I’ve been on jury duty, so it seemed a good time to launch a new occasional feature, “Stories We Missed.” These are stories we didn’t get around to blogging on at the time.

Speaking of the legal system, the ChiPs are down for the California hydrogen highway cul de sac — literally. The future Ponches and Jons of the California Highway Patrol won’t be policing the hydrogen highway.

As Green Car Reports explained in a piece from this summer, “RIP Hydrogen Highway? California Takes Back Grant Dollars.”

… the future of hydrogen vehicles depends on a network of filling stations to allow people to go about their journeys as normal.

That future has taken a blow in California, with the news that $27 million in grants for hydrogen filling stations has been revoked by the California Energy Commission.

According to the Santa Monica Mirror (via Autoblog Green), the grants have been revoked so the state can reassess the grant process, after complaints that Linde Group and Air Products & Chemicals (AP&C)–two companies set to use around two-thirds of the grant money–had largely self-dealt the contracts.

… there are questions about how green the hydrogen actually is–since much of the fuel Linde and AP&C will sell is from natural gas, rather than renewable sources. Air products has said that one third of its hydrogen will be extracted from landfill biogas, meeting the state’s one-third-renewable energy requirements by 2020.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) require multiple technological (and other) miracles to succeed as practical, affordable, carbon-reducing consumer vehicles — and they require every plausible competitor, including electric vehicles, to fail first (see “Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a dead end from a technological, practical, and climate perspective” and “The car of the perpetual future” — The Economist agrees with Climate Progress on hydrogen).

As I wrote in a 2005 journal article, “The car and fuel of the future” (which was the “hottest article” in Energy Policy from July 2006 through March 2007):

Using fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen from zero-carbon sources such as renewable power or nuclear energy has a cost of avoided carbon dioxide of more than $600 a metric ton, which is more than a factor of ten higher than most other strategies being considered today….

Nothing that would significantly change that calculation has happened in the last few years. Moreover, as The Economist noted a few years ago, some say “the solution to large-scale hydrogen production lies in using renewable electricity to extract hydrogen from water via electrolysis” or using “nuclear power. But it would surely be easier simply to use this energy to charge the batteries of all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles.” Easier, hundreds of billions of dollars cheaper, and you don’t throw away 75% of the valuable carbon free electricity in the process!

Running HFCVs on natural gas makes no sense at all since the full life-cycle GHG emissions (including methane leakage) are merely comparable to the best gasoline hybrids. Also, building an expensive hydrogen fueling infrastructure over the next two decades around a fossil fuel would vastly increase the total long-term cost since that infrastructure would have to be replaced in the two decades after that by carbon-free hydrogen fueling stations.

These are but a few of the reasons the incredibly expensive infrastructure will never be built. No independent group ever proposed a plausible scenario under which the infrastructure would be built, so it’s no surprise California couldn’t figure it out.  And that’s the fundamental reason hydrogen cars will not be practical or a cost-effective climate strategy in your lifetime. Or, as The Economist put it,

In other words, claims that hydrogen will be the automotive fuel of the future are as true today as they ever have been.

by Katie Valentine

Federal regulators have issued the most permits for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico this year since 2007.

That’s according to data from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, as reported by the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

So far this year, the government has issued 90 new drilling permits for wells deeper than 500 feet — more than the last two years combined and more than each of the two years before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

The news comes on the heels of President Obama and Governor Romney’s heated exchange about energy development during the second presidential debate last week. It further refutes Romney’s claims that new licenses and permits for drilling are down under the Obama administration, and backs up a report from Representative Edward Markey, which finds oil and gas companies have 3,684 idle leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil production from existing federal leases in the Gulf of Mexico is also increasing, according the Times-Picayune:

Nearly 1.3 million gallons of oil were produced per day in July, up from 1.2 million gallons the year before, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s still down from 1.7 million gallons in 2009, the year before the spill.

That number is projected to grow to 1.4 million gallons per day by the end of 2013, according to federal estimates.

