posted February 05, 2007 11:17 PM              

Cheney's Fund Manager Attacks ... Cheney
By Brett Arends, TheStreet.com

The oil-based energy policies usually associated with Vice President Dick Cheney have just come under scathing attack. There's nothing remarkable about that, of course -- except the person doing the attacking.

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Step forward, Jeremy Grantham -- Cheney's own investment manager. "What were we thinking?' Grantham demands in a four-page assault on U.S. energy policy mailed last week to all his clients, including the vice president.

Titled "While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, Global Warming, and a Love of Feel-Good Data," Grantham's philippic adds up to an extraordinary critique of U.S. energy policy over the past two decades.

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What Cheney makes of it can only be imagined.

"Successive U.S. administrations have taken little interest in either oil substitution or climate change," he writes, "and the current one has even seemed to have a vested interest in the idea that the science of climate change is uncertain."

Yet "there is now nearly universal scientific agreement that fossil fuel use is causing a rise in global temperatures," he writes. "The U.S. is the only country in which environmental data is steadily attacked in a well-funded campaign of disinformation (funded mainly by one large oil company)."

That's Exxon Mobil.

As for Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, who appears everywhere to question global warming, Grantham mocks him as "the solitary plausible academic [the skeptics] can dig up, out of hundreds working in the field."

And for those nonscientists who are still undecided about the issue, Grantham reminds them of an old logical principle known as Pascal's Paradox. It may be better known as the "what if we're wrong?" argument. If we act to stop global warming and we're wrong, well, we could waste some money. If we don't act, and we're wrong ... you get the picture.

As for the alleged economic costs of going "green," Grantham says that industrialized countries with better fuel efficiency have, on average, enjoyed faster economic growth over the past 50 years than the U.S.

Grantham says that other industrialized countries have far better energy productivity than the U.S. The GDP produced per unit of energy in Italy is 50% higher. Fifty percent. Japan: 60%.

And China "already has auto fuel efficiency standards well ahead of the U.S.!" he adds. You've probably heard about China's slow economic growth.

Grantham adds that past U.S. steps in this area, like sulfur dioxide caps adopted by the late President Gerald Ford, have done far more and cost far less than predicted. "Ingenuity sprung out of the woodwork when it was correctly motivated," he writes.

There is also a political and economic cost to our oil dependency, Grantham notes. Yet America could have eliminated its oil dependency on the Middle East years ago with just a "reasonable set of increased efficiencies." All it would take is 10% fewer vehicles, each driving 10% fewer miles and getting 50% more miles per gallon. Under that "sensible but still only moderately aggressive policy," he writes, "not one single barrel would have been needed from the Middle East." Not one.

I repeat: This is not some rainbow coalition. This is not even Al Gore. Grantham is the chairman of Boston-based fund management company Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo. He is British-born but has lived here since the early 1960s.

More Coverage:
· Oil Finishes Below $59 a Barrel
· Bloggingstocks on Cheney

Talk About It: Post Thoughts

Grantham is, like most fund managers, prudent, conservative and inclined to favor the free market and smaller government. He has even said he supported Bush-Cheney in 2000. That doesn't make him particularly political. He also manages a portion of the Heinz-Kerry fortune, as well as those of many other wealthy types.

But he's certainly a man Cheney respects highly. According to the vice president's last personal financial disclosure form, filed with the Federal Election Commission, Cheney has somewhere between $1.6 million and $6 million of his family's money invested in four of Grantham's funds. These aren't even index funds. These are discretionary funds, where you trust the manager to look at the landscape, analyze all the data, and make the best investments. Cheney must have a lot of faith in Grantham's judgement and analytical skills.

CONTINUED
http://articles.news.aol.com/business/_a/cheneys-fund-manager-attacks--cheney/20070205144509990001

posted February 06, 2007 12:07 AM            

As for energy policy and energy independence, leftist morons have blocked every avenue with any possibility of success.

They're totally against nuclear power plants.
They're totally against hydro-electric power plants
They're totally against building new refineries and even expanding the production capabilities of existing refineries.
They're totally against drilling...anywhere, including Alaska, ANWAR and off shore.

The only thing they are in favor of is taking productive food crop land out of production to produce corn for ethanol...which cannot possibly fill the gap and is much less efficient as a source of energy...and also produces some pollution..including CO2 which leftists say is killing the planet.

There are already consequences in the rush to ethanol.

People in Mexico and I presume other places as well have seen the cost of one of their staple foods..corn and corn products including tortillas skyrocket in price in Mexico...double the price in the last year.

posted February 09, 2007 02:58 PM            

quote:

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Democrats aren't against hydroelectricity. They are against hydroelectric plants affecting wildlife. Why do Conservatives care so little about conserving the environment?...acoustic

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Lawsuit after lawsuit were filed to delay, obstruct and raise the cost of projects to the point it cost additional tens of millions just in legal fees.

So, spare me the nonsense. These leftist bullsh*t artists are nothing if not creative liars. They lie, not only about endangered species, endangered plant life but about their real intended goals as well.

Let's just call these liars what they really are. Anti-civilization.

One doesn't have to look very deeply into how they live their own lives. I give you Algore, Puffington, Peelosi, Kennedy..both and a chorus of other far left radicals who do not practice...in any way...what they preach. What they have, is their cause of the day.

I'm tired of being harangued by morons and hypocrites.

posted February 09, 2007 04:27 PM            

quote:

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While many of our Democratic colleagues take issue with a variety of provisions in this bill, these Dissenting Views will deal with two of the worst problems with bill –– provisions relating to electricity and hydroelectric relicensing. In each case, Democrats offered substitutes that were defeated along party lines.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/legviews/108lvhr0006-elec.shtml

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quote:

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Again, I note my personal disappointment over the language contained in the hydroelectric title of this legislation. In the last Congress, we advanced compromise language that was developed and supported by all the relevant parties. This language hardly enjoys that level of support. It tips the balance in favor of the industry, and undercuts the resource agencies’ ability to impose necessary conditions to ensure hydropower projects protect our river systems. Indeed, this language ignores the fact that our nation’s waterways are public resources in which many parties – resource agencies, states, tribes, farmers, sportsmen and everyday citizens – have interests that are just as important as those of the hydropower industry.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/press/108st19.shtml

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posted February 09, 2007 05:00 PM            

Still having a problem with definitions, aren't you acoustic!

posted February 09, 2007 06:56 PM            

relicensing and licensing cannot be used interchangeably.

posted February 10, 2007 01:13 PM            

New hydroelectric power plants are exactly one of the issues which leftist radical, so called environmentalists have fought tooth and nail against.

That was one of the vehicles towards energy independence I mentioned, the loonies object to and the one you chose to bring up in defense of the lunatic fringe left.

There is no place on earth where anything can be built...anything at all...which will not displace one or another specimen of flora, fauna or biota.