A Mormon President?

Mormon Temple, Oakland, CaliforniaI regularly write for the US Reformed Christian newspaper Christian Renewal. They have just published this latest from me offering the thoughts of a non-US citizen and voter suggesting how Christians should view a potential Mormon candidate. Here's a taster:

The issue is whether Mormonism is simply a variant type of Christianity. The salvation issues taught by the LDS shows plainly it is anything but a variant, being neither “mainstream” nor “Christian”. That does not mean that Mitt Romney would not make a good president, nor would handle the US economy better than Obama, nor that he would be anything other than a good family man, husband and father. The larger point is that the November election is not going to be between a Christian Obama v a pseudo-Christian Romney. The former will run on his presidential record; while he still fails to answer serious questions about the nature of his professed Christian faith (and there is much evidence that it is lacking). The latter, will run largely on his past good economic and business record; while a professing member of cultic Mormonism. 

However US CR readers or US Christians more generally vote in November, it is important not to allow the world to believe that Mitt Romney is a Christian; or that Mormonism is anything less than a fully-fledged cult with core tenets of faith a million miles away from mainstream, historic and biblical Christianity.  

For more: go via my good friend John Van Dyk's (in development) Christian Renewal site here.

Has De La Rue Already Printed All Pre-Euro Currencies?

Inside information I recently received...fascinating story this.

For the full article go to The Commentator (UK) or Energy Tribune (US).

UK Coalition on Energy: Dumb and Dumber

My article as titled above published here at The Commentator (UK) and here at Energy Tribune (US).

Here's a taster:

UK Energy plc is not in the best of hands. Quite honestly, the Muppets could have come up with a more coherent script than that contained in the coalition’s new energy bill.

With investor interest in developing North Sea oil and gas fields running at an all-time high, and parts of the UK onshore and offshore sitting on potentially world class shale gas reserves, it beggars belief that David Cameron’s coalition partners could end up presenting UK energy as a bad news story.

Somehow they managed it.

How NOT to do a Public Protest

The Occupy Protest nitwits should read this (if they can read). How NOT to do a p[ublic protest. Brilliant. Go here for the full article, but here's the last four of seven hints on how to protest:

4.      If you bring together five or more environmental activist groups and publicly announce a joint protest to show the full force of public fury against a science conference, a free enterprise group or some other undesirable entity, try to show up with at least 40 protesters.

5.      If you bring fewer than 40 people to a protest, you probably don’t want to chant “We are the 99 percent!” It simply makes you look foolish.

6.      If there are 40 or less of you chanting in the street, and you really do comprise 99 percent, that means there are only 41 people in the world who agree with you, giving you the benefit of the doubt and rounding up the 99-percent figure.

7.      When your protest leader is a troll-looking creature wearing a long, black rubber boot on his head and holding a megaphone with the self-identifying words “Vermin Supreme” written on it, you may wish to call off your protest after all.

Europe's Other Power Crisis: Energy

Just published here at The Commentator (UK) and here at Energy Tribune (US). And re-published here at Fuel Fix (Houston Chronicle) and here at the UK Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Here's a taster:

What’s the difference between the European Union and the Titanic? Answer: the Titanic was holed by a single immovable object and took minutes to sink. The EU, another allegedly “unsinkable” project, is taking a little longer. As if Eurozone crisis and keeping Greece afloat wasn’t threatening enough, the next crisis is looming: energy – a crisis entirely of the EU’s own policy-making.

The EU’s ideologically-driven Energy Road Map prioritized ‘green’ renewable energy, diverting away from Russian natural gas dependency and harmonizing energy and environmental needs. The result: a devastatingly inept screw up that threatens continent-wide power outages even, as Die Welt recently reported, in Germany as early as next winter.

In short order, EU energy policies have created an unsustainable, publicly-subsidized, market-skewing ‘green’ energy bubble, eschewed a cheap fossil fuels policy and realistic alternatives to Russian gas imports. Together those failed policies have resulted in the double double-whammy of soaring of energy prices and, as is now being reported, diminishing European industrial competitiveness.

Argentina's 'Chavez' Risks Shale-fuelled Economic Miracle

My latest article provides context for two things: Argentina's resource nationalisation (at the expense of Spain's Repsol) and her sabre-rattling towards Britain. Both are crude given Argentina's economic and diplomatic basket-case status. Published here at The Commentator (UK) and here at Energy Tribune (US).

Ehrlich, False Prophets and the 'Futures' Market

Time we held the false prophets of environmental alarmism accountable for their abysmal failures. My artilce published here at Energy Tribune.  Here's a taster:

When Elijah stood on Mount Carmel he faced a formidable array of 950 prophets (I Kings 18:19). All were resolute in their populist ‘consensus’ theory about a troubling environmental matter. But Elijah didn’t mind the odds. He wasn’t interested in predictions and theory, just hard facts. The issue on Carmel was one that countless would-be prophets throughout the ages have played on: weather (no rain) and climate change (a three-year drought).

It didn’t end well for the false prophets on Carmel. And it was faith in their theoretic sacrificial solutions that proved to be their downfall. These days, of course, we don’t put false prophets to the sword. Instead we put them on the public payroll, give them status awards and grant them high-profile media prestige, no matter how pathetic their prophetic insight may have been. Take Paul Ehrlich, for example.

Ehrlich came to prominence in 1968 with the publication of his environmental blockbuster The Population Bomb. The book’s central Malthusian thesis is that a growing population is unsustainable in a world of dwindling finite resources. As Malthus’ scenario failed to materialize, so too Ehrlich’s apocalyptic vision of hungry and dead bodies on the streets in the 1970s proved a total fiction. Not that this has deterred Ehrlich. He has continued to make a healthy living from a litany of population predictions – not one of which has come to pass.

