The Wonk Room

CNN’s Velshi Went On Arctic Refuge Tour With Right-Wing Representative Bachmann»

After a presentation on opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, CNN anchor Ali Velshi hosted a discussion between Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ). Velshi started the interview by making the startling admission that Bachmann joined him on his expedition to northern Alaska:

Congressman [sic] Bachmann, I want to talk to you first about this because those pictures we just showed, we took from an airplane. You were with us on that airplane. You went up there to get a sense for yourself about the impact of drilling in ANWR.

Watch it:

During the interview, Velshi asked Bachmann what lesson she learned from their joint trip. Her response:

Ali, I came away with the idea that this is the most perfect place on the planet to drill.

Bachmann’s bizarre response — she also called the ecologically unique refuge the “most convenient, quickest place” to drill, despite also saying it is “permanently frozen in darkness three months of the year” — comes as no surprise, as she is one of the biggest boosters of Big Oil propaganda in Congress. Just in the past two months, she’s claimed that caribou love pipelines, falsely blamed Democrats for blocking renewable energy incentives, and repeated the lie about China drilling for oil off the Florida coast. In this segment, Bachmann introduces a new lie, claiming “this area was specifically set aside for drilling by President Jimmy Carter for drilling.”

This is simply false. As Carter explained in a 2000 New York Times column calling for expanded protections of Alaskan lands from drilling:

Then, even more than today, much attention was focused on high energy prices; oil companies — playing on Americans’ fears — sought the right to drill in protected areas. While the House held firm, the Senate forced a compromise, without ever putting the fate of the refuge to a vote. Thus, the law I signed 20 years ago did not permanently protect this Arctic wilderness. It did, however, block any oil company drilling until Congress votes otherwise. . . The simple fact is, drilling is inherently incompatible with wilderness.

Velshi did not question Bachmann about any of these false statements. Velshi also failed to mention global warming even once, despite the extreme warming taking place in northern Alaska, driving wildlife toward extinction and threatening a global climate meltdown.

Freshman representative Bachmann is a hard-line conservative funded primarily by right-wing organizations like the Club for Growth ($92,630), TCF Financial ($38,400), and Koch Industries ($17,500), the right-wing corporate polluter. She has also received $20,250 from right-wing billionaire Stanley Hubbard, one of the the top funders of Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now” organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF).

CNN’s campaign coverage continues to be funded by the coal industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

UPDATE: Velshi’s Arctic Refuge piece first aired July 24, but he did not disclose that the trip was with a delegation of 11 conservative representatives led by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH). However, prior to the trip, he did say in a July 15 interview with Rep. Bachmann:

I should tell you, I’m hoping to join you on that trip this weekend. We’re still trying to work that out.

Evidently, his wish was granted.

CNN’s Velshi Pimping Dirty ‘Oil Sands’ Boondoggle»

CNN’s senior business correspondent, Ali Velshi, is a one-man public relations team for the polluters that advertise on his network. In response to rising energy prices, Velshi has spent months promoting the Nazi-era technology of liquid coal. On CNN’s American Morning, Ali Velshi previewed his weeklong tribute to another disastrous and dirty boondoggle, the Alberta tar sands — or “oil sands” among its backers.

After showing off his “equipment” — a Calgary Stampede belt buckle — Velshi described the sands as “the largest reserves of oil in the entire world,” where “oil workers make $100,000, $120,000 to start.” Velshi conceded that “it’s doing something to the land.”

