When the government introduced the mandates for ethanol and related biofuels, they needed a way in which companies could verify that they were complying with the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007. For whatever reason, the decided mechanism would require that companies purchase credits to demonstrate that they had complied with the mandate: a renewable identification number (RIN). Each RIN is theoretically tied to a gallon of ethanol, biodiesel, or similar renewable fuel. However, because the RINs can be sold and traded similar to stock, in practice the pairing of a RIN with a particular gallon of fuel is somewhat superficial.

Unfortunately, this government created market in RINs has created an opportunity for criminally-minded entrepreneurs to scam the companies who are attempting to comply with the law by creating fake RINs and selling them in the marketplace. Note that these oil companies are required by law to purchase these credits, and its often difficult to verify that they are genuine, leading oil companies to often completely bypass small producers and only purchase biofuels and credits from larger, recognizable producers, a somewhat unique barrier to entry for small firms (suspicion of fraud). The latest case in fraudulent RINs surfaced late last month involved the sale of 60 million credits worth roughly $84 million, the third big bust in recent years ($ub required):

According to the violation notice, EPA determined that the fake credits were generated between July 16, 2010, and July 15, 2011. The Clean Air Act allows the agency to assess a civil penalty of up to $37,500 a day for each violation.

“When fuel credits are generated or used that do not represent qualifying renewable fuel, it undermines Congress’ goals in creating the program, creates market uncertainty and is a violation of the standard,” EPA said in a statement emailed to Greenwire. “EPA enforcement of the standard deters fraud and abuse in the system, helps to restore certainty in the market and ensures that the goals of Congress are met.”

This is the third notice EPA has issued since November to companies allegedly producing fake credits, and it is likely not the last.

Last November, EPA accused a Maryland man of generating $9 million worth of fraudulent renewable identification numbers (RINs) on his computer. The 38-digit numbers represented 22 million gallons of biodiesel that was never produced at the man’s company, Clean Green Fuel LLC.

EPA issued another violation notice in February to Texas-based Absolute Fuels LLC for allegedly creating 48 million fake credits worth approximately $62 million. The agency said CEO Jeffrey Gunselman used the money to purchase an aircraft and a number of vehicles, including a 2010 Mercedes Benz and a 2011 Bentley.

Yes, creating markets that are easy to fraudulently manipulate would indeed seem to undercut the goal of the ethanol mandate. Thankfully, unlike in previous cases, the EPA is working constructively with the companies who have been subjected to these scams rather than fining them for getting caught up in a problem the government has created.

This is yet another reason why moving forward with increasing blends of ethanol is not a good idea. Freeze the mandate at 2012 levels if it can’t be scrapped completely. Yes, the short term capital losses from ethanol investments  will be realized, and this will hurt a lot, but the alternative is to continue investments into a fuel that is still more expensive than gasoline once you adjust for its lower energy content. Or we can continue pretending that whatever minute environmental benefits accrue from corn ethanol are worth the absurd push to encourage ethanol use beyond E10. We can also continue to pretend that cellulosic ethanol is around the corner, and won’t suffer from the same problems that have haunted corn ethanol: high prices and heavy land use.

Last week, the Obama administration rolled out new tariffs on Chinese solar manufacturers. These new taxes will make solar energy more expensive, which will make environmentalists’ clean energy dream even more difficult to obtain. In other words, this action shows conclusively that this industry exists to benefit Obama Inc., not the American public.

Obama’s excuse for this move is that China subsidizes their solar industry and sells the panels here at a loss. Forget the absurd hypocrisy for a moment—what this argument really amounts to is an admission that the solar panel industry exists, not for the sake of the American consumer—that is, society in general—but for solar panel producers themselves. President Obama sees the industry collapsing all around him and has chosen to use government force to save it, another sly-bailout for the Bailout King.

China has decided to sell America solar panels at a loss. That’s true, but imagine if McDonald’s decided to do that. Should the government step in and subsidize Burger King, or should Americans just take advantage of the stupidity? You would think that Obama would be happy that another government is subsidizing his clean energy economy, but again, his tariff decision shows that he’s not actually interested in “clean energy” per se. He’s interested in the votes and campaign cash that the clean energy industry brings.

As Peter Schweizer, Hoover Institute Fellow and Throw Them All Out author, points out seventy-five percent of the Department of Energy green energy subsidies went to Obama bundlers or campaign members. Of the $20 billion in grants and loans, $16 billion went to “Obama-related companies,” notes Schweizer. “By that I mean either the chief executive or leading investor was a member of his campaign finance committee or was a bundler for his campaign.”

