But it isn’t increasing demand for oil that is driving the recent price increase. In fact, demand is the lowest it’s been since April, 2007, according to the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS). Instead, OPIS points to speculators as the party responsible for driving up prices:

Strangely, the current run-up in prices comes despite sinking demand in the U.S. “Petrol demand is as low as it’s been since April 1997,” says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service. “People are properly puzzled by the fact that we’re using less gas than we have in years, yet we’re paying more.”

Kloza believes much of the increase is due to speculative money that’s flowed into gasoline futures contracts since the beginning of the year, mostly from hedge funds and large money managers. “We’ve seen about $11 billion of speculative money come in on the long side of gas futures,” he says. “Each of the last three weeks we’ve seen a record net long position being taken.”

A multitude of experts, from academics to government agencies, have pinned the 2008 gas price spike on oil speculators. Of course, a big increase in gas prices could doom the slow but steady economic recovery.

Questions about the authenticity of the leaked Heartland Institute documents are fading, as projects described therein are confirmed. Heartland’s senior fellow James Taylor confirmed the existence of the climate-denier classroom curriculum project to ThinkProgress Green yesterday. Now, anti-science blogger Anthony Watts has confirmed that Heartland is funding his project to display weather station data, detailed in the leaked fundraising plan. In a comment at Andrew Montford’s Bishop Hill blog, Watts claims there are no “nefarious motives” in his project:

Heartland simply helped me find a donor for funding a special project having to do with presenting some new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form, something NOAA themselves is not doing, but should be. . . . DeSmog, as part of their public relations for hire methodology to demonize skeptics, will of course try to find nefarious motives for this project. But there simply are none here. It’s something that needs doing because NOAA hasn’t made this new data available in a user friendly visual format.

The secret Heartland document explains that Watts isn’t just trying to present “new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form.” Watts, the document explains, has been “exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that the Heartland Institute supported and promoted),” based on his hypothesis that “many of the temperature stations relied on by weathermen are compromised by heat radiating from nearby buildings, machines, or paved surfaces.” These stations generate “spurious records” which are “used by environmental extremists as evidence that human emissions are causing either global warming or the more ambiguous ‘climate change.’”

Like the rest of Heartland’s climate denial work, this project is anonymously funded.

Although it is important to calibrate weather stations, Watts’ idea that the record of rising temperatures is a result of bad data has been repeatedly debunked. In fact, Richard Mueller, a physicist funded by the Koch brothers to study “flawed” weather stations, confirmed that temperature data is “excellent” and “global warming is real.” Watts is now just another conspiracy theorist for hire.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration does not have the resources to present their data in a more public-friendly form because of the endless assault on government by groups like the Heartland Institute and their right-wing funders. Last November, Republicans even killed a no-cost plan to streamline the agency to provide better services to the public.

by Daniel J. Weiss

As part of the FY 2013 budget released on February 13, President Obama proposed to eliminate $40 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas producers over the next ten years. Yesterday, the Yale Project on Climate Change reiterated its recent finding that Americans of all political stripes oppose subsidies for “coal, oil, and natural gas companies.” They oppose these subsidies by 70 percent to 30 percent – better than two to one.  Republicans oppose these subsidies by 67 percent to 34 percent (reflects rounding of percentages).

Intensity matters in public opinion.  A determined, energetic minority can be quite powerful.  The Yale poll shows that there is much more intensity against oil subsidies than in favor of them.  Americans strongly opposed to the subsidies outnumber those who strongly support them by 31 percent to 3 percent – a 10 to 1 ratio.  Independents – the voters who will likely determine the outcome of the 2012 election – strongly oppose these fossil fuel subsidies by 45 percent to 2 percent.

This poll was conducted from October 20 to November 16, 2011, before respondents knew that the profits of the big five oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell – would be a record $137 billion in 2011.  In addition, gasoline prices averaged $3.38 to $3.44 per gallon during the survey period.   This week the average gasoline price was $3.52 and climbing.  Imagine how the anticipated higher gasoline prices combined with big oil’s record 2011 profits will intensify opposition to big oil subsidies.

It is said that elections are won in the middle.  Politicians who want to appeal to these independent voters would do well to vocally oppose these big oil subsidies.  Certainly President Obama understands that.  Supporters of big oil tax breaks may learn this lesson the hard way.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Roseanne Barr, best known for her role on the eponymous 1990s television sitcom, has in recent years taken up a slightly less glamorous job: running a 46-acre macadamia nut farm in Hawaii.

Now, she is officially running for President of the United States. Barr even pulled 6 percent in a national presidential poll that pits her against President Obama (47 percent) and Mitt Romney (42 percent). Barr, a Green Party candidate, has stated that the environment will be one of the main platforms for her campaign:

While Barr admits that she does not believe she will win the presidency, she tweeted recently, “I’m absolutely sure that Obama will win this election by a landslide- exp. If he takes a cue from the Green Party Platform.”

Barr, whose political past is of questionable sanity, may now be the best hope for addressing the environment in the 2012 election.

So far in this primary, discussion of the environment has been minimal at best, and even Fox News has noticed. Meanwhile, an iceberg the size of New York City is about to break off of Antarctica, and most of the country is experiencing one of the mildest winters on record.

On the Republican side, the environment has played virtually no role in the campaign. Rick Santorum has made clear that he believes climate change is a “hoax.” Newt Gingrich has consistently talked about environmental policy only as a barrier to the free market. And Mitt Romney’s most pointed comments on the environment came on the heels of Obama’s recent decision to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Romney spun the conversation from the environment to jobs.

Romney’s overall stance on the issue of global climate change is itself changing.

But the Republicans are not the only ones downplaying the environment this election season. Progressives have repeatedly expressed their frustration with Obama’s distance from climate policy issues. The State of the Union only mentioned the words “climate change” once.

A recent study from Graciela Kincaid at Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab shows that the climate rhetoric has changed in recent months. Obama has transitioned from “climate change” to “clean energy.” Kincaid writes:

What has caused this significant shift in rhetoric? Climate change is apparently politically tainted, a doomsday issue, and the administration has re-branded it under a clean energy and energy independence discourse. The administration has clearly responded to increasing hostility (on one end of the political spectrum) towards the effort to address climate change, scrubbing out words like global warming, cap-and-trade, and climate change from agency communication.

The expectations are low for any significant environmental legislation in 2012. Still, members of the environmental advocacy community see the opportunity for climate change to become a “wedge issue” in the election. Roseanne Barr may be just the character (with her 100,000 twitter followers), to put the environment on the agenda.

A combination of drought, a build-up of combustible fuels and increased tree mortality is the recipe for a “perfect storm” of wildfire conditions, the researchers warned in a Feb. 14 paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Summit County Voice]

Zurich Financial Services AG, Switzerland’s biggest insurer, may say fourth-quarter profit fell 31 percent after increased climate and earthquake catastrophe losses. [Businessweek]

The electric battery company A123 recently cut its revenue forecast for 2011 by about 20 percent and laid off a few hundred employees at its Michigan factory after one of its biggest customers, electric-car maker Fisker Automotive, unexpectedly reduced the number of batteries it had ordered from the company. [Boston Globe]

American attempts to get major Asian importers of Iranian oil to rein in their purchases are faltering as allies South Korea and Japan give U.S. officials a polite brushoff. [Courier Journal]

Mississippi is rushing toward drilling in state waters without having “done its homework” or addressed concerns about tourism, the environment or economics, opponents say. [Sun Herald]

The shakeout in the solar power industry claimed another victim Tuesday as Auburn Hills-based Energy Conversion Devices filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced plans to sell its assets, including its main subsidiary, United Solar Ovonic. [Detroit Free Press]

Installation of solar panels in the U.S. surged as much as 67 percent in the fourth quarter as developers raced to qualify for an expiring federal incentive program and panel prices fell 16 percent, a trade group said. [Bloomberg]

The licensing of the nation’s first new nuclear-power reactors in decades, Insiders said, will serve as a signal for the industry that the seemingly convoluted regulatory process actually works. [National Journal]

Kloza believes much of the increase in gas prices is due to speculative money that’s flowed into gasoline futures contracts since the beginning of the year, mostly from hedge funds and large money managers. [Businessweek]

A variety of forces is pushing coal back to the brink. [Politico]

President Obama’s new budget lays down a clear and much-needed challenge to the Republican House’s large number of climate-change deniers and all of the Republican Party’s many panderers to Big Oil. [NYT]

The Obama administration blasted the House’s five-year transportation proposal Tuesday and issued the White House’s first veto threat of the year. [Politico]

Heart attacks more common at high levels of every main air pollutant except ozone, researchers find. [Guardian]

Convicted Ponzi-Schemer Bernard Madoff

A Koch spokeswoman disputed the demand, arguing, “The Koch entity involved made an investment in an entirely separate fund. That Koch entity no longer exists and its investment was redeemed in 2005, long before anyone knew of Madoff’s fraud.”

Even the Rupert Murdoch-owned WSJ noted the amusing irony in their lead:

Koch Industries Inc., whose billionaire owners are funding an ad campaign (via an advocacy group they support) criticizing the Obama administration’s support of bankrupt solar company Solyndra LLC, faces a call to give back money received from Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Even if the Kochs lose this case though, $21.5 million would hardly make a dent in the billionaires’ empire or, one imagines, their extensive giving to right-wing Republican causes.

Heartland Institute's secret plans for a K-12 climate-denier curriculum.

“Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” Heartland’s confidential 2012 fundraising document bemoans. The group believes that Wojick’s project has “potential for great success,” because he has “contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting scientific curricula.” The document explains that Wojick will produce “modules” that promote the conspiratorial claim that climate change is “controversial”:

Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy“), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).

Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather“), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.

Wojick will receive $5,000 per module, with twenty modules produced a year. Wojick, who manages the Climate Change Debate listserv, is not a climate scientist. His doctorate is in epistomology.

The Heartland Institute also runs the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, a conspiracy-theorist parody of the Nobel-prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Heartland’s NIPCC project “pays a team of scientists approximately $300,000 a year to work on a series of editions of Climate Change Reconsidered.” Their climate-denial work is funded anonymously.

James M. Taylor, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, told ThinkProgress Green in an e-mail why the group is developing its denier curriculum:

We are concerned that schools are teaching climate change issues in a manner that is not consistent with sound science and that is designed to lead students to the erroneous belief that humans are causing a global warming crisis. We hope that our efforts will restore sound science to climate change education and discourage the political propaganda that too often passes as “education”.

Right-wing ideologues, fueled by the fossil fuel industry, have been increasing their efforts to pollute science education in elementary schools. These attempts to hijack children’s education piggyback on the religious right’s war on biology education and the science of evolution. The National Center for Science Education, which has long led the defense of evolution education in elementary schools, has begun a new program to fight global warming denial in textbooks and classrooms.

Subscribe to ThinkProgress Green.

Today, to celebrate Valentine’s Day, activists in New York City will target Bank of America, citing the bank’s shoddy consumer record regarding its mortgage lending practices and its support for hazardous environmental practices like mountaintop removal coal mining, according to a press release published at the Paramus Post:

Bank of America loves profits more than people. We, the 99%, want out of this abusive relationship. Bank of America has foreclosed on more homes than any other bank in the United States. On February 14th, Valentine’s Day, housing and environmental activists will break up with Bank of America.

According to the release, activists organized by Mountain Justice, an environmental group, and various groups associated with Occupy Wall Street will gather at New York’s Washington Square this afternoon before marching to a local Bank of America branch and delivering thousands of blue valentines. Bank of America is a “grave threat to US financial stability,” the release says, and it also has “an ugly relationship with the planet: bankrupting the ecosystem with their investments in the coal industry–lending billions of dollars to companies seeking to build new coal-fired power plants.”

Bank of America has been the target of protests over its financial and foreclosure practices, ranging from charging customers fees to withdraw unemployment benefits, foreclosing on homes because of clerical errors, and perpetuating fraudulent foreclosure practices. The bank, meanwhile, has been targeted repeatedly by environmental activists for its connections to Big Coal.

According to one consulting firm, Bank of America is the most susceptible bank to bank transfer protests and could lose up to 10 percent of its customers and $42 billion in customer deposits.

The House of Representatives is considering a behemoth surface transportation bill this week, designed to fund the roads, highways, and bridges that connect our country.  It has nothing to do with the public lands that belong to all of us, but that didn’t stop three Republicans from Arizona from filing an amendment to the bill that would override Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s January decision to protect 1 million acres around Grand Canyon National Park from new uranium mining requests.

Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) penned the amendment:

SEC. __ . TERMINATION OF PUBLIC LAND ORDER 7787.

Public Land Order 7787 (77 Fed. Reg. 2563) and the withdrawal of lands by that Public Land Order shall have no force or effect, and the provisions of the land use plans applicable to such lands immediately before the issuance of such Public Land Order shall remain in effect.

