There’s a lot of debate about whether increasing natural gas production will help or hurt renewables.

In Pennsylvania, where a major shale gas boom is underway, Governor Tom Corbett is doing exactly what renewable energy supporters feared, according to a recent story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The Corbett administration is de-emphasizing renewable energy and energy conservation, eliminating programs created by previous Democratic and Republican administrations as it focuses on natural gas energy from booming Marcellus Shale.

Quietly but systematically, the administration has all but shut down the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Energy and Technology Deployment — the state’s primary energy office — and removed directors and reassigned staff in the Office of Energy Management in the Department of General Services and the Governor’s Green Government Council.

It has also forbidden state executive agencies from signing contracts that support clean energy supply.

After many years of strong build-up of Pennsylvania’s renewable energy industry under former Democratic Governor Ed Rendell, is all that work being dismantled in the name of natural gas?

Rendell signed a renewable energy standard into law, created manufacturing incentives, and expanded rebates and loans for renewable energy projects – helping spur the creation of tens of thousands of jobs in the state. But some groups fear that is all being swept aside by the Corbett Administration:

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If you look up chutzpah in the dictionary, there is a picture of Rick Perry.  Perry has received millions of dollars from Big Oil to push its pro-pollution, anti-science agenda:

So what does Perry do when a questioner points out that the National Academy of Sciences and observed data utterly disagree with his disinformation on climate change?   He simply asserts with no evidence that a “substantial number” of climate scientists have “manipulated data” for money, as TP Green reports.  Here’s the background and the video:

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“Construction and operation of the Keystone Pipeline system will continue to meet or exceed world-class safety and environmental standards.”

That was a statement from TransCanada CEO Hal Kvisle in June 2010 about the commissioning of the company’s new Keystone pipeline built to bring Canadian tar sands crude from Alberta to refineries in the Midwest. One year later, the company has seen twelve oil spills from its brand new, state-of-the art pipeline — with one “six-story geyser” dumping 21,000 gallons of  oil in North Dakota.

Today, TransCanada is looking to build another pipeline, Keystone XL, to bring tar sands crude all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. The company is again selling it as “the safest pipeline in the U.S.”

Company executives were in Montana yesterday, trying to re-assure residents who are concerned about the environmental impact of another pipeline after Exxon spilled 1,200 barrels of oil into the Yellowstone river in early July:

TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL Pipeline will be the safest crude oil pipeline built in America, officials of the Calgary-based company told reporters Tuesday during a stop in Billings.

“A very high degree of safety” has been engineered into the project, said [Engineer and Director of the Keystone XL project Les] Cherwenuk. The company has been subjected to “regulated standards that have never been required of any operation constructing a new liquid pipeline,” he said.

There will be “minor” environmental disruption, company officials acknowledge. But they stressed that the disruptions are far outweighed by security and economic factors.

However, the agency tasked with reviewing the environmental impact of the project, the Environmental Protection Agency, has twice said the disruption would be more than just “minor.”

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Polluter-interested industries met with the White House yesterday, arguing that the pending anti-smog standard would be too costly. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute have also launched an advertising campaign in television, radio and in newspapers along the route of Obama’s Midwest bus tour this week “blasting the Environmental Protection Agency’s upcoming ozone regulations as a major burden on the economy.” The “Coalition for American Jobs” claims that Americans have to choose between jobs and the health of their families:

The stronger ozone standards will, if history is any guide, create jobs as manufacturers upgrade their equipment to sicken fewer people.

The American Lung Association, joined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public Health Association and American Thoracic Society, also met with the White House chief of staff Bill Daley yesterday to encourage the delayed efforts by the Obama administration to repair ozone standards corrupted by President Bush. They “made clear that the science and the law require the administration to move forward with a smog standard that protects public health“:

We made clear that the science and the law require the administration to move forward with a smog standard that protects public health. The American public strongly supports air pollution cleanup, and an updated standard is long overdue to protect and save lives. We urged the administration to issue the standard immediately.

Also joining the meeting of anti-pollution advocates were the League of Women Voters, the Center for American Progress, Earthjustice, Environment America, Environmental Defense Fund, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club.

China lawyer sues oil giants over spill

A Chinese lawyer is suing a state-owned energy giant and its US partner over a huge oil spill off China’s northeast coast, amid public anger over the resulting pollution, state media said Wednesday.

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Challenged in New Hampshire today about his accusation that global warming is a “contrived phony mess,” Rick Perry dug in, accusing climate scientists of a for-profit conspiracy. At the Politics and Eggs breakfast in Bedford, New Hampshire, Perry was questioned by Jim Rubens, a former New Hampshire Republican legislator and technology investor, who noted that the National Academy of Sciences, which has advised presidents since its founding by Abraham Lincoln, has concluded that global warming is caused primarily by fossil fuels.

“If observed scientific data and the National Academy of Sciences are both wrong on an issue involving thousands of scientists, and an issue as prominent as global warming,” Rubens asked, “doesn’t this call into question the entire science discovery process that forms the foundation of a hundred years of America’s technological preeminence?”

“You may have a point there,” Perry replied, arguing that “there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects”:

You may have a point there, because I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly or even daily scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes our climate’s changed, they’ve been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into a group of scientists who have in some cases found to be manipulating this information.

And the cost to the country and the world of implementing these anti-corbon programs is in the billions if not trillions of dollars at the end of the day. And I don’t think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money still on a scientific theory that has not been proven, and from my perspective, is being put more and more into question.