The Obama administration has lost a subsidy war and has started a trade war, all for the benefit of one politically favored industry. As China officials quickly pointed out, this tariff “will hurt both countries because China imports a large amount of raw materials and equipment from the U.S. to produce solar panels, and it exports such goods to the U.S.” But these industries aren’t as politically connected as the many wannabe Solyndras.

Crony-capitalism dressed in green rhetoric is still crony capitalism. It’s one reason that Congress should adopt a “Gift Clause,” which would ban all corporate subsidies. Only then would we have a true “level playing field” that Obama has advocated so many times.

Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) has just updated its 2009 and 2011 studies of ethanol’s impact on gasoline prices. CARD claims that from January 2000 to December 2011, “the growth in ethanol production reduced wholesale gasoline prices by $0.29 per gallon on average across all regions,” and that in 2011 ethanol lowered gasoline prices by a whopping $1.09 per gallon.

I’m no econometrician, but this study does not pass the laugh test. We’re supposed to believe that ethanol has conferred a giant boon on consumers even though gasoline prices have increased as ethanol production has increased, and even though gas prices hit their all-time high when ethanol production hit its all-time high. If that is success, what would failure look like?

CARD’s argument boils down to this. The gasoline sold at the pump today is E-10 — motor fuel blended with 10% ethanol. Ethanol thus makes up 10% of the motor fuel supply for passenger cars. If there were no ethanol, the motor fuel supply would be 10% smaller, and gas prices would be $1.09 per gallon higher (p. 6).

Well, sure, if we assume a drop in supply and no change in demand, prices will rise. But this scenario tells us nothing about what really matters — whether ethanol’s policy privileges, especially the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a.k.a., the ethanol mandate, benefit or harm consumers.*

Note first that even in the absence of government support, billions of gallons of ethanol would be sold each year anyway as an octane booster. So a scenario in which 10% of the motor fuel supply simply disappears does not correspond to any policy choice Congress is actually debating or considering.

More importantly, CARD assumes that if the motor fuel supply were 10% smaller, refiners would not increase output to sell more of their product at higher prices. In other words, refiners would not engage in the economically-rational, profit-maximizing behavior that would bring supply back into balance with demand, thereby moderating the initial price increase.

Why wouldn’t they? There are only two possible explanations. One is that refiners don’t want to get rich, which is absurd. The other is that refiners operate like a cartel, colluding to restrict output in order to charge monopoly rents. CARD gives no sign of endorsing this view, and repeated investigations of the U.S. refining industry by the Federal Trade Commission repeatedly fail to find evidence of such anti-competitive scheming.

CARD’s analysis also ignores the opportunity costs of ethanol’s policy props. Capital is a finite resource. Every dollar refiners are forced or bribed to spend on ethanol is a dollar they cannot spend to produce gasoline. Government cannot rig the market in favor of ethanol without discouraging gasoline production. It is ridiculous to assume that all of the resources (e.g., refining capacity) commandeered by federal policy over the past decade to boost ethanol’s market share would have been left idle and not used to make gasoline in a free market.

In short, CARD’s analysis abstracts from the most basic economic realities we were all supposed to learn in Econ 101: resources are finite, choices have opportunity costs, and incentives (prices) matter.

I leave it to econometricians to quantify the repercussions, but this much is clear. In a free market, refiners would have blended less ethanol and produced more gasoline than they did in the market rigged by the RFS and other pro-ethanol policies. CARD — or, more precisely, CARD’s sponsors, the Renewable Fuel Association (RFA) — would have us believe that refiners would produce no more gasoline in a free market than they would in a market politicized by mandates and subsidies. That assumption is so unrealistic that any analysis based upon it is inappropriate and even fraudulent if used as a justification for maintaining or expanding government support for ethanol.

* Ethanol has about one-third less energy than an equal volume of gasoline. Consequently, even today, when the per-gallon price of ethanol is lower than gasoline, it still costs more to drive one mile on ethanol than it does on gasoline. But don’t take my word for it. According to the AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge for May 16, 2012, the mile-adjusted price of E-85 (motor fuel blended with 85% ethanol) is $4.261 per gallon — pricier than regular gas ($3.728/g), premium ($4.026/g), and diesel ($4.032/g).

