In what will likely prove as meaningless a vote as the 37th repeal vote of Obamacare, on Wednesday night 241 members of the House of Representatives voted to approve the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. H.R. 3 would give Congress the power to approve the pipeline and allow TransCanada to build the northern leg without a cross-border permit.

These legislators support the oil industry’s push for the pipeline, even though it would create far fewer jobs than its supporters claim, would do nothing to make the country more energy independent, and would facilitate a dramatic increase in the production of high carbon polluting tar sands oil.

The 241 members who voted for the bill have taken a collective $39,150,812 in career contributions from the oil and gas industry, compared to $5,094,217 for those who voted no. Even more starkly, in the last election cycle, that split widens to $11,529,335 versus $742,125.

Only 19 Democrats voted for the bill, less than a third of the number (69) who supported a similar bill in April 2012. Even some supporters of the pipeline couldn’t vote for tonight’s bill, such as Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV):

“Last Congress, I voted for every piece of pro-Keystone pipeline legislation that was brought before this body…. Something’s happened along the way between then and now. And that something is called a hijacking of this bill by the right wing.”

This is the eighth time Republicans pushed a bill promoting Keystone, and the fifth time it voted to speed up the approval process. A White House statement made clear that President Obama would veto the bill because it “conflicts with long-standing Executive branch procedures.”

While some conservatives may claim the pipeline would create tens of thousands of jobs, the most recent State Department draft environmental impact statement found that the pipeline would directly create only “3,900″ temporary construction jobs. After construction is complete, the operation of the pipeline would only support 35 permanent and 15 temporary jobs, with “negligible socioeconomic impacts.” Moreover, only 10 percent of the total workforce would be hired locally. For perspective, the U.S. had 3.4 million green energy jobs in 2011 and it was the fastest-growing industry in the country.

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Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the new chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, wrote an op-ed in Monday’s Washington Post that contains several misrepresentations of fact. He argued for increased fossil fuel production, against the scientific consensus that humans cause climate change, and for a “wait-and-see” approach to cutting carbon emissions.

Two years ago, the Washington Post’s Editorial Page Editor wrote that “The GOPs climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion.” Apparently it is a delusion the Post is happy to spread. Below is a fact check of the seven worst parts of Smith’s piece:

Integrity of Climate Science

Smith opened with a general appeal for a clear discussion of the facts: “Climate change is an issue that needs to be discussed thoughtfully and objectively. Unfortunately, claims that distort the facts hinder the legitimate evaluation of policy options.”

However, with a look at his record, Rep. Smith did not have such a clear discussion in mind. After he became chair of the science committee, his first move was to schedule a hearing that aimed to take issue with the science of climate change. He has criticized “the idea of human-made global warming.” More dangerously, he has made headlines for authoring legislation that would politicize research conducted by the National Science Foundation. Of course, there is strong, 97%-grade consensus on human-caused climate change in the scientific literature, as a recent study confirmed.

Keystone Claims

With the House set to vote on Wednesday to force the approval of the Keystone tar sands pipeline, Rep. Smith argued that opposition to the Keystone tar sands pipeline hurts the economy and would not decrease carbon emissions. He said the “State Department has found that the pipeline will have minimal impact on the surrounding environment and no significant effect on the climate,” and would create “more than 40,000 U.S. jobs.”

This just isn’t true. The Environmental Protection Agency submitted a public comment on the State Department’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement, finding that, among other things, State needs to make revisions on the true impact of the project’s carbon emissions and about how dirty tar sands oil truly is. Additionally, tar sands oil extraction is not inevitable because transporting it by rail is not feasible — the pipeline is really their only option. Smith’s claims about 40,000 jobs are also quite inflated. The project would create just 35 permanent jobs, along with 51 coal plants’ worth of carbon dioxide each year.

U.S. Emissions

Smith went on to argue “that U.S. emissions contribute very little to global concentrations of greenhouse gas.”

In fact, annual U.S. carbon emissions rank just behind China’s, despite having only a quarter of China’s population. The U.S. is by far the world’s biggest contributor to global concentrations of CO2, the main greenhouse gas, since that depends on cumulative emissions.

Despite advances in energy efficiency and renewable energy, the United States remains a significant part of overall global carbon emissions. Domestic coal use is on the rise again in the U.S., and coal exports reached a record high last year, beating the record set in 1981. America is also the world’s number one fossil fuel subsidizer.

