One would expect that with today’s gasoline prices, the recent discoveries of massive oil reserves in the Bakken Shale region of North Dakota, USA, would be met with soaring optimism about America’s struggle for energy independence. Geologists have discovered oil reserves that may amount to more than one hundred billion barrels of oil; it is probably the largest discovery of oil in the history of the United States. Consider that Saudi Arabia, which has the largest oil reserves in the world, has only 264 billion in proven reserves. In years gone by, such a discovery would have been major sustained news for months in the United States. Industries would be ignited, fortunes made. Large groups ...

While the President of the Earth was making the free publicity rounds on network TV to promote his movie, Gore, in a fit of "I-can-get-away-with-saying-anything-on-Charlie-Rose" hubris, reassured Americans that while there were a few scientists that didn't agree with him on his global warming claims, they were on par with "holocaust deniers." Uh huh. Unless the world history academy has recently been overrun by morons while I wasn't paying attention, Gore might want to check his data. A recent survey being discussed on Sen. Inhofe's press blog reports that in fact, more than one-half of all scientists that have published academic articles on the subject reject Gore's view. In the end, you either have to conclude that Gore does not really care what the scientific community actually ...

This issue of energy and global warming has the promise of creating millions of new jobs in America. It can be a win-win, if we do it right. - Sen. Hillary Clinton, at the Democratic debate in South Carolina James Pethokoukis scrutinizes the economic logic of Senator Clinton's statement and determines that she has committed the classic broken window fallacy. Pethoukoukis argues that spending billions of dollars on a "supposed problem" may add climate change-related jobs, but at the cost of other jobs that actually increase productivity in "the nanotechnology industry or healthcare or business consulting or some industry we have yet to imagine." Perhaps Clinton should read up on the ...

Al Gore is a man of big ideas. Just ask him. Earth is "in the balance." The internal combustion engine is the "greatest enemy of mankind."  Today's political climate is "an assault on Reason." And so on. We all knew guys like this in college; now we duck them in the office. Guys who speak in paragraphs. Long, boring paragraphs. Al Gore is so tiresome he could put coffee to sleep. Today our self-appointed Earthwise Evangelist issued an altar call to the true believers: Step out of the aisle, come to the front, and take a 7 point pledge to the Earth.  The 7 points are primarily political: pressure your government to do this, pressure your government to do that. And, by the way, work to reduce your emissions or pay for carbon offsets. Repent of your sin, ...

It seems like only yesterday that President of the Earth Al Gore was claiming to every talking head that would let him get away with it that the scientific community was uniformly behind his view of global warming. Gore's claim, of course, is that human created greenhouse gases are going to be the end of the world as we know it unless we -- pretty much -- return to pre-industrialization modes of living within the next 10 years. Gore acknowledged that there were a few outliers who disagreed with him, but, as Gore assured Charlie Rose, these people were so far outside the mainstream science that they were on par with holocaust deniers. What a difference a ...