Or check out EPA and the Department of Energy’s joint Web site, www.fueleconomy.gov. The relevant information is not easy to find. Once you get to the landing page, click on Advanced Vehicles and Fuels, then on Flex-Fuel Vehicles, then on Fuel Economy Information for Flexible-Fueled Vehicles, and then again on Flex-Fuel Vehicles. For each of 25 models, EPA and DOE estimate how much the typical owner of a flex-fuel vehicle spends per year to fill up with either regular gasoline or E-85. The estimates fluctuate as gasoline and ethanol prices fluctuate. As of today (May 16, 2012), the average flex-fuel vehicle owner spends about $350 more per year to run the vehicle on E-85.

The wind energy industry has been having a hard time. The taxpayer funding that has kept it alive for the last twenty years is coming to an end, and those promoting the industry are panicking.

Perhaps this current wave started when one of wind energy’s most noted supporters, T. Boone Pickens, “Mr. Wind,” in an April 12 interview on MSNBC said, “I’m in the wind business…I lost my ass in the business.”

The industry’s fortunes didn’t get any better when on May 4, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) wrote an editorial titled, “Gouged by the wind,” in which they stated: “With natural gases not far from $2 per million BTU, the competitiveness of wind power is highly suspect.” Citing a study on renewable energy mandates, the WSJ says: “The states with mandates paid 31.9% more for electricity than states without them.”

Then, last week the Financial Times did a comprehensive story: “US Renewables boom could turn into a bust” in which they predict the “enthusiasm for renewables” … “could fizzle out.” The article says: “US industry is stalling and may be about to go into reverse. …Governments all over the world have been curbing support for renewable energy.”

Michael Liebreich of the research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance says: “With a financially stressed electorate, it’s really hard to go to them and say: ‘Gas is cheap, but we’ve decided to build wind farms for no good reason that we can articulate.’” Christopher Blansett, who is a top analyst in the alternative-energy sector in the Best on the Street survey, says, “People want cheap energy. They don’t necessarily want clean energy.”

It all boils down to a production tax credit (PTC) that is set to expire at the end 2012. Four attempts to get it extended have already been beaten back so far this year—and we are only in the fifth month. The Financial Times reports: “Time-limited subsidy programmes…face an uphill battle. The biggest to expire this year is the production tax credit for onshore wind power, the most important factor behind the fourfold expansion of US wind generation since 2006. Recent attempts in Congress to extend it have failed.”

According to the WSJ, “The industry is launching into a lobbying blitz.” The “2012 Strategy” from the American Wind Energy Association includes:

• “To maximize WindPAC’s influence, WindPAC will increase the number of fundraisers we hold for Members of Congress.”
• “Continue the Iowa caucus program to ensure the successful implanting of a pro-wind message into the Republican presidential primary campaign.”
• “Respond quickly to unfavorable articles by posting comments online, using the AWEA blog and twitter, and putting out press releases.”
• “Continue to advocate for long term extension of PTC and ITC option for offshore wind.”
• “AWEA requested a funding level of $144.2 million for FY 2012 for the Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Energy Program, an increase of $17.3 million above the President’s Congressional budget request.”

A wind turbine manufacturer quoted in the Financial Times article says, “If the PTC just disappears, then the industry will collapse.” Regarding United Technologies plans to sell its wind turbine business, chief financial officer Greg Hayes admitted: “We all make mistakes.”

Despite twenty years of taxpayer funding, according to the Financial Times, “Most of these technologies are unable to stand on their own commercially, particularly in competition with a resurgent natural gas industry that has created a supply glut and driven prices to 10-year lows.” The WSJ opines: “the tax subsidy has sustained the industry on a scale that wouldn’t have been possible if they had to follow the same rules as everyone else.” A level playing field would mean that wind developers would lose the exemptions from environmental and economic laws.

It is the fear of having to play by “the same rules as everyone else”—like the free market does— that must have propelled the anti-fossil fuel Checks and Balances Project to dig deep to unearth a “confidential” document. The brainstorming document was designed to trigger conversation during an initial meeting of grassroots folks with a common goal—the document’s author didn’t even join us and his ideas received little attention. The meeting was February 1 and 2. I was there. But suddenly, on May 8, our little meeting is in the news.