Watch video shot by ThinkProgress’ Travis Waldron:

“Rick Perry is a very impressive candidate in demeanor and personality, but he is simply citing false information and implying that there is some large-scale conspiracy among scientists, including the National Academy of Sciences,” Rubens told ThinkProgress Green in a phone interview. “Candidates running for president need to cite the facts as they are.”

Transcript: Read more

Obama has hit an all-time low in unpopularity in Gallup tracking.  No surprise, really:

1. The economy is still doing poorly
2. He spent months talking about the debt ceiling rather than the economic issue the voters care most about — and the voters weren’t fooled into thinking cutting the debt would stimulate either jobs or the recovery.
3. His messaging is still lame.  As NY Times biz reporter Joe Nocera wrote last week, “When did President Obama become such a lousy speech-maker? His remarks on Monday afternoon, aimed at calming the markets, were flat and uninspired–as they have consistently been throughout the debt ceiling crisis.”
4. He looked weak by the end of the debt ceiling deal — he had been insisting on  a balanced approach that included revenues and  ultimately agreed to sign one that did not include them.

In short, while Americans suffer, Obama focused on the wrong issue, he didn’t talk about it effectively, and he was rolled.

Given how poorly he is doing,  I do think it worthwhile to point out one recent rhetorical flourish.  He embraced the term “Obamacare” and turned it back on his critics in an Iowa event (video via Think Progress):

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Welcome to the sixth annual scientific integrity cartoon contest! It’s time for you to choose which cartoon ends up on the front of the 2012 UCS [Union of Concerned Scientists] calendar.

Twelve talented artists have created editorial cartoons that poke fun at the not-so-humorous issue of political interference in science. This year, they focused on how special interests can manipulate, distort, and suppress the science used to make policy and undermine the public’s understanding of scientific issues—often leading to disastrous consequences for our health, safety and environment.

Click here to see all the cartoons and vote for your favorite.  Here are a couple more:

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by Michael Conathan

As anyone who’s traversed the northern segment of New Jersey’s infamous Turnpike can attest, the Garden State has a bit of an image problem when it comes to clean air. And despite dramatic improvements over the past several decades, the state’s report card from the American Lung Association consisted almost entirely of Fs for ozone pollution, and counties received a cumulative 1.9 GPA for particle pollution, including 3 Fs and a D. Apparently, this suits the Koch brothers just fine.

Not content with the efforts of their group Americans For Prosperity to convince Gov. Chris Christie to derail New Jersey’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, the Koch brothers have also ramped up their efforts to ensure New Jersey’s air quality continues to live up to its historic reputation. Last month, the Koch-subsidized Beacon Hill Institute, or BHI, released the latest in a series of slanted cost-benefit analyses of offshore wind energy.

The report, proudly touted on the AFP website, misses the mark on both sides of the ledger by dramatically overstating the costs and underestimating the economic benefits of offshore wind. According to CAP Economist Adam Hersh, such accounting is “like trying to balance your checkbook without entering all the bills you pay or all the deposits you make.” Specifically: Read more

EPA: No way to capture fuel leaked into Missouri River

Fuel leaked from Enterprise Products Partners’ natural gas liquids pipeline into the Missouri River in Iowa has dissipated or evaporated with little chance of recovery, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Tuesday .

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In June, ThinkProgress broke the story about the latest big oil front group, called the Iowa Energy Forum. The Iowa Energy Forum — with funds from oil giants like Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil, and direction from lobbyists in DC — organized “grassroots” activists to appear at GOP primary events, lobbing loaded questions to candidates to get them on record supporting oil and gas public policy positions, like building the new Keystone XL pipeline from Canada through the United States.

The American Petroleum Institute, the umbrella lobbying organization for the oil industry, has apparently set up a number of other front groups focused on similar astroturf efforts as the Iowa Energy Forum. The Missouri Energy Forum, another API organization, sent an e-mail alert yesterday afternoon urging its staffers and activists to attend the Missouri State Fair to press public officials about opposing environmental regulations. The Missouri Energy Forum suggests that its supporters ask Rep. Blaine Leutkemeyer (R-MO) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) about the EPA’s new ozone regulations, because such regulations will supposedly “hurt Missouri’s farmers and business’s [sic].”

View a screen grab of the e-mail below (click to enlarge):

The oil industry has blanketed the country with millions of dollars in political advertisements for several years now to remind the public that the oil and gas sector creates jobs, and must never pay for its carbon pollution or lose its billions in taxpayer subsidies (view one of the many API advertisements here). But what kind of jobs is the industry creating? A brief search shows that API lobbyists have been busy hiring other state-based lobbyists to push a big oil political agenda in every corner of the country:

– The Keystone Energy Forum calls itself “a growing community of concerned citizens committed to two goals achieving energy security for our country and holding our elected officials more accountable in shaping energy policies.” Rather than being a group of “concerned citizens,” the Keystone Energy Forum is a front funded by the American Petroleum Institute and the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association to pushing the interests of the fracking industry. Bill Stewart, a former state legislator, is the head of the group, which was formed in January.

– The Florida Energy Forum hired Nicolás J. Gutiérrez, Jr., a lawyer who has worked with a number of trade association and is a partner at the firm Gutiérrez & Zarraluqui, LLP.

– The Northstar Energy Forum bills itself as a “community of concerned citizens throughout the state” of Minnesota. The language from the Northstar group is nearly identical to the API front in Pennsylvania, except for the word “growing.” However, the group does not disclose who actually works for the organization in Minnesota.