Andy Radford, a senior policy analyst with the American Petroleum Institute, expects deepwater drilling will continue to pick up, as additional rigs become available and operators become accustomed to the regulations and resumed pace of permitting.

Many operators are now trying to build up a cache of permits so that when drilling rigs become available, they can make a move, Radford said, which shows that operators are bullish on the outlook of drilling in the Gulf.

In fact, U.S. oil production is at its highest level since 1997, according to government figures. Though Republicans often tout domestic production as the key to lower gas prices, current and historical experiences shows that isn’t the case: fuel prices are still high today, in spite of record production levels, because the price of oil is determined by the global market.

An Associated Press analysis of 36 years of data on oil production and gasoline prices found “no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.”

The surge in new drilling permits has to do with better communication of new rules and regulations between oil companies and government officials, industry analysts say. The Obama administration suspended deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for six months following the Deepwater Horizon spill, a decision that was criticized by the oil industry and Gulf coast officials, who said it was excessive and would hurt the industry and the Gulf economy.

After lifting the moratorium early in October 2010, administration officials said the time period had been necessary put into place new rules and requirements that would reduce the risks of drilling enough to prevent another disaster.

More than two years later, the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon spill are still playing out.  Oil has been leaking from a 100-ton containment device on the seafloor near the site of the Macondo well blowout since at least September 16 of this year, when a sheen was discovered at the site. The leak is occurring at a rate at a rate of 100 barrels per day, and tests have confirmed the oil matches that which flowed from the Macondo well in 2010.

August’s Hurricane Issac  brought about 565,000 pounds of oiled material to the surface, more than had been collected in eight months before the storm. It’s estimated that up to 1 million barrels of oil from the spill remain beneath the ocean’s surface – oil that is affecting marine life in ways scientists still don’t know for sure.

In addition, scientists have discovered shrimp with no eyes or eye sockets and fish with deep lesions in the region.

Katie Valentine graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Journalism. She is currently an intern on the international climate policy team at the Center for American Progress.

by Greg Noth

A new study conducted by the energy consulting firm IHS CERA and sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, American Chemistry Council, and Natural Gas Supply Association finds the U.S. is on track to become the largest oil producer in the world.

Oil and other liquid carbon production is expected to reach 10.9 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, which is a 7 percent increase from last year. By next year, the Department of Energy projects the country will produce an average 11.4 million bpd — just below the 11.6 million bpd produced by the largest oil producer in the world, Saudi Arabia.

This study, which the Chamber happily endorsed, proves that attacks from the right against the Obama administration’s domestic energy policies — often led and funded by the Chamber of Commerce — are completely false. Indeed, production has increased every year of Obama’s presidency and this year is the largest single-year gain since 1951.

Compared to the last three years of President Bush, there have been 241 million more barrels of oil produced from public lands in the first three years of President Obama. Also, the number of oil drilling rigs have seen a 75 percent increase between 2009 and 2011.

Even though the Chamber acknowledges energy production is high, the organization and other oil-funded groups have spent millions this election cycle running attack ads, some repeating energy myths about the government limiting production. Its campaign narrative does not match reality.

Oil production is now higher than at any point since the mid 1990′s. Yet, despite these massive gains in production, gas prices have remained “stubbornly high.” This is because the global market determines prices, and factors outside U.S. borders control them — not presidents.

According to a recent analysis from the Congressional Budget office, the only way to truly protect consumers from price increases is to promote “policies that reduce the use of oil.” And that’s what we’ll need to do in order to address climate change as well.

The Chamber continues to attack Obama on energy. But the group is already getting the energy policy it wants, as this recent report it sponsored points out. Meanwhile, gas prices remain high and we continue on a path of uncontrolled carbon pollution.

Greg Noth is an intern with ThinkProgress.

Fact #1: coal is dirty.

Let’s start with a fact we can’t ignore: we need to transition away from carbon intensive energy sources like coal — and pretty quickly.