The Sheer Idiocy and Folly of Theoretic Climate Alarmism

Another short video and as good as it gets in summing up all the nutjob theories of the end-is-nigh climate alarmists - and the damage it is doing to common sense, intellectual thought and to humankind per se. 

Made by the good people at Free Market America - good job.

The Rise of Leftist Eco-Fascism

My article (as titled above) published at here at The Commentator and here at Energy Tribune compelete with 'green police' video (see previous blog blog).

This is where we are heading as the climate alarmists (while losing the scientific case) still hold sway over governments.

Here's a taster:

"Fascism per se has its roots in the beliefs and ideology of the radical Left, not as is often portrayed, the Right, radical or otherwise. German National socialism (it still exists), communism, even Islamism, all favor Big Government, centralized power and control, the subversion of democratic processes and, especially, the restriction of liberty and free speech.

If fascism in any guise doesn’t get what it wants, it has always sought ways of grabbing power first by bullying others to keep silent, then asserting the need to “put democracy on hold”. We can all understand the extreme need in times of war. But as Lovelock says, we have no idea what the climate is doing. Yet the eco-fascists are gaining social headway imposing their will through regulatory ‘laws’ often emanating from unaccountable quangos (quasi-non-governmental organizations), unelected czars and other un-democratic agencies.

US Green Police to Enforce "Environmental Justice"

If you're wondering how far eco-fascism has got...wonder no more.

The US Homeland Security Dept, has just announced it is setting up local law enforcement "green police" to enforce "environmental justice". I kid you not. And Audi are already using the reality to help sell their cars as per this Super Bowl ad.

UK Goes for Shale-fuelled 'Gold'

My article on the bonanza available from world class shale gas reserves for the UK - and the idiot green  fact-free fractivists that would prefer we went back to live 'quaintly' in the dark ages.

For the full article go here. Here's a taster:

While Eurocrats and eco-fractivists remain captivated by the synchronized stupidity of anti-fossil fuel policies and the precautionary principle, some UK officials, at least, perceive 2012 as the time to go for what promises to be an Olympian-scale prize: shale-fuelled economic ‘gold’.

Curing Murdoch-aphobia: A Lesson in Media Democracy

Thanks to The Commentator for publishing my latest piece (titled above) as the Digger flies in to give evidence at the Leveson Inquiry on Tuesday and Wednesday.

For the full article go here but here's a taster:

Fears over “journalistic integrity”, however, just don’t stack up in Britain. Even when son James as Sky CEO, there was no discernible ideological and editorial differences between Sky, BBC and ITV; all three lean left in their anti-US, anti-Israel, anti-Christian news reporting and analysis. Equally, Murdoch’s Sun newspaper supported New Labour not the Conservatives during the Blair years; years at a time when the Conservative Party was much further right-of-centre than it has become under Cameron’s ‘liberal conservativism’.

Not that the anti-Murdoch media war being waged against News Corp is a “fair and balanced” struggle about democracy and genuine debate in the public square – if only it were. If propaganda and bias were really the concern in Britain, the BBC would have lost its ‘public service’ broadcast licence years ago. The notion of the BBC unbiasedly serving its public is demonstrably untrue. Whole websites exist to document the BBC’s left/ liberal culture of bias in its reporting on Israel, climate, poverty, race and religion. Even its own internal reports confirm its on-going biases. Time and again the BBC has to be told to be more balanced in its coverage of the climate issue, for instance. Against this background, concerns over “journalistic standards” at Sky, especially its possible “Fox-ification”, are laughable.

Big Oil, Big Profits, Big Green Lies

The above article from me is published this weekend here at The Commentator (UK) and here at Energy Tribune (US).

Climate Dissent Launches at NASA

My article (as titled above) published at here Energy Tribune (US) and here The Commentator (UK). Here's a taster:

That’s the thing about flying to the moon. It gives you an untrammelled perspective and respect for the real world, facts and hard data. In a blast worthy of a rocket launch, 49 former NASA scientists, astronauts and engineers have finally had enough of NASA’s climate advocacy role. Going public with a letter to Chief NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, the group pull no punches in asserting the lack of empirical evidence in support of the agency’s “extreme position” as a bastion of climate change alarmism.

The letter’s co-signatories “respectfully request” that both NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) – the latter run by the high priest of climate alarmism James Hansen – refrain from making “unproven remarks in public releases and websites”.

Claims that man-made CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are “not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data.” And, alluding indirectly to the high-profile headline grabbing alarmism of James Hansen and his GISS team, the letter emphatically states “the science is NOT settled”.

Iran or No Iran, There Will Be Oil

Our latest article (as titled above), just published in the March/April issue of The Maritime Executive, described as a "brilliant essay" and "must read". Now how did that happen...?

Not allowed to re-produce it all here, so here's a taster:

Iran is the new Gordian knot and similar to Alexander the Great’s solution whatever cannot be untied can be cut. Although a sudden and catastrophic event, buoyed by headlines, may push the price of oil to over $150, measures already taken, will settle the situation relatively quickly.

The hand-wringing public angst of politicians and pundits alike contemplating an Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities is overblown, and for two reasons. Firstly, Iran’s neighbors in the Middle East are fast-revealing where their true loyalties lie – and it isn’t with Tehran – and secondly, Iran’s oil power is already declining.

Speaking at the biennial International Energy Forum conference in Kuwait in mid-March, Saudi oil minister Ali Al Naimi offered this commitment over Iranian oil exports, “Saudi Arabia and others remain poised to make good the shortfall, perceived or real, in crude oil supply.” Right there, in that single sentence, is the bottom line which should allow Western politicians to rest easy on two counts. First, over the potential loss of Iranian oil in the wake of an Israeli strike; second, over the oft-repeated myth that a “conflagration across the Middle East” would ensue.