Recent Warming

Rep. Smith made the case that “global temperatures have held steady over the past 15 years, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.”

This is simply not the case. The overall trend line shows continued warming. 2010 was the hottest year on record. Every year of the decades of the 2000′s was warmer than the average temperature in the ’90s.

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(Source: Suncor Energy Inc., BLM)

The Canadian government has nearly doubled its spending to promote the Keystone XL pipeline to $16.5 million, up from $9 million a year ago.

This dramatic spending increase is a result of an increased lobbying effort the government is planning, which includes high-profile ad buys and dispatching a series of officials to reiterate talking points that the pipeline will increase U.S. energy security and provide us with thousands of home-grown jobs.

Their expanded lobbying efforts include Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper traveling to New York City to speak with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and participate in roundtables with American business leaders. During his Q&A session with the CFR, Mr. Harper advocated for approval of the pipeline, insisting it would add “almost nothing globally” to carbon emissions.

Harper’s claim just isn’t true — extracting crude from the oil sands is an incredibly energy intensive process that emits 3 to 4 times more greenhouse gases than producing conventional crude oil, making it one of the world’s dirtiest forms of fuels. Approving Keystone would more than double the production of carbon-intensive tar sands by 2024, leading to an increase in greenhouse gases equivalent to adding 8 million cars on the road every year. Without the pipeline, tar sands production is expected to fall flat by 2020.

Harper also said the US should not “turn up” its nose at the potential of 40,000 construction jobs nor the prospect of being able to reduce its dependence on oil shipped in from overseas.

Again, Harper is just avoiding the facts — the State Department released a draft environmental impact statement earlier this year that found the pipeline would directly only create “3,900″ temporary construction jobs. After construction is complete, the operation of the pipeline would support 35 permanent and 15 temporary jobs, with “negligible socioeconomic impacts.” The State Department’s report, which was written by a private consulting firm with links to the pipeline’s owner, also made clear that at least some of Keystone’s oil will be refined and exported in response to “lower domestic gasoline demand and continued higher demand and prices in overseas markets.” The pipeline will add nothing to U.S. energy security and is simply a way for the oil industry to sell refined fuel at higher prices available overseas.

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Tiffany Germain is a Senior Climate/Energy Researcher in the Think Progress War Room.

President Obama’s decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline is like those Escher stairs — you keep climbing yet you never seem to get anywhere.

But it’s the metaphor from an unnamed Obama administration official explaining the umpteenth delay that caught my eye.

First, however, Reuters reported this “exclusive” last Friday:

The Obama administration is unlikely to make a decision on the Canada-to-Nebraska Keystone XL pipeline until late this year as it painstakingly weighs the project’s impact on the environment and on energy security, a U.S. official and analysts said on Friday.

The decision may not be made until November, December or even early 2014, said a U.S. official, as President Barack Obama will not rush the process, which still has a number of stages to work through. One of those stages has not even begun yet and will run for months.

The Administration is certainly giving pains. Whether it is taking them remains to be seen. But I digress.

So what kind of pains do they claim they are they taking?

“The president has to be able to show that the administration looked under every stone to ensure it knew as much as it possibly could about the impact of Keystone,” said the official, who did not want to be named given the sensitive nature of the project.

First off, yes, it’s true, the pipeline has a sensitive nature. Heck, it still cries at “It’s a Wonderful Life” not to mention “E.T.” and “Bambi.” Oh and forget entirely about watching “Titanic” with the tar sands pipeline, at least while we are rearranging the deck chairs.

Bottom line on Keystone’s sensitive nature: Almost anything will make it spring a leak. But don’t mention that in public, of course. The pipeline is very touchy about that. I digress again.

It’s this metaphor I liked: Team Obama has to show it “looked under every stone to ensure it knew as much as it possibly could about the impact of Keystone.”

Reuters notes, “The EPA had concerns about the level of emissions from Canada’s oil sands, where crude production is carbon-intensive. It also took issue with the State Department’s conclusion that the pipeline would have no effect on climate because the oil sands would make it to market whether or not the pipeline was approved.”

Team Obama is looking in the wrong place — in fact, it’s looking in the wrong direction entirely. The most worrisome impact of Keystone isn’t under every stone, heck, it isn’t under any stone. It is in the atmosphere, an accelerated change in the climate.

But whatever you do, don’t mention those climate impacts out loud. Turns out the pipeline is sensitive about them, too.