Watch it:

The Athabasca Oil Sands development, now producing 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, is an ecological disaster. The bitumen-drenched sands — essentially the same composition as asphalt pavement — lie a few hundred feet below the surface in a region of northeastern Alberta the size of Wisconsin. Like “oil shale,” tar sands are millions of years away from being true oil deposits — there are no gushing oil wells here. To produce usable crude oil from the sands, man has to shortcut the geological processes at huge expense of energy, water, and land. The result leaves an industrial moonscape in Alberta and a tremendous global warming footprint. Here’s how:

Four Tons Of Material Are Required Per Barrel Of Oil. Tar sands oil production chews up the earth at a prodigious rate. After the hundreds of feet of “overfill” (read: the living habitat of Alberta’s boreal forest) are bulldozed, enormous trucks haul out tons of tar sands to the natural-gas fueled production plants. After extracting one barrel of bitumen for every two tons of tar sands and two more tons of mined rock, the remaining toxic sludge and sand is dumped as “tailings.” [The Pembina Institute, 11/05]

Tar Sands Plants Use Two To Four Barrels of Water Per Barrel Of Oil. “Currently, the water consumption is enough to sustain a city of two million people every year. And after it’s been through the process, the water is toxic with contaminants, so it cannot be released into the environment. Some of it is reused, but vast amounts of it are pumped into enormous settlement ponds to be retained as toxic waste.” [Energy & Capital, 9/07]

Tar Sands Generates Two To Four Times The Greenhouse Pollution Per Barrel Of Conventional Oil. A 2005 Pembina Institute report found that a barrel of tar sands oil had 2.98 times the greenhouse gas intensity of a barrel of conventional oil. Production of oil from bituminous sands also generates twice the nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide pollution as conventional oil. [The Pembina Institute, 11/05]

Tar Sands Are A Double Climate Disaster For Canada. Global warming has already decreased the flow of the Athabasca River by 20 percent in fifty years, even as its water is increasingly used for oil sands production. Greenhouse gas emissions from bituminous sands production are “projected to reach 45-50 MT by 2010,” half of Canada’s increase above 1990 levels, further hastening the climate change threatening the region. [WWF, 11/05]

At current production rates, the Alberta tar sands exploitation chews up four million metric tons of earth, a billion cubic feet of natural gas, and 400 million gallons of water and produces 100 thousand metric tons of greenhouse gases a day. A three-mile-per-gallon increase in fuel economy for the United States fleet would eliminate the entire need for the 1.3 million barrels of oil synthesized each day from the tar sands.

Velshi’s “Energy Hunt” is one of desperation, where oil companies profit only because they don’t have to pay the costs of their pollution. Instead, they keep the money and the rest of the planet pays the price.

Read the transcript.

Coal Industry Sponsors CNN, CNN Praises Coal»

CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi has been promoting coal-to-liquids technology and praising “clean coal, 99 percent clean” for an entire month. On Tuesday, CNN held a no-holds-barred coalfest, promoting coal-to-liquids and coal gasification technologies, calling coal “seductive,” and criticizing “blogs” who “go nuts” and “environmentalists” who “want to get rid of coal.”

What’s motivating CNN to closely mirror coal-industry talking points?

One hopes it has nothing to do with this:

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is a $45 million front group for over 40 companies in the coal industry.

CNN’s Ali Velshi Confuses Coal With Soap»

On the date of the West Virginia primary, CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi appeared throughout the morning and afternoon, waving a lump of coal. In one segment yesterday morning, Velshi described the coal-to-liquids process:

It is a cleaner burning fuel in the end — now I get in a lot of trouble when I say this, because the blogs go nuts on this — I didn’t say coal was clean. I said that the fuel that is derived from coal happens to be a very clean-burning fuel. What happens prior to when it becomes gasoline can be very dirty.

As the Wonk Room reported, on April 25, Velshi said:

You see the signs for clean coal, 99 percent clean. I’m not 99 percent clean when I get out of the shower. . . I just look clean.

And then yesterday afternoon Velshi got excited:

Most people think of coal as a relatively dirty thing. You may have seen the ads on TV for 99.9% clean coal, that’s clean coal technology. Bottom line is people are split on the cleanliness of coal.

