Obama expedites southern leg of Keystone pipeline and embraces fossil fuels. Does this make him more or less likely to okay the northern leg post-election?

Once upon a time, Obama said future generations would remember his ascendance as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

In a Cushing, Oklahoma, speech today, Obama made clear future generations would remember him for something quite different:

I’ve come to Cushing, an oil town — (applause) — because producing more oil and gas here at home has been, and will continue to be, a critical part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy.  (Applause.)

Now, under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.  (Applause.)  That’s important to know.  Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states.  We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high.  We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.

So we are drilling all over the place — right now….

Obama will, I’ve said, be remembered for a “failed presidency” simply for failing to seriously fight for a climate bill. And this speech certainly guts any possible claim for a climate legacy.

Ironically, as Brad Johnson notes over at TP Green, Cushing is “ground zero for climate disasters in the United States.” In the last five years, “Cushing alone has been hit by disastrous drought, severe summer storms, ice storms, and wildfire.”

Obama will have precisely one more shot to restore his legacy and, more importantly, to give the nation and the world a fighting chance to beat catastrophic climate change — the debt deal that is cut right after the election (see “Bipartisan Support Grows for Carbon Price as Part of Debt Deal“).  In the meantime, all we can do to divine his intentions is to listen to what he tells the American people. It ain’t pretty.

So how do we divine his intentions on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline? Read his lips:

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The campaign of President Barack Obama has fired back at GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney following the Republican’s calls for the firing of three Obama administration Cabinet officials — Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson — in charge of overseeing energy issues. When asked for a response to Romney’s call for the President to fire his “gas hike trio,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told ABC news:

“As a result of the president’s all-of-the-above energy strategy, domestic oil and gas production has increased each year and our dependence on foreign oil is at a 16-year low.”

“In Massachusetts, Gov. Romney raised the gas tax by 400 percent. Now Mitt Romney rolled out a tax plan that continues to charge taxpayers $4 billion a year to subsidize oil and gas companies making record profits and he opposed raising fuel economy standards, which will save consumers an average of $8,000 per vehicle.”

LaBolt then took to his Twitter, providing a link to an article on tax reform by Greg Mankiw, a Romney adviser Harvard economics professor, who was once the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush. In the article, published January 21, 2012, Mankiw advocated a tax on gasoline exceeding $2 a gallon.

LaBolt’s comment is misleading — Romney did not raise the 21-cent state gas tax at all, but did increase a 0.5 cent clean-up tax to 2.5 cents, and then diverted the money to the general budget, BuzzFeed explains:

Romney actually increased the price of gasoline directly himself. In 2003 Romney increased fees on drivers by two cents a gallon to pay for environmental clean ups of leaking underground gas station fuel tanks. The fee increased the clean-up tax on drivers by 400% and hit consumers directly at the pump. The fund, which was originally only half-a-cent, was created in 1992 to aid gas station owners with clean-ups. Two weeks after raising taxes on drivers, Romney eliminated the fund for gas station clean-ups entirely but kept the two cent increase in the tax gas. The money raised by Romney’s tax increase now goes directly into Commonwealth’s coffers for legislators to spend as they please.

The issue of gas taxes has been a proven vulnerabilty for Mitt Romney in the past. When running against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for the Republican nomination in 2008, Romney’s campaign took a bruising for the gas fee he imposed on the state of Massachusetts:

McCain campaign communications director Jill Hazelbaker responded to a Romney attack on McCain over energy issues by saying, “Mitt Romney has proven in this campaign that he will say anything to anyone at any time if he thinks it will help him politically. … As governor, Mitt Romney effectively raised gas taxes on every single motorist in Massachusetts.”

Governor Romney’s efforts to raise Massachusetts gas taxes — like his support for regulations on coal plants, the Northeast’s cap-and-trade initiative, and green energy — were progressive policies that helped improve the welfare of Massachusetts citizens. The eroding rate of gas taxes in this country has meant that more and more money flows from the 99 percent of drivers to the 1 percent involved with oil companies and Wall Street speculators. Meanwhile, the transportation infrastructure that people depend on is crumbling into disrepair. Burned by a previous attempt to restore the state gas tax from its eroding position, current Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) is refusing to restore the gas tax enough to preserve critical public transit services for his state.

– Fatima Najiy

The gripping Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, set in a post-apocalyptic North America ravaged by global warming, comes to theaters across the nation at midnight. In the series’ world, climate change is mostly forgotten history, the cause of the great societal collapse that led to the totalitarian society of Panem:

He tells the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens.

The tale of adolescence, bread and circuses amid economic injustice, and the trauma of war is beloved by a generation of young adults who are living themselves in a science-fictional world. No-one under the age of 35 has been alive when the planet’s temperature was normal. The coming decades, as climate change accelerates due to the exponential growth of fossil-fuel burning, will make the recent extreme floods, fires, droughts, and storms of the early 21st century a fond memory. But the authoritarian, apocalyptic world of the Hunger Games is avoidable — if its generation of readers makes wiser choices than those who now control the wealth of the world and are deciding to let it burn.

by Jocelyn Fong, reposted from Media Matters

In a pretty impressive act of journalism, the Associated Press recently conducted a “statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production.” The result: “No statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.” It’s neat to see math cut through the talking points and get straight to the truth of the matter — which is that expanding drilling is a fundamentally ineffectual response to gas price spikes.

Given that changes in U.S. oil production don’t move gasoline prices, it should be clear that U.S. government policies related to drilling are of even smaller consequence. Indeed, 92 percent of economists surveyed by the Chicago Booth School of Business agreed this week that “changes in U.S. gasoline prices over the past 10 years have predominantly been due to market factors rather than U.S. federal economic or energy policies.”

Still not convinced? How about another 20 economists and analysts from across the political spectrum who will tell you the same thing:

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March Heat Records Hit Incredible Ratio of 35 to 1 vs. Cold Records, Must-See Weather Channel Video Explains Link to Global Warming

Dr. Jeff Masters: A spring heat wave like no other in U.S. and Canadian history peaked in intensity yesterday, during its tenth day. Since record keeping began in the late 1800s, there have never been so many temperature records broken for spring warmth in a one-week period–and the margins by which some of the records were broken yesterday were truly astonishing. Wunderground’s weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, commented to me yesterday, “it’s almost like science fiction at this point.“

Yesterday, meteorologist Masters published a detailed statistical analysis that concluded, “It is highly unlikely the warmth of the current ‘Summer in March’ heat wave could have occurred unless the climate was warming.”

Based on satellite data, the map depicts temperatures from March 8–15 compared to the average of the same eight day period of March from 2000-2011. Image: NASA via Masters.

Among the stunning records set yesterday are:

• Pellston, MI: record high broken by 32°F
• Low temperatures beat the previous record high for the date at two stations
• Multiple Canadian cites break all-time April records for warmth in March

This off-the-charts event is just what scientists have been warning to expect if we kept spewing billions of tons of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the air (see Hansen et al: “Extreme Heat Waves … in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 Were ‘Caused’ by GlobalWarming”).

Meteorologists and science writers have been struggling to come up with words to describe this super-charged heat wave: “This is not the atmosphere I grew up with” and it’s “not just breaking but obliterating records” and “OFF THE SCALE WEIRD; even for Minnesota.” Climate Central wrote:

In fact, the broad geographic scope of this heat event, along with the margins by which records are being broken, the time of year this is occurring, and the duration of the event are all indications that this may be an unprecedented event since modern U.S. weather records began in the late 19th century.

Like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace. Weather Channel meteorologist Stu Ostro calls the current heat wave “surreal” and explained that “While natural factors are contributing to this warm spell, given the nature of it and its context with other extreme weather events and patterns in recent years there is a high probability that global warming is having an influence upon its extremity.”

There is a must-see interview of Ostro on the Weather Channel’s website, in which he explains how “data and science” — see this big PDF – switched him from being a skeptic on climate change to someone who understands that humans are changing the climate now:

Weather Channel meteorologists are stunned by “the sheer number of daily record highs either tied or broken over the past two weeks” as they explain in their post, “Perspective: More than 4,000 Record Highs Set!“:

If you pull out your calculator and add the numbers up from March 9 to March 19, the total exceeds 4,300!! This speaks to the widespread nature and longevity of this warm spell….

Through March 21, International Falls, Minn., self-promoted as the “Icebox of the Nation”, has tied or broken daily record highs 11 of the past 12 days!

… Chicago, Ill. set record highs eight days in a row through Wednesday! In this streak, seven of the days have been in the 80s, including Wednesday’s astounding 87 degree high! The National Weather Service in Chicago recently called the warm spell “historic” and something that is unlikely to be matched in our lifetime.

We have entered the age of the exclamation point.

But the notion that this won’t be matched in our lifetime is to miss the impact global warming is having on heat records, according to the scientific literature.

Yes, this March U.S. heat records have been outnumbering cold records by a stunning amount – an incredible 35-to-1 – as this chart from Steve Scolnik at Capital Climate makes clear:

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by Manish Bapna and Betsy Otto, via WRI Insights Aqueduct

It’s rare for water to make waves at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of business leaders and finance ministers.

But the most recent Davos summit was an exception. A new eye-opening report ranked water supply among the top five global risks in terms of impact– on par with systemic financial failure and fiscal imbalances.

As we mark World Water Day, the alarming statistics underlying water scarcity are worth repeating. Worldwide 2.7 billion people are currently affected by water shortages. As the global population races toward 8 billion and beyond, upward trends in food demand and economic growth promise to further strain freshwater resources, especially in the developing world. Climate change, of course, is exacerbating these water challenges.

Clean, abundant water is essential for life and economic growth. Since it is a finite resource, we need to find solutions that will ensure we can use water more efficiently and mange water systems more wisely.

Making this happen is easier said than done. Success depends on the recognition of three essential characteristics. That is, water risk is: multi-dimensional; local; and requires a collective response.

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President Barack Obama’s visit to Cushing, Oklahoma, the “Pipeline Crossroads for the World,” took him to ground zero for climate disasters in the United States. Since 2007, Cushing alone has been hit by disastrous drought, severe summer storms, ice storms, and wildfire. The state of Oklahoma — home to the country’s most visible climate denier and oil industry apologist, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — has the greatest density of disaster declarations in the country, an analysis by Environment America has found. Six Oklahoma counties have each experienced 10 or more declared presidential climate disasters since 2006:

In 2011, Oklahoma was hit by the disastrous Groundhog’s Day blizzard, flooding rains in April, tornadoes in May, and then set the national record for the hottest summer ever of any state in the union, smashing the previous record set by Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl summer of 1934 by 1.8 degrees.

American taxpayers are footing the bill for these fossil-fueled disasters, motivated by the obligation to care for their fellow citizens no matter where they live.

In his speech, Obama made no mention of the climate disasters that have hit Oklahoma. “It is good to be back in Oklahoma,” he said. “I have not been back here since the campaign, and everybody looks like they are doing just fine.”

Speaking in Cushing, OK, President Barack Obama touted his administration’s record of a huge boom in the U.S. oil and gas industry, dismissing concerns about accelerating climate change:

We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We have quadrupled number of operating rigs to a record high. We have added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the earth and then some. So we are drilling all over the place, right now. That’s not the challenge. That’s not the problem.

Watch it:

Obama announced that he is expediting the construction of the southern leg of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which will connect tar sands and oil shale production from the north to Gulf Coast refineries for tax-free export to foreign markets.

Obama concluded by saying that the “future I want for our kids” is one in which “we’re going to keep on drilling.”

Climate scientists have warned that the prevention of catastrophic climate change would require that 80 percent of known fossil-fuel reserves will have to remain unburned.

by Bill McKibben, via Huffington Post

The president makes a potentially interesting speech today in Cushing, Oklahoma.

It comes amidst a completely unprecedented March heat wave — 2,000 records fell last week as cities like Chicago broke records dating back to the 19th century, and that heat is expected to move towards the eastern seaboard this week; meanwhile, record levels of atmospheric moisture are expected to trigger flooding in Texas and Oklahoma. It comes on the tail of a year when America set a new record for multi-billion dollar weather disasters. And it comes on his first visit to the Sooner State since it set the all-time American record for the hottest summer by any state — the average reading for June, July and August was 86.9 degrees, breaking the old record (also Oklahoma, this time 1934) by an astonishing 1.7 degrees. In other words, if there was ever a moment for talking about global warming, this would be it.

But I’m guessing the president won’t.

My bet is he’ll talk about what’s he’s called his “all of the above” energy policy — about how America has drilled a record number of oil and gas wells during his administration, about how fracking technology has spread around the country. He’ll laud sun and wind, but as supplements to gas and oil, not replacements.

And to make it especially painful to ranchers, indigenous people, and assorted environmentalists, he may do it while standing next to pipe waiting to be laid for the southern half of the Keystone Pipeline, an enterprise he has promised to “expedite.”

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by Yoram Bauman and Dani Ladyka, reposted from the Sightline Institute

This spring marks the release of new editions of introductory economics textbooks, so it’s a good time to update our 2010 review of the treatment of climate change in economics textbooks. As in 2010, some hit the mark while others are wildly misleading, but we’re happy to say that there’s plenty of good news: about half of the books improved their treatment of climate change.

Especially noteworthy is Glenn Hubbard and Tony O’Brien’s Economics, 4th ed., which has jumped to the top of our list. (Our previous review gave the 3rd edition a C+, describing it as “a masterpiece vandalized by hooligans”.) As a political aside, it is worth noting that Glenn Hubbard and Greg Mankiw, whose textbook also received a top grade, are the two economists advising Mitt Romney.

Only one textbook received a worse grade this time around: Roger Miller’s Economics Today, 16^th ed. Not coincidentally, it has also earned the coveted 2012 Ruffin and Gregory Award for the Worst Treatment of Climate Change in an Economics Textbook.

If you’d like to congratulate Professor Miller and/or encourage him to update his textbook—which is full of fallacies, including the astounding assertion that an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 is “the official carbon emissions target of the U.S. government” (!)—he can be reached at rogerleroy33031@yahoo.com. (Please be polite, because that’s the best way to effect change.)

PS. On a historical note, Paul Gregory is now aware that there is an award named after his textbook, which went out of print ten years ago after this hilarious email exchange about the book’s ridiculous treatment of climate change. He of course claims to be a victim of the “climate police”, but the truth is that his textbook now sells on Amazon.com for $3.78 because it included wildly inaccurate statements like “There are in fact very few climatologists in the United States, and the majority of them are skeptical of global warming.” We are delighted that most textbook authors are more open to constructive criticism than Professor Gregory was, and we invite authors to email us at yoram@standupeconomist.com for free and confidential feedback on draft material related to climate change.

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These days, Mitt Romney falsely accuses Obama of wanting “to see gasoline prices go up.” But back in 2006, it was Romney who championed high gasoline prices. He opposed a reduction in the state gas tax by arguing ”I’m not sure there will be the right time for us to encourage the use of more gasoline.”

Ironically, Mitt Romney is in damage control mode after one of his top campaign spokesmen compared the candidate’s stance on issues to an Etch A Sketch yesterday.

“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign,” said campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom on CNN yesterday morning. “Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.”

The comments illustrate what conservative Republicans fear and what the Democratic opposition is celebrating: the candidate’s stances have changed so dramatically, it’s nearly impossible to know who the real Romney is.

The latest Etch A Sketch moment for the campaign relates to gas prices. In 2006, saying he didn’t think high gas prices would go away, Romney pushed for alternatives to petroleum fuels. When Romney came into office, his Administration even proposed quintupling a fee on wholesale fuel deliveries in order to fund environmental clean up.

Alec MacGillis of the New Republic had a piece this morning on Romney’s old gas policies:

Governor Romney responded to price spikes by describing them as the natural result of global market pressures and by calling for increases in fuel efficiency—the same approach that he now derides Obama for taking as president.

