The Truth About Gas Prices, cont...

March 5th, 2012

As the "conservative" media continues to push last month's RNC talking points, rational actors keep pushing back by stating what are commonly known as facts. I harped on this HERE recently.

Today, the NY Times editors state it plainly:

"There are lots of reasons for the rise in gas prices, but the lack of American production is not one of them. Domestic crude oil production is actually up from 5.4 million barrels a day in 2004 to 5.59 million now; imports have dropped by more than 10 percent in the same period. Despite a temporary slowdown in exploration in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil disaster, the number of rigs in American oil fields has quadrupled over three years. There have been new discoveries and the administration has promised to open up more offshore reserves. To say that Mr. Obama has denied industry access is nonsense.

Equally nonsensical is the Republican claim that Mr. Obama’s proposed repeal of $4 billion in annual tax breaks for the oil and gas industry — whose five biggest players posted $137 billion in profits last year — would drive prices upward. As is Newt Gingrich’s claim that a proposal now taking shape in the Environmental Protection Agency, and fiercely opposed by refiners, to lower the sulfur content in gasoline would add 25 cents to the cost of a gallon. Agency experts say it would add about a penny.

The truth is that oil prices are set on world markets by forces largely beyond America’s control."

Sen Sanders is leading the fight against unbridled speculation HERE.

Obama's Oversight Of Energy

Feb 25th, 2012

Since the election of President Obama, domestic crude production has steadily risen for the first time since 1985 reversing nearly a quarter century of decline.

Image via

Image via

Anything But Exceptional

Feb 20th, 2012

The smart moves to prepare for a sustained industrial future are being being made everywhere but here.

The latest news reflecting our failure to keep up with the rest of the Western world comes via Care2:

"As the sovereign debt crisis unfolds in Europe, onlookers have questioned whether the region will stay committed to renewable energy. The answer so far is “yes.”

Even with a few countries pulling back on government support of the industry because of fiscal troubles, 2011 was still a huge year for deployment — with wind and solar alone representing almost 70% of new capacity.

That’s almost a 10-fold increase over deployment in 2000, when only 3.5 GW of renewable energy projects were installed. Last year, 32 GW of renewables — mostly wind and solar — were deployed across European countries.

The figures come from the European Wind Energy Association, which just released a report on industry growth."

While "conservatives" continue to push for both the subsidy of destructive early 20th Century technologies as well as the demonization of public sector investment in alternatives, they are also guaranteeing that we are being left behind. Alas, the opponents of successfully adapting to the future have reduced the concept of American Exceptionalism to "America, fuck yeah!"

Buying Keystone XL

Jan 30th, 2012

As Speaker John Boehner's Keystone problem is just beginning and could end his career, it's not hard to see how he would have finally come to the conclusion that anything goes in the Beltway.

Image via Public Campaign Action Fund

What The Frack?

Jan 10th, 2012

As evidence continues to mount linking "fracking" to seismic instability and new earthquake activity, Scott Thill goes off:

"To what should be the surprise of no one, earthquakes caused by the junkie gas sector's hydraulic fracturing process, known as fracking, have been cropping up like Freud's repressed. The latest ominously arrived in Republican-dominated Ohio on New Year's Eve, quickly prompting Youngstown's mayor to buy earthquake insurance and lament, "You lose your whole house, that's your life savings, and if you have no money or no insurance to replace it, then what do you do?"

That's easy, Mayor Charles P. Sammarone, and anyone else finally learning these hard lessons: You stop fracking, which is to say you stop messing with the geological integrity of your cities, and their water tables. If you're Ohio, then you stop givingGOP industry stooges like Speaker of the House John Boehner and Governor John Kasich access to your precious natural resources. If you're the rest of the world, you accept that you have a serious problem with fossil fuel consumption, detach your complicity and support, and start planning for a future in which deregulated shale gas extraction, and its frackquake-causing disposal wells, are a desperate cry for psychoanalysis rather than an acceptable peak oil market."

Christopher Helman dismisses these concerns:

"After a handful of earthquakes in Mahoning County, most recently on New Year’s Eve, Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources shut down five deep wells used by natural gas drillers to dispose of chemical-laden gunk recovered from natural gas fracking operations. The quakes, biggest of which measured 4 on the Richter scale, coincided with injections into the wells, pretty much ruling out coincidence.

The Oklahoma Geological Survey has found a 10-fold increase in quakes there in recent years (including three magnitude 5s in early November), but has stopped short of blaming them on a rampant increase in gas drilling. A year ago Arkansas declared a moratorium on deep injection wells after a flurry of earth-shaking there (even though similar quake swarms have occurred there in the past). Even in England, the drilling company Cuadrilla Resources says its activities probably caused a couple quakes, but they were less than 2 on the Richter, about as rough as a truck driving down your street."

What is abundantly clear is that "fracking" is a very dirty business and is a terrible threat to groundwater systems throughout the country. 

The Iowa Circus, cont...

Jan 3rd, 2011

Jonah Goldberg actually makes some sense in an otherwise (surprise) very smarmy piece:

"The real problem with the Iowa caucuses is simply that they confer too much entrenched arbitrary power on one state in perpetuity. For instance, without the Iowa caucuses we would never have wasted billions of dollars on environmentally damaging and economically wasteful ethanol subsidies."

Although Goldberg lamenting the sad state of the environment should raise eyebrows, he's correct. These ridiculous subsidies, arguably the last several decades most bi-partisan domestic boondoggle, would never have been so popular had they not been tied to the nation's highest volume corn producer and its place at the front of the race.

Although the subsidies have finally been allowed to lapse this year, the ill effect they had on both energy and agriculture will ripple for years.

The Truth About Tar Sands, cont...

Sept 1st, 2011

Josh Fox issues a call for further direct action

Tar Sands Action/ Josh Fox from JFOX on Vimeo.

The Truth About Tar Sands

Sept 1st, 2011

The construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is likely a forgone conclusion. As much as I support the protesters who have put their freedom on the line in D.C. and as loudly as I have tried to draw attention to the potential hazards, this is only the latest stage of the largest energy project on the face of the Earth. Putting the brakes on now is nearly impossible.

The TransCanada corporation first proposed the Keystone project in early 2005, yet most Americans had never even heard the phrase "tar sands" until earlier this year. The accident prone first Keystone pipeline has been in operation for over 14 months and many still don't realize just how much more volatile the materials involved are than traditional petroleum.

Carrie La Seur wrote recently in Grist:

"Keystone XL won’t carry “light, sweet” crude, which floats on top of water and can be mopped up with absorbent booms. Bitumen—a tarlike substance mined from the Alberta tar sands, chemically diluted, and heated to improve flow—will travel at high pressure across Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas to Gulf Coast refineries. If and when it leaks into water bodies, this product will sink. To judge the risk of that happening, it helps to know that the first piece of the Keystone system, TransCanada’s Keystone I pipeline that crosses the eastern Dakotas, has sprung a dozen leaks in its first year of operation."

As La Seur notes, the XL phase of operations directly threatens the Ogallala aquifer. This very shallow groundwater network is the source for roughly 30% of U.S. agricultural irrigation and drinking water for tens of millions of citizens. A serious accident here would devastate not only the health but the economy of the United States for generations. 

Our failure to educate the public sooner through the kind of direct action now being engaged in Washington is a major contributor to the public's lack of awareness. That doesn't make pushback pointless. It makes it even more essential. 

We are literally running out of time.

Moving Right Along...

March 21st, 2011

Now that we have a new Middle Eastern theater of military action to be afraid of, let's just forget all about the the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl.

In all seriousness, Please give to Japanese Relief HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE