Hussein Pushing Military To Spend $26 A Gallon On "Green Fuel"

[billt]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/02/gop-in-congress-critical-navy-great-green-fleet/#ixzz1zX8phjVc?test=latestnews

And the insanity continues.

[tombogan03884]

Actually it makes perfect sense, in a fast and furious sort of way.
If you look at it from the perspective of spending defense $ as effectivly and efficiently as possible you will not see the logic of it.
Just like you will not see the logic of a gun smuggling investigation that does not track the weapons it supplies and does not result in any arrests.
If you look at it as a means to another end though, it makes perfect sense, Fast and Furious was about undermining the citizens rights to arms for personal defense and this "green fuels" crap is about undermining the militaries ability to defend the nation.
The Navy spends to much on fuel, we need to moth ball half our ships so we can afford to keep fueling the other half at $26/Gal.

It's all part of the big picture.

[jnevis]

I'm on the fence about the whole thing.  If you look at Brazil, they've been almost exclusivley biofuel for a few decades now and the costs are less than the petro-based fuels at the pump.  The production and delivery costs are about the same.  They are using sugar cane.  What is costing us more is the use of corn and alge.  I'm not on it, but I've seen how the biofuel blend is performing in various aircraft, including the Blue Angels.  The engines actually are running a little cooler but the flow rate is a little higher.  Ships would be about the same.

Is it something we should be looking into, probably.  Should we be cutting over before its perfected (cost effective), no.

Not defending him in the least, but the Navy has been sliced back to the point of not being ready for much longer than BHO has even been on the radar to be POTUS.  Bush Sr started it with the "peace dividend" and all of them since have just contiued the trend.  The cuts actually had started to stablize until last year when it was decided we'd "won" in Iraq.  Now we're ramping up coalition interoperability so we can be like England, requiring help from the outside (France/NATO) to defend our own borders.

[billt]

I'm not on it, but I've seen how the biofuel blend is performing in various aircraft, including the Blue Angels.  The engines actually are running a little cooler but the flow rate is a little higher.

The Blue Angels using "Green Bio Fuel" is somewhat of a joke. Especially when you consider they use 10W motor oil injected into the tailpipes to produce the plumes of white smoke in their air shows.

[Pathfinder]

Actually it makes perfect sense, in a fast and furious sort of way.
If you look at it from the perspective of spending defense $ as effectivly and efficiently as possible you will not see the logic of it.
Just like you will not see the logic of a gun smuggling investigation that does not track the weapons it supplies and does not result in any arrests.
If you look at it as a means to another end though, it makes perfect sense, Fast and Furious was about undermining the citizens rights to arms for personal defense and this "green fuels" crap is about undermining the militaries ability to defend the nation.
The Navy spends to much on fuel, we need to moth ball half our ships so we can afford to keep fueling the other half at $26/Gal.

It's all part of the big picture.

As well as lining the pockets of DNC backers in the meantime.

In the early/mid-90's the DNC produced a report - that quickly disappeared - stating that there was ca. $15-25 Billion in NEW revenue to be made EACH YEAR by "going green". Things like CFLs (at that time about $12 each as opposed to 75 cents for 4 incandescents) , ethanol (i.e., taking food stores away to make fuel), solar (Solyndra anyone?) and similar topics.

This has all been planned. As that traitorous, venal self-serving asshole "Deep Throat" said - follow the money. With politicians of all ilk, always follow the money.

[Sponsor]

[tombogan03884]

The whole "energy shortage", like "global warming is nothing but a scam.


http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/03/morning-bell-the-energy-revolution-and-its-discontents/?roi=echo3-12462174173-9047936-19304b7cff24dc9143ad31967b43cb96&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

With all the gloomy economic news coming out of late, one bright spot flew under the radar last week: the United States is poised to be the proverbial center of the energy universe.

A recent study by Harvard Research Fellow Leonardo Maugeri found that the United States’ incredible shale reserves represent “the most important revolution in the oil sector in decades.”

    Thanks to the technological revolution brought about by the combined use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, the U.S. is now exploiting its huge and virtually untouched shale and tight oil fields, whose production – although still in its infancy – is already skyrocketing in North Dakota and Texas.

Few Americans are more cognizant of this energy revolution’s possibilities than those who live in the towns sitting above the nation’s largest shale formations. The Heritage Foundation traveled to Willison, North Dakota, above the massive Bakken shale, to hear first-hand how the oil boom there has improved residents’ lives.

But there are forces looking to undermine North Dakota’s oil boom. “The area that we worry the most about would be the federal government and regulations,” explained Willison Mayor Ward Koeser, “specifically the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Koeser’s concerns are not without merit. The EPA has a history of wrongfully targeting companies using hydraulic fracturing for supposed environmental contamination. When a top EPA official, Region 6 administrator Al Armedariz, compared his enforcement philosophy to Roman crucifixions, the agency’s history of enforcement actions against oil and gas drillers – both use hydraulic fracturing to extract resources from shale – belied Armendariz’s subsequent apology and walk-back.

Armendariz just took a job at the Sierra Club, a radical environmentalist group that has undertaken a massive campaign against the extraction of natural gas from shale only a few years after it championed natural gas as a cleaner alternative to coal and oil.

The left’s emerging hostility to “fracking” has the potential to derail the amazing economic opportunity that shale presents. So it should come as little surprise that the political consequences of that hostility are bearing themselves out in places like Western Pennsylvania, which sits on huge shale gas reserves.

Roll Call’s Stuart Rothenberg reported over the weekend that Pennsylvania, which over the past 20 years has moved further left in terms of its voting patterns, is suddenly more competitive. “Western Pennsylvania increasingly looks like West Virginia or southeastern Ohio,” Rothenberg notes.

Rothenberg, appropriately concerned with the political analysis, did not connect the dots: Western Pennsylvania, Southeastern Ohio, and West Virginia are all major energy-producing states (or parts of states). The Utica, Marcellus, and Devonian shale formations, for instance, represent major economic opportunities in those states.
From the federal perspective, then, a sensible energy policy would at least refrain from proactively discouraging those opportunities, as Heritage’s Nick Loris has suggested:

    An aggressive energy policy that opens access, provides a timely permitting process as well as environmental and judicial review, and places a freeze on new environmental regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would go a long way to help lower energy prices, create jobs, and bring revenue into the financially strapped government that’s racked up [over] $15 trillion in debt.

But left-wing environmentalists continue to fight against the country’s natural gas and oil boom. That boom has the potential not just to revitalize parts of the American economy, but to infuse economic vitality into some of the nation’s most economically distressed communities. Don’t be surprised when those communities stand up to regulatory overreach and environmental hysteria.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>VIDEO AT LINK<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

[tombogan03884]

The Navy got a heck of a deal !

http://news.yahoo.com/u-air-force-tests-biofuel-59-per-gallon-050646502.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy angered Republicans by spending $26 a gallon for biofuels for this week's Great Green Fleet demonstration, but the Air Force received little attention when it paid twice as much per gallon to test synthetic jet fuel last month.

The Air Force bought 11,000 gallons of alcohol-to-jet fuel from Gevo Inc, a Colorado biofuels company, at $59 a gallon in a program aimed at proving that new alternative fuels can be used reliably in military aircraft - once, that is, their pricing is competitive with petroleum, which now costs $3.60 a gallon.

The cost of the Air Force demonstration - $639,000 - was far less eye-catching than the $12 million the Navy spent for biofuels to power a carrier strike group on alternative energy for a day.

But it was part of the same Pentagon push, which has escalated under the administration of President Barack Obama, to adopt green solutions to rising fuel costs.

Some Republican lawmakers have criticized the high price-per-gallon paid by the Navy as wasteful Pentagon spending at a time of significant budget cuts and a shrinking fleet.

They have also blasted Obama for making green energy a cornerstone of his agenda, with federal funds flowing to alternative energy companies that may not make economic sense, as in the case of bankrupt solar-panel maker Solyndra.

Jeff Scheib, Gevo vice president for fuels, said the alcohol-to-jet fuel made for the Air Force was expensive as it came from a small demonstration plant in Silsbee, Texas, which makes only 7,500 to 8,000 gallons of biofuel a month.

Once the company builds a commercial-scale refinery, expected around 2015, "we believe we can be cost competitive on an all-in basis with petroleum jet fuel over the life of a contract," Scheib said.

Pentagon officials say alternative fuel development is strategically important because the United States relies too heavily on fossil fuels from foreign sources, leaving it vulnerable to price shocks and disruptions.

HUGE ANNUAL FUEL BILLS

The Air Force spends about $10 billion a year on energy, with nearly $9 billion of that being for jet fuel, Kevin Geiss, Air Force deputy assistant secretary for energy, said recently.

Planning is done two years in advance, so officials in 2009 were expecting jet fuel to cost about $2.37 a gallon in 2011. Instead, prices rose as high as $3.96 a gallon.

"What that results in, for this year, was about a billion dollar shortfall from what we had budgeted for in fuel," Geiss said.

Geiss said Air Force work on biofuels was focused on ensuring that products likely to achieve commercial-scale production are formulated correctly for use in aircraft engines. The Navy's mission is much broader, he said.

The Obama administration directed the Navy last year to work with the Agriculture and Energy departments to invest up to $510 million to help private industry partners develop a viable alternative energy market capable of producing cost-competitive marine and jet fuels.

Some companies involved in the push to build a biofuels industry have connections to prominent Democratic backers, further raising Republican skepticism of the effort.

Vinod Khosla, whose venture capital firm says it played a central role in funding and developing Gevo's business strategy, has given campaign contributions of $474,534 since 1996, 86 percent of which has gone to Democrats, according to data compiled by opensecrets.org. Khosla's firm owned a 27 percent stake in Gevo as of the company's March federal filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Khosla also has close ties to another venture capital firm whose team includes Al Gore, the former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate in 2000.

Gevo did not immediately respond to queries about what role, if any, Khosla played in helping the firm secure government grants or contracts.

Republicans upset over Navy spending on biofuels are backing legislation that could bar the Pentagon from contracting for fuels that are more expensive than traditional petroleum, something that worries military officials.

The officials agree that purchases for operational quantities of fuel should be at competitive prices, but they warn that legislative language could restrict them and ultimately make it difficult for them to economize.

"Congress has been very vocal in not wanting us to pay a huge premium to use alternative fuels. I get that," Geiss said.

"Our goal is that it's got to be cost-competitive. But cost- competitive doesn't mean that you've got a bright line that you can't even .... (exceed by) a penny. I think in trying to define these lines, they may be presenting some challenges for us," he said.

Supporters of the alternative fuel industry argue that green energy spending will eventually help cushion price volatility. They have begun to push back against Republican criticism.

A coalition of groups, including the powerful American Farm Bureau Federation, bought full-page ads in a Capitol Hill publication this week with glossy photos of biofuels success stories.

Those featured Gevo's Luverne, Minnesota, plant for producing isobutanol, an alcohol that can be added to gasoline like ethanol or processed into other chemicals.

Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, and a group of retired senior officers briefed about 100 Senate staffers on Thursday about the Navy's use of alternative fuels.

Dan Nolan, a retired Army colonel, said biofuels were currently too expensive to purchase in operational quantities but it made sense to begin testing because "strategically if we can start moving toward that … it's going to be worth every penny we invest in it now."

Despite Republican criticism over biofuel spending, the military is proceeding with its programs. Geiss said the Air Force expected to finish certification soon of the alternative fuels that appear to have the best chance of reaching commercial production in the coming years.

The Navy's Green Fleet demonstration takes place on Wednesday, and the service is moving ahead with plans to help fund biofuel refineries.

"At the end of the day," said Geiss, "if their program is successful, all of the services would benefit."