If this sounds familiar, it is because this trio of lawmakers has tried three times in the last two years to undo new protections for one of our nation’s great places.  Here is a list of their other attempts to do the National Mining Association’s bidding:

– They added roll back language in the text of last year’s budget bill (which did not pass) where it was dubbed “the Flake earmark for the mining industry.”

– In October, Franks introduced the Northern Arizona Mining Continuity Act of 2011, an attempt to halt the mineral withdrawal.

– Franks introduced legislation in the last Congress to stop the mineral withdrawal.

As ThinkProgress has outlined before, the Grand Canyon is incredibly important to the economy of Arizona.  Tourists spending money in and around the Grand Canyon create jobs. Headwaters Economics found that Grand Canyon National Park supported over 6,000 jobs in 2009 and those tourists spent more than $400 million.

In addition, mining for uranium around the canyon poses risks to drinking water for 25 million people reliant on the Colorado River, as seen in the legacy of old, abandoned, and hazardous mines.     

It remains to be seen whether Congressional rules will allow the amendment to be considered.  But House Republicans have made their position clear—despite the fact that the battle over the Grand Canyon has been fought, and these three Congressmen lost, they will keep fighting another day.  Franks recently stated to E&E News that “anything that we can do to promote the legislation we will.”

But the battle over Keystone XL is not even close to finished. The Senate introduced an amendment in a transportation bill yesterday that would allow Congress to approve the project. Meanwhile, activist groups are hoping to raise over one million signatures against the tar sands pipeline by noon today — shattering any previous petitions from environmental organizations.

So it was fitting that faux-pundit Stephen Colbert invited McKibben “the troublemaker” onto his show just before the next Congressional showdown. Will the rally against the Keystone XL experience the infamous “Colbert Bump” after last night’s appearance? We can only hope.

“The Colbert Bump is the curious phenomenon whereby anyone who appears on The Colbert Report gets a huge boost in popularity, causing them to win elections, receive massive increases in money (making Colbert the greatest fundraiser ever), receive major awards and even get laid (The Colbert Bumpin’ Uglies).

Watch McKibben’s segment on last night’s show:

Hundreds of people rallied to save the MBTA public transit system from draconian cuts in Boston. [Occupy Boston]

Tropical Cyclone Giovanna has hit the island of Madagascar, with winds of up to 120mph ripping up trees and electricity pylons. [BBC]

The Latin America drought has spread to Brazil, with no rain for the entire month of December and only one rainy day in January, playing havoc with corn prices. [NASDAQ]

The U.S. requires the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for the Asia-Pacific to help countries address the climate challenge, and to complement its current military and economic engagement in the region. [e-International Relations]

Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) will be speaking before the Senate Finance Committee in support of a bill aimed at developing offshore wind energy in Maryland. [Washington Post]

Climate change is warming the oceans and preventing water layers from mixing, which could upset the carbon storage capacity of microbes and plankton. [Economic Times]

Natural gas prices have strengthened in the two weeks since Chesapeake Energy Corporation announced it was immediately slashing spending on U.S. dry-gas exploration and production. [MarketWatch]

Employment in the EU’s renewable energy sector has broken through the one million mark for the first time, after the number of people working in the industry increased 25 per cent in 2010. [BusinessGreen]

President Barack Obama’s proposed budget would renew and extend a subsidy for renewable-energy projects that helps pay for as much as 30 percent of development costs, according to a solar lobbying group. [Bloomberg]

Forging ahead with its green power agenda, IKEA is expanding its solar power commitments in the US yet again and installing more charging stations for electric cars. [EV Wind]

President Barack Obama proposed cutting the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget for the third straight year by trimming funding for water grants to U.S. states and Superfund clean-up programs. [Bloomberg]

American scientists say they’re concerned that Canadian budget cuts will hamper important international research efforts on climate change, pollution and other regional issues that cut across political boundaries. [Summit County Voice]

Analysts say they’ll be looking for more clarity on what’s next for TransCanada‘s efforts to ship Alberta crude to Texas refineries when the pipeline giant reports its fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday. [Canadian Business]

California’s powerful Air Resources Board has issued new rules that, when finally approved, will lead to many fewer smog-causing pollutants, fewer greenhouse gases and, in time, encourage the auto industry to build millions more emissions-free cars and trucks, including a new generation of all-electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles. [NYT]

The recent disclosure of the Sierra Club’s secret acceptance of $26 million in donations from people associated with a natural gas company has revived an uncomfortable debate among environmental groups about corporate donations and transparency. [NYT]

As we approach the town of Manatí, in northern Colombia, I look eagerly out the window for signs of change. When I was here almost a year ago, makeshift shelters and tents lined the sides of the road. Random pieces of furniture were piled nearby: a refrigerator or a rocking chair – anything people could save from the floodwaters.