At moments, Romney went so far as to make high gas prices out to be a welcome reality for the foreseeable future, one that people needed to learn to live with. When lieutenant governor Kerry Healey, a fellow Republican, called for suspending the state’s 23.5 cent gas tax during a price spike in May 2006, Romney rejected the idea, saying it would only further drive up gasoline consumption. “I don’t think that now is the time, and I’m not sure there will be the right time for us to encourage the use of more gasoline,” Romney said, according to the Quincy Patriot Ledger’s report at the time. “I’m very much in favor of people recognizing that these high gasoline prices are probably here to stay.”

Romney aggressively supported “smart growth” policies to promote public transportation, walkable cities and next-generation vehicles. Today, conservatives like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh call smart growth a liberal UN plot to increase government control over people’s lives.

During the 2012 campaign season, Romney has jumped head-first into the political gamesmanship over gas prices, completely switching his previous stances on how to deal with our dependence on petroleum-based fuels. Even while admitting in 2006 that prices would continue to climb, Romney is now saying that “there’s no question” the Obama Administration is responsible for the spike in prices.

Of course, the President is not responsible for high gas prices. And that completely bogus claim has been repeatedly debunked by the Wall Street Journal and the conservative Cato Institute.

Romney has called for nothing but a “drill baby drill” approach to lowering gas prices — even though multiple analyses, including a recent investigation by the Associated Press, have found absolutely no correlation between increased drilling and lower gas prices over the decades.

In 2006, Romney believed efficiency, public transportation and alternatives to oil were the key to alleviating consumer pain at the pump. Today, he calls those options “illusory.”

“I’m running as a conservative Republican,” said Romney, in response to the Etch A Sketch comment. “I was a conservative governor. I will be running as a conservative Republican nominee — hopefully, nominee at that point. The policies and the positions are the same.”

But that’s the trouble for Romney. His policies and positions aren’t anything close to the same.

As governor of Massachusetts in 2006, Mitt Romney opposed a Republican proposal to suspend the state gas tax during a gasoline price spike, saying “high gasoline prices are probably here to stay.” Romney’s “fit into his broader effort to promote ‘smart growth’ policies in Massachusetts,” Alec MacGillis of the New Republic reports. Romney told the Quincy Patriot Ledger that he opposed increased gasoline consumption:

“I don’t think that now is the time, and I’m not sure there will be the right time, for us to encourage the use of more gasoline. I’m very much in favor of people recognizing that these high gasoline prices are probably here to stay.” [Quincy Patriot Ledger, 5/06]

Now that Romney’s running for the Republican nomination and seeking the support of right-wing oil magnates like the Koch brothers, he’s changed his tune. On Sunday, Romney argued that the “gas hike trio” of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson should “hand in their resignations” — because they and President Obama have pursued policies in line with Romney’s former position:

There’s no question but when he ran for office he said he wanted to see gasoline prices to go up. He said that energy prices would skyrocket under his views. And he selected three people to help him implement that program: the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of the Interior, and the EPA Administrator. This gas hike trio has been doing the job over the last three-and-a-half years and gas prices are up. The right course is, they ought to be fired, because the president has apparently suffered an election-year conversion. He’s now decided that gasoline prices should come down.

Watch it:

It appears Romney’s Etch-a-Sketch runs on oil.

Other stories below: Seal pups face climate change woes; Obama putting oil pipeline on fast track as he touts energy record in Oklahoma

Climate Central: If We’re Altering Rain, Hail, Any Doubts Left on Climate?

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when communicating climate science is the resistance many have to accepting the notion that human activities are capable of altering the earth’s climate system. After all, the planet is a pretty big place, and the climate was doing its thing long before humans arrived. To some, the abundant scientific evidence showing that manmade emissions of global warming gases, such as carbon dioxide, are likely the key driver behind recent global warming seems, well, kind of arrogant.

To these folks, I say check out a recent study that had nothing to do with global warming. By showing that human activities can have measurable impacts on small-scale weather phenomena – in this case, thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes and hail – the report highlighted that we’re already able to influence weather on a daily basis.

And if we are capable of modifying thunderstorm behavior, it’s not a large leap to understand that we’re also altering the atmosphere on much broader scales.

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