The American Petroleum Institute (API), the trade association for the oil and gas industry, has launched a new radio and print ad campaign in seven states opposing Democratic efforts to eliminate subsidies for the petroleum companies and then urge voters to call key home-state senators.

The Washington Post reported that API spokesman Reid Porter said the ad campaign was “based on public policy currently being debated before the U.S. Senate” and “not related to campaign activities.”

The ads are running in Missouri, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Maine and Nevada from March 24-27. Six of those states will see fiercely-contested Senate races this November. The seventh, North Carolina, will likely see a close Senate race in 2014. The 2012 races are:

– MA: Sen. Scott Brown (R) won a 2010 special election and is seeking a full term
– ME: Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) is retiring, leaving an open seat
– MO: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) is seeking re-election
– NE: Sen. Dean Heller (R) is seeking a full term
– VA: Sen. Jim Webb (D) is retiring, leaving an open seat
– WV: Sen. Joe Manchin (D) won a 2010 special election and is seeking a full term

Some of the ads mention both of the state’s senators, but others mention only one senator.

In the four states that have an incumbent running for re-election — Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, and West Virginia — the API ads mention that senator alone. And the North Carolina ads mention only Sen. Kay Hagan (D), the incumbent up for re-election in two years. In the two states with an open-seat election — Maine and Virginia — the ads mention both senators.

Sen. Brown’s campaign conceded the ads have an effect on the Massachusetts senate campaign, in his favor. The Massachusetts Republican will make a donation to a charity of his opponent’s choosing, in accordance with an agreement between their two campaigns.

In a 51-47 vote, 43 Senate Republicans and four Democrats filibustered to protect $24 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil. Although a majority voted for Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D-NJ) bill, it fell short of the 60 needed. The only two Republicans to break rank were Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

A Think Progress Green analysis shows how oil and gas companies have funneled cash to the same senators who protected its handouts:

– The 47 senators voting against the bill have received $23,582,500 in career contributions from oil and gas. The 51 senators voting to repeal oil tax breaks have received $5,873,600.

– The senators who voted for Big Oil’s handouts received on average over four times as much career oil cash as those who voted to end them.

– Overall, Senate Republicans have taken $23.2 million in oil and gas contributions. Democrats received $6.66 million.

– Since 2011, Senate Republicans have voted seven times for pro-Big Oil interests and against clean energy three times.

Democrats who joined the Republicans in defeating the bill include Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Begich (D-AK), and Jim Webb (D-VA). Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) broke ranks and voted to cut the tax breaks. Two senators, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) didn’t vote.

Republicans have taken an overwhelming 88 percent of oil and gas contributions this election cycle. While showering politicans with cash, the oil industry also spent over $146,000,000 on lobbying last year.

Although 55 percent of Americans want to see Big Oil welfare end, the GOP once again largely acted in-line with their Big Oil donors.

The full list of oil contributions for the Senate is listed below, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics:
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Ever wonder what the wind really looks like? Turns out Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t far off when he painted Starry Night.

The folks at Many Eyes, an experimental visualization company funded by IBM, have released an amazing map showing how the wind moves across the country in real time. Upon a quick glance, it’s easy to see why all the wind farms are being built in the Midwest, Northwest and Northeast.

Click on the map to see the interactive version. It’s hard to take your eyes away.

Acknowledging Climate Change Doesn’t Make You A Liberal

by Paul Douglas, via neorenaissance

I’m going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real.

I am a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment, and sound science. I am not a climate scientist. I’m a meteorologist, and the weather maps I’m staring at are making me uncomfortable. No, you’re not imagining it: we’ve clicked into a new and almost foreign weather pattern. To complicate matters, I’m in a small, frustrated and endangered minority:  a Republican deeply concerned about the environmental sacrifices some are asking us to make to keep our economy powered-up, long-term. It’s ironic.

The root of the word conservative is “conserve.”  A staunch Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, set aside vast swaths of America for our National Parks System, the envy of the world. Another Republican, Richard Nixon, launched the EPA. Now some in my party believe the EPA and all those silly “global warming alarmists” are going to get in the way of drilling and mining our way to prosperity. Well, we have good reason to be alarmed.

Weather 2.0. “It’s A New Atmosphere Floating Overhead.”

These are the Dog Days of March. Ham Weather reports 6,895 records in the last week – some towns 30 to 45 degrees warmer than average; off-the-scale, freakishly warm. 13,393 daily records for heat since March 1 – 16 times more warm records than cold records. The scope, intensity and duration of this early heat wave are historic and unprecedented.

