Yesterday, Nancy Pfotenhauer, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) senior policy adviser, claimed that she had been “misinformed” when she falsely stated that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita “did not spill a drop of oil.” Today, McCain made another “misinformed” argument, claiming that oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico “have survived, very successfully, the impacts of hurricanes”:

Q: I’ve been listening to your comments around renewable resources – solar, tide, and wind – you’ve talked a lot about that, but you keep peppering your comments with offshore drilling. But I’m not sure what you think the impact on our environment is based on that.

A: Keep the microphone. I’m aware that off the coast of Louisiana and Texas there are oil rigs, as we well know, and those rigs have survived, very successfully, the impacts of hurricanes – hurricane Katrina as far as Louisiana is concerned.

McCain is wrong. According to press reports, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita “tore through the Gulf of Mexico’s offshore oil and gas fields, toppling production platforms, setting rigs adrift and rupturing pipelines.” The U.S. Minerals Management Service reported that the hurricanes totally destroyed 113 offshore oil platforms.

The hurricanes cost Transocean, the largest offshore driller, “about $135 million in repairs, downtime and equipment upgrades” alone, and damage to offshore producers accounted for 77 percent of the oil industry’s storm costs. One offshore rig, the Ocean Warwick, drifted 66 nautical miles before running aground.

Here are some photos of the success that McCain is touting:

Cross-posted at ThinkProgress.

Kentucky has selected a site to build a $4 billion coal-to-liquids plant in Pike County that would produce 50,000 barrels of liquid coal a day. According to Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader:

…The county would use federal and state grant money to put the basic infrastructure in place, including water and sewer, and the company chosen to operate the facility would pay for the rest.

County officials have not yet secured funding, but Ruther­ford said he has received support from Gov. Steve Beshear, as well as several others, including state Rep. Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook.

Joe has written often about the climate dangers of coal-to-liquids, and recently about the health dangers of living near coal plants. There are also other consequences.

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[I am asking all Climate Progress readers to start an email campaign. Please feel free to post your emails as comments.]

The Drudge headline blared “Group Repping 50,000 Physicists Opens Global Warming Debate…” The link was to a story “Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate.” Since it was a denier website, I ignored it. Then I got forwarded an e-mail from one of the top journalists in the country titled “This may be important” with the same opening paragraph as the denier article:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”

Now you can be just as sure that any denier talk point is wrong without studying it in detail as you can be sure that a perpetual motion machine is not, in fact, perpetual without studying it in detail. But as a former American Physical Society Congressional science fellow, I feel obliged to point out that the obvious way to figure out what the American Physical Society believes is to go to their website, www.aps.org, and see what they say:

APS Climate Change Statement

APS Position Remains Unchanged

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that “Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.” This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

Read: APS Climate Change Statement [which states, "The evidence is incontrovertible" and "We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now."

I really don't like the word "consensus" (see Deniers say there's no consensus about global warming. Well, there's not. There's well-tested science and real-world observations [that are much more worrisome].” But in any case, one ignorant editor at one unpeer-reviewed newsletter does not explode it.

So this editor who single-handedly smeared the good name of the American Physical Society and the 50,000 physicists it represents is one “Jeff Marque, Senior Staff Physicist at Beckman Coulter Corporation, 1050 Page Mill Rd., MSY-14, Palo Alto, CA 94304, jjmarque@sbcglobal.net.” Please do email him and his bosses (whose names and e-mails I will provide below) to let them know your thoughts.

What Marque has does is so beyond the realm of real scientific debate that he should be fired from his editorial position. In the July issue of the newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, Marque wrote:

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The United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created in 1975 in the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo to help the United States buffer against oil price shocks that have “major adverse impact on national safety or the national economy.” With oil hitting $147/barrel last week and American families struggling with gas prices over $4.00/gallon, we believe the time for a buffer is now.

This week, in the Center for American Progress Action fund advocated releasing half a million barrels of oil from the reserves per day for 100 days. This increase in the oil supply would bring prices down, pop the speculative bubble, and raise money to pay for relief for struggling American families.

This sale would require using a mere 50 million barrels from the record 708 million barrels currently in the reserves. This would leave 90% of the reserves intact, enough to power the entire U.S. economy for two months without oil imports (an extraordinarily unlikely scenario as over 1/3 of our imported oil comes from Canada and Mexico).

To illustrate the power of releasing oil from the reserves, check out these two graphs illustrating oil prices in the wake of the 1991 release during Operation Desert Storm and the 2005 release in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Operation Desert Storm: On January 16, 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced the release of 34 million barrels of oil to stabilize oil prices during Operation Desert Storm. That day, oil sold for $32.25 a barrel. The day after the announcement, prices dropped 33.4%, one of the largest one-day drops in the history of recorded oil prices, to $21.48/barrel. In conjunction with the release of oil reserves in nations across the OECD, prices stayed low, averaging $19.46/barrel in February and $15.50/barrel in March.

Hurricane Katrina: Oil prices were rising as Hurricane Katrina bore down onto the Gulf Coast in late August 2005. By September 1st, after the storm made land-fall and wrecked key oil infrastructure in the gulf, prices had risen to $69.50/barrel, well above the August average of $65.58/barrel. On September 2nd, President George W. Bush authorized the release of 30 million barrels of crude oil from the reserves. The price dropped 3.7% that day, and stayed low throughout the aftermath of the storm, averaging $62.26 in October and $58.32 in November.

Releasing oil from the Strategic Oil Reserves could provide serious price relief for American families struggling with skyrocketing gas prices and raise revenue to invest in a new energy future without padding the profits of big oil companies or putting our nation at risk. President Bush has the authority to release this oil today, and it could be on the market in two weeks. He should consider it.