Financial Post's Lawrence Solomon praises bloggers for telling the truth about Global Warming

The world would have to drastically realign its outlook if the three countries with the world's largest oil deposits were the United States, China and Israel. That realigned world may be ours in less than a decade if new technologies can fulfil expectations of exploiting known oil shale deposits.

At the Advocates for Civil Liberties' Canada and the New Middle East conference last week, Financial Post columnist Lawrence Solomon discussed the amazing possibilities presented by newly developed technology that can produce fuel from oil shale at $40 per barrel. Within as little as five years, these deposits may be fully actualized, meaning energy self-sufficiency and profits for countries like the US and China, which have the world's largest and second largest identified oil shale deposits. For countries like Israel that ranks 3rd with it' deposits amounting to as much as 500 billion barrels, there is the potential to become one of the world's major petroleum exporters.

The result would be a massive shake up of the Middle East's geo-political reality. Oil prices would likely plummet, and middle eastern countries ruled by despots propped up by oil revenues would see their economies collapse along with those nations' social cohesion.

Islamist terror is for the most part funded by oil revenue, particularly in the case of Saudi Arabia. In a unsavoury deal between two devils, Saudi Sheiks fund Wahhabi Islamic extremism abroad as a form of protection pay-off that sees their rule at home face little challenge. Iran uses its petro-dollars to fund its Revolutionary Guard Corps that brutalize the domestic population and proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah who engage in terrorist activities throughout the middle east and Latin America.

If oil shale from the US, Canada, which also has major deposits, and other free countries becomes a major source of energy and revenue, it would see the leaders of countries like Venezuela and Iran without the means to stir up trouble outside their borders, while having to face new ones within them.

The new reality posed by this development makes it all the more clear why environmental groups are so closely aligned with groups who advocate for Iran and are so sympathetic to Islamists. They have common interest in trying to sabotage the West's ability to achieve energy independence.

One of the interesting aspects that the Financial Post's Solomon observed is that while much of Global Warming alarmism is a sham, you would never know that from reading most mainstream media, like Canada's most popular dailies the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. If one had to rely exclusively on those media, one might not realize that there are as many climate scientists (as opposed to fruit fly geneticists) who disagree as agree with the theory that global warming is the result of human activity.

Solomon noted that it is actually through blogs that the most accurate and balanced information about Global Warming science is available. It must be that bloggers are less intimidated by the prospect of falling into disfavour from the likes of Al Gore and David Suzuki. Of course, bloggers generally have less to lose, as they are already unlikely to receive invitations to caviar and champagne parties at Sundance, so the threat of having them withdrawn is not particularly intimidating.

The new Ethical Oil - Take this, OPEC! Now we can turn seaweed into fuel!

Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation. Most importantly for would-be biofuel-makers, it contains no lignin—a strong strand of complex sugars that stiffens plant stalks and poses a big obstacle to turning land-based plants such as switchgrass into biofuel.

Researchers at Bio Architecture Lab, Inc., (BAL) and the University of Washington in Seattle have now taken the first step to exploit the natural advantages of seaweed. They have built a microbe capable of digesting it and converting it into ethanol or other fuels or chemicals.

Full article at Scientific American

A new plant is opening to convert seaweed to fuel

Shallow Canadian polemicist is really, really mad about the term "ethical oil"

Naomi Klein is outraged that proponents of Canadian Tar Sands oil, which finances social programs and provides employment to indigenous peoples in one of the freest countries in the world, describe the product as "ethical oil."

You know she's outraged because she proudly announced it at a rally comprised of middle aged, middle-class white socialists in Washington D.C. last week where she advocated against Canada's economic interests while demonstrating her tenuous comprehension of economics and environmental science.  Klein also likes to use the word "ravages" a lot when describing the effects of Canada's Tar Sands oil. She repeats it so frequently, it makes one wonder what sort of fixations she has.

Ms Klein, who appears at so many protests as to give the impression of a camp follower of such things, doesn't seem to understand the use of "ethical oil"  refers not to its debatable environmental impact, but to the social and political outcomes of purchasing oil from a democracy that uses revenues to fund social programs. That is as opposed to purchasing it from tyrannical monarchies or dictatorships, which use revenues to finance terrorism or further enrich oligarchs.

Klein never really addresses that ethical component in her supposed "debunking"  of the term "ethical oil." In fact, she doesn't really address much of anything, except express her fury, sputtering out marginally coherent nonsense that rivals the Alec Baldwin marionette's speech at the end of Team America.

According to the author of The Shock Doctrine,  Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn't represent what Canadians want. That's amusing coming from someone who has never held any elected office in her life suggesting that is it she who represents what Canadians really want.

Actually, that sort of puts things into perspective. It's no wonder Klein has so much trouble differentiating "ethical" oil from the other kind. Her instincts seem to indicate she has a lot in common with the unelected dictators and tyrants that produce foreign oil who, without virtue of being chosen by a democratic process, also claim to represent the 'true interests of the people.'