Senate nominee Gabriel Gomez (R-MA) (Credit: The Republican)

Gabriel Gomez acknowledges that ”science says climate change is real.” But the Republican nominee to fill John Kerry’s open Senate seat in Massachusetts says he is unwilling to take serious steps to combat it, lest it hurt the economy in the short term.

His support for a “serious energy agenda,” including the risky Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, coincides with his own significant investments in dirty energy companies.

On his campaign website, Gomez writes:

Climate change is real. However, while science says climate change is real, addressing the problem must be done rationally. Unfortunately, many solutions offered by politicians in Washington are not rational, and would put America at a competitive disadvantage. We need a serious energy agenda that promotes private sector innovation in both the United States and in other countries around the world.

He also attacks the Obama administration as “wrong in stopping the Keystone pipeline, a project that will create jobs, drive down our energy costs, and help us to become energy independent.” Beyond serious environmental risks, the Keystone XL project would create just 35 permanent jobs, would do little for American energy security, would actually raise energy costs for many Americans.

While his opponent, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), has made clean energy and defending the environment a top priority throughout his tenure in Congress, Gomez repeatedly bashes the Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member for being “focused on everything but the economy.” A 2009 study by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute found that Markey’s proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), combined with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, would have created a net 1.7 million more American jobs.

A ThinkProgress review of Gomez’s personal financial disclosure filings reveals that a significant amount of his own money is invested, directly or indirectly, in Dirty Energy stocks and bonds. These include investments of between $1,000 and $15,000 each in: Read more

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness….

In this tale of two headlines, we start with Bloomberg’s famous post-Sandy cover, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid.”

You might’ve thought that said it all. In fact, the story itself asserted:

… the only responsible first step is to put climate change back on the table for discussion. The issue was missing-in-action during the presidential debates and, regardless of who wins on Nov. 6, is unlikely to appear on the near-term congressional calendar. After Sandy, that seems insane.

… Ultimately, the global warming crisis will require global solutions. Washington can become a credible advocate for moving the Chinese and Indian economies away from coal and toward alternatives only if the U.S. takes concerted political action.

So, obviously, for the sake of our global credibility, if nothing else, we shouldn’t approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Right? Right??

But, no, now we have this headline from the editors at Bloomberg:

And this editorial waves off climate concerns:

Even though extracting and refining bitumen from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, emits much more carbon dioxide than ordinary oil-drilling, total emissions from the tar-sands crude are only about 20 percent greater than from other oil, because most emissions come from burning the fuel.

So because the tar sands are only 20% dirtier than a fuel we have to wean ourselves off in the coming decades, we can sweep aside the climate concerns.

Is that insane or just stupid?

Keystone is a gateway to a huge pool of carbon-intensive fuel most of which must be left in the ground. Leaving most of the world’s coal in the ground but still pursuing unconventional oil and gas won’t save humanity from multiple devastating impacts that may be beyond adaptation. That’s doubly true if, instead of switching from coal to renewables, we switch from coal to shale gas.

At this point “Developed Nations Must Cut Emissions In Half By 2020” as one 2013 study showed. Then we need to be on a path to more than an 80% cut by 2050.

And again, if the richest country in the world insists on sticking new spigots into huge, dirty carbon pools like the tar sands, how can we be credible advocates for moving the Chinese and Indians to transition off of dirty fuels?

You were right the first time, Bloomberg editors, it is global warming, stupid!

h/t Brad Johnson

By Dr. Jim Barrett

It’s nice to know that the Joe Nocera at the New York Times can be taught. The last time I read one of his columns, he made the mistake of calling people “boneheaded” because they understood the economics of oil markets in a way that he clearly didn’t. He actually claimed that taxing oil production would increase oil production.

This time out, Joe has clearly showed that he learned his lesson: Don’t call people “boneheads” while displaying your own ignorance. Unfortunately for Joe, the lesson seems to have ended at not calling names, because his ignorance is once again on full display.

As with his last column, the discussion is about the Keystone XL pipeline which would bring crude from the tar sands of Canada to oil refineries in Texas. If you haven’t been paying attention to the issue, environmentalists and others oppose the pipeline on the basis of both local environmental issues surrounding the possibility of a leak in sensitive areas and on the global environmental grounds that developing Canada’s tar sands would be catastrophic for climate change.

