The Foundry

Archive for the ‘Energy and Environment’ Category

• Government’s New Climate Service Shouldn’t Be Used as Doomsday Device

  Posted February 9th, 2010 at 3:13pm in Energy and Environment with 0 comments

  The Washington Post reports that The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has proposed to create a new climate service and website that would provide the public with information and predictions about the impact of global warming. If this turns out to be yet one more source of apocalyptic government press releases and other such [...] More

• Watch Out for the “Green Police”

  Posted February 8th, 2010 at 4:07pm in Energy and Environment with 12 comments

  In what was seemingly an outlandish Super Bowl commercial, the “Green Police” could become all too real.  Though the cap-and-trade legislation appeared to die in the Senate after the passing the House, that doesn’t mean the war of environmental regulations is over. Liberals could still force draconian environmental restrictions on us anyway. Tucked into the [...] More

• Night of the Living Dead Idea

  Posted February 5th, 2010 at 3:00pm in Energy and Environment, Protect America with 2 comments

  The Department of Homeland Security’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) is out. Like the Pentagon’s QDR it is supposed to detail future threats and how our government will deal with them. This report, also like the QDR (and the annual assessment of the Director of National Intelligence), includes the obligatory reference to global warming. The [...] More

• Budget 2011: Past Deficits vs. Obama’s Deficits in Pictures

  Posted February 5th, 2010 at 12:24pm in Energy and Environment with 3 comments

  Releasing his budget this Monday, President Barack Obama told the American people: We won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight, given that the recovery is still taking hold and families across the country still need help. … Just as it would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children’s future to pay our [...] More

• Climate Change Scientific Consensus Cloudy as Ever

  Posted February 4th, 2010 at 12:55pm in Energy and Environment with 8 comments

  We’re a few days before a massive snowstorm whitewashes the District of Columbia, but the Climategate and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change storms are already here and as fierce as ever. Earlier this week, The Guardian shed a little more light on the flawed and hidden data from University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit: The [...] More

• Obama’s Enthusiasm to Nuclear Energy is Encouraging, But…

  Posted February 3rd, 2010 at 3:47pm in Energy and Environment with 4 comments

  President Obama reaffirmed his willingness to expand the commercial nuclear energy in the United States when he said in his State of the Union address that we should be “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” He backed it up by including an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees [...] More

• School Choice Bad for the Environment?

  Posted February 2nd, 2010 at 2:18pm in Energy and Environment with 1 comments

  No, it’s not a joke. It’s the finding from a new paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The argument is school choice leads to more driving which results in more vehicle emissions. The abstract says, “that eliminating district-wide school choice (i.e., returning to a system with neighborhood schools only) would have significant [...] More

• Wind Mills: Not Spinning, Not Creating Jobs

  Posted February 2nd, 2010 at 12:21pm in Energy and Environment with 9 comments

  The cold weather is creating a number of unintended consequences for new energy designs. First, snow accumulating on LED traffic light bulbs wouldn’t melt because the lights failed to heat up resulting in car accidents, and in some instances, death. In Minnesota, the weather resulted in wind turbines freezing and thus not turning even if [...] More

• Budget 2011: Obama’s Energy Budget: A Revenue Neutral Cap and Trade System?

  Posted February 1st, 2010 at 4:16pm in Energy and Environment with 3 comments

  President Obama released his fiscal year 2011 budget this morning; his budget provides $28.4 billion for the Department of Energy (DOE) and $10 billion for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Both sections in the budget reflect the president’s message in the State of the Union address delivered last week: a government attempt to facilitate America’s transition [...] More

• Rapidly Melting Credibility

  Posted February 1st, 2010 at 2:00pm in Energy and Environment with 5 comments

  The Washington Post asks: “Recently, a U.N. scientific report was found to have included a false conclusion about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. That followed the release of stolen e-mails last year, which showed climate scientists commiserating over problems with their data. Is there a broader meaning in these two incidents, and should they cause [...] More