And yes, climate change is probably spiking our weather.

“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” 129,404 weather records in one year? You can’t point to any one weather extreme and say “that’s climate change”. But a warmer atmosphere loads the dice, increasing the potential for historic spikes in temperature and more frequent and bizarre weather extremes. You can’t prove that any one of Barry Bond’s 762 home runs was sparked by (alleged) steroid use. But it did increase his “base state,” raising the overall odds of hitting a home run. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, more fuel for floods, while increased evaporation pushes other regions into drought.

Here’s what I suspect: the patient is running a slight fever. Symptoms include violent tornado sneezes, severe sniffles of flooding and raging rashes of jaw-dropping warmth. It’s 85 in March. What will July bring? It’s as if Mother Nature seized the weather remote, put America’s seasons on fast-forward, and turned the volume on extreme weather up to a deafening 10. This isn’t even close to being “normal”. Weather Underground’s Dr. Jeff Masters put it best. “This is not the atmosphere I grew up with.”

Some TV meteorologists, professionals who are skilled at predicting short-term weather, are still in denial. Why? Some don’t like being upstaged by climate scientists; we’ve all been burned by weather models, and some (mistakenly) apply the same suspicion to climate models. Others haven’t taken the time to dig into the climate science. “It’s all political” one local TV weather-friend told me recently. No, it’s science. But we’ve turned it into a political football, a bizarre litmus test for conservatism. Weather and climate are flip-sides of the same coin; you can’t talk about one without understanding the other.

Acknowledging Climate Science Doesn’t Make You A Liberal

My climate epiphany wasn’t overnight, and it had nothing to do with Al Gore. In the mid-90s I noticed gradual changes in the weather patterns floating over Minnesota. Curious, I began investigating climate science, and, over time, began to see the thumbprint of climate change, along with 97% of published, peer-reviewed PhD’s, who link a 40% spike in greenhouse gases with a warmer, stormier atmosphere.

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Challenging Congress to reduce big oil subsidies, President Barack Obama accused oil companies of gouging American taxpayers at the pump and at tax time:

The oil industry is doing just fine. With record profits and rising production, I’m not worried about the big oil companies. With high oil prices, they’ve got more than enough incentive to produce more. I think it’s time they got by without more help from taxpayers who are having a tough enough time paying their bills and filling up their tanks.

Watch it:

“Instead of taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s never been more profitable, we should be using that money to double down on investments in clean energy technologies that have never been more promising,” Obama argued, saying that the “future” lies in “wind power and solar power and biofuels; in fuel-efficient cars and trucks and homes and buildings.” He criticized Big OIl’s allies in Congress who choose to defend fossil-fuel subsidies “that keep us trapped in the past” while attacking investment in a clean-energy future.

by Ben Holland, via Rocky Mountain Institute

When it comes to energy and the environment, most people want to do the right thing. But how many people actually contribute to improving energy use and environmental impact is another story.

That goes for just about any industry, and few know it better than those at South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive. The conference, held annually in Austin, Texas, is a breeding ground for innovation and entrepreneurship in design, Internet and mobile technology—Twitter, for instance, started its rise as a global phenomenon there in 2007. Naturally, I had concerns about giving a seemingly unrelated presentation on observed barriers to electric vehicle adoption. But it turns out that the SXSW crowd is ahead of the curve on the subjects of environment and energy use.

Two buzzwords, “Gamification” and “Big Data,” were in frequent use at SXSW earlier this month. The two are closely related, and when combined, could have interesting implications for energy use. By applying principals of gaming to non-game applications, it is believed you can encourage people to change their behavior. Mobile app developers have had great success doing this by incorporating location-based awareness data into their products. Think about foursquare, which awards users with digital badges for frequently checking into various locations. Being a regular at Starbucks, for instance, isn’t a prestigious honor, but it might earn you a free coffee. What if you could do something similar for energy?

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by Tom Kenworthy

In a stunning report last year, the National Center for Atmospheric Research concluded that substituting natural gas for coal as an energy source would actually increase global warming for many decades – unless methane leakage rates can be kept below 2%.

Even though we don’t know much about the actual leakage rate for methane – the major component of natural gas and a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 – that NCAR study is bad news. It’s especially bad for shale gas, in part because hydraulic fracturing is believed to have a higher life-cycle leakage rate during the production and transport phases of development.

In a separate NOAA study in February, researchers found that natural gas companies in a Colorado field were losing about 4% of methane during production, and that doesn’t include the losses from leaks in the pipeline and distribution system.

The task of controlling fugitive methane leaks is critical if switching to natural gas is going to do anything to aide the fight against climate change.

According to one environmental organization, controlling those leaks isn’t just necessary for the environment — it’s also potentially profitable.

A report just released by the Natural Resources Defense Council argues that industry – with strong government oversight – can reduce methane losses by 80%, and make $2 billion a year in the process by employing what the group calls “technically proven, commercially available, and profitable” control technologies.

Those ten technologies can be used at different stages of the production process: when drilling at hydraulic fracturing wells; when removing moisture from the gas; and when the gas is being compressed for transport through pipelines.

The report acknowledges that voluntary gas saving programs like the EPA’s Natural Gas STAR effort aren’t enough to stimulate this process, and that mandatory programs would need to be put in place. The EPA estimates that proposed regulations on new oil and gas sources coul reduce methane emissions by as much as 25%. NRDC recommends that leakage controls should also apply to existing oil and gas industry sources and that the federal government should be particularly tough on drilling operations on public lands.

Tom Kenworthy is a Senior Fellow with the Public Lands team at American Progress

Related Posts:

• Natural gas is mostly methane
• Study: You Can’t Slow Projected Warming With Gas, You Need ‘Rapid and Massive Deployment’ of Zero-Carbon Power
• Ken Caldeira: Natural Gas Is ‘A Bridge To A World With High CO2 Levels’, Deployment Is To R&D As Elephant To Mouse

“Food insecurity and climate change are already inhibiting human wellbeing and economic growth throughout the world, and these problems are poised to accelerate,” John Beddington, who chaired the commission, said….

Other stories below: Fears grow over pollution risk from North Sea gas rig; Top 10 states for renewable power; Scientists warn of climate-change onslaught; Tim DeChristopher In Isolated Confinement

How to Fight Food Insecurity, Even in a Changing Climate

About 800 million people worldwide do not get enough food to eat, while about 1.5 billion are overweight. As the global population expands by an additional 2 billion people by 2050 and climate change alters traditional agricultural areas, scientists and policy makers are racing to figure out how to address both problems….

This uneven food landscape is not caused solely by government regulations or farming practices, but stems from many powerful forces—forces that are expected to keep increasing. “Several converging threats—from climate change, population growth and unsustainable use of resources—are steadily intensifying pressure on humanity and world governments to transform the way food is produced, distributed and consumed,” wrote the authors of a new report, published online March 28, from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change….

One of the major concerns worldwide is increasing production on ever-dwindling acres of farmable land. The world’s farms continue to put out some 2.2 percent more food each year, but that is hardly on pace to keep up with growing global demand. And, many experts argue, these expansions need to be done in a sustainable way if people are to be fed without dragging down the economy—or the environment.

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IPCC (2001) graph illustrating how a shift and/or widening of a probability distribution of temperatures affects the probability of extremes. (Via RealClimate)

The full 592-page (!) IPCC extreme weather report is out. Like most Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports it has some value for people who don’t follow the science closely, which is to say the overwhelming majority of the media and policymakers.

Of course, the TV media ignored the summary report in November, so we will have to see if they pay any attention to this one now that the United States has just been through the most extreme winter heat wave in our recorded history.

But as Kevin Trenberth, one of the world’s leading experts on the link between climate change and extreme weather, put it to me in an email:

I have seen the chapter on the physical climate and I found it quite disappointing…. I don’t think it adds to AR4 [IPCC Fourth Assessment] much.

I agree with Trenberth that if, for instance, you want a more up to date and straightforward discussion of the impact of climate change on precipitation, you should just read his 2011 paper, “Changes in precipitation with climate change” (online here).

Indeed, the actual scientific literature from 2011 is generally more useful than this report — see “NOAA Study Finds Human-Caused Climate Change Already a Major Factor in More Frequent Mediterranean Droughts” and Hansen et al: “Extreme Heat Waves … in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 Were ‘Caused’ by Global Warming.”

It is, as I wrote when the summary came out in November, the report is “Another Blown Chance to Explain the Catastrophes Coming If We Keep Doing Nothing.”  I also wrote that the summary has a good chart that hints at dust-bowlification, but is mostly silent on warming’s gravest threat to humanity.

