Global Warming Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/x-325-Global-Warming-Examiner
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    • Thu Jun 5th 19:04 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Homeowner Equity at Post WWII Low
      I am not surprised that home equity is lower with falling home prices. But that may not be the only reason. With interest rates below the inflation rate, the prospect of the dollar continuing to fall, and investments available in hard assets and/or foreign currencies; wouldn't it make sense to borrow against your home at a fixed rate with the plan on paying it off later with 'cheaper' dollars even if you could pay off the loan balance now.
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    • Tue May 27th 12:38 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Which Are the Bargains In Solar Stocks?
      Update on SOLF - The Earnings projection for SOLF in my chart is apparently incorrect. Newstar - appreciate your pointing it out. I posted the projected 2009 earnings number after checking with a couple of sources. Today one of my sources has reduced the number to $1.34. Newstar got a $1.16 number. At $1.34 the 2009 P/E would be 15. Remember these are estimates. I don't trust the 5 year growth estimate for SOLF, but the PEG would be higher than the 1.03 number listed in the chart. SOLF is a stock that doesn't have as good a visibility as the other solar stocks and as such I consider it to be very high risk. Sorry for the incorrect data.
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    • Fri May 23rd 12:33 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      America's Energy Policy: Coming to Terms with Reality
      It really is about supply and demand. The politicians just don't get how badly they are hurting our economy. For example, did you know that spending $1 trillion in Iraq is destroying our economy. We could do better spending that money at home. But, we can't drill in ANWR! That's a financial loss of $1.4 trillion that goes to our 'friends' in OPEC. Part of the reason that oil prices are so high is because the value of the dollar is falling. That hurts everyone in the country, not just because gasoline is more expensive, but because the buying power of the dollar is falling. Food is more expensive.

      Companies like Exxon are slowly going out of business because they can't replace their reserves as fast as they are depleting them. They produce 2.5 million barrels per day. Were do these people in congress expect us to buy our oil? Some of these people think the solution is a windfall profits tax! How much new oil is that going to produce? How much money do they expect to collect from the tax? I guess to be 'fair' you have to make everyone equally poor and miserable.
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    • Thu May 22nd 13:58 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Oils Well That Ends Well
      Crack spreads are low and capacity utilization is low so we probably have enough current refining capacity. We are actually getting gasoline imports from Europe. They use a higher percentage of diesel and ship us their excess gasoline. This also causes diesel prices here to be higher.

      The problem here is political. There are a lot of countries that for various reasons are not developing their oil resources. Saudi Arabia is looking longer term. Countries like Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia are all using their oil revenue to fund immediate economic needs without making investments that will pay off far in the future (greater than a few years.) Some countries like Mexico and Russia have nationalistic policies that prevent foreign investment in their oil industry. I posted an article on my web site talking about Mexico. They could run out of oil in 10 years. Pemex doesn't have the resources to develop new reserves. They get 40% of their national budget funded with oil. They will be hurt severely if they don't invest in new development. And the liberal congress in Mexico refuses to change their laws and even hold rallies to denounce the politicians who would 'exploit' and 'steal' their resources. Unfortunately, it also sounds a lot like our congress.

      Many OPEC countries are experiencing or expecting decreases in future production. Nigeria just announced they expect their production to keep falling. There are not many countries that are increasing production.
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    • Thu May 22nd 13:40 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Peak Oil Stocks for the Future
      I agree with Brahm here. It does not make sense that the author wants to 'protect' our environment by not drilling ANWR, but suggests coal to liquids which would release tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide. These types of plants can't get funding because the investors realize that future carbon emission limitations might prevent them from operating the plants for their expected lifetimes and they are not going to risk losing the huge investments required. It is even difficult now to fund a coal-fired power plant for the same reason.

      We should have a plan to reduce greenhouse emissions and it should start with cutting back on fuels like coal that have the highest carbon emissions for the energy produced. Oil should be in the mix of fuels we use now until we can produce all of our energy from alternative fuels. I have a web site on Global Warming (examiner.com/x-325-Gl... where I discuss how the mix of fuels affects our environment. So called environmentalists who are against any type of fossil fuel production are actually making the global warming situation worse. We are not producing enough new alternative energy to even meet increasing demand, much less replace existing fossil fuel consumption. I could take 40 years to switch to alternative fuels. To suggest that everything will change in a few years is not reasonable. 'All we need is hope' will not put gas in the tank.

      Not producing oil from ANWR hurts us economically, about $1 trillion dollars that we will import from foreign countries. It hurts our trade balance which hurts the value of the dollar. It causes industry to move off-shore to countries like China that pollute worse than we do. It hurts the people in Alaska who won't get the tax revenue for their state endowment fund. It hurts everyone who has to pay higher prices for gasoline (special thank you to Bill Clinton), and can't buy an alternative energy vehicle this year. It's not just ANWR, but also all of the oil and gas resources off our coast that can't be utilized.

      Drilling in ANWR will only require about 2,000 acres out of 1.2 million acres in the reserve. A lot of infrastructure like the Alaska pipleline is already in place. Some of the time-line estimates include the time to fight the legal challenges. This supply could come on faster than some of the estimates.

