President Obama continues to have uncanny (read bad) karma when it comes to speeches about energy sources he wants to tap and subsequent disasters related to same.

In February 2010, Obama gave a speech in Maryland about the need for renewable and non-fossil fuel sources of energy, including nuclear power.

In the speech, he hailed nuclear power, along with solar and wind-generated energy, and boasted of $8 billion in loan guarantees his administration was making available to build in Georgia the U.S.’s first nuclear power plant in almost 30 years. It would be a boon for clean energy, producing energy without all the greenhouse gases of coal.

Slightly more than a year later, Japan’s magnitude 8.9 earthquake and resultant tsunami, besides killing thousands, severely damaged several nuclear reactors, causing the release of radioactive material.

That has led to renewed concerns about the safety of nuclear energy. That, in turn, has made it more of a challenge, to say the least, for the president to effectively pitch nuclear power as strongly as he did before to a likely more skeptical public.

All this was preceded, of course, by the president last Spring announcing that his administration was opening up certain parts of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore oil production.

Weeks later, the BP-Deep Horizon gulf disaster happened.

I’m not saying there’s a connection. It’s just odd how seemingly one by one his energy initiatives are suffering these setbacks.

The president has also mentioned wind and solar energy in many speeches.

Which leads me to ask, is it just me or has the Sun been looking a little strange lately? Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.