GAO: Bad Publicity Scaring Prospects Away from Stimulus Money

The publicity surrounding President Obama’s failed strategy to stimulate the economy, by putting clueless manager Steven Chu in charge of the Department of Energy’s lending activities, has become so bad that few “green energy economy” entrepreneurs want to accept taxpayer money any more.

That’s according to a report published earlier this month by the Government Accountability Office, which reviewed DOE’s loan programs for a briefing to both the House and Senate’s Appropriations subcommittees on Energy. Amusingly though, the Web site of DOE’s Loan Programs Office still calls itself “The Financing Force Behind America’s Clean Energy Economy.” The minor blip that undermines that premise is that DOE is having trouble getting someone to borrow $55 billion.

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GERMAN PAPER WARNS OF COMING ICE AGE: We may yet see some of the more grizzled would-be climate scientists who warned that global cooling was about to destroy the earth in the 1970s, told us that global warming was about to destroy the earth in more recent decades switch back to telling us that global cooling is soon to destroy the earth. And all the while championing the same socialist formula to prevent mankind’s destruction — which is no doubt just right around the corner

Richard L. Revesz and Michael A. Livermore: For Climate Change Solution, Look to Yesterday's GOP

If you don't believe that human actions are leading to a warming planet, nothing will convince you that carbon controls are useful -- if it ain't broke, as they say, why pay to fix it?

But for the rest of us who know that there is near unanimity among climate scientists that temperatures are rising and humans are the cause, the choice isn't whether to act but how to most efficiently lower our pollution.

PARKERS PRAIRIE, Minn.: Train cars derail in Minnesota, spill crude oil | Nation | Kentucky.com

While the spill appeared to be under control from an ecological standpoint, it could play a role in the politics surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from tar sands in Canada to refineries in Texas. Environmentalists have criticized the proposal, saying that a pipeline could be prone to spills and would ensure that the carbon-laden tar sands are fully developed. A recent analysis from the State Department seemed to knock down one of their arguments, by saying that when it comes to global warming, shipping the oil by pipeline would release less pollution than using rail.