Nature News: “Attack sparks memories of McCarthy witch-hunt.”
Nature, the highly respected British scientific journal, has an excellent editorial and news story tomorrow on the recent assault on climate science (excerpted below).
Glenn Beck Attacks You!
A must-see video, but it only works if you have a Facebook account (click here).
ConocoPhillips chair mocks clean energy advocates as “hydrocarbon deniers”
CEO of Saudi Aramco worries about “a bottleneck” in oil production. Seriously!
Oil prices and profits are on the rise again. The anti-science disinformation campaign funded in large part by Big Oil is having unimaginable success. And the powerful minority of do-nothing ideologues appear to have the upper hand in the Senate.
And that means a modern day Mr. Potter oil company executive can speak his mind and tell us what he really thinks of clean energy, as Greenwire (subs. req’d) reports:
Energy and Global Warming News for March 10: Climate’s a hot issue in Arkansas; New Senate ‘gang’ gathering on energy?
Climate’s a hot issue in Arkansas
Arkansas is rapidly emerging as ground zero for climate politics, as advocates from all sides swarm embattled incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
Lincoln’s approval rating “” at an all-time low of 27 percent “” has made her one of the most politically endangered Democrats in the Senate. Last week, Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter jumped into the race, posing a serious challenge from the left to the conservative Democrat.
The Do-Nothing Energy Tax: $3 Gasoline Dead Ahead
Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The mounds of snow blackened by auto exhaust have barely melted in Washington, D.C, yet the Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook already predicts that average gas prices “will exceed $3 per gallon” in coming months:
Average U.S. pump prices likely will exceed $3 per gallon at times during the forthcoming spring and summer driving season.
EIA projects gasoline consumption will begin to show modest, but consistent, increases over the previous year, growing by 60,000 bbl/d in 2010 and 70,000 bbl/d in 2011.
In other words, there will be a gasoline price increase of 17 percent compared to summer 2009, even though consumption will only increase by six-tenths of a percent. It means that American drivers will spend an additional $174 million per day on gasoline this summer compared to last year. This could be as much as $16 billion more during the months of June, July and August. Total daily spending on gasoline this summer could be more than $1 billion per day.
The higher gasoline prices reflect higher oil prices.
EIA expects WTI prices to average above $80 per barrel this spring, rising to an average of about $82 per barrel by the end of the year and to $85 per barrel by the end of 2011.
This will mark a rise in crude oil prices from a $39 per barrel in February 2009 to $82 by the end of 2010 – a 110 percent increase in two years. Oil prices have already closed above $80 this week.
Higher gasoline prices are like a tax on consumers – they pay more for the same amount of product, with the additional funds enriching big oil companies and foreign oil suppliers.
Since one of every four barrels of oil comes from nations that the State Department classifies as “dangerous or unstable,” more oil consumption and higher prices further enriches these states. And a $1 increase in oil prices provides an additional $1 billion dollars to the Iranian government – even though the U.S. buys no oil from it. This can only help Iran incite unrest and attacks in Iraq and elsewhere. Read more
API Uses Fake ‘Americans’ To Attack Fake ‘Energy Taxes’
Big Oil is using fake “Americans” to defend billions in tax subsidies. The American Petroleum Institute is running full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call that attack Congress for “new energy taxes”:
Congress will likely consider new taxes on America’s oil and natural gas industry. These new energy taxes will produce wide-reaching effects, and ripple through our economy when America — and Americans — can least afford it.
These unprecedented taxes will serve to reduce investment in new energy supplies at a time when most Americans support developing our domestic oil and natural gas resources. That means less energy, thousands of American jobs being lost and further erosion of our energy security.
Our economy is in crisis, and we need to get the nation on the road to economic recovery. This is no time to burden Americans with new energy costs.
The target of this ad is the Obama administration’s effort to remove $36 billion in loopholes and subsidies for the oil industry. As it turns out, the “Americans” presented in the ad are stock photos from Getty Images:
“Warehouse worker holding large wrench on shoulder”
“Woman working in a distribution warehouse”
“Man standing with hands in pocket”
Americans are paying the price for these subsidies with our tax dollars, our health, and our national security. Removing these subsidies would “ripple through the economy” by unleashing a clean-energy future.
