What's hot, what's not, in energy land

What's hot? Wind says the MSM and all the ads being sponsored by former oilman T. Boone Pickens. Pickens is going to get lots of play because he can spend lots of money. You may have seen some of his ads.

Pickens even got one beknighted MSM reporter to drive a natural gas powered car. Radical, no? No, there are millions of CNG-powered cars on the planet, just not in the U.S. And we recently blogged about how the U.S. is increasing its domestic supply of natural gas. However, we still import a fraction of our natural gas from Canada and Mexico.

Not Hot?

The price of crude oil has now dropped so low I'm going to petition my Congressperson to suggest a bail-out for oil speculators. Poor things, the price is down below $110 per barrel. Why? Less demand. High price is driving drivers to drive less in the U.S. And economic woes in places like the U.S. and Great Britain are lowering industrial and personal use of oil-derived products.

Guess there's gravity even in the markets. What's goes up.... Some observers are now saying oil could get to $85 per barrel by the end of the year. Maybe we should organize a bail-out for Exxon and Chevron? We could model it on the banking buy-out underway.

Does this mean the bursting of the alternative energy bubble?

[poll id=31]

Well, oil prices were sliding during August. And what was rising at the same time?

Green hot sector

Exchange traded funds that focus on cleantech were up more than the overall stock market. And the VCs and analysts are continuing to stump for their favorite investments and cleantech overall. Piper Jaffrey for one.

And what's really hot, record hot actually?

We are. Researchers say the temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are hotter than they've been at any other time in the past 1300 years. At some point, who's to blame may begin to morph into, what'll we do now?