      I am actually very bullish on natural gas producers. Replacing all of our coal plants with natural gas would cut the emission of carbon dioxide from electric generation in half. But it is not going to happen in 3 years. This would be a huge infrastructure investment in new gas wells and pipelines. Maybe in 30 years, a little at a time. Some of that natural gas may come from ANWR.
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    • Fri May 16th 12:52 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Closing LDK Solar, Keeping Trina
      There seems to be a lot of short positions in the solar cell manufacturers. I myself, don't see the short argument. If anyone can present the case for shorting these stocks, I would like to read it.
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    • Fri May 16th 12:41 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Solar Cell Manufacturers Have Room to Grow
      Robert - Let me try to explain my math. 3.8 GW (billion watts) is the total combined output of all the solar cells produced. This is the amount of electricity that can be produced at any one time. This is the equivalent to the output of 4 nuclear plants. If the cells produce power for 7 hours per day, then the amount of power you get in one day is 3.8 GW x 8 hours or 26.6 GW hours. Multiply by 365 days and you get the annual production of 9,709 GW hours that will be produced each year by the solar cells manufactured in 2007. The 12.4 GW of capacity is the sum of all solar cells produced before and through 2007. Since solar cells last a long time, each year the world solar capacity will increase by the amount of solar cells produced in that year. Currently the demand for electric power is growing faster each year than the worlds manufacturing capacity for producing solar cells. Manufacturing capacity is growing at an exponential rate, but even with that rapid growth, it will be several years before manufacturing capacity will provide a meaningful amount of new solar cells each year to meet demand. Hope this helps.
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    • Fri May 16th 11:38 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Solar Cell Manufacturers Have Room to Grow
      Jack - You are correct that only a part of the world is enjoying subsidies for solar cells. The manufacturers are maxed out on production right now anyway. My analysis was very rough to show only the substantial room left to grow in the market. Over the next couple of years the production capacity is likely to grow and new data will allow for a more exacting analysis of when capacity catches up to demand. There are a lot of unknowns now, such as how much, if any, fossil fuel energy production will be removed and replace with renewable energy. How big will future subsidies be? How much will costs for solar cells go down? Still for now I believe solar companies will be expanding production and this should drive their stock prices higher. If they also start to enjoy expanding multiples, the stock prices have the potential to go very much higher.
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    • Tue May 13th 19:05 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      NAR's Lawrence Yun Continues to Mislead on Housing
      The two extremes: things are much better than you think and the sky is falling.
      The prices are going to come down/ be weak until supply equals demand. This will happen when the overhang of people needing or wanting to sell their homes is cleared by people who have a chance to buy more now more affordable homes. The Fed is doing all it can to create easy money for people to buy homes by making mortgages more affordable and increasing inflation which will drive up the value in dollars of real assets like homes.

      Are home prices weak - yes
      Will home prices keep dropping - maybe
      Will home prices fall to 1999 levels - not with current Fed policy

      Probably a good time to start looking at the builders again, especially the strongly capitalized ones.
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    • Fri May 9th 18:40 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      An Energy Policy That Makes Sense, Revisited
      I agree with most of your analysis. We really need a national energy policy that develops nuclear, wind, and solar.

      The one energy resource that we have in abundance that is cleaner than coal is natural gas. Drilling technology has opened up very large shale deposits. Natural Gas could be a bridge fuel that could replace oil and coal in many applications thus reducing our need for more imported oil and starting to clean our environment.

      How about developing cars and trucks that run on natural gas? New electric power plants will be built with natural gas as the fuel.

      Eventually nuclear, hydrogen from nuclear, and synthetic fuels will dominate, but in the mean time I like the gas producers: APC, CHK, COP, DVN, ECA, EP, SWN, XTO. (I own shares of APC, CHK, COP and SWN)
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    • Fri May 9th 14:59 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Uranium: Safely and Efficiently Powering the Future
      I don't understand nuclear and it is so scary. How can we make that type of decision, especially since some people know that it will kill us all. Electric cars don't make since without nuclear so I plan on a more sensible solution. I plan on buying a horse and keeping it in the spare bedroom of my condo.
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    • Wed May 7th 14:11 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Commodities vs. REITS
      I liked your article. Lots of good background on REITS and Commodity investing. In regards to REITS, the current credit crunch is limiting the availability of funds to property developers, thereby reducing supply. This has the same positive effect on existing properties as high interest rates without the actual cost of higher rates. This should be a positive for the large, existing, quality REITS. If anyone on the site has suggestions on specific REITS that might benefit, I am interested.
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    • Wed Apr 30th 18:38 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      3 CEFs for Emerging Market Debt Exposure
      I also own EDD, mainly because I would looking for income producing bonds that were NOT denominated in US Dollars. Many of the funds buy bonds denominated in dollars.
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    • Thu Apr 24th 17:39 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Big Oil Asks: Where Will Tomorrow's Oil Come From?
      I agree with Jack but we will probably do the wrong things:
      - Tax all the greedy oil companies to capture their windfall profits
      - Never drill in ANWR because it is only about 1 year supply at current rates
      - Nuclear is absurd - It only works in France
      -We should invest our money in Nuclear Fusion - which is clean and politically correct
      - There is more power from the Sun and Wind then we could possibly ever use
      - Drilling off the coasts would ruin our environment and only reward the oil companies
      - We should develop solar powered cars
      - Oil prices are too high and when we find the person who sets the price we should shoot him
      - make all cars get at least 34 mpg
      - We could all start taking the bus
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    • Thu Apr 24th 17:23 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Those Bubbling Solar Stocks
      The amount of annual production for all the solar stocks is only on the order of a couple of Giga Watts (GW) per year. That is about 2 nuclear plants. The world could use 10 times or more capacity easily as long a governments are going to provide incentives to buyers. These stocks could easily all grow production at 100% or multiple rates for several years before they reach a level of production that saturates demand.
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