawlenty has taken criticism for allowing the program, but according to a report by CBS News was not responsible for the program.  According to a statement by his office, the program was set up by the housing office acting on its own and Pawlenty ordered its termination when he became aware of it. 

Another controversy in Pawlenty’s past involves his past support for carbon cap-and-trade.  In 2008, he even went so far as to make a radio ad with Janet Napolitano, a Democrat who was then the governor of Arizona.  Napolitano is now Secretary of Homeland Security.  By 2009, Pawlenty was writing letters to Congress to oppose cap-and-trade legislation that was being considered.  According to Minnesota Public Radio, Pawlenty still believes that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for global warming, but opposes cap-and-trade on economic grounds.  He now says, “… all of us should be focused on reducing emissions and pollution, but we need to do that in a way that doesn't wreck the economy, doesn't hurt our farmers [and] doesn't hurt our manufacturers….”  Pawlenty believes that nuclear power fits that description.

Most recently, Pawlenty earned publicity for coining the term “Obamneycare” to describe the similarities between Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health insurance law and Barack Obama’s federal law.  Pawlenty’s phrase highlights the fact that Romney enacted a centralized health care reform featuring an individual mandate when he was governor of Massachusetts.  In what is likely an undesired endorsement, President Obama praised Romney’s Massachusetts law in a February 2011 speech.

Pawlenty’s campaign manager, Nick Ayers, also worked on Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue’s re-election campaign in 2006.  While in Georgia, Ayers was arrested and charged with drunk driving in Valdosta.  Last month, a Minnesota website posted the dash cam video of Ayers’ arrest on the internet.  Ayers is a Georgia native.

Pawlenty’s campaign in Georgia will be headed by Eric Johnson, former president pro tempore of the Georgia Senate and candidate for Georgia governor.  According to CBS Minnesota, Johnson called Pawlenty “the most conservative candidate in the race that can beat President Obama” and said that he “is right on the fiscal issues and right on the social issues.”

At this point, Pawlenty is a long shot for the Republican nomination.  A May 2011 Gallup poll shows him in sixth place with six percent of Republicans favoring him.  Those numbers might increase following a recent speech unveiling his economic plan in which Pawlenty called for tax cuts and a simplification of the tax code along with a constitutional amendment that caps government spending at 18 percent of GDP.  (Federal spending is currently at about 40 percent of GDP according to USgovernmentspending.com.)  Pawlenty’s plan is the polar opposite of the Obama economic plan and that might just be what voters are looking for in 2012.

http://www.examiner.com/elections-2012-in-atlanta/meet-the-candidates-tim-pawlenty"> 

Global warming and the blizzard of '11

Kids in Georgia got almost a week of sledding early in the year.

As Georgia digs itself out of a record-breaking winter storm that followed its first white Christmas in more than a century, people are starting to ask, “What happened to global warming?”  After a series of mild winters, Georgia is experiencing its second harsh winter in a row.  In the winter of 2009-2010, Atlanta received more than its average annual snowfall in one storm on February 12.  Ironically, this was my son’s birthday and his party at Chuck E. Cheese was almost snowed out!  There were several other snowstorms in addition to that one. 

The trend seems to be one of bigger snowstorms in Georgia that occur earlier in the season than in the past.  The trend seems to be one of harsher winters in many countries around the world, not just the United States. Records for cold weather are being set across the United States and around the world this winter.

As global warmists are fond of pointing out when cold weather strikes, local weather conditions do not necessarily disprove a global trend.  Unfortunately, many of these same people are quick to point to local heat waves, droughts, and hurricanes as proof of global warming in other parts of the year. 

As countries around the world experience record cold weather, as well as record hot weather, the term “global warming” has slipped out of favor.  Instead, it has been replaced with the generic term “global climate change.”  It is difficult to argue against global climate change because the global climate is definitely changing.  It always has been and always will be.

