1. Chart of the Day I. The chart above shows the share of after-tax income spent on energy by income quintiles in 2013 (BLS data here). For example, households in the lowest income quintile in the US spent an average of $971 in 2013 on electricity ($81 per month), $1,231 on gas and motor oil ($102.50 per month) and $217 on natural gas, for total energy spending of $2,419. Based on average disposable income of $10,092 in 2013, the poorest 20% of American households spend 24% of their after-tax income on energy. As the chart shows, the middle income quintile spent 10% of their disposable income on energy, while the richest 20% spent only 5% of their income on energy.
Related: See Diana Furchgot-Roth’s article “Pope Francis’ Plan to Help the Environment Will Backfire,” where she makes the case that following the Pope’s green agenda to abandon fossil fuels and focus on cleaner energy will raise energy prices for the poor and hurt the most vulnerable in societies throughout the world.
2. Quotation of the Day. Matt Ridley on “The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science“:
The great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses tested — or so I used to think. Now, thanks largely to climate science, I see bad ideas can persist for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they become intolerant dogmas.
Inch by inch, the huge green pressure groups have grown fat on a diet of constant but ever-changing alarm about the future. That these alarms—over population growth, pesticides, rain forests, acid rain, ozone holes, sperm counts, genetically modified crops—have often proved wildly exaggerated does not matter: the organizations that did the most exaggeration trousered the most money. In the case of climate, the alarm is always in the distant future, so can never be debunked.
These huge green multinationals, with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, have now systematically infiltrated science, as well as industry and media, with the result that many high-profile climate scientists and the journalists who cover them have become one-sided cheerleaders for alarm, while a hit squad of increasingly vicious bloggers polices the debate to ensure that anybody who steps out of line is punished. They insist on stamping out all mention of the heresy that climate change might not be lethally dangerous.
Today’s climate science is based on a pre-ordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored and analytical procedures are treated as evidence. Funds are not available to investigate alternative theories. Those who express even the mildest doubts about dangerous climate change are ostracized, accused of being in the pay of fossil-fuel interests or starved of funds; those who take money from green pressure groups and make wildly exaggerated statements are showered with rewards and treated by the media as neutral.
3. Chart of the Day II (above). New international oil production data from the EIA show that for the 28th straight month starting in November 2011, the US was the world’s largest petroleum producer and American oil and gas companies produced more total petroleum products (crude oil and other petroleum products like natural gas plant liquids, lease condensate, and refined petroleum products) in February (14.43 million barrels per day) than No. 2 Saudi Arabia (11.52 million barrels per day).
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4. Chart of the Day III (above). Based on the new international oil production from the EIA, the table above shows that as a separate oil-producing nation, “Saudi Texas” would have been the world’s sixth largest oil producer in the month of February with daily output that averaged 3.68 million barrels.
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5. Chart of the Day IV. Texas is also a major producer of natural gas, and as a separate country the Lone Star State would have been the world’s No. 3 producer of dry natural gas in 2012 (most recent year available) based on data from the Energy Information Administration, featured in the table above from the American Petroleum Institute.
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6. Markets in Everything /Markets to the Rescue / Thanks Capitalism: A San Francisco biotech startup has managed to 3D print fake rhino horns that carry the same genetic fingerprint as the actual horn. It plans to flood the Chinese market with these cheap horns to curb poaching. Source.
7. Chart of the Day V (above), via the API Energy Tomorrow blog (“Consumer Interests Ahead of Ethanol Interests”) showing that most vehicles on the road today are not recommended to use E15 by automakers: For model years 2014 and 2015, half of manufacturers do not recommend using E15 in their vehicles (see chart above) and for model years 2001 through 2011, not a single manufacturer recommends using E15. And yet the EPA is pushing for more E15 – a fuel mixture of 15% ethanol with gasoline – so that the U.S. gasoline market will accommodate more ethanol and allow refiners to meet the ethanol volume requirements proposed by the EPA.
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8. Major Victory for Property Rights and Economic Freedom. Raisin farmers have prevailed over unconstitutional, uncompensated government taking of private property as the SCOTUS strikes down by a 5-4 ruling the USDA seizures of California raisins going back to 1949. Via Reason. (ht/Morgan Frank)
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9. Chart of the Day VI (above). The World Federation of Exchanges, a trade association of 64 of the largest publicly regulated stock market exchanges around the world, released data recently for May showing that the strong global stock market rally continues as the market capitalization of the world’s major surged to another record high of $70.4 trillion last month.
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10. Video of the Day. In this Ted Talk video below, watch an 11-year-old prodigy perform old-school jazz.
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