This is just the latest in a stream of polluter front groups using stock photos in Astroturf campaigns against clean energy policy. API was recently caught trying to add diversity to its dirty ads by photoshopping minorities into stock photography. West Virginia’s “FACES of Coal” turned out to be from iStockPhoto.com. And Virginia’s “Coalition for American Jobs” is a stock-photo front group for the American Chemistry Council.
Update
Found the last stock photo: “Blue collar worker leaning against forklift.”
Update
,At Down With Tyranny, KenInNY comments:
All the tearjerking bullshit about how these “new taxes” will destroy the economy and make life even more hellish for average Joes is just that: bullshit, lies, posturing propaganda.
Now you’d think Brad might want to give the API’s members credit for rare honesty in declaring upfront that if Congress goes along with this mad scheme to deprive them of those loopholes and subsidies, it’s a done deal that they’re going to make their customers pay for the drain on their galactic-level profits. Well, actually that isn’t exactly the way the ad sees it playing out. What the ad says is that these imaginary taxes “will serve to reduce investment in new energy supplies,” which in turn means “less energy, thousands of American jobs being lost and further erosion of our energy security.” So it isn’t so much that Americans are going to “pay for new energy taxes” as that the oil and gas megacorporations are going to stop investing in new reserves that will yield them even more megaprofits. Huh? Does anyone believe that?
The Do-Nothing Energy Tax: $3 Gasoline Dead Ahead
As long as we keep taking no serious action on climate and clean energy, there’s nothing to stop the energy bills of Americans from rising. Daniel J. Weiss, CAP’s Director of Climate Strategy, explains what’s in store this summer.
The mounds of snow blackened by auto exhaust have barely melted in Washington, D.C, yet the Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook already predicts that:
USA Today: Some scientists misread poll data on global warming controversy
Stanford researcher: “It is certainly possible that public confidence in climate scientists has declined since our last survey in December, but it’s not likely.”
Polling data is misunderstood and misread all of the time. The public strongly supports action on climate and clean energy legislation, even if it raises their energy bill by $10 a month, but even (lazy) environmentalists are unaware of that.
Now it turns out that polling on the science may be equally misunderstood, as USA Today reported Tuesday:
Inslee’s Message For The Senate: ‘Put Away Your Fear’ And Unleash Clean Energy Jobs
In an exclusive interview, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) explains that the U.S. Senate needs to “get over their fear” and cast a vote for clean energy job creation. Inslee, the co-chair of the House Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition and member of the House Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, praised Rep. Tom Perriello’s (D-VA) courageous vote in favor of climate legislation and counseled the U.S. Senate to follow his example. After explaining that the American people are strongly in favor of investment in clean energy jobs, Inslee said that “people who don’t want to move on this” should “just get over their fear“:
I would counsel people who don’t want to move on this to just get over their fear. Because frankly it’s fear that’s holding back. It’s people who are afraid that Americans aren’t smart enough to invent new technologies to deal with that. That we’re not bold enough like we used to be when we went to the moon with the original Apollo project.
Put away your fear, get a little dose of confidence, cast a vote that has trust in America’s entrepreneurial spirit, and we will beat this beast and America will grow economically. And I really believe this. So I hope the Senate gets the message.
Watch it:
Inslee sat down with the Wonk Room just before he addressed the Apollo Alliance-Center for American Progress “Picking A Winner: How to Make the U.S. a Leader in the Clean Energy Economy” conference, in which luminaries from the labor, business, and political world discussed what American clean-energy industrial policy should look like.
The lack of trust in American ingenuity is leading senators to want to water down and weaken climate legislation now being constructed by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Dozens of senators are pushing for less ambitious targets, a smaller clean-energy market, and tremendous subsidies for the existing and antiquated energy infrastructure of nuclear, coal, and oil. Instead of being trapped by fear, the Senate should indeed get a “dose of confidence” and unleash the future.
Transcript: Read more
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
