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Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus - Allysia Finley
Now, however, the Golden State's fastest-growing entity is government and its biggest product is red tape. The first thing that comes to many American minds when you mention California isn't Hollywood or tanned girls on a beach, but Greece. Many progressives in California take that as a compliment since Greeks are ostensibly happier. But as Mr. Kotkin notes, Californians are increasingly pursuing happiness elsewhere.
Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.
As California Collapses, Obama Follows Its Lead - Joel Kotkin
Obama’s push to nationalize many of California’s economy-stifling green policies has been slowed down, first by the Republican resurgence in 2010 and then by his reelection considerations. But California’s politicians, living in what’s become essentially a one-party state, have doubled down on green orthodoxy. As the president at least tries to cover his flank by claiming to support an “all-in” energy policy, California has simply refused to exploit much of its massive oil and gas resources.
Does this matter? Well, Texas has created 200,000 oil and gas jobs over the past decade; California has barely added 20,000. The state’s remaining energy producers have been slowing down as the regulatory environment becomes ever more hostile even as producers elsewhere, including in rustbelt states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, ramp up. The oil and gas jobs the Golden State political class shuns pay around $100,000 a year on average.
Instead, California has forged ahead with ever-more extreme renewable energy mandates that have resulted in energy costs roughly 50 percent above the national average and expected to rise substantially from there. This tends to drive out manufacturing and other largely blue-collar energy users.
Over the past decade the Golden State has grown its middle-skilled jobs (those that require two years or more of post-secondary education) by a mere 2 percent compared to a 5.3 percent increase nationwide, and almost 15 percent in Texas. Even in the science-technology-engineering and mathematics field, where California has long been a national leader, the state has lost its edge, growing just 1.7 percent over the past 10 years compared to 5.4 percent nationally and 14 percent in Texas.
Is Fusion Power Finally For Real? - Elizabeth Svoboda
If fusion works as proponents claim, it could produce enough clean energy to power the world for hundreds and hundreds of years to come. One of the first hurdles is the tiniest component, the fuel: Hydrogen isotopes, such as deuterium and tritium, adamantly resist uniting, regardless of the amount of heat and steel and funding thrown into the effort.
But this past fall, physicists at NIF, based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, made an important advance with their elaborate building and enormous laser: They fired 121 kilojoules of ultraviolet light into the $3.5 billion facility's target chamber, causing deuterium and tritium nuclei to fuse into helium atoms, releasing 300 trillion high-energy neutrons. Even though NIF and other labs have created fusion before, the achievement brings researchers a step closer to conquering the ultimate challenge: a fusion reaction that produces more energy than is required to start it.
Small Nuclear Reactor Site Planned - Randall Parker
Small nuclear reactors might be the ticket to restarting growth of the US nuclear power industry.
This week the Tennessee Valley Authority signed a letter of intent with nuclear-reactor maker Babcock & Wilcox to work together to build up to six small reactors near Clinch River, Tennessee. If the plan goes ahead, these could be the first small modular commercial nuclear power plants.
Babcock & Wilcox has a long history of making nuclear reactors for US Navy ships. This gives them an advantage in the small nuclear reactor market. Whether this advantage can translate into a competitive product remains to be seen. In theory small reactors can be made in a manufacturing plant that can reach much higher levels of productivity than a construction site for a big nuke could hope to achieve.
Small Nuclear Reactors Get a Customer - Kevin Bullis
The plan comes at a time when many nuclear projects are stalled because of safety concerns and also for reasons of cost. Babcock & Wilcox's modular reactors require less capital than conventional ones, and they have some safety advantages as well.
Gas tanks are draining family budgets - Jonathan Fahey
As Memorial Day weekend opens, the nationwide average for a gallon of unleaded is $3.81. Though prices have drifted lower in recent days, analysts expect average price for 2011 to come in higher than the previous record, $3.25 in 2008. A year ago, gas cost $2.76.
The squeeze is happening at a time when most people aren't getting raises, even as the economy recovers.
"These increases are not something consumers can shrug off," says James Hamilton, an economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies gas prices. "It's a key part of the family budget."
The ramifications are far-reaching for an economy still struggling to gain momentum two years into a recovery. Economists say the gas squeeze makes people feel poorer than they actually are.
They're showing it by limiting spending far beyond the gas station. Wal-Mart recently blamed high gas prices for an eighth straight quarter of lower sales in the U.S. Target said gas prices were hurting sales of clothes.