Many of us who were at the meeting received calls from a variety of publications including The National Journal, The Washington Times and Bloomberg News—none of whom ran with the story (after talking to a number of us, the Bloomberg reporter concluded “I don’t think we’re writing a story about this”)—and The Guardian who did. The Guardian story was picked up and expanded on in Environment & Energy (the reporter did talk to several of us), HuffPost, Tree Hugger, Think Progress’ Climate Progress, and others. (Note: Climate Progress and Tree Hugger remove any comment in opposition to wind energy as soon as it is posted.) High Country News has apparently done an original story trigged by the Checks and Balances press release. From these sources, some form of the story is all over the Internet.

The wind energy industry panic explains the sudden interest, but why our little group?

Washington Examiner columnist, Timothy Carney, provides the answer: “AWEA plans ‘continued deployment of opposition research through third parties to cause critics to have to respond,’ the battle plan states. In other words: When people attack AWEA’s subsidies, AWEA might feed an unflattering story on that person to some ideological or partisan media outlet or activist group.” We are the people who have attacked the subsidies and AWEA has, through a “third party” fed “an unflattering story” to a “partisan media outlet.” Our collaborative actions have helped block the PTC extension efforts.

A common thread in the news stories is that we are really an oil-and-gas funded entity. They’ve tied us to the Koch Brothers. We all wish. Apparently they can’t believe that individuals and local groups can think for themselves and impact public policy without a puppet master telling us what to do and say.

In fact, the group has no funding. As we began to email back and forth over the sudden reporter interest, one meeting attendee quipped: “My trip was funded, in part, by MY brother, Paul, who donated frequent flyer miles for my trip. I can assure you that my brother is not part of the Koch family. I paid for the rest of the trip out of my own pocket.” Yet, the reporters seemed determined to find a funding link. I told the Bloomberg reporter that we each paid our own way, that the meeting was held in a budget hotel outside of DC (unlike the AWEA meeting held at the prestigious La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, CA), and that we each had to pay for our own transportation, food, and lodging. My comments never made it into print. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am the executive director of companion organizations that do receive funding from oil and gas companies and individual donors. But I, like the others, was invited as an individual, not as a member of any organization.

Additionally, we are not even a formal group. We met to consider forming a group. The “leaked” memo, addresses finding a group that might absorb us, affiliate with us, or align with us.

Attendees brought their individual issues, observations, and successes. Each had valid insights to contribute. Some viewed health impacts as the most important ammunition. Others, economics. Some, setbacks or bird deaths or land use. Others, including the meeting’s organizer, John Droz, believe that the science—or lack thereof, is the best weapon. There are so many reasons to oppose wind that come down to government use of taxpayer money to support something that raises electricity prices based on the failed concept of man-made global warming. As a result of the meeting, we now know we are not alone, and we can call on one another for insight and advice.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Gabe Elsner, a co-director of the Checks and Balances Project. Without his discovery and subsequent exposure of the “document,” we’d still be just loosely affiliated individuals and small citizens’ groups. The attack has emboldened us and helped others find us! A representative from the Blue Mountain Alliance sent Droz an email stating: “I probably need to send them a thank you note for leading me to you and your efforts.”

After the murmurings became known, one of the meeting attendees, Paul Driessen, wrote a detailed and data-filled column, “Why we need to terminate Big Wind subsidies,” which has garnered more than 700 Facebook “likes” on Townhall.com. (To give perspective, I am pleased if I get 50 “likes.” Each “like” generally represents thousands of readers.) In just a few days, his column is all over the Internet.

Wind energy has more opposition than most people realize, and Elsner, who has served as the “third party” in the AWEA strategy, has allowed us to find one another. While a few attendees at the DC meeting were concerned about all the publicity, attorney Brad Tupi, who has represented citizens victimized by wind energy projects, responded: “I would plead guilty to participating in a meeting of concerned citizens opposed to wasteful, unproven, inefficient wind energy. I would agree that we are interested in coordinating with other reputable organizations, and I personally would be honored to work with Heartland Institute and others.”

If you do not support industrial, tax-payer-funded, wind-energy projects that are promoted based on ideology and emotion rather than facts and sound science, you can benefit from our affiliation. Droz has a wonderful presentation full of helpful information. A few of the websites from the meeting attendees include: Illinois Wind Watch, Whitley County Concerned Citizens, Coalition for Sensible Siting, Energy Integrity Project, and Citizen Power Alliance.

The lesson to be learned from the attack on these hard-working citizens is that the little people can make a difference! We’ve got the subsidy-seeking, wind-energy supporters running scared—along with the crony capitalism that accompanies them. Remember, “If the PTC just disappears”—meaning if we do not keep giving them taxpayer dollars—“then the industry will collapse.”

