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Alternate title: “Sierra Club Acknowledges Role as Corporate Front Group, Industry Shill, Hired Gun for Natural Gas Industry.” From Time:

Now the biggest and oldest environmental group in the U.S. finds itself caught on the horns of that dilemma. TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past. It’s also sure to anger ordinary members who’ve been uneasy about the Club’s relationship with corporations. “The chapter groups and volunteers depend on the Club to have their back as they fight pollution from any industry, and we need to be unrestrained in our advocacy,” Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director since 2010, told me. “The first rule of advocacy of is that you shouldn’t take money from industries and companies you’re trying to change.”

Of course I’m kidding. The Sierra Club holds their respective opinions on energy and environmental policies, and then goes out and seeks funding for donors, some who may have their own corporate interests at heart. In this case Chesapeake Energy gave the Sierra Club millions of dollars to attack the coal industry, and the new head of the Sierra Club decided to end that relationship because the Sierra Club and their members don’t particularly like natural gas either, especially when its hydraulically fractured from the ground.

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Dumping on Al Gore’s hypocritical, hysterical climate change posturing is like bitching about metro service here in the nation’s capital: It’s trite, but nonetheless gratifying. Having acknowledged as much, I draw your attention to an excellent editorial in yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily, about the former Vice President’s plan to go on a star-studded cruise to Antarctica. Here’s a snippet:

Al Gore, who invented global warming hysteria, has most recently been found planning a trip to Antarctica where he will surely find evidence that man is overheating the planet.

This clearly insecure man who so desperately needs an audience that approves of his world-saving efforts says he will be taking with him “a large number of civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens from many countries.”

He expects them “to see firsthand and in real time how the climate crisis is unfolding in Antarctica.”

For Gore’s reading material on this trip, we suggest he look at some data released by Great Britain’s Met Office. He would find himself meeting head-on a terribly inconvenient truth.

According to the data, there’s been no warming for more than a decade. The global temperature that Gore and the rest of the alarmist tribe are so concerned about was about one full degree cooler (as measured in Celsius) last year than it was when temperatures peaked in 1997.

Of course 2012 could be warmer than 2011 just as 2010 was warmer than 2008 and 2009.

Or it could be cooler. Who knows?

Read the whole thing here.

Both industry and environmentalists were paying close attention to yesterday’s House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing on the “fractured science” behind the groundwater (not drinking water) contamination research in Pavillion, Wyoming conducted by US Environmental Protection Agency.   On December 8, 2011, the EPA released a draft report recapitulating the findings of their investigation. “Investigation” is too strong a word, because the point of the hearing was to find out why EPA released the draft report before key results were reproduced, or before the study was even peer reviewed. EPA’s draft report has been exploited by environmentalist zealots, so it is strange that the Agency failed to vet the document before it was released. This is especially true in light of the many methodology problems alleged by state and industry officials.

Fracking, the gas extraction process in which several tons of pressurized water laced with sand and a small amount of chemicals are injected through the drill hole to break up apart shale rock so trapped gas can flow more freely, has been improved by the new technology of horizontal drilling.  The ability to drill horizontally is valuable because it can reach and recover more gas that is inaccessible by vertical drilling alone.  This is a new and valuable practice that involves environmental precaution, so it’s only natural for environmentalists to jump to conclusions.  Unfortunately, so is EPA.

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Last week, 16 scientists published an oped in the Wall Street Journal about how global warming isn’t a big deal. Yesterday, 38 scientists published a letter in the same paper, about how global warming is a big deal. Tomato, tamato.

Personally speaking, global warming is the last of my concerns. This is the predominate view among Americans. So my eyes glazed over the science squabbles in the two letters. I did, however, find it interesting that the second letter, representing the “consensus” view, contradicted itself.

