EPW Minority Blog Press Release
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, today joined in a colloquy with Senators Allard (R-CO) and Stevens (R-AK) regarding the need to develop domestic energy resources and increase domestic refining capacity in order bring down the high price of gas at the pump. Videos of the colloquy will be available shortly to view on the Inhofe You Tube channel.
“Faced with skyrocketing gas prices and national economic insecurity, many Oklahoman and American families will be forced to think twice about travel plans this Memorial Day weekend and throughout the summer,” Senator Inhofe said. “Hopefully after this holiday, after enough Senators have heard from outraged constituents about the high price of gas at the pump, there will be enough political pressure that we can finally get Congress to agree to start drilling in ANWR, drilling offshore, drilling in the shale area and experimenting in some of these areas where we can become totally self-sufficient in America.
One of the major hurdles to bringing down the price at the pump is to increase domestic refining capacity. To address this glaring need, I introduced legislation to improve and streamline the permitting process for the expansion of existing and new refineries in each of the past two Congresses. In fact, I offered this common sense legislation as an amendment to the energy bill last year. Unfortunately, the amendment failed 43-52 without a single Democratic member voting for the amendment. Today as gasoline prices continue to rapidly increase, the question remains, how much higher will gas prices need to go before we act?
The simple fact remains, until we explore and develop domestic energy resources and increase domestic refining capacity, the cost of gas at the pump will increase. Now is not the time for politics as usual - now is the time for common sense solutions.” See this release and Senator Inhofe’s floor remarks here.
Terence Corcoran, Financial Post
In the now-familiar century-old ritual of corporate punishment, the U. S. Senate judiciary committee yesterday ordered members of the Big Oil’s CEO chain gang to explain themselves. Which they did, very effectively. Whether any of the demagogic politicians were inclined to hear the message is another matter. The committee chair is Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. Yesterday, Leahy lit into oil industry profits, oil executive salaries, and the oil industry’s alleged links to President Bush. “The president once boasted that with his pals in the oil industry, he would be able to keep prices low and consumers would benefit. Instead, it is his pals in the oil industry who have benefited,” Leahy said. “Why has the price of oil increased 400% since President Bush took office?”
As the price of oil topped US$130 a barrel, the best U. S. politicians can come up with as a response is blind partisanship and destructive policy initiatives aimed at attacking the oil industry. Among the dumb ideas is the Consumer First Energy Act, to impose a windfall profit tax on U. S. oil firms. Another plan would force U. S.-based oil companies to disclose money they pay foreign governments for resources.
Shell president John Hofmeister tabled a report from the Argonne National Laboratory listing 40 U. S. laws and regulations that prevent, delay, limit and