It is time for the AWEA and the politicians who support the PTC to explain why higher electricity costs, human health impacts, substantial loss of property values in rural communities, dead bats and birds, and increased national debt are good for America and her taxpayers!

The author of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc. and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE). Together they work to educate the public and influence policy makers regarding energy, its role in freedom, and the American way of life. Combining energy, news, politics, and, the environment through public events, speaking engagements, and media, the organizations’ combined efforts serve as America’s voice for energy.

About a year ago on this blog, I offered some skeptical commentary about the gloomy testimony of Dr. Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science, who warned the House Energy & Commerce Committee that global warming would inflict major losses on U.S. corn crop production unless scientists develop varieties with improved heat resistence.

I noted that long-term U.S. corn production was increasing, including in areas where average summer temperatures exceed 84°F, the threshold beyond which corn yields fall, according to Field.

Well, this just in, courtesy of the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA): USDA projects the U.S. corn crop for 2012 to reach 14.79 billion bushels, the biggest ever. RFA’s objective, of course, is not to debunk climate alarm, but to assure us that we can have our corn (ethanol) and eat it too. Nonetheless, the numbers are mighty impressive and indicate that, in this decade at least, U.S. corn farmers are more than a match for climate change. From RFA’s briefing memo:

At 14.79 billion bushels, the 2012 corn crop would:

• be a record crop by far, beating the 2009 crop of 13.09 billion bushels by 11%.
• be 65% larger than the crop from 10 years ago (8.97 billion bushels in 2002).
• be more than twice as large as the average-sized annual corn crop in the decade of the 1980s (7.15 billion bushels on average).

The 2012 projected yield of 166 bushels per acre would:

• be a record yield, beating out the 2009 average yield of 164.7 bushels per acre.
• be only the third time in history yields have topped 160 bu/acre, the others being 2009 (164.7) and 2004 (160.4).
• be 35% higher than the average yield from the 1990s and 12% higher than the average yield since 2000.

The House and Senate conference committee on re-authorizing the highway bill met for the first time on Tuesday, 8th May.  One of the most contentious issues is House language that would require permitting of the 1700-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to Gulf refineries. Initial reactions were that the Keystone provision has little chance of being included in the final conference report.  However, there are signs that the ground is shifting.

Representative John Mica (R-Fla.), Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said last Thursday that he thought the Keystone provision was making great progress toward being included in the final bill. Mica noted that eleven Democratic Senators and 69 Democratic House members (out of 190) have recently voted for permitting the pipeline.

Perhaps more importantly, billionaire investor Warren Buffett told Fox Business News last week that he supports building the Keystone XL Pipeline. Buffett is a close supporter of President Barack Obama.  It has been speculated that Buffett was one of those advising Obama to deny the Keystone permit last fall out of self interest.  Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, which because of the lack of pipeline capacity has become a major shipper of crude oil from the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana to refineries.  The Keystone XL would transport oil from the Bakken Formation as well as from Alberta’s oil sands.

Buffett may well have been offering his own opinion without consulting the White House first.  On the other hand, his comments may be a sign that the White House is maneuvering to save face and let the Keystone permit go through.  President Obama’s political advisers clearly understand that the President is on the wrong side of public opinion on Keystone.  Letting the Congress overrule the President this summer would largely take away a campaign issue in the fall.

In the new movie The Avengers (which is excellent: see my review for National Review Online here), Iron man’s alter-ego Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) perfects a renewable, clean energy source, and uses it to light up his company’s new Manhattan skyscraper.

In spite of this green street-cred, Stark is a hero designed—literally—to drive liberals crazy.  Stan Lee, who co-created Iron Man in the 1960′s, has often reminisced to interviewers about his motives for creating Stark.  After helping to create a string of popular heroes for Marvel Comics, including Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, Lee had decided to give himself a challenge, and asked himself:  Who do young people (read: liberals) hate?  The military, Lee thought right away (it was the 60′s, after all), and the wealthy.  So for his next hero, Lee decided to create a millionaire industrialist who made weapons for the army, and then make him likable.  Iron Man was born.

Now, Filmmakers who have brought Tony Stark to the big screen in a string of recent blockbusters—Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012)—have made him even more unpalatable to liberals.  After all, what other super-hero is regularly shown blasting terrorists out of their caves in Afghanistan, or working side-by-side with the United States Military?

