In last week's Denver Post article about Mark Udall's reversal on offshore drilling, Mike Riley notes that the plan which Udall seems to be accepting, a plan from the so-called "Gang of Ten" group of 5 Democrat and 5 (politically idiotic) Republican Senators, "also creates a $20 billion program to shift 85 percent of cars from petroleum-based fuels within two decades."

It's time for some push-back on this ridiculous move to "end our addiction to oil". I understand the arguments against the use of large quantities of foreign oil, especially when some of the suppliers aren't our friends.

But oil is the most efficient, dense energy source on earth (other than nuclear power, which is hard to put in a car.) Saying we're addicted to oil is much like saying we're addicted to oxygen. We must have energy and oil is, at least for now, by far the best source of energy.

The global warming scare is a hoax by people who hate capitalism and industry. They're using the specter of us all frying to death to attack oil...the very foundation of modern economies. How many of you have heard, among the chatter of the Algore-besotted media, that the planet hasn't warmed at all for a decade?

Here's some interesting information from an article in a Canadian newspaper:

The net global warming from 1940 to 1998 was a tiny 0.2 degrees C, during nearly 70 years of the first, and theoretically most powerful, surge of human-emitted CO2.

Since 1998, temperatures haven’t risen at all, and over the past 18 months, the thermometers and satellites both report a sharp global cooling. Earth’s temperatures are now about where they were in 1900.

NASA admits the oceans “stopped warming 4–5 years ago,” and the earth can’t warm if the oceans don’t.

The Jason satellite confirms the Northern Pacific has entered a cooling phase that is likely to dictate cooler global temperatures over the next 25 years.

How long will it take us to realize that the CO2 explanation for our warming was wrong? I’d guess another three years.

The planet’s only runaway warming today is inside the global computer models. They’ve consistently predicted far more warming we’ve gotten. Now they’re predicting warming when we’re getting cooling.

The idea of making 80% of cars run on something other than gasoline or diesel within a generation is not only ridiculous, it's dangerous. Look at the food inflation we already have because of our idiotic ethanol policy. It's only a liberal or a Senator from Iowa who could seriously think "let's save the planet by burning our food".

Just say no to this "Gang of Ten", and let's get a move on with extracting American resources from American territory. It's not complicated.

As for "renewables", they will be developed over time as the technology and economic viability improves...just as every other technology.

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For those of you who are very into the math and science of climate change, you may find this note of interest:

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/08/backcasting-wit.html