When considering the possibility of global warming, we should ask ourselves a series of questions.  First, is global warming actually occurring?  If so, is it a natural phenomenon or is it caused by man?  Whether is caused by man or not, is it a bad thing?  Finally, if it is bad and if it is caused by man, is it possible to reverse it?  If so, is it worth the cost?

Al Gore (Steve Jurvetson)

As far back as 2005, global warmists such as Al Gore claimed that there was a consensus that global warming was occurring, was caused by man, and would be catastrophic if not stopped.  More recently, this claim has been shattered, first as more and more scientists began to dissent from the prevailing viewpoint on global warming, then as hacked emails from prominent climate scientists revealed a pattern of deception.  Global warming believers had faked much of the data that proved warming was occurring, covered up data that did not match their conclusions, and tried to discredit scientists who were skeptical of their claims.

The warmist claim that recent years are the hottest on record was shattered several years ago when it was learned that NASA’s algorithms for graphing temperatures suffered from a Y2K bug.  Previously, 1998 was believed to be the warmest year on record for the US.  With the new data, 1934 became the warmest year.  As of 2007, five of the warmest ten years on record for the US were prior to World War II. 

Further, more doubt was cast on the data itself by the website surfacestations.org, which is conducting a survey of automated weather stations in the US.  Many were revealed to be improperly placed in a manner that could make their readings seem warmer than actual.  For example, some stations are located adjacent to asphalt parking lots or near the exhaust of air conditioning units.  If these types of errors are found in the United States, it is likely that they are also present in other countries, especially in the third world.

NASA image of solar flare striking Earth

If it cannot be conclusively determined that the earth is warming, it also cannot be said that it is beyond a doubt that warming is anthropogenic, or caused by man.  Another likely explanation is that global warming is caused by solar activity.  The sun is on an eleven year cycle that peaked in 2000 and reached a second peak in 2002.  Solar max is known to cause short-term climate change in the form of higher temperatures, increased clouds, and El Nino-like storms.  We are currently experiencing a very deep solar minimum, the deepest in over a century.  Solar activity has been at very low levels since 2008, which coincides with the onset of the harsh winters.  Historical data on cosmic rays shows an almost perfect correlation with temperature over a period of three thousand years.

On the other hand, the relationship of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with temperature is less certain.  Far from carbon leading historical changes in temperature, carbon dioxide levels actually follow changes in temperature.  According to historical data, carbon dioxide levels lag behind changes in temperature by about 1200 years.  On the other hand, scientists do seem to agree that carbon dioxide can act to amplify temperature changes that are caused by other variables. 

Further, increased volcanic activity may be contributing to the cold weather.  Volcanic activity has been known to affect weather since 1816 when an eruption on the Indonesian island of Tambora, coupled with a solar minimum, caused record cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere.  The year became known as “eighteen hundred and froze to death” and the “year without a summer.”  Failing crops led to food shortages in many parts of the world.  The dismal weather sparked emigration from New England to the American West and inspired Mary Shelley to write “Frankenstein.”

Recent years have seen an upsurge in volcanic activity in some areas as well.  Undersea eruptions were revealed to be the likely cause of melting glaciers.  Last year, an Icelandic eruption shut down air travel across the Atlantic and Europe, stranding thousands.  In recent years, volcanic activity in Iceland has increased 30-fold.  As demonstrated by Tambora, it would not take a worldwide increase in volcanic activity to affect weather patterns around the globe.

2010 eruption of Icelandic volcano (Max Haase)

Additionally, yet another reason for warmer global temperatures may be that the world is still recovering from the Little Ice Age.  From 1250 to 1850, glaciers advanced and cold, wet weather led to diseases and crop failures.  As recently as 1862, during the Battle of Fredericksburg, the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) appeared in the skies of Virginia.

The link between warming and man is also tenuous.  For one thing, global warming has been reported beyond Earth’s globe.  The planets Mars, Neptune, Jupiter and Pluto have all been reported to have increasing global temperatures.  If global warming is a problem throughout the solar system, it would point toward a cause that is beyond Earth as well.  After all, there is little or no human industry on other planets.