The full report has more on drought, but fails to clearly describe what the literature now suggests is coming if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path. In 2010, the National Center for Atmospheric Research did a far more valuable literature review and analysis of what we face, which makes clear we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path.

In the case of extreme weather, my guess is that decades from now, people will look back on the staggering growth in off-the-charts “outlandish” extreme events in the past few years and conclude that a regime change had occurred in the climate. That change is probably a combination of the sharp loss in summer/fall Arctic sea ice and the sharp increase in ocean heat content.

We’re only in the past year or so seen analyses that demonstrate the human fingerprint in these uber-extreme events, including the studies above and these two:

• Nature Climate Change: Strong Evidence Manmade ‘Unprecedented Heat And Rainfall Extremes Are Here … Causing Intense Human Suffering’
• Study Finds 80% Chance Russia’s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Climate Warming

So rather than citing this timely, but already out-of-date IPCC report, let me just repost below an excellent new piece from RealClimate by the authors of those two studies, who have been doing some of the best recent work in this area.

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by Adam James

Clean energy should play a central role in revitalizing our economy, putting Americans back to work, and keeping America on the cutting edge of innovation and growth. Recently a slew of misguided attacks on the merits of clean energy have exchanged petty partisanship for hard facts.

Here are the top six things you really need to know:

1. Clean energy is competitive with other types of energy
2. Clean energy creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels
3. Clean energy improves grid reliability
4. Clean energy investment has surpassed investments in fossil fuels
5. Investments in clean energy are cost effective
6. Fossil fuels have gotten 75 times more subsidies than clean energy

Here are the supporting details:

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More than 100 Lung Association staff members, volunteers, doctors, nurses and clean air advocates from 34 states across the country unfurled a giant Red Carriage banner on the Capitol steps, drawing attention to the devastating impact of air pollution on the health of children, in addition to sitting in on 150 meetings with key members of Congress. The Lung Association Red Carriage campaign has defended Clean Air Act rules designed to fight greenhouse pollution, smog, and toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants.

The day of action also falls on the same day the House Energy and Power Subcommittee held a hearing on the GOP’s Gasoline Regulations Act of 2012, which would eliminate life-saving clean air protections that reduce toxic pollution in our air and make cars more fuel-efficient.

A recent Lung Association poll found that two-thirds of American voters support stricter EPA standards on pollution.

There were 3.1 million green jobs around the U.S. in 2010, according to new figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Those jobs — which accounted for 2.4 percent of nation-wide employment that year — represented a diverse range of opportunities in renewable energy, efficiency, pollution control, resource conservation and education.

But what kind of impact are those jobs having on the ground? In order to capture the importance of this emerging sector, various organizations are putting together documentary-style shorts on the environmental and economic value of green jobs.

Climate Solutions has put together a great Solutions Stories series. The Center for American Progress is working on its own profile of green jobs in key states (with more to be released soon). And Green For All has rolled out a series of stories from cities around the country. There’s activity happening everywhere — it’s nearly impossible to capture all of it.

This latest Green For All video from Kansas City shows how grassroots much of the activity is, creating real jobs that create direct local benefits:

Associated Press Investigation: There is “no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.”

by Daniel J. Weiss, Rebecca Leber, and Jackie Weidman

CLAIM: “More domestic production is critical to putting downward pressure on gasoline prices — supply matters.” – Jack Gerard, American Petroleum Institute President and CEO, March 26, 2012

TRUTH: To test whether more U.S. domestic production would lower gasoline prices, the Associated Press just completed an exhaustive analysis of 36 years of monthly U.S. oil production and gasoline price data. AP found that there is:

“No statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump. If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say, you’d now be paying about $2 a gallon for gasoline. Instead, you’re paying the highest prices ever for March.”

An organization set up by API, “Energy Tomorrow,” actually acknowledges that oil prices are set on a global market, with many different factors affecting its price. Most of these elements are beyond control of the United States.

“Crude oil prices are set globally through the daily interactions of thousands of buyers and sellers in both physical and futures markets, and reflect participants’ knowledge and expectations of demand and supply. In addition to economic growth and geopolitical risks, other factors, including weather events, inventories, exchange rates, investments, spare capacity, OPEC production decisions and non-OPEC supply growth all figure into the price of crude oil.”

U.S. oil production is not listed as one of the factors affecting price.