That’s been lost in the current election-year politicking around energy. Over the last few months, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have twisted themselves in every direction trying to convince voters that they support coal more than the other candidate, and that the other candidate really hates the industry.

Both Obama and Romney have been on the record explaining in no uncertain terms why pollution from coal is so dangerous for the climate and public health. But in the kind of bizarre reversal that only an election can cultivate, both men have run ads attacking the other for their previous comments on the need to transition away from coal.

Of course, Obama — who despite his recent silence on climate, talks extensively about the clean resources of the future — is the one catching all the heat from the coal industry.

Supported by tens of millions of dollars in coal ads and campaign donations, Republicans have crafted a disciplined messaging strategy around Obama’s supposed “war on coal.”

It’s a campaign that puts energy progressives in a tough spot defending the need to reduce carbon pollution while simultaneously claiming that Obama isn’t waging a war on coal. (The same goes for increases in oil drilling).

We’ll say what Obama and almost every other politician won’t say this election: phasing out the burning of carbon-intensive resources — waging a War on Carbon Pollution — is necessary and admirable if we want to address climate change.

But we’ll also call it like we see it. The supposed “war on coal” is a clever election-year messaging strategy that simplifies the complicated reality of what coal is facing.

So while the Chamber of Commerce and the American Council on Clean Coal Electricity spend their last millions in the coming weeks to push this campaign, keep in mind these five facts about coal:

1. Regulations have a limited role in current coal woes

We could see up to 75 gigawatts of coal plant closures over the next 5-8 years, resulting in a turnover of around 5-10 percent of our total electricity generation fleet by 2020. Surely this must be due to EPA overreach and Obama’s war on coal, right?

Actually, as a recent report from the Brattle Group points out, most of the recently announced closures are “primarily due to changing market conditions, not environmental rule revisions, which have trended towards more lenient requirements and schedules.”

Coal electricity fell dramatically this spring, but it climbed back up in the summer. Why? Because when natural gas prices hovered near record lows, plant operators either switched fuels or ramped down coal plants. But when prices started climbing back up, they burned more coal. This relationship illustrates how the low price of gas — a trend fossil fuel hawks have championed — has influenced the recent decline in coal.

“It’s the market forces that are pushing [coal] out of the market,” Alan Beamon of the Energy Information Administration told the Charleston Gazette recently.

We also have a very old coal fleet in this country; the median age of U.S. coal plants is 46 years. Many plants are ready for retirement anyway and rather than keeping them open, companies are looking toward natural gas or renewables. So yes, new Environmental Protection Agency rules on mercury and air toxics have influenced recent decisions by operators to keep some plants open. But in many cases, these are the oldest, dirtiest power plants that need to be immediately dealt with — an undeniably positive outcome.

2. While the government gives away taxpayer-owned coal, exports surge

Read more

by Brad Johnson

Richard Mourdock, the Mitt Romney-endorsed Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Indiana, is standing by his comments that pregnancy after rape is “something that God intended to happen” and a “gift from God.”

While these comments are supposedly “pro-life,” his support for global climate destruction undercuts any notion that he supports policies to protect our children and future generations from serious harm.

Mourdock, who made his career as a coal and oil geologist and disastrous coal mining executive, has made repeated statements on manmade climate change that evince a total disregard for science and the risks posed by carbon pollution to all unborn children:

“I’m scared to death about each of the three candidates and their positions on global climate change,” Mourdock said. “Global caps in the last 15 years receded until last year on Mars, but what do we have in common with Mars? Last time I checked, only the sun.” Mourdock explained that humans aren’t the cause of global warming and that it’s something bigger in the universe, such as the sun. [Indiana Statesman, 4/25/08]

“Clearly, Lugar is out of touch with Hoosier conservatives if he thinks that serving on the board of groups that advocate ‘cap and trade’ carbon tax schemes and the junk science associated with global climate change alarmism is prudent when he represents a state that meets the majority of its electrical needs with coal-fired generators.” [The Hill, 4/5/12]