Nocera, who to his credit admits openly to being a “longtime supporter” of the pipeline, abandons his previous comically flawed attempt at making economic arguments. This time, he attempts a political one: Allowing the pipeline to go through the U.S. will help us achieve “energy independence.”

Ignoring both the fact that the tar sands crude would flow to Texas refineries and then exported to other parts of the world as well the odd trend of treating Canada as though it were part of the U.S. (I wonder how Canadians feel about that), Nocera’s new energy security argument is just as flawed as his old economic one.

The problem is that even if Canada were just a northern U.S. state and even if all of the oil it produced were consumed in the U.S., the pipeline wouldn’t bring us any closer to actual energy independence. The reason is economics (sorry Joe, the stuff is everywhere). Oil is sold on global markets. The price oil is the same no matter where it is sold and who is buying it. If a buyer in Japan is offering $100 for a barrel of oil, and a U.S. company is only offering $80, the Japanese buyer will get it. That’s just how markets work. If the U.S. wants oil, we’re going to have to pay the market price.

The companies developing Canadian tar sands are not going to sell us that oil at below market rates because we are neighbors or because they like us. American oil companies don’t even do that. If global oil prices go up, we pay more for oil no matter who we buy it from.

Despite Nocera’s claim that “[w]e would no longer need OPEC,” (the oil producing cartel centered in the Middle East) we would still be very much subject to their whims and the impact it has on global oil markets. Whether or not the Keystone pipeline gets built, OPEC will still be a major supplier of oil. If OPEC decides to decrease production, global oil prices will rise, and the existence of the Keystone pipeline won’t change that. Fighting in the Middle East, sadly common, will still send global oil prices rising as it always has, and unless the Canadian oil companies promise not to raise their prices or only to sell to Americans (which they have literally sworn they won’t do (see video below), oil from the Canadian tar sands will go through the same price gyrations as all the other oil in the world.

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The State Departments draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the Keystone XL pipeline is centered on the assumption that there will be an increase in tar sands oil production with or without the pipeline. On that basis, it concludes Keystone will have no impact on carbon pollution or climate change.

Reuters debunked the State Department’s notion that without Keystone, the tar sands oil can travel by rail to the Gulf Coast.

Yesterday, Reuters reported that the Canadian government’s top Keystone cheerleader also admitted that rail would not be an effective alternative to the pipeline – also undermining the State Department’s assessment

Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver is in Washington, DC to continue the Canadian campaign to convince President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to approve the permit for the Keystone pipeline. Under questioning today by Reuters’ reporter Patrick Rucker, Oliver debunked the State Department’s assumption that the construction of Keystone would have no impact on tar sands oil production.  Reuters reported

Using trains to move heavy crude oil out of Western Canada would be a poor alternative to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, Canada’s top energy official said on Wednesday, and a rail-only plan would likely put a dent in future oil sands development.

Joe Oliver, Canada’s natural resources minister, said costs and logistical challenges make crude-by-rail a poor second choice for oil sands producers trying to reach the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“I don’t think anybody feels that it could be a substitute for pipelines,” Oliver told Reuters.

But Oliver said pipelines reliably beats crude-by-rail which “is more expensive for longer hauls than pipelines.”

In fact, the State Department’s draft SEIS did suggest that “limitations on pipeline transport would force more crude oil to be transported via other modes of transportation, such as rail, which would probably (but not certainly) be more expensive.”  In other words, Oliver publicly disputed this major State Department assumption.

Minister Oliver is an outspoken proponent of building the Keystone XL pipeline.  He has brutally attacked advocates who expressed opposition to Keystone because of concerns about climate pollution, toxic oil spills, and other risks.   Last year Oliver wrote in an “open letter”

There are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade.  Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry.  No mining.  No oil.  No gas. No more hydro-electric dams.

Oliver’s acknowledgment that the State Department’s rail scenario is unlikely occurred just two days after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also questioned the same fundamental assumption about tar sands oil production without Keystone. EPA concluded that

The market analysis and the conclusion that oil sands crude will find a way to market: With or without the Project is the central finding that supports the DSEIS’s [draft SEIS] conclusions regarding the Project’s potential GHG emissions impacts. Because the market analysis is so central to this key conclusion, we think it is important that it be as complete and accurate as possible.

Both Canadian Energy Minister Oliver and the U.S. EPA agree: The State Department’s draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement’s central assumption about tar sands oil production without Keystone is wrong.