By Doug Powers

Yesterday there was another White House document dump regarding Solyndra’s bankruptcy filing just after the 2010 elections. While Solyndra is the crown jewel in the Department of Energy’s “you can’t make a green omelette without breaking a few hundred million taxpayer eggs” trial-and-error initiative, there are many other examples.

CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson — who was one of the first reporters on the Solyndra trail — featured 11 other DoE loan recipients that either have or probably will take a Solyndra-style plunge and suck down $6.5 billion of taxpayer loans with them.

Read the rest at Michelle Malkin.

By Dan Chapman

The failed Range Fuels wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that sucked up $65 million in federal and state tax dollars was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar to another bio-fuel maker with equally grand plans to transform the alternative energy world.

LanzaTech, a New Zealand-based biofuel company, paid $5.1 million for the plant in Soperton. Its main financial backer: Vinod Khosla, a California entrepreneur who also bankrolled Range Fuels, and helped secure its government loans, before Range went bust last year.

LanzaTech hasn’t received the same type of loans, but the company has received $7 million from the U.S. departments of Energy and Transportation to assist in the development of alternative fuels.

Read the rest at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

By the P/O’d Patriot

I, like many of you, did a few cartwheels when I noticed the headline on Drudge that said:

“Congress Overturns Incandesenct Light Bulb Ban…”

The dreaded “green” light bulb ‘mandate’ that was created in 2007 was dead! I began to proclaim the good news from the highest mountains in the land of Facebook without even reading the article. 

Shame on me for doing so…

I shortly found an article in Forbes that popped my bubble. So did Congress reverse the light bulb ban?  No, No, not really…

Read the rest at Gateway Pundit.

Obama in 2008: “Under my plan… electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket.”

By Dennis Cauchon

Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity.

Households paid a record $1,419 on average for electricity in 2010, the fifth consecutive yearly increase above the inflation rate, a USA TODAY analysis of government data found. The jump has added about $300 a year to what households pay for electricity. That’s the largest sustained increase since a run-up in electricity prices during the 1970s.

Electricty is consuming a greater share of Americans’ after-tax income than at any time since 1996 — about $1.50 of every $100 in income at a time when income growth has stagnated, a USA TODAY analysis of Bureau of Economic Analysis data found.

Read the rest at USA Today.

By Jo Nova

Good news. The talented strategists left the UNFCCC team before COP17 in Durban. The A-graders saw the trainwreck coming and moved on.

Everyone knows it’s a herculean task to get 190-odd countries to sign anything, and with a typical pragmatical approach the UN drafting team have gone for … not just a new “International Court” (crikey!) but rights for Mother Earth (can we be sued by a rock?), and oh boy, the holy grail, the whole kit and caboodle … we demand Peace On Earth, and a  Partridge in a Pear Tree, as Part 47a, and starting by morning tea tomorrow.

Monckton  reports that the funereal collapsing Durban talks still held the highest of ambitions. Godlike even. The real action behind the posters of parrots and pleas to save pygmy corals, or spotted limpets is the plea to make some unelected bureaucrats the totalitarian Kings of The World.

In part it’s chilling, a New International Court — which could presumably try you for crimes against coastlines, clouds, or (more likely) against endangered windfarms. Those with their hands on the legal wheel want the power to direct money (was that $1.6 Trillion?)  from the richest nations to their friends, patrons, or pet causes. If they became the anointed Kings, it would swiftly become a crime to speak doubts of climate models upon which billions of trades depends.  The darkest evil always comes cloaked with helpful intentions.

Fortunately, what’s left of the UN strategic team is even lower caliber than B-grade, beyond Z, somewhere into hexadecimal.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the grown-ups in the IPCC-support-team left the party sometime after Copenhagen, and the Z++ team are left to guard the bones. No one can take this wild ambit claim seriously.

Read the rest at JoNova.

Climate Depot’s Report from Durban, South Africa UN Global Warming Conference – UN Goes Full Climate Astrology

By Marc Morano

DURBAN, South Africa – The South African media and government leaders are borrowing a page from medieval witchcraft when it comes to the science of man-made global warming.

South African President Jacob Zuma literally believes that mankind has caused every storm and that regulatory actions of the UN can prevent bad weather.

“We have experienced unusual and severe flooding in coastal areas in recent times, impacting on people directly as they lose their homes, jobs and livelihoods. Given the urgency, states, parties should strive to find solutions here in Durban,” Zuma said according to an article in the South Africa’s Independent newspaper on December 4.

