Dumb Bears

A senior sales director for MXEnergy, “the fastest growing natural gas and electricity retail provider” states, “As we observe the unrest in Egypt and other parts of the world, we recognize the volatility of the natural gas market.”  What?  He like many others “on both sides of the aisle” use the Middle East and our real dependence on foreign to twang the audience’s emotional strings.

The goings on in Egypt will have nearly zero affect on natural gas prices here in the mainland, U.S.  Why?  Because nearly all of our natural gas is produced here and we import from hostile regimes like Canada.  LOL!  The guy is using Middle East unrest and the threat of rising oil prices to translate to high gas and electricity prices here at home.  I think renewable energy at maybe 1-2% of our electricity supply may produce more electricity than oil does.  C’mon.  Don’t feed me this bull dung.

Then there is Al Gore’s movie the inconvenient truth, lower case on purpose.  The movie is one giant tug at the heart strings with flooding, starvation, cuddly polar bears dying.  In reaction to the movie, the president at Veriform, a steel fabricator, was so moved by the film he reduced his energy bills by 58% by investing $46,000 to save $90,000 annually.  Something tells me there is a little bit of number manufacturing and/or trickery going on here.  This leads the reader to believe that $90,000 is the 58% but it’s a little hard to fathom a steel fabricator with a $160,000 annual energy bill.  And what was the guy doing before?  Heating his facilities with electricity with all the doors and windows open?  He saved this with lighting, heating controls (e.g., thermostats?), and insulation?

One time we had a coworker of my wife’s over for a cookout and he was describing a program on Discovery Channel, if I remember correctly, that chronicles a polar bear that starves to death.  So I mentally roll my eyes and think, I’ve got to see this program.  The next day or next week I tuned in watching the polar bear swimming around in open water, jumping in, climbing out, jumping in, swimming, and at the end he’s on an island with nothing but gigantic walruses, the things with 18 inch tusks.  These things are too huge for a polar bear to take down.  They have skin an inch thick and about three feet of blubber.

The bear is after the cub, calf, pup, piglet, baby, squab or something like that – the little ones.  But the five ton adults are pig piling the little guy like a loose ball at the line of scrimmage in an N.F.L. game.  The bear is jumping on the backs of these school-bus size blubber bags – like a guy trying to tackle a Clydesdale.  He of course gets nowhere and walks away with a dejected look with sad music and depressing voice over.  Who knows if the bear actually died or they just made up the whole story fabricated from lost footage of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, with Marlin Perkins.

The conclusion: global warming was destroying the habitat of the bear’s favorite food, seals, and therefore, the gasoline you are releasing into the air when driving your car, killed the bear in the film.  My conclusion: assuming the bear really starved, what a dumb bear that doesn’t know how to hunt.  What about the seals that were spared?  Somewhere a bunch of seals that would otherwise be dead are basking in the sun.

Back to Al Gore’s film.  When I first saw the film’s promotional poster (you can get an eleven by seventeen keepsake for fifteen dollars) I immediately thought this is fitting and wonderfully ironic.  If you know anything about the weather at all – anything, you know low pressure systems, hurricanes, snow storms, rainstorms, and tornadoes spin counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere.  Yet the hurricane cartoon on the movie poster spins clockwise.  Chances this was intentional to represent a storm in the southern hemisphere: 0%.  All credibility: gone.  If this had one bit of “scientific” “peer review” (aka like-minded conspiring), why couldn’t anybody see this?  Al Gore won an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize, while the U.K. has all but banned the film for being full of bull dung.

We don’t need these convenient lies.  Get it?  To sell energy efficiency.  Exaggerating, embellishing, and just plain manufacturing facts catch up with you.  This, like climate gate, does our industry no good.  Just the facts ma’am.

Tidbits

Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator, is convinced ever increasing regulation is going to be an economic boom.  Did you know every dollar the EPA levies in regulation returns $40 to the economy?  Wow!  What is the ticker symbol?  I’ll margin my account to the max.

Saying these regs will be a net job generator is ludicrous – like the breaking windows to put people to work parable.  That’s exactly what this is.  Just look at this report, and specifically page 7.  Where is the higher cost of energy factored into the equation?  Somebody has to pay for all this stuff.  Higher energy prices are like higher taxes.  The more that is spent on energy, the less there is left to buy goods and services – that are provided by workers, formerly located in the United States.  This doesn’t even pass the laugh test.