E&E News - Lame-duck session emerges as possibility for energy bill conference

Which means that despite the oft-repeated assertion by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) that "cap and trade is dead," the House's bill based on cap and trade could be back in play -- someday, given the right conditions. Even if they do not enact cap and trade, Democratic leaders could use a conference to ratchet up the climate regulations past what the Senate agreed to and beyond what Democratic House centrists want.

"We have a lot of wiggle room in conference," said a House Democratic aide.

Ha ha ha ha ha! – Telegraph Blogs

Truly you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh. But it gets even better. Go on: guess how they’ve decided to “solve” the problem. Think of the stupidest way you could spend you money on power generation in a place where there really isn’t that much sun.

Yep:

The trust is now planning to spend part of its £300,000 share of the prize money on more solar panels to prevent a repeat of the shortages in future years.

The Reference Frame: Burton Richter: natural gas vs oil, energy, price, and reserves

The main disadvantages of natural gas are expensive pipelines, extraction side effects, and the toxic nature of the gas. While someone who is only obsessed with the "bare price" or "energy content" or "CO2 emissions" could easily miss all these "more subtle" issues, they are actually behind the fact that the natural gas is replaced by coal or oil in many applications.

So even though the simplest calculations of the energy efficiency (and price) seem favorable for the natural gas, it makes no sense for people with a limited knowledge of these "engineering" issues - e.g. Burton Richter - to dictate what the "right" mixture of energy sources should be.