Today, the House Oversight Committee, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), held a hearing on rising gas prices and EPA regulations, targeting EPA administrator Lisa Jackson on policies to limit pollution and its effects on public health. Before the hearing, the House GOP released a report entitled “Rising Energy Costs: The Intentional Result of Government Action.” Meanwhile, the Democratic members of the House oversight committee released their own report – “Real Help For American Consumers: Who’s Profiting At The Pump?”

The GOP’s 42-page report furthers the party’s Oil Above All agenda, repeating conspiratorial claims that the Obama administration is “intentionally” driving up gas prices to spur investments in renewable energies. It supposedly “identifies numerous Administration efforts to suppress domestic oil and gas production that lead to higher costs while helping the Administration promote expensive alternative sources of energy” and attempts to pin rising costs on the administration:

A report released today by Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa highlights evidence that the statements by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu about intentionally raising energy costs for Americans can be seen across the federal government: from blocking production in the Gulf of Mexico, to hindering “fracking” technology, and stifling oil and gas production on public lands.

The report is a melange of widely debunked oil-industry talking points. The report claims that the Obama administration is purposely trying to increase the price of gas, but experts agree it’s “not credible” to blame the administration for the increase in prices. Oil production is at its highest level since 2003 and gas prices are still high. Since oil is priced and sold in a world market, increased drilling won’t bring down the price of gas. The U.S. possess only two percent of the world’s oil reserves, but uses almost 25 percent of the world’s oil.

On the other side of the aisle, the Democrats’ report, prepared for Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), points to proven statistics about the role of oil speculators on increased prices:

Experts estimate that excessive oil speculation could be inflating prices by up to 30%, while increasing domestic drilling would impact prices by only about 1%, and then only after a decade or more. Addressing excessive speculation offers the single most significant opportunity to reduce the price of gas for American consumers.

The report points to various evidence from market experts, including Goldman Sachs, who admitted in April that excessive speculation in oil futures increased the price of gas to a level that was no longer profitable for them. Goldman urged investors to “lock-in” profits made on commodities, “with the bank’s estimates suggesting speculators are boosting crude prices as much as $27 a barrel.”

Instead of focusing measures that would help lower the price of gas, Republicans have been set on cutting funding to the agency that could actually help, and filling the pockets of the companies that fund their campaigns. The House GOP voted for H.R. 1, which would cut funding for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which polices energy markets, by one-third. The House GOP also voted for the Ryan budget, which slashes funding to the CFTC by 34 percent, which would take two-thirds of the agency’s staff off the payroll. 

Additionally, House Republicans are recommending slashing the CFTC’s budget by 15 percent in a proposal before the agriculture subcommittee of the House Appropriations committee. And they’re doing all this while voting to maintain taxpayer-funded subsidies and royalty-free drilling to wildly profitable Big Oil companies.

As Public Campaign points out, Issa has received $140,350 in oil industry contributions over the course of his congressional career.  According to analysis by Opensecrets.org, in just the first five months of 2011, Republicans received over $2 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. Meanwhile, Democrats received just over a quarter of a million dollars.

Plus McKibben, Trenberth & why ‘Mother Nature is only warming up’

The devastation of Joplin, MO has led to a super-storm of media stories on the link between climate change and extreme weather, including tornadoes.  After April saw records set for most tornadoes in a month and in 24 hours, I examined the link in great detail here, looking at the data, the literature, and expert analysis.  That piece concluded

1. When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.
2. Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.

The flattening of a city, and the death of 117 people — “the single deadliest tornado since officials began keeping records in 1950,” as the WashPost reported — is naturally going to spin up media interest.  Since it is a complicated subject, one would expect the coverage to be mixed.

ABC News had a very good story, with the help of climatologist Heidi Cullen:

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Those who don’t remember the past….

“On June 22, 1969, an oil slick and debris in the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio,” explains Ohio History Central.  There were nine fires on the river before then.  “The 1952 fire [see photo] caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage.”

As one Ohio environmental reporter has written:

The current environmental movement began in response to a previous oil disasters in 1969, one resulting in the Cuyahoga River fire. During this period, Lake Erie was considered dead. Lake Erie has come a long way, but we must be viligiant about its health. The resources in Lake Erie are held in trust for Ohioans, and we must ensure that disasters such as the Gulf Coast do not happen here.

CAP’s Kiley Kroh has the story of the Ohio Republicans with a short memory: Read more

Issa: Advancing “so-called clean energy” is “not good” for America

Despite all the strong evidence proving the business case for implementing clean energy technologies, reducing energy use and building other solutions to climate change, some policy makers are still stuck in the past. Here’s an excerpt from a report released today by Darrell Issa, the Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on the Obama Administration’s approach to energy:

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I suppose it was inevitable that some anti-science extremist would compare the doomsday claims of evangelical broadcaster Harold Camping with the overwhelming body of scientific evidence that says unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions risks multiple simultaneous catastrophes for human civilization.

It’s just sad that this extremist was the editor of The Wall Street Journal‘s online editorial page, James Taranto.  His inane, defamatory piece, “The Christian Al Gore: The eternal appeal of doomsday cults,” makes one question the factual basis of every thing that appears in the WSJ.  After all, if an astrologer and Flat-Earther can rise to such prominence at the leading financial newspaper in the country, and publish pure anti-science nonsense, then on what basis is there to believe that the rest of the staff is any more rational?

Oh yes, I forgot.  There’s an impenetrable firewall between editorial and news at the WSJ.  No doubt it’s as impenetrable as the firewall in Wall Street investment banks between the corporate-advisory group and the brokerage department.

Taranto’s money graf is:

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First green development bank to open in U.K.

Siemens executive says bipartisan clean energy push could start with efficiency bill

With Congress bogged down over high gasoline prices, the head of U.S. operations for Siemens AG said proposals to increase energy efficiency are a “no-brainer” and a doable next step to advance U.S. energy policy.

“It’s thousand-dollar bills lying on the ground. People just need to bend over and pick them up,” said Eric Spiegel, president and CEO of Siemens Corp., the U.S. arm of the Munich-based conglomerate.

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Republicans have, for the last several weeks, been lambasting President Obama for the nation’s high gas prices, while promoting so-called solutions “” like authorizing more offshore oil drilling “” that won’t bring down gas prices. At the same time, House Republicans are actively undermining the agency charged with policing manipulation in the oil markets.  ThinkProgress has the story.

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Our guest blogger is Kiley Kroh, Associate Director for Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress.

A gas derrick on the Canadian side of Lake Erie

The next target for the GOP’s “drill everywhere now” craze could very well be the Great Lakes. Earlier this month, both the U.S. House and Senate took up sweeping measures that would disregard lessons learned in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and open up enormous areas of the country to offshore drilling. Following suit, the Ohio state legislature is voting this week on a bill that would make state-owned lands available to the highest-bidding oil and gas companies — an area that includes Lake Erie.

In its original form, House Bill 133 included a provision stating the Ohio Department of Natural Resources may issue permits and leases for removal of stone, sand, and other minerals “other than oil or gas” from the lake bed. That key exemption was clandestinely removed last week.

As several studies have concluded, the risks of oil and gas exploration in Lake Erie far outweigh the benefits – but that hasn’t stopped the oil companies from circling for several years. There’s currently a federal ban in place that prohibits offshore drilling in the Great Lakes, but Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on opening up anything they can to be drilled. State Rep. Dennis Murray (D-Sandusky) sees the “oil above all” agenda at work in Ohio:

We still have the federal law for the time being that forbids drilling on or under Lake Erie, but that could be removed at some point … I suspect it is a more ideological statement of drill here, drill now, drill everywhere.

Murray said he will seek to reinsert the language protecting Lake Erie when the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee takes up amendments today. he bill could reach a full House vote as early as Wednesday.

As the Toledo Blade reported, State Rep. David Hall (R-Killbuck), chairman of the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, “said he’s willing to entertain a discussion about putting the lake language back into the bill on Tuesday, but he doesn’t believe that it’s necessary given the federal ban.”

The federal government has already issued more than 70 new deepwater drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico since the moratorium was lifted last October. The U.S. House of Representatives and 42 Senate Republicans voted to open vast swaths of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic to drilling, without acting on a single piece of legislation to shore up safety requirements after the worst oil disaster in U.S. history. We have to think it’s only a matter of time before the GOP catches wind that there might be oil beneath the Great Lakes, too, and clearly nothing is off limits for the Grand Oil Party.

President Santos: “The tragedy the country is going through has no precedents in our history”

JR:  Sadly for Colombia, the possibility that the U.S. would take notice of their Biblical flooding has been greatly diminished by the uber-flooding of the Mississippi River along with the “truly exceptional” tornado outbreaks and Texas drought/wildfires.  And this offers a grim look at the future if the world doesn’t act fast to reduce emissions and set up a global adaptation fund using some of the resulting revenues:  While record-breaking deluges and droughts will increasingly slam the developing world in the future, necessitating outside assistance, the rest of the world itself will be very busy dealing with its own ever worsening extreme events, along with sea level rise, Dust-Bowlification, and the like.  We must all hang together — or we will surely all hang separately.

For an update on Colombia, here’s a guest post by Alice Thomas, Climate Displacement Program Manager at Refugees  International

Unprecedented rain that has hammered Colombia over the past year has affected three million people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. In March, I spent three weeks traveling across the Caribbean region visiting families displaced by the floods. The alarming conditions I encountered more than three months since President Santos declared a state of emergency are described in a new report by Refugees International entitled, “Surviving Alone: Improving Assistance to Colombia’s Flood Victims.”

In the town of Manat­ in Atl¡ntico Department I was greeted by the Iraida, an Afro-Colombian mother of four who leads a local women’s organization. “Today we don’t have a glass of water to drink,” Iraida tells me. “The water truck has not come to distribute water. It comes every eight days.” She explains that water rations are not sufficient to allow her to bathe her baby and provide enough water for the other four members of her family.

Watch a personal account from Iraida and her husband:

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During last week’s recess, Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) felt the heat once again at a town hall back in New Hampshire, and this time had an odd recommendation.  CAP’s Kristen Bartoloni has the story and video.

When a constituent asked  a question about ending Big Oil subsidies – which received a round of applause from the audience – Guinta pointed his finger at the recent failed Senate vote to roll back some subsidies for the richest oil companies. He said that if oil companies lost their subsidies, they shouldn’t have to pay for leases. His suggestion prompted shouts of “ridiculous” and “that’s a giveaway to Big Oil” from angry Granite Staters:

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