Every 50-cent jump in the cost of gasoline takes $70 billion out of the U.S. economy over the course of a year, Hamilton says. That's about one half of one percent of gross domestic product.
Forget About Wind & Solar – Natural Gas Is Our Energy Future, Says Policy Expert - Stacy Curtin
Most notable is Schwenniger's assertion that Obama's clean energy initiative, which is supposed to bolster competitiveness, create jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources, will actually drag on U.S. economic growth in the short- and medium-term.
He cites subsidies for clean energy programs as the main culprit for two reasons: opportunity costs and foreign investment, rather than domestic investment.
"The program subsidizes the commercialization of inefficient wind and solar technologies, many of which are produced abroad, while ignoring more efficient alternatives that would cut America's oil import bill and reduce the overall cost of energy in the United States," he writes in his report. "It makes no economic sense, for example, to subsidize the installation of imported wind turbines when natural gas fired generators can produce an equivalent amount of energy for one-third to one-half the cost." (See: What Energy Problem: U.S. Oil Exports Are on the Rise)
Speculation - John Hinderaker
It is getting hard to keep track of all of the disgraceful things Barack Obama is doing, but we shouldn't overlook his effort to blame high energy prices on "speculators." In fact, the high price of petroleum, which in turn raises the cost of everything else, is due to a combination of market forces and the Obama administration's terrible energy policies. When you have an administration that openly wishes for higher energy costs, it shouldn't be a surprise when prices go up.
But Obama doesn't want to take the blame for the consequences of his policies, so he follows his usual Alinskyite policy--fabricate a villain and demonize him.
The Department of Distraction Swings Into Action - The Professor
It is becoming clear that Obama’s criticism of speculators was not a one-off. Instead, it is part of a broader campaign to demonize them. Today’s installment of the Two Minutes’ Hate came courtesy of the Justice Department (so tempted to use quotes around that). Eric Holder announced the formation of an Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group consisting of Department of Justice, the National Association of Attorneys General, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the Departments of Agriculture and Energy. The Group’s charge is:
In March 2011, President Obama asked the Attorney General to work with federal and state agencies to monitor oil and gas markets for potential wrongdoing. In response to the President’s call for action, Department of Justice leadership consulted with federal agencies and state attorneys general and discussed pending inquiries in some states, the most effective legal tools and areas that require additional exploration. As a result of this examination and to further the central mission of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, the Attorney General formed the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group.
Are Speculators Responsible for Today’s Higher Oil Prices? - Warren Meyer
There are two checks on current commodity values that make sustained speculative bubbles much less likely. First, physical commodities are really expensive to inventory. I can hold futures contracts on a million barrels of oil in my desk drawer; a million barrels of physical oil requires a container the size of 63 Olympic swimming pools. Second, the demand curve for oil futures is based on expectations and predictions and hope and fear. The demand curve for physical oil is grounded in the real economics of electricity generation and powering factories and driving trucks.
So lets consider speculation in this context. We start from a market in oil for current delivery that is in balance, where the price is such that supply and demand are roughly equal. Now, enter speculators. They supposedly drive the price up above this “natural” price. As the price rises, we know producers will seek ways to bring more oil to market, and consumers will reduce their consumption. The result is a glut – an excess of supply over demand. Here is the real question to ask if one suspects that speculators are driving the price of oil for current delivery above and beyond the market clearing price: Where is all the extra oil going?
More White House Demagoguery on Gas Prices - John Hinderaker
It is easy to show that Obama's attack on the oil companies is baseless. To begin with, what do "subsidies" have to do with high gas prices? I assume that by "subsidies" Obama means that there is still some oil company income that the government doesn't tax. But the effect of a tax break is to lower prices, not raise them. On the other hand, the government does raise the price of gasoline, very significantly, by levying massive taxes on gasoline at both the federal and state levels. In fact, the government profits much more from the money you pay at the pump than any American oil company does.
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Many people do not realize that the American oil companies are relatively minor producers on the international scene. Because of our restrictive drilling policies, they do not have access to substantial quantities of oil in the ground. They are major refiners, but relatively small producers of crude oil. The largest American oil company, Exxon-Mobil, barely registers in terms of control over supplies of crude oil. You have to hunt for it on this chart, which we wrote about here.