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Today’s House  Science, Space, and Technology Committee on “Fractured Science” was overshadowed by an obvious publicity stunt.  This is a shame, because the media’s attention should have been focused on the substance of the hearing, which cast suspicion on the timing of EPA’s recent bombshell press release about aquifer contamination allegedly produced by hydraulic fracturing in Pavillion, Wyoming. I attended the hearing, and I will report on it tomorrow. Today’s post bemoans Fox’s agitprop tactics.

After settling into my seat, eager to hear testimony, I noticed a swarm of security guards surrounding a young man in baseball cap and thick-rimmed glasses attempting to set up film equipment.  It was Josh Fox, director of the fear mongering documentary “Gasland,” who was escorted in hand-cuffs out of the hearing squealing, “I’m being denied my First Amendment rights!”  Apparently, Fox is working on a sequel to “Gasland,” a debunked film predicated on the attempts to brand the entire natural gas industry with an infamous scene of a man lighting his tap water on fire.

Fox was precluded from filming the hearing because he did not have the necessary press credentials. Reportedly, an ABC news camera crew was also blocked from filming.  In the wake of Fox’s removal, ranking member Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina requested a vote for Fox to film.  Ranking Member Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) recessed the hearing for nearly an hour because there was not a quorum.  As more Congressman filed in, the vote finally took place. On a 7-6 party-line vote, the majority denied the Ranking Member’s request.

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While Republican Party candidates face a political drilling in the Florida primaries, Florida prepares for the offshore drilling by a Spanish company just miles away from its coastline, courtesy of our embargoed neighbor to the South.  Cuba has signed lease agreements for offshore drilling blocks with six nations in the North Cuba Basin, a body of water within the Cuban Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that is believed to harbor at least 4.6 billion barrels of crude oil.  Five of the six companies are owned by foreign countries: India, Venezuela, Malaysia, Vietnam and Angola.  Spanish-based Repsol, the single private company, will drill one exploratory well in the North Cuba Basin, called the Jaguey Prospect, lying about 55 to 60 miles south of Key West, FL.  It owns a 40% share in the newest exploratory well, while India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Norway’s Statoil each hold a 30% stake.  Repsol has contracted the Italian-owned Scarabeo-9, a mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU), to drill the Jaguey well.

In March 2010, President Obama introduced a plan for drilling to take place 125 miles from Florida’s Gulf coastline. Only weeks later, the President’s offshore drilling proposal was shelved due to the Deepwater Horizon spill. Since then, the administration has been largely hostile to existing deep water drilling offshore in American waters—first, it imposed a de jure moratorium, and, after that, it imposed a de facto moratorium via bureaucratic foot dragging.

In a surprise move, the President seemed to pivot on offshore drilling policy in last Tuesday’s State of the Union Address. Specifically, he announced a plan to open 75 % of potential offshore oil and gas reserves. Details of the plan are still scarce, so we still don’t know what it entails exactly. One must wonder if the President’s wind of change was prompted by the fact that companies from five nations are drilling for oil and gas in such close proximity to Florida.

In The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future, Randal O’Toole (known as the Antiplanner over on his blog) defends the car against its environmental foes. He lists many benefits, most of which should go without saying unless you’re talking to an environmentalist, including mobility, increased incomes, lower transport costs, social freedom, and even health and safety. He concludes by defending the car against the accusation that it destroys the environment through urban sprawl.

Best Laid Plans was published in 2007

Automobiles are blamed for “wasting” land in the form of urban sprawl. Yet autos actually have produced significant land-use benefits. Consider first the land supposedly wasted by sprawl. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, urban land increased from 15 million acres in 1945 (the earliest year for which data are available) to 60 million acres today. During this time, urban populations increased by 160 percent, so if densities had remained the same as in 1945, urban areas would occupy only 39 million acres today. Thus, some 21 million acres of urbanizations might be attributed to postwar automobile-oriented sprawl.

Of course, whether this is waste depends on your point of view. Low-density development brought the American dream of owning a home with a yard to far more people than ever before. Large yards do not destroy open space so much as they convert one form of open space—farms and forests—to another—backyards. From the point of view of watersheds and certain kinds of wildlife, backyards may even be better than intensely managed croplands.

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