“We are basing our energy policy on the greatest hoax of all time, which is that mankind is changing the climate.” [American Spectator, 5/9/12]

Mourdock’s rejection of scientific fact doesn’t just have theoretical implications. As Mike Oles pointed out in September, Indiana has been devastated by the carbon-fueled drought of 2012:

Rain during the last few weeks have allowed Indiana to go from being in an exceptional and extreme drought zone to merely a severe one, but the damage has been done. It was miserable this summer in the Hoosier state. Way too hot and way too dry, served up with dire warnings of “fireweather.” Nearly every major Indiana City broke or tied records for the hottest day on record and Terre Haute set at an all-time state record at 108°F. July was the hottest month on record in Indiana and June was the driest. It gets worse. The Union of Concerned Scientists have painted an even bleaker picture for Indiana over the next century if nothing is done to combat greenhouse emissions. The 2012 drought might just be the beginning.

Richard Mourdock’s campaign is financed by the coal industry.

Brad Johnson is the campaign manager of Forecast the Facts and ClimateSilence.org.

by Kate Gordon

It’s hard to even know where to start with the Institute for Energy Research’s attack on the regional energy report just released by The Center for American Progress and the Center for the Next Generation.

One easy response would be to simply point out the institute’s failure to even acknowledge the reality of climate change. Ignoring the fact that our report consistently points to climate change as the most important reason to transition to a cleaner energy future, the institute pretends that we’ve instead written a paper about the world running out of oil. They write:

Yes, it is certainly true that in a physical sense, there is a finite amount of energy located within the United States—or planet Earth for that matter—in the form of oil, natural gas, and coal. But by the same token, even solar power is “finite”—the sun will eventually burn out.

The sun will, in fact, burn out in a few billion years. But the global tipping point on climate change—the point at which the Earth reaches a 2 degree Celsius increase in temperature above pre-industrial levels—will happen in as few as 16 years if we don’t take steps now to stop it, or at least slow it down.

IER also asks — not jokingly — “in what sense is ‘drilling’ unsustainable?”

To understand exactly why drilling is so unsustainable, take a look at the chart below documenting how the oil industry has pushed us far over our carbon budget. This should be a wake-up call for anyone considering the future of energy:

But even if we take a cue from the presidential campaigns and leave climate change out of it, just focusing on the institute’s central economic arguments about the advanced energy future, the institute is still dead wrong.

The central critique in their blog post is that oil, gas, and coal, are profitable industries, they pay taxes—a debatable point, but we’ll leave it alone—and therefore they are good for America. On the other hand, goes the argument, renewable energy programs “need support from the taxpayers … which is an implicit admission that these energy projects would not receive investment from people who voluntarily could put their money at risk.”

There are two immediate problems with this analysis. First, fossil-fuel companies are profitable in large part because they do not put an honest price on their goods. Instead, they pass the cost of adverse health consequences of a polluted environment and climate change directly onto consumers. The hidden cost of oil-and-gas consumption in the United States in 2011 amounts to a staggering $89 billion, based on the conservative findings of a U.S. Government Working Group that tallied the social cost of greenhouse gases to be about $21 per ton. Other studies say this figure is far too low.

Read more

By Jackie Weidman and Noreen Nielsen

ConocoPhillips announced its 2012 third-quarter profits this morning, reporting earnings of $1.8 billion — a decline of 31 percent due to a drop in crude oil prices and natural gas.

ConocoPhillips has made $7 billion in profits in 2012 alone. Earlier this year, ConocoPhillips split into two companies – ConocoPhillips and Phillips66 – with ConocoPhillips controlling upstream business, and Phillips66 taking over the refineries side.

ConocoPhillips is ranked as the ninth-largest company in the world in the 2012 Global Fortune 500. It receives an estimated annual average of $600 million dollars in tax breaks, and continues to spend millions of dollars to influence lawmakers.