Make no mistake, President Zuma is claiming that the UN can somehow “find solutions” to flooding in South Africa. The belief that mankind can control the weather is not new. See: ‘Witches,Warlocks and Weather’: ‘In medieval times superstition blamed witches for weather disasters and crop failures…lower temps caused a statistical increase in witch trials’ — Medieval Pope’s version of today’s UN IPCC report: ‘Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that, just as easily as they (witches) raise hailstorms, so can they cause lightning and storms at sea; and so no doubt at all remains on these points’
The Aztecs in 1450, also thought they could end drought by appeasing angry Gods and slaughtering thousands of people. See: Have we advanced? ‘Aztec priests encouraged people to sacrifice blood to the gods’ to end severe drought in 1450 – ‘Sacrificed thousands of people in a few weeks’

Read the rest at Climate Depot.

My six year-old, parroting her teacher, proclaimed, “If we don’t fix Climate Change, we’re all gonna die!” At that moment, I decided to write YOU’VE BEEN GORED, the book that lampoons Al Gore and his hypocritical ‘ALpostles.’

The environment has become the hottest political issue of our time. And when anything is politicized, falsehood flourishes. The volume of lies, disinformation, propaganda, hypocrisy and exaggeration far exceeds the quantity of material pollutants and is more hazardous.

Green has become the convenient, safe, lucrative cause for politicians, corporate weasels, celebrity eco-frauds, power-hungry government agencies and fast-buck swindlers hustling everything from gas-to-water engine conversion plans to carbon offset credits.

There’s a combination gold-rush/Armageddon’s a-comin’ zeitgeist that’s very troubling. It’s like watching the panicked crowd flee from Godzilla. Their mindless fear is more dangerous than the monster.

Statistics of doom are conjured and accepted without vetting. Idiotic “solutions” are clutched in desperation. Most terrifying of all, leaders are anointed and followed without scrutiny.

Read the rest at Big Government.

The closing this week of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which was envisioned to be the key player in the trillion-dollar “cap and trade” market, was the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s effort to pass the controversial program meant to combat global warming.

“It is dead for the foreseeable future,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and the Environment with the Competitive Energy Institute, which had fought the measure.

Read the rest at Fox News.

By Paul Chesser

On Monday NLPC’s Mark Modica smartly called into question Consumer Reports’ sudden change in opinion about the electric hybrid Chevy Volt from a vehicle that they once believed “doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense,” to one the publication recommends. The next day, however, CR delivered an online review of the major all-electric vehicle on the U.S. market “the Nissan Leaf ” and while not intended to be scathing, the account given by reviewer Liza Barth makes the car sound so unappealing, she should have panned it outright.

I wish I could reproduce her entire account here without a charge of plagiarism, to detail exactly what a turkey the Leaf is, so make sure you follow the link to Barth’s assessment. And while giving somewhat a nod of approval in a late September review based upon CR’s very controlled facility testing, Barth’s real-life experience told the true story.

Her test of the vehicle was over the course of a long weekend, beginning on a Thursday evening. On her Friday morning commute from her New Jersey home to CR’s Yonkers headquarters which she said normally includes a 33-mile ride that incorporates the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River. She already suffered a case of range anxiety. “So,” Barza wrote, “I opted to travel fewer miles and pay the $12 toll over the George Washington Bridge and another $2.25 over the Henry Hudson Bridge.” Ouch.

Barza contended that she and her kids enjoyed the Leaf and had fun driving it, but apparently only so long as she traveled no farther than the corner store (or an equivalent distance). Then she and her husband planned an evening dinner date, so she plugged the Leaf in during the afternoon for five hours (isn’t that an entire afternoon?), which she said only raised the range from 25 miles to 75 miles. “I wasn’t confident we would make it there and back to our dinner location, which was 60 miles round trip,” Barza recounted. So the Leaf could not transport them for the evening.

Read the rest at National Legal and Policy Center.

From Plains Daily

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem is announcing a lawsuit against the State of Minnesota over the latter state’s restrictions on using power from coal plants, among other sources.

“It is unfortunate it has come to this. As Minnesota seeks to rebuild its economy, it will need energy,” said Stenehjem in a press release. “Much of that energy will need to come from sources outside Minnesota.”