CLAIM: “Opposition to higher energy taxes is rising among the public. A recent ‘What is America Thinking on Energy Issues’ poll showed that 76 percent of voters think that higher energy taxes could equal higher gas prices.” – Jack Gerard, API President and CEO, March 26, 2012

TRUTH: A Center for American Progress Action Fund poll conducted March 10-13, 2012 by Hart Research provided respondents with fourteen policy options asked which “would help a lot to address the issue of gasoline?”  The following option was chosen by 55 percent of the respondents:

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“The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) today issued an approval of Shell Gulf of Mexico, Inc.’s Oil Spill Response Plan for the Beaufort Sea,” the Department of Interior agency tasked with approving oil spill plans has announced. Shell plans to drill up to four shallow water exploration wells in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea this summer, beginning on July 1. The expansion of offshore drilling into the dangerous and fragile Arctic seas not only threatens that ecosystem with unmanageable disaster, but represents a reckless disregard for the urgency of decarbonizing the global economy to avoid the risk of unstoppable global warming.

by Adam James

Last week, the White House unveiled a new program called the Green Button Initiative. So what the heck is the Green Button?

Quite literally, it is a green button on a utility’s website that allows consumers to download their energy consumption data in an easy-to-understand format. There are two exciting outcomes from this industry-led initiative:

• For the first time, consumers can have the kind of access to their energy data that they have with online banking. This will allow people to save money while easing the demand-side burden on the grid.
• This neatly sidesteps the legal questions around 3^rd party access to information since customers can now transmit data themselves directly to innovative energy management companies.

Before going into too much detail on these two points, it is helpful to put this breakthrough in context. The Green Button is a milestone in a much larger story about transparency and empowering citizens, a narrative which resonates with Americans who want to build a future around sustainability and equity.

Seeing the Big Picture

Rewind to January 20^th, 2009. A newly minted President Obama unveiled his top priorities for America that boldly included a commitment to transparency, participation, and collaboration within the Government. This was one of his campaign pledges that helped bring younger voters to the ballot box.

In August 2010, President Obama announced the creation of the “blue button” which allows individuals to download their personalized healthcare information. This was a huge step forward for cutting through red tape and increasing Americans’ access to the information that would make their lives easier.

In September 2011, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra challenged the energy industry to create a “green button” and enhance consumer access to energy consumption data. This recommendation followed the basic trajectory of the Framework for a 21^st Century Grid put forward in June 2011, which urged the adoption of policies which would help consumers “save energy, ensure privacy, and shrink bills.”

The launch of the “green button” marks a broad commitment from the Obama Administration to open and transparent government, and for building a sustainable energy future.

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65% of Americans favor more regulation of fracking
72% of Ohio residents favor a state moratorium on fracking

by Tom Kenworthy

At the Wall Street Journal’s recent ECO:nomics conference, the chief executive of Atlas Energy LP was asked how fracking had become a four-letter word. Edward E. Cohen’s response: “I think when we talk about the natural-gas industry losing the PR war, that is not correct.”

If that is typical of how the natural gas industry is interpreting public opinion on hydraulic fracturing and the development of shale gas, then it’s got its head in a borehole.

Recent polling gives a more realistic picture of the public’s broad and deep concerns about the technique that is widely used, in conjunction with horizontal drilling, to stimulate production from oil and gas wells. The practice involves  pumping a combination of water, sand and chemicals underground at high pressure to crack rock formations and release oil and gas.

A Bloomberg News poll conducted earlier this month, for example, found that 65% of Americans favor more regulation of fracking and only 18% favor less regulation. The survey of 1,002 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1%.

In Ohio, a January poll conducted by Quinnipiac University found that 72% of Ohio residents favor a moratorium on fracking in their state until the process is better understood. Ohio has been the site of a series of earthquakes which the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said in early March were most likely caused by the underground injection of wastewater produced during fracking of natural gas wells.

At the Wall Street Journal conference, Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey K. McClendon appeared to adopt the same no problemo attitude. “I fracked 15,000 wells,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of American gas is fracked, and it has been for 50 years. [Today there are] 1.2 million wells. Where are the 1.2 million disasters?”

Someone should tell McClendon it doesn’t take a disaster rate of 100%. It only takes a few. Like the one in Pennsylvania where his own company was fined $900,000 by regulators for causing the methane contamination of the water supplies of 16 families.

Tom Kenworthy is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress working on the Public Lands team.