Is Al Gore Bad for Big Environmentalism?
Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, 7 July 2011
Chinese Coal Blamed for Global Cooling
Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 5 July 2011
Nic Lewis on IPCC Sensitivity
Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit, 5 July 2011
The Quiet Case for a Rail System of Some Speed
Charlie Cooke, Planet Gore, 1 July 2011
Obama Mandates a Market for His Own Market “Investments”
Henry Payne, The Michigan View, 27 June 2011
This calculation comes from Ken Glozer’s opinion piece in last Thursday’s Washington Times. Here’s the pertinent paragraph:
On Friday near midnight, a 12-inch pipeline operated by Exxon Mobile ruptured under the Yellowstone River near Billings, Montana, releasing an as yet undetermined amount of crude oil into the river. Read news reports here, here, and here.
It seems to me that there is no shortage of juicy angles for journalists to work on this developing story: Exxon Mobil, a favorite target of the left, is the responsible party; oil is visible miles downstream; aquatic wildlife is endangered; 140 people living near the break in the pipeline were temporarily evacuated due to fumes and the risk of an explosion; and the Yellowstone River, like many in the region, is swelled with snow melt and rain, which has rendered difficult the cleanup. For the Associated Press, however, the story wasn’t juicy enough. Otherwise, the AP write-up would not have included this sensationalist paragraph:
First, They Came for My Light Bulbs
Matt Patterson, Washington Times, 1 July 2011
Private Oil and Gas for the Public Good
Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, 1 July 2011
Corn Ethanol Fiction
Ken Glozer, Washington Times, 30 June 2011
Global Welfaring
Henry Payne, The Michigan View, 28 June 2011
An Inconvenient Fallacy
Bob Carter, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 June 2011
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday released draft Clean Air Act permits for Shell’s planned oil exploration in federal offshore waters in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, which are parts of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. The draft permits are subject to public comment and will undoubtedly be litigated by environmental pressure groups.
Shell has been trying for more than four years to drill in 10-year lease tracts for which it paid the federal government more than $2 billion. Shell has also invested well over $1 billion in building the infrastructure that offshore exploratory drilling requires. If oil is discovered, then Shell would make huge further investments to begin production and connect the fields to the Trans Alaska Pipeline. Shell would pay a royalty to the federal treasury for every barrel produced.
Alaska Governor Sean Parnell this week announced in Washington, DC plans to hold auctions in October to lease 15 million acres of state land for oil and gas exploration. The lease tracts include areas within state waters in the Beaufort Sea off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and onshore areas that are adjacent to ANWR.
In a written statement, Governor Parnell and Natural Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan did not try to conceal that part of the plan is to drain oil reserves under ANWR that have been locked up by Congress since 1980 and under the National Petroleum Reserve. “By drilling on state land and waters adjacent to NPR-A and ANWR, developers may end up drawing untapped oil that lies beneath these federal lands.”
On Friday, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation issued proposed regulations for hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. “fracking,” the technological breakthrough in natural gas drilling that has roughly doubled known North American gas reserves in the last five years. Much of New York is within the geologic area known as the Marcellus Shale, which contains enormous gas deposits that became recoverable only with the advent of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. New York lawmakers imposed a moratorium on the process, due to unsubstantiated fears fanned by environmentalist special interests that the technique could contaminate New York City’s water supply. The drilling regulations are unnecessarily onerous, such that they might make gas extraction uneconomic, but they potentially could open up to 85% of the state’s Marcellus Shale deposits to hydraulic fracturing.
Across the pond, the French Parliament this week voted to ban hydraulic fracturing, making it the first country to enact legislation to outlaw the practice. However, the prospects for the gas drilling technique remain excellent in much of the rest of the European Union. Unlike France, which generates the preponderance of its electricity from nuclear and therefore has less of a need for expanded gas supplies, Central and Eastern Europe are embracing the technique. For countries in these regions, expanded domestic production of gas is preferable to relying on Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas export company.
Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan on Thursday upheld the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Environmental groups had sued to change the listing to endangered, which would lead to much more restrictive protection measures. The State of Alaska and industry groups represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation had sued to de-list the polar bear.
The decision to uphold the Interior Department decision made during the George W. Bush administration does not stop the litigation underway to overturn a separate ruling made by then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and upheld by the current Secretary, Ken Salazar, that the threatened listing should not be used to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (which allegedly cause global warming which allegedly threatens the sea ice that polar bears depend on for hunting seals), but should be confined to protecting polar bear habitat in Alaska.
California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols made a surprise announcement this week to delay implementation of California’s cap-and-trade scheme by a year. Chairwoman Nichols claimed that the delay is to prevent “gaming” of the market for energy-rationing coupons, but the existence of functioning carbon markets in the Northeast (the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative) and in Europe (the Emissions Trading Scheme) suggests that the real reason for the delay was that the administration of Governor Jerry Brown wants to postpone burdening the state’s ailing economy by making energy more expensive.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute announced today that it is acting as co-counsel in a recently filed lawsuit in the state of New York against the state’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (a state cap and trade program). The lawsuit has been filed on behalf of small business owners in New York State who have faced increased electricity costs, and can be read here (.pdf). The American Spectator has a short write up here. The basis for the suit relies on the fact that elected officials in New York enrolled in the RGGI without approval by the state legislature. New York is the only state involved with RGGI who entered the initiative without approval from its legislature. As RGGI has forced electricity generators to purchase annual carbon allowances, it has raised the price of electricity for New York residents, effectively acting as a tax on electricity producers (those who produce more than 25 megawatts annually) in New York. [click to continue…]
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