In its lawsuit, North Dakota alleges that the Next Generation Energy Act violates the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, unconstitutionally interfering with North Dakota’s energy production. The NGEA imposes prohibitions on energy imported from North Dakota, and while the law does make some exemptions the State of North Dakota is alleging that those exemptions benefit only Minnesota-based businesses and projects.

Read the rest at Plains Daily.

By Paul Chesser

For years Coca-Cola has given millions of dollars to eco-extreme group World Wildlife Fund, whose alarmism and perpetration of falsehoods are unmatched among its cohorts in climate activism. Now Coke has initiated a new campaign with WWF that features its iconic advertising species in an effort to drive more funding to the international nonprofit group to “protect the polar bears’ Arctic home.” 

The promotion will include new packaging for Coke over the holiday season, changing its familiar red cans to white, and featuring an image of a mother polar bear and her cubs on the side. Coke says it will donate $2 million over five years to WWF for “polar bear conservation efforts,” and will also match donations made at iCoke.ca. Last year Coke gave WWF $1.64 million for its various activities globally.

“The planet is changing very quickly, and nowhere more quickly than in the Arctic,” says Gerald Butts, president of WWF-Canada.

“I’s really important that we all understand that they need our help,” he added. “Climate change is changing livelihoods, it’s changing migration patterns for species, and we want to plan ahead. We want a future for the Arctic where the communities of people who live there are vibrant and sustainable, and the iconic species,” in particular the polar bear,  “has a long-term future on the planet.”

Read the rest at the National Legal and Policy Center.

By Johnathan Serrie

Just months after obtaining more than $400,000 in federal stimulus funds, TR Auto Truck Plaza off Interstate 40 sits idle.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) handed out the $424,000 Environmental Protection Agency stimulus grant for electrical hookups so that truckers wouldn’t have to burn diesel fuel while resting. Both the state and EPA were apparently unaware that owner Rick Lewis had a history of legal and financial problems and had filed for bankruptcy.

What was originally lauded as Tennessee’s first electrified truck terminal is now boarded up.

“It is Solyndra in miniature,” said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., referring to a Silicon Valley solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy shortly after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. “What I am questioning is the vetting and oversight and the fiduciary responsibility that the federal government — the people who run these programs — have to we, the taxpayer.”

Even before his latest bankruptcy filing, Lewis had a history of financial troubles. He filed for bankruptcy in 2003, a year after a conviction on 31 counts of theft. And Lewis currently faces indictments for allegedly writing worthless checks, according to court records.

Read the rest at Fox News.

By Ed Morrissey

Conservatives know well that Mitt Romney has so far refused to back away from his contention that anthropogenic global warming is real, and yet the former Massachusetts governor continues to lead the Republican race for the presidential nomination. In seven debates, none of Romney’s competitors have challenged him on this position. This week, however, the blog Moonbattery found a very interesting memo from Romney’s office in 2005 announcing tough new regulations on emissions  and noting a partnership with a familiar conservative b’te noire in this administration (via Sundries Shack):

Governor Mitt Romney today announced that Massachusetts will take another major step in meeting its commitment to protecting air quality when strict state limitations on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants take effect on January 1, 2006. …
Massachusetts is the first and only state to set CO2 emissions limits on power plants. The limits, which target the six largest and oldest power plants in the state, are the toughest in the nation…
In addition to reaffirming existing stringent CO2 limits, the draft regulations announced today, which will be filed next week, contain protections against excessive price increases for businesses and consumers. They allow power generation companies to implement CO2 reductions at their own facilities or fund other reduction projects off-site through a greenhouse gas offset and credits program.

In other words, the Romney administration in 2005 essentially did what Barack Obama’s EPA wants to do now. He imposed CO2 emission caps, “the toughest in the nation,” in an effort to curtail traditional energy production.  Not only did Romney impose these costly new regulations, he then imposed price caps to keep power companies from passing the cost along to the consumer. As we have seen in RomneyCare, regulation and price controls eventually drive businesses into bankruptcy or relocation.

So what has happened to Massachusetts’ electrical production since signing these regulations into law? According to the EIA, whose latest data is for 2009, it dropped 18% in four years, from over 46 billion megawatt hours to 38 billion. International imports, however, went from 697 million megawatt hours in 2006 to 4.177 billion megawatt hours two years later, and to almost 5 billion megawatt hours in 2009, more than twice the amount imported in any of the previous twenty years.

And who advised Romney on these regulations? Why, none other than Obama’s chief science adviser, John Holdren…

Read the rest at Hot Air.