Freezing In The Dark: Preview Edition

Gas Prices Under President Obama in Pictures | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.: "Fact: President Barack Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu wants to “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” At the time he made the statement, gas cost $7 – $8 a gallon in Europe.
Fact: Since taking office, President Obama’s entire energy agenda has made a gallon of gas more expensive:

Immediately after taking office in 2009, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah.
The EPA announced new rules mandating the use of 36 billion gallons worth of renewable fuels (like ethanol) by 2020."

And exactly what part of this don't you understand?:

Premium is now over $3 in my neighborhood -- how about yours?

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Stopped Clock Watch At The NYeT

JustOneMinute: Oil And Gas - Not About To Pass The Baton: "Today's Times has a special section on energy.  It includes an article on oil and natural gas which utterly confounds the conventional wisdom of the left (as exemplified by Obama's campaign speech on energy in 2008).

Some snippets:

Just as it seemed that the world was running on fumes, giant oil fields were discovered off the coasts of Brazil and Africa, and Canadian oil sands projects expanded so fast, they now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In addition, the United States has increased domestic oil production for the first time in a generation.

Meanwhile, another wave of natural gas drilling has taken off in shale rock fields across the United States, and more shale gas drilling is just beginning in Europe and Asia. Add to that an increase in liquefied natural gas export terminals around the world that connected gas, which once had to be flared off, to the world market, and gas prices have plummeted.

Energy experts now predict decades of residential and commercial power at reasonable prices. Simply put, the world of energy has once again been turned upside down."

Talk about wandering off the reservation. LOL!

And check out this energy production and consumption graphic in case you want to know what the world of U.S. energy usage really looks like.

You eat oil. Literally.

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Thorium: The New Plastic

Development of Tiny Thorium Reactors Could Wean the World Off Oil In Just Five Years | Popular Science: "An abundant metal with vast energy potential could quickly wean the world off oil, if only Western political leaders would muster the will to do it, a UK newspaper says today. The Telegraph makes the case for thorium reactors as the key to a fossil-fuel-free world within five years, and puts the ball firmly in President Barack Obama's court.
Thorium, named for the Norse god of thunder, is much more abundant than uranium and has 200 times that metal's energy potential. Thorium is also a more efficient fuel source -- unlike natural uranium, which must be highly refined before it can be used in nuclear reactors, all thorium is potentially usable as fuel.
The Telegraph says thorium could be used as an energy amplifier in next-generation nuclear power plants, an idea conceived by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia, former director of CERN."

Yes, that's right - a "nutjob" like the former director of CERN. LOL! And it's a by-product of rare-earth metals mining. But it won't happen until after the collapse and we put all the politicians in jail of course. They won't allow it until then.

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A Fitting Metaphor: Shakedown Stripped

Payne: The irony of Jesse Jackson's stripped SUV | themichiganview.com | The Michigan View: "Following the embarrassing news that Mayor Dave Bing’s GMC Yukon was hijacked by criminals this week, Detroit’s Channel 7 reports that the Reverend’s Caddy Escalade SUV was stolen and stripped of its wheels while he was in town last weekend with the UAW’s militant President Bob King leading the “Jobs, Justice, and Peace” march promoting government-funded green jobs.
Read that again: Jackson’s Caddy SUV was stripped while he was in town promoting green jobs.

Add Jesse to the Al Gore-Tom Friedman-Barack Obama School of Environmental Hypocrisy. While preaching to Americans that they need to cram their families into hybrid Priuses to go shopping for compact fluorescent light bulbs to save the planet, they themselves continue to live large."

And then the writer drops the hammer:

Real jobs produced big, profitable SUVs like the one Jesse prefers to ride in. His SUV has been stripped by thugs – a fitting metaphor for what Jesse and his pals have done to the auto industry for the last 35 years.

Perfect.

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Government Is The Real Clunker

Enough to make a numerate person weep.

And just in case you hadn't figured out why a majority of Americans oppose this craziness, here's the video illustration:

Basically, in addition to un-employing teenagers by raising the minimum wage and adding insult to injury by depleting the pool of cars they can afford, we are leaning on people to go in to debt to buy a new car and ... wait for it ... going in the hole on each clunker upgrade energy and CO2/pollution-wise for 4-8 years unless you drive over 20K miles per year.

Sheer genius. Well, if one of your biggest campaign contributors is the UAW it is anyway...

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Ray Harvey On Mises.org!

Time to click over to Mises.org and read Ray Harvey's excellent "Wind or Nuclear?".

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