Watch it:

There are, in fact, no such ads, because even the coal industry isn’t willing to be that misleading about coal. Velshi seems to be confusing coal propaganda with the classic Ivory Soap slogan, “99 and 44/100% pure.”

Velshi asked for people to email suggestions about what “we should cover when it comes to energy.” Here are a few items not discussed in yesterday’s coalfest on CNN: More »

CNN Goes Nuts For Coal»

As primaries are held today in the coal-rich but job-poor state of West Virginia, CNN — whose presidential debates have been sponsored by the coal industry front group ACCCE — is spending significant air time promoting coal-industry spin. The Wonk Room has previously highlighted CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi’s exploitative promotion of coal-to-liquids technology. Today, Velshi brought the rest of the CNN team into his coal-propaganda orbit.

CNN’s American Morning show was drenched with segments promoting coal above the chyron “MAKING GAS FROM COAL: REDUCING DEPENDENCE ON OIL.” Velshi even handed out coal to hosts John Roberts and Kyra Phillips. Phillips chirpily exclaimed, “We’ve got hope. We’re going to make gas out of coal.” Roberts introduced a segment on an eccentric inventor developing coal gasification — not the same as coal-to-liquids — technology by saying “We have huge supplies of it: coal!”

On “Your World Today,” senior correspondent Allan Chernoff confused coal-to-liquids with coal gasification and intoned, “Environmentalists want to get rid of coal. That’s not happening.” On CNN Newsroom, Brianna Keilar called the “250-year supply” of coal “seductive” before begging Ali to show off his lump of coal some more.

Watch video from today’s coalfest: More »

Ali Velshi Hosts Glenn Beck To Promote Liquid Coal»

Recently, CNN’s senior business correspondent Ali Velshi has been promoting coal-based liquid fuel as a response to high oil prices, even though it leads to climate disaster. Yesterday, the Wonk Room noted that Velshi has even implied coal is cleaner than himself. This afternoon, Velshi continued his obsession with liquid coal in a discussion with CNN’s Glenn Beck. Beck is a self-described “big dumb rodeo clown” who believes the United States is a “suicidal superpower” for not turning coal into gasoline:

This can be done — coal to oil — at $55 a barrel. That’s about half of what we are paying right now for oil. We can have cheap oil that is actually good for the nation because it is all home grown. We’re sitting … just Montana is the Saudi Arabia of coal.

Montana does indeed have vast coal reserves. But coal-based fuel is in fact a dangerous and expensive prospect once the high costs of its pollution are factored in — especially its carbon dioxide global warming emissions.

Velshi then noted that his “clean coal” boosterism has raised questions about his journalistic integrity:

Well you know, South Africa, most of the gasoline it uses is produced from coal. I did something on this the other day and the number of e-mails and comments I got about how I’m shilling for the coal industry . . .

After Beck scoffed, “Oh please,” Velshi then made his most accurate pronouncement about coal to date:

I don’t think it’s clean. It’s not cleaner. It just happens to not be oil.

Glenn Beck — whose response to the threat of climate change is to complain that polar bears eat people — was terribly alarmed by Velshi’s moment of truth:

Now hang on just a second. We can sequester the CO2 now. We can make it cleaner than it has been.

In fact, there is not a single coal plant producing electricity or fuel that sequesters carbon dioxide anywhere on the planet. Although we definitely can make coal cleaner, the coal industry is doing everything it can to ensure that the American taxpayer foots the bill. If Velshi were truly interested in the economics of coal, he would host financial analysts that discuss the economic risks of coal power, not global-warming deniers like Glenn Beck.

Watch it:

Transcript: More »

CNN’s Velshi Promotes Coal: I’m Not Even As ‘Clean’ As Coal When I ‘Get Out Of The Shower’»

Previewing his interview with the CEO of Sasol, a South African company that produces coal-based liquid fuels, chief business correspondent Ali Velshi admitted on CNN’s American Morning on Friday that “There are issues with coal,” but minimized its problems:

There are issues with coal. It’s not the cleanest thing in the world. You see the signs for clean coal, 99 percent clean. I’m not 99 percent clean when I get out of the shower. . . I just look clean.

