By Christy Goldfuss, Public Lands Project Director at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

For the seventh time in a row, Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) of the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing where he pushed for more domestic production of oil and gas, a proposal known to benefit Big Oil with little impact on gas prices. His colleague on the Committee, Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA), whose largest single industry contributor is oil and gas, took the opportunity at the hearing to defend the profits of Big Oil.

He and other Republicans argued that the profit margin for major oil companies is commensurate with other industries. But in 2010, Exxon Mobil had $30.9 billion, Shell had $18.28 billion, and Chevron had $19.29 in profits. Bill Graves from the American Trucking Association had to “agree to disagree” with that reasoning.

Big Oil also was defended by the Republican majority witness from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Karen Alderman Harbert. When Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) asked whether Harbert supported the billions of taxpayer subsidies that go to Big Oil, she refused to give a yes or no answer. She instead tried to squeeze in a pitch for why Big Oil subsidies are necessary, even with billions in profits. She feels that denying those subsidies would be unfairly, “singling out the oil and gas industry and penalizing it.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also supports oil speculators, by pushing to repeal the new authority that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has to police speculation under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The Democratic minority invited witness from the Gasoline & Automotive Service Dealers of America, Inc., noted that “the fastest way to $6 a gallon is to cut the funding to the CFTC.”

To sum up, the House Natural Resources Committee is doing a great job defending Big Oil with hearings on issues that benefit Big Oil, with Republican members that ask questions and make statements in defense of Big Oil, and the Republican invited witnesses that support Big Oil.

34 Senators, enough to sustain veto, call for continued implementation of the Clean Air Act.

Is the White House, in the quest for a budget deal, quietly preparing to accept some aspects of a House GOP effort to roll back the regulatory power of the Environmental Protection Agency, which would represent a significant weakening of the Obama adminstration’s commitment to combat global warming? So reported the Associated Press, but in a statement sent my way, the White House is denying it….

UPDATE: Dem Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (a member of which was the source on the AP story), has also released a statement denying it: “The anonymous source who contributed to the Associated Press story was inaccurate.”

UPDATE II: The Associated Press, which originally reported this story, did a subsequent version that watered down the original claims, so it seems like there’s no one out there on any side vouching for the original assertion.

That’s the WashPost‘s Greg Sargent who blogs at “The Plum Line.”  When I first saw the story reported at places like Grist and then Alternet, it seem unlikely and incorrect to me and the folks I know who are familiar with these discussions.

Because I thought the story was wrong, I didn’t blog on it.  But enough readers have raised concerns that it’s clearly worth a post.

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Extreme weather disasters, especially floods, are on the rise (see Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding).  Last year, we had Tennessee’s 1000-year deluge aka Nashville’s ‘Katrina’.  And  Coastal North Carolina’s suffered its second 500-year rainfall in 11 years.

Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in December, “The term ’100-year event’ really lost its meaning this year” (see Munich Re: “The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change”).

A couple weeks ago, I asked how many U.S. nuclear plants are vulnerable to a tsunami and/or a 500-year 100-year flood? Here a very initial treatment of the flood vulnerability issue.

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Her amendment, like others to be voted on next week, would stop vital carbon-pollution safeguards

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has joined the pro-polluter frenzy sweeping the U.S. Senate, introducing legislation to permanently cripple Clean Air Act rules on global warming pollution.  Brad Johnson has the story.

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By Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

This morning, the House Natural Resources Committee held yet another hearing to tie rising gas prices to an oil industry agenda. The panel’s Grand Oil Party leadership continues to ignore reality. It’s not the Obama administration’s supposed imposition of “regulation after regulation, roadblock after roadblock” that’s holding up more domestic oil drilling, as claimed by Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), the committee chairman. He acts as if his panel can help reduce gas prices at the pump by hiding the truth and smacking the Obama administration.

The facts are simple:

– As the head of the Energy Information Administration told Hastings’ panel the other day, opening up more federal lands to oil drilling will have at best a marginal impact on gas prices and even if there is a reduction it could be erased by OPEC cutting production.

– The oil and gas industry has failed to use more than two-thirds of the offshore leases they hold in the Gulf of Mexico and more than half of those they hold onshore.

– The industry has almost 7,200 drilling permits on federal lands that it hasn’t used yet, according to BLM data obtained by E&E news.

– In Wyoming alone, the oil and gas industry has idled nearly 12,000 natural gas wells that were actually producing. The cause? A “downturn in pricing” – in other words, low natural gas prices, according to Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission supervisor Tom Doll.

– The United States has 1,738 drill rigs actively exploring for or producing oil and gas right now, a 20 percent increase over a year ago. That’s more than the rest of the world has combined, not including Russia and China where the company that collects the data, Baker Hughes, says reliable information is not available.

The truth is that drilling and production are largely dictated by world energy markets and the industry drills and produces when it thinks it can make the most excessive profits. And when prices are down, the industry counts on people like Hastings allowing them to stockpile leases and drilling permits until prices rise. Americans will only stop being harmed by spiking gas prices when they are no longer hostage to the oil industry.

Skeptical Science debunks more Muller disinformation

UPDATE:  GOP Chair Hall referred to the emails of “East Angeles“!

Muller says of surface temperature dataset, “Some of the most worrisome biases are less serious than I had thought.“  That’s because he doesn’t read the scientific literature!

There is a climate science hearing trial today at 10 am of the full House Science Committee, “Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy” (webcast here).

The Charter (here) makes clear this is a Scopes-like trial of Climategate, since it has an extended discussion of the stolen e-mails (which it claims were “leaked” — as if) along with innuendo-laden treatments of “Data Quality” and the “IPCC process.”  The Charter never mentions the multiple vindications of the scientists whose emails were stolen and of the IPCC itself — and it omits any discussion of the massive amount of data and independent analyses that underpin our understanding of climate science.  And those phony attacks  are then used to question EPA’s rather obvious finding that unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases are a danger to the health and well-being of Americans.

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The headline is from the opening line of an article by former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Atlantic.  He is talking about Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload “” a core climate solution.

In this piece, he “lays out the case for putting large solar farms in the Mojave desert as part of a serious energy policy based on improving public health, boosting the economy, and avoiding the risks of the fossil economy.” Here’s more:

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Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has joined the pro-polluter frenzy sweeping the U.S. Senate, introducing legislation to permanently cripple Clean Air Act rules on global warming pollution. The small business legislation, the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011 (S. 493), introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), is being used as a vehicle for senators who wish to prevent regulation of greenhouse pollution from oil refineries, coal-fired power plants, heavy industry, and other major emitters. Stabenow has added her amendment to three others intended to hamstring the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of carbon polluters.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has introduced amendment 183, the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, first introduced by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). The amendment is cosponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Pat Toomey (R-PA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Johnny Isakson (R-GA). The amendment calls for:

– The permanent prohibition on Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gases, other than the existing motor vehicle rules

– Repeal of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding and reporting requirements

– Preventing any future California waiver for tailpipe greenhouse emissions

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has introduced amendment 215, the EPA Stationary Source Regulations Suspension Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND). The amendment calls for:

– A two-year suspension of stationary source regulations of carbon dioxide and methane.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) has introduced amendment 236, which has three elements:

– Forbidding regulation of greenhouse gases from a emitter that doesn’t also produce other regulated air pollution

– Codification of the EPA tailoring rule that establishes a 75,000 ton CO2e/year threshold for regulation

– Excluding regulation of biofuel greenhouse emissions related to land-use changes, or of any greenhouse emissions from other agricultural activities

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has introduced amendment 265, which has four elements:

– A two-year suspension of stationary source greenhouse gas regulations

– Preventing any future California waiver for tailpipe greenhouse emissions

– Excluding regulation of biofuel greenhouse emissions related to land-use changes, or of any greenhouse emissions from other agricultural activities

– Allocating $5 billion to the Advanced Energy Project tax credit

Votes on some combination of these amendments is expected as early as Thursday afternoon.

Solar Farms Gain Priority in China as Atomic Goal Cut After Japan Accident

China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, will cut its 2020 target for nuclear power capacity and build more solar farms following Japan’s atomic crisis, said an official at the National Development and Reform Commission.

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Guest blogger Lowell Feld is editor of Blue Virginia, in a WonkRoom cross-post.

This week, Sen. Jim Webb’s office put out a press release (see the full release at Blue Virginia) calling for a vote on the “Rockefeller Amendment to Delay EPA Greenhouse Gas Regulations.” Needless to say, I strongly disagree with Jim Webb that any delay in taking aggressive, comprehensive action on clean energy and climate change makes any sense whatsoever. There are three main reasons we need to act immediately, not delay a minute longer:

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34 companies and 7 associations write that the House proposal to kill the DOE loan guarantee program would cost thousands of jobs all across the country.

By CAP’s Richard W. Caperton.

Yesterday, 34 clean energy companies and seven associations that represent different sectors of the clean energy economy sent letters to Congress urging them to not end the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program.  The companies identified 34 projects in fifteen states that would be at severe risk of not moving forward if this program is eliminated.  These projects will immediately create 35,000 direct jobs.

Distressingly, the House of Representatives doesn’t think these jobs are worth saving.

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