Richard Morrison and Marc Scribner welcome guest co-host Alex Nowrasteh to Episode 102 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We take a special look at the prognosis for the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil spill (segment begins approximately 8:20 in).

Read the full story

Here’s something I didn’t expect: Quite a few “green” journalists on the energy policy beat have concluded that President Barack Obama’s moratorium on new drilling in the Gulf is seriously flawed. To be sure, the LA Times editorial board has come out in favor of an extended drilling ban, but among reporters who have spent time in Louisiana, there’s an acknowledgment that the moratorium is hurting livelihoods.

I was recently in Dallas, and there I had the opportunity to speak with a broadcast…

Read the full story

Richard Morrison and Marc Scribner welcome back long-lost co-host Michelle Minton to Episode 101 of the LibertyWeek podcast. Among other issues, we discuss the IPCC’s latest attempt to muzzle its own advisory scientists (segment begins approximately 10 minutes in).

Read the full story

That’s the question I address today on the free-market energy blog, MasterResource.Org.

This morning, the  House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Environment is holding a hearing on the Blowout Prevention Act. The bill text says that the federal government “shall not” issue a permit for an offshore oil well unless the applicant can “demonstrate” that he has the “capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail.” However, as the ongoing disaster…

Read the full story

Back in February 2009, when everyone thought a deep depression was imminent, Keynesian economists and their political boosters demanded big government spending. According to their calculations, a “timely, targeted, and temporary” infusion of taxpayer money would defibrillate our moribund economy, the growth of which would make the trillion-dollar price tag seem like small potatoes. It was elementary!

So the White House pushed, and the Congress passed, a gigantic trillion-dollar stimulus, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It was, however, anything but…

Read the full story

In what has to be one of the most disgraceful examples of political, unscientific attacks, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a report, “Expert credibility in climate change,” alleging to show that climate change “deniers” have less impressive credentials and haven’t published as much as those promoting anthropogenic climate change. With the billions in research money given to climate change advocates over the past 15 years, and the recent ClimateGate email disclosures about shutting skeptics out of…

Read the full story

Sen. James Inhofe’s daily Environment & Public Works Press Blog is a source I check early and often. The posts, which are more like essays than press releases, are incisive, rigorous, and witty.

In today’s post, Sen. Inhofe explains, by the numbers, why the claim that cap-and-trade will help us get “beyond petroleum” is horse feathers. Cap-and-trade will significantly increase our pain at the pump, yet will hardly make a dent in U.S. dependence on petroleum and oil imports.

In EPA’s analysis, the Kerry-Lieberman bill would raise…

Read the full story

A TV station in New Orleans reports that “the federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.”   Louisiana planned to create the sand berms to prevent the massive BP oil spill from polluting its coastline.

Earlier, a federal judge blocked Obama’s drilling ban on offshore drilling, citing deception by Obama administration officials.  The ban applied mostly to oil companies with radically better safety records than BP.  (BP’s executives gave…

Read the full story

There’s only a month left on the Senate calendar, and elections are looming, so many Senators are wary of an issue as divisive and nuanced as is cap-and-trade energy rationing. As a result, there’s been a lot of procrastinating.

Two weeks ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid convened a meeting of Senate Committee chairs in order to figure out how to proceed with climate legislation. They agreed to punt, by having a meeting of the entire Senate the following week.

A week…

Read the full story

A federal judge has just blocked the Obama administration from imposing a blanket ban on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  Judge Martin Feldman cited blatantly false claims by the Obama administration in its report imposing the ban, and violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, which protects against arbitrary government actions.  Earlier, Obama had delayed a clean-up of the Gulf of Mexico by Louisiana and foreign countries, by imposing unnecessary red tape.

“Judge Feldman hones in on blatant lies incorporated into the Deepwater…

Read the full story