Below is a quick glimpse at what ConocoPhillips is using its billions of dollars in profits for:

– ConocoPhillips has already spent $1.9 million lobbying Congress this year. Since 2011, ConocoPhillips spent over $20 million on lobbying Congress, making it the top spender of the oil and gas industry.

– Conoco has contributed over $483,000 to federal campaigns this year, with 90 percent of the contributions going to Republicans.

– Conoco is sitting on $1.3 billion in cash reserves.

– The company spent 8 percent of its third quarter profit — or $149 million— buying back its own stock, which enriches the largest shareholders and executives.

– Conoco’s production is 1 percent lower than this time last year (1.525 million BOE per day vs. 1.538 million BOE per day in 2011)

– Conoco paid an 18 percent effective federal tax rate in 2011. This is nearly half of the 35 percent standard top corporate tax rate.

– ConocoPhillips’ former CEO James Mulva received $18.92 million in total compensation last year. Current CEO, Ryan Lance received over $5.9 million in compensation in 2011. He sits on the board of the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying arm of the oil and gas industry.

BP will be the next of the Big Five oil companies to announce its 2012 third-quarter profit earnings on Tuesday, October 30, 2012.

A changing Gulf Stream off the East Coast has destabilized frozen methane deposits trapped under nearly 4,000 square miles of seafloor, scientists reported Wednesday. And since methane is even more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas, the researchers said, any large-scale release could have significant climate impacts. [NBC]

“It is unlikely that the western North Atlantic margin is the only area experiencing changing ocean currents,” [researchers] noted. “Our estimate … may therefore represent only a fraction of the methane hydrate currently destabilizing globally.”

… “We may approach a turning point” from a warming driven by man-made carbon dioxide to a warming driven by methane, Jurgen Mienert, the geology department chair at Norway’s University of Tromso, told NBC News.

“The interactions between the warming Arctic Ocean and the potentially huge methane-ice reservoirs beneath the Arctic Ocean floor point towards increasing instability,” he added.

Job growth in the U.S. solar industry, fueled by falling panel prices, will outpace employment in wind energy, which faces the looming expiration of a federal credit, according to a report from CleanEdison Inc. [Bloomberg]

In early October, E&E News and the MIT Energy Initiative held a wide-reaching energy and climate debate between surrogates from the two campaigns. The debate between Aldy and Cass was fascinating and substantive. [Wonk Blog]

Of the roughly 50,000 words spoken in this month’s three presidential debates, none were “climate change,” ‘’global warming” or “greenhouse gas.” [Associated Press]

PBS’ Frontline recently aired a documentary titled “Climate of Doubt,” examining how conservative groups, frequently funded by the fossil fuel industry, have pushed Republicans to reject the scientific consensus on manmade global warming. Media Matters looks back at how Fox News has contributed to that “Climate of Doubt.” [Media Matters]

Photographs of a dead Sperm Whale in the Gulf of Mexico offer a rare glimpse into how many whales came into close contact with the gushing BP well during the oil spill. They also show Obama administration officials tightly controlling information about whales and other wildlife caught up in the disaster. [Washington Post]

Hurricane Sandy made landfall in Jamaica on Wednesday afternoon, and it is increasingly likely to turn into a massive — potentially even historic — storm with the potential to spread hazards ranging from coastal flooding to high winds across a wide area from the Carolinas northward to New England. [Climate Central]

Lord Monckton had declared that he will shortly be presenting the results of a paper on climate economics, namely a hypothesis that it is up to 50 times more costly to try to prevent global warming today than to pay the cost of adapting to its consequences the day after tomorrow. [Gibraltar Chronicle]

The UK cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than any other European country last year, over-achieving on targets under the Kyoto protocol on climate change. [Guardian]

Major importers in Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan and top buyer Japan, have turned away from the United States as U.S. corn prices soared to record highs this summer, buying feed from South America and producers in the Black Sea region. [Reuters]

A project to help track Arctic climate change using volunteers to transcribe U.S. ship logs online was launched on Wednesday by the National Archives and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). [Reuters]