Today the tents are gone. But just outside of town, we turn off the road and into a lot, where temporary shelters made of fiberboard and corrugated metal have been constructed. I see Irida emerge from one of them. Smiling and laughing, we embrace each other.

Irida is one of approximately 225,000 people who were affected when unprecedented rains in the fall of 2010 caused the nearby Dique Canal to rupture. The break in the canal, which connects Colombia’s coastal city of Cartagena to the Magdalena River, submerged half of the northern state of Atlántico under 80 million cubic meters of water. When I first visited Manatí in March 2011, half of the town was still underwater, and Irida was living under plastic sheeting after being evicted from the local school. Irida’s house, which she showed me by canoe, had water up to the rooftop.

To some extent, Irida was lucky. Hers was one of the first families in the town able to move into these temporary shelters last April. In many of the nearby towns we have visited, they were not completed until three months ago.

But the shelter where Irida now lives was designed to last only three months. She has been there for almost a year. Worse than that, the floodwaters have still not dissipated, and her house is still flooded. According to the state governor’s office, 60 percent of the area that flooded when the Dique Canal burst in 2010 is still underwater today. Pumping has proven ineffective because much of this area was once wetland and is now returning to its natural state. So Irida and the roughly 600 other families in Manatí who’ve lost their homes are now being told they will have to relocate.

The day after our reunion with Irida, we join a town hall meeting where the governor tells a schoolyard full of flood-affected families that his priority is to find land and build homes for the thousands still displaced more than a year later. But Irida tells me that she doesn’t want to take the piece of land being offered. It is too far away from the center of town, she says. Before the floods, she ran a small grocery shop out of her house. If she relocates, she will be unable to restart her business and will be isolated from her community.

Like so many other Colombians we are meeting on this trip, Irida is quick to smile and laugh. But the pain and anxiety are nevertheless visible on her face. Beyond the relocation troubles, she has many more immediate worries. The toilets at her temporary shelter do not work, and two of the plastic water tanks have recently ruptured in the heat. The Colombian government discontinued food deliveries to the area in November. Her husband has been unable to find work. Without permanent homes or work, how can the process of recovery even begin?

I am at a loss for words as we say our goodbyes. I hope things will be better for Irida the next time we meet; I wish I could be more certain.

Hundreds of thousands of people have stated their opposition to a proposed big expansion of a coal strip mine in Utah that would harm Bryce Canyon National Park and the recreation economy associated with the southern Utah attraction that has enjoyed federal protection for nearly 90 years.

Known for its slot canyons and ghostly red rock spires called hoodoos, Bryce is threatened by a plan to greatly expand the nearby existing Coal Hollow Mine from 635 acres to 3,576 acres, with a majority of the expansion taking place on public lands. If completed, the mine would then include areas just 10 miles from Bryce.

The National Park Service, Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have all weighed in with serious concerns about the mine proposal, as has the Hopi Tribe, which estimates up to 74 archaeological sites could be harmed or ruined. Park Service objections are particularly strong, and that agency has recommended the project not go forward, saying:

The park has determined that [the mine expansion would have] adverse effects on surrounding comunities, the tourism industry of southern Utah, air quality standards, dark skies conservation, and regional wildlife

In a letter last week, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, urged Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to “consider the signal this decision sends regarding the future of our parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas and reject the call for expanding coal mining.”

Repeating concerns raised by other federal agencies about air quality, the park’s well-known night skies, natural quiet and wetlands and wildlife, Markey also reminded Salazar of the Obama administration’s commitment to clean energy development on public lands:

Proceeding with the expansion of coal mining in a sensitive area so close to a national park calls in question our dedication to promoting renewable energy development both on and off public lands

More than 210,000 comments have been been submitted to public land managers in opposition to the strip mine expansion.

Interior’s Bureau of Land Management has issued a draft environmental analysis of the coal mine, with a proposed action that would allow the expansion to go forward.

As it has in regard to several new coal mining leases in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, the BLM has closed its eyes to the Utah mine’s impact on climate change, contending that existing climate prediction models cannot estimate potential climate change impacts from one mine.

In November, two climate scientists called that dodge flawed and scientifically indefensible.