The problems with global warming theory affect other areas of policy as well.  In 2008, polar bears were added to the endangered species list as a “threatened” species after a long campaign by global warming activists who were concerned that rising temperatures and melting seas could threaten the bear’s survival.  The listing led to a suit by the State of Alaska and countersuits by environmental groups.  The problem is that the polar bear population is actually increasing, something that is rare for a truly endangered species.  In some areas of the arctic, the number of bears is becoming so great that they constitute a safety issue for local villagers.

Are people a danger to polar bears or is it the other way around?

Contrary to what some warmists have claimed, current weather is not the warmest in history.  Climate during the early Pliocene Epoch (5.3 to 3 million years ago) and the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) (950-1100 AD) was much warmer than today.  Both periods occurred long before modern industry and manmade greenhouse gases.  In fact, the MWP coincides with the Medieval Maximum, a period of increased solar activity.

The MWP was warm enough to allow Vikings to colonize parts of Greenland and Newfoundland.  These colonies lasted until after the onset of the Little Ice Age.  Evidence of a warmer climate during the MWP is found around the world.

We can also examine the MWP to help determine whether global warming is actually a bad thing.  For example, agriculture flourished during the MWP when the “the climate was warm and dry, with high tree lines, glacier retreat, and reduced lake catchment erosion” compared to the numerous crop failures and famines of the Little Ice Age and 1816.  Further, the cold weather of these periods also caused the spread of disease, such as the Bubonic Plague (the Black Death), which killed a third of Europe.  Even today, cold weather is a bigger killer than hot weather.

Granted, a warmer climate would not be a boon to all areas of the earth.  Areas that are already warm might become too arid.  Sea levels would rise if glaciers melt, but even alarmists only predict rises of a few feet.  It is likely that much more land would be gained from the retreat of the ice, than would be lost.  Few global warmists were worried enough about the rising seas to oppose the rehabilitation of New Orleans, a city already below sea level.

The final question is whether global warming can be stopped by man and at what cost.  Environmentalist and global warming believer Bjorn Lomborg, author of the Skeptical Environmentalist, argues that proposed solutions for global warming will cost billions of dollars and only change projected warming by fractions of a degree. Lomborg argues that the money would be better spent on reducing third world poverty and fighting disease.  Humans are masters of adaptation and future generations, with the benefit of advanced technology, would be better able to deal with global warming.

The problem is compounded by the fact that developing nations do not want to be handicapped in their quest for a better standard of living by artificial limits on carbon production.  Large carbon producers such as China and Russia show little interest in cutting production of carbon.  If the United States were to enact cap-and-trade or some other type of carbon limits, we would effectively hamstring our economy. 

The best argument against global warming theory is the way the warmists have attempted to stifle the debate.  It has been years since Al Gore said, “There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about this,” yet the debate is stronger than ever.  Scientists who are skeptical of global warming theory are painted as members of “a massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation lavishly funded by polluters” and oil companies, allegedly destroying the world to preserve their profits.  As we have already seen, climate scientists dedicated to the theory of global warming have conspired to suppress data that contradicts their beliefs and fought to prevent papers skeptical of global warming from being published.  Global warming skeptics have been compared to Holocaust deniers and criminals.  A recent promotional video seemed to advocate summarily killing skeptics. 

Predictions of global warming are often based on sophisticated computer models.  To accurately model the earth’s climate and weather, they must take a large number of variables into account.  If these variables are omitted or applied incorrectly, the results will be useless.  To put it simply, it is a case of “garbage in – garbage out.”  In the past, the results of this modeling has been less than stellar, though models are improving.  The failure of climate science to predict the recent and current harsh winters underscores the difficulty of modeling climate.

If the science of global warming were truly as solid as its proponents would have you believe, there would be no need for these kinds of heavy-handed tactics.  If the global warming believers truly want to advance the cause of science, they should tone down their rhetoric and allow an open debate on the subject.  They might also want to find a better explanation for the harsh winter weather.

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Polar bear photo credit:
naturespicsonline.com Alan D. Wilson