Watch it:

Velshi’s hygiene is his own business, but it’s no secret that coal is a dirty fuel and Velshi’s “99 percent clean” is false:

– The misleading “clean coal” ads from the coal-industry front group ACCCE only claim that “today’s coal-based generating fleet is already 70 percent cleaner based upon regulated emissions per unit of energy produced.”

– The “70 percent” baseline is from 1970 and only refers to air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act, not water and land pollution or greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

– Because coal use has more than tripled since 1970, total pollution from coal plants has increased. In fact, in 2004 the Clean Air Task Force found coal-plant pollution “cuts short the lives of nearly 24,000 people each year.”

Velshi has now used his position to repeatedly promote coal-to-liquids technology and minimize its problems. Perhaps he wasn’t kidding when he said, “I only look clean.”

Transcript: More »

CNN’s Ali Velshi Promotes False Coal-Based ‘Solution’ To Gas Prices»

This weekend, CNN’s senior business correspondent Ali Velshi devoted his “Your Money” show to rising gas prices. In one segment, he introduced an interview with Pat Davies, the CEO of the South African energy company Sasol:

Any way you slice it, prices at the pump are high, even if you stick with the regular gas. One innovative energy company based in South Africa thinks it has a workable solution. For decades it’s been turning coal and natural gas into gasoline.

In reality, Sasol’s coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology is neither “workable” nor a “solution” to high gas prices. In the interview, Davies modestly admitted that there’s a global warming problem, saying “We need to do some more work.” The truth is liquid coal is a climate killer. The energy required to convert coal to liquid fuel doubles the amount of carbon dioxide released compared to petroleum-based gasoline, producing a ton of carbon dioxide for each barrel of liquid fuel. The New York Times shows how liquid coal is the worst of all possible alternative fuels:

Furthermore, Velshi concludes his piece by debunking the claim that CTL is a “workable solution” to the rising cost of gasoline:

This is not about lowering the cost necessarily of gasoline, it is about creating alternatives and particularly coal is something you don’t eat, unlike corn, which makes ethanol. Sasol is looking to open some facilities here in the United States and it’s conducting feasibility studies. So it would take years before the first coal-to-gasoline fuel could possibly enter the U.S. market.

Watch it:

In fact, the only benefits would accrue to the coal industry, who paid CNN millions to sponsor their presidential debates, and companies like Sasol, who paid lobbyists $400,000 last year to promote their technologies.

Coal-Sponsored CNN Promotes Climate Killer Coal Technology»

On CNN this morning, senior business correspondent Ali Velshi discussed the new record high oil prices reached today. American Morning co-host Kiran Chetry asked Velshi about ways to conserve, such as hybrids. His response:

I just spoke to the CEO of Sasol, the old South African oil company. They make gasoline out of coal. If oil is not $50 or higher, it doesn’t make it worth doing that. But at 112 bucks, 113 bucks, why not?

Watch it:

Why not convert coal into gasoline using coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology? After all, the United States does have abundant coal reserves, and CTL is a well-established technology, having been developed by scientists in Nazi Germany:

Liquid coal increases our addiction to fossil fuels. The way to break an addiction to fossil fuels is to figure out how to use less, not consume more. To replace ten percent of our oil consumption would require an increase in coal mining by 40%.

Liquid coal is a climate killer. The energy required to convert coal to liquid fuel doubles the amount of carbon dioxide released compared to petroleum-based gasoline, producing a “ton of carbon dioxide for each barrel of liquid fuel.”

I hope CNN’s Velshi is promoting coal-to-liquid technology unwittingly, and not because his network has been receiving millions of dollars from the coal industry to run their debates — debates where questions about global warming are rarely if ever asked.

Transcript: More »