Imagine how queasy greens must feel to see that this arch-capitalist be the one to invent renewable energy in the Marvel universe.  And worse, he didn’t do it for the good of Mankind.  He did for entirely selfish reasons, indeed, the most selfish reason:  He built the first, miniature version of his energy source in the first Iron Man film in order to power his wounded heart, which had been shredded by enemy shrapnel.
More unforgivable from the environmentalists’ perspective, however, is that Stark did all of this without a Department of Energy grant.  Unlike Solyndra, he needed no government incentives or funding.  Unlike Solyndra, he succeeded.   Now, in The Avengers, Stark uses this technology to power a gigantic monument to himself, a gleaming tower with “Stark” emblazoned in bright letters at its apex.

True, Stark and his exploits are fiction.  But can there be any doubt that, if and when an actual, viable green tech is invented, that it will be by someone like Stark, a self-reliant, independent genius, as opposed to a pasty-faced D.O.E. bureaucrat?  Can there be any doubt that it will be a capitalist, working for his or her own selfish ends, that will provide the breakthroughs that environmentalists insist the government must provide and/or subsidize?

And won’t that drive them crazy?

National Journal’s Amy Harder reported last week that the Sierra Club is re-branding its anti-natural gas efforts as “Beyond Natural Gas.”  Beyond Natural Gas joins the Sierra Club’s other two anti-energy campaigns, Beyond Coal and Beyond Oil (Beyond Nuclear is a separate organization founded in 2007 and headquartered in Takoma Park, Maryland, which has been an official nuclear-free zone since 1983).

Here’s how the Sierra Club introduces its Beyond Natural Gas web page: “The natural gas industry is dirty, dangerous, and running amok. Government loopholes exempt natural gas drillers from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act — and at the same time, don’t require them to disclose the frequently toxic chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the violent process they employ to dislodge gas deposits from shalerock formations. The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears; and the less of it we burn, the better off we will be.”

The Sierra Club’s timing, whether intentionally or not, kicks Aubrey McClendon, their former patron, when he is down.  Time Magazine reported earlier this year that McClendon gave the Sierra Club $26 million between 2007 and 2010 for their Beyond Coal campaign.  This week McClendon was relieved of his duties as chairman of one of the U. S.’s largest natural gas producers, Chesapeake Energy, although he remains CEO.  It also became public knowledge last week that the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into McClendon and Chesapeake.

The SEC investigation and the decision by Chesapeake’s board to replace McClendon as chairman are the result of revelations by Reuters on 18th April that McClendon, the founder of Chesapeake, had a sweetheart deal with the company to borrow over $1 billion and use it to buy personal shares in Chesapeake gas wells.

The climate scaremongers are losing the public relations battle on global warming—and it’s driving them absolutely batty.

Take eco-warrior Steve Zwick. Writing for FORBES Zwick calls on so-called “climate deniers” to be treated like war criminals:

Let’s take a page from those Tennessee firemen we heard about a few times last year—the ones who stood idly by as houses burned to the ground because their owners had refused to pay a measly $75 fee. We can apply this same logic to climate change.

We know who the active denialists are—not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay.  Let’s let their houses burn until the innocent are rescued. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands.  Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices.  They broke the climate.  Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?

Notice that arguments contrary to what Zwick believes are not honest differences of opinion—they are “lies.” Those who disagree with him are not merely mistaken, they are malevolent. They are not worthy of being converted to his point of view via honest debate; they deserve only to have their homes razed.

This is fascism, pure and simple, and it is more and more a feature of environmentalist rhetoric.

The violent imagery has even seeped into the pronouncements of the eco-priests at the Environmental Protection Agency. Recently a video surfaced of EPA Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz admitting that his agency’s philosophy is to “crucify” oil a gas companies:

I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said:

It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean.  They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.

How can anyone, whether on the Left or the Right, not be chilled to the bone to hear a government official talk in such a manner about private companies and individuals?

The desperation the eco-crowd feels is driven by a simple fact—the Earth is not melting. The disastrous consequences of carbon emissions we were warned about have simply not come to pass, as even some environmentalists are at last admitting.  James Lovelock, for example, influential author of the “Gaia” theory that the whole planet is a single, living organism, has recently recanted some of his most egregious climate doomsaying. Lovelock, who once claimed that, “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable,” now concedes that things may be OK after all.

“[W] don’t know what the climate is doing,” Lovelock recently told MSNBC. “We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books—mine included—because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.” Specifically, the warming Lovelock and others warned about hasn’t happened.  “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time,” he admitted, though the global temperature “has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising—carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.”

Kudos to Lovelock for having the guts to admit the truth, and for changing his mind in the face of new facts. It is an admirable quality so little found on the political Left, a cesspool of hate and ignorance where hack journalists and bureaucrats can openly fantasize about violently punishing their political and intellectual adversaries.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, global warming was the Left’s last, best chance to institute a world-wide redistributive regime.  What happens when global warming, too, collapses?

I fear they will not go gently into that good night.

Today, the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) published a study on the challenges facing the more than 120,000 U.S. convenience stores that sell motor fuel in a market increasingly shaped by the competing requirements of two federal programs: renewable fuel standard (RFS, a.k.a. the ethanol mandate) and corporate average fuel economy (CAFE).

I may have more to say about the study in a later post, but the skinny is that RFS and CAFE may whipsaw the retail fuel outlets upon which most of us depend to fill our tanks. CAFE will decrease the amount of fuel purchased and the frequency of consumer transactions at convenience stores, while the RFS will force convenience stores to make costly investments in storage tanks and blender pumps to sell increasing amounts and percentages of high-ethanol blends.

The excerpts below from NACS’s press release paint a disturbing picture on an industry caught in the regulatory cross hairs:

“RFS and CAFE policies cannot coexist without substantial changes in the retail and vehicle markets to accommodate significantly higher concentrations of renewable fuels, an unlikely scenario given that we may not even meet current requirements as they stand in 2012,” said John Eichberger, NACS vice president of government relations and the author of the new NACS whitepaper, The Future of Fuels: An Analysis of Future Energy Trends and Potential Retail Market Opportunities.

The Renewable Fuels Standard, revised by Congress as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), requires that increasing amounts of qualified renewable fuels be integrated into the motor fuels supply, culminating at a minimum of 36 billion gallons in 2022. This mandate was expected to increase renewables to approximately 20% to 25% of the overall gasoline market in 2022, about double the rate of 10.4% last year.

Meanwhile, in 2011 the Obama administration proposed new CAFE standards, which are expected to be finalized this summer, that seek to increase the average fleet fuel efficiency to an equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The cumulative effect of the two mandates is that renewable fuels will be required to represent a significantly greater share of the market than originally anticipated — perhaps as much as 40%, or four times higher than today.

“This level of renewable fuels penetration in the market will impose significant economic burdens on the retail fuels market and consumers,” said Eichberger. “To meet such a high renewable fuels concentration, it is likely that most retailers in the country will have to replace their underground storage tank systems and fuel dispensers. For the convenience industry alone, this will require a minimum infrastructure investment that will add nearly $22 billion to the cost of retailing fuels.” [And where will they get the scratch, I wonder, with CAFE depressing motor fuel demand and sales?]

Even after this enormous infrastructure investment, it still may be impossible to satisfy the RFS, considering that only one in six consumers will drive vehicles capable of running on the mandated fuels. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects only 16% of on-road vehicles in 2022 will be flexible fuel vehicles.

“Unless something dramatic happens, we will hit the ‘blend wall’ within the next two years and will not be able to meet RFS requirements. This will trigger massive fines throughout the petroleum distribution system that will increase the cost to sell motor fuels,” said Eichberger.

An industry expert explains the problem to me as follows:

It’s all about the drop in demand caused by increased fuel economy running up against inflexible volumetric mandates and an infrastructure that can’t meet those targets.

In a 140 billion gallon gasoline market, the ”blend wall” (how much ethanol may be blended annually into the nation’s motor fuel supply) is 14 billion gallons (full market penetration of E10 — motor fuel made with 10% ethanol).

If CAFE drops demand to 100 billion gallons, the blend wall drops to 10 billion gallons of ethanol. But the RFS requires the sale of 36 billion gallons by 2022. To sell 36 billion gallons of ethanol and meet and the proposed CAFE standards, E-10 must be replaced with E-40 nationwide. However, pumps and storage tanks at most convenience stores, most cars, and nearly all outboard motors, lawn mowers, and other small engines can’t handle E-40.

The goals of the two programs — cut fuel consumption, expand ethanol consumption — conflict with each other.

Folks, your government’s left hand does not seem to know what its other left hand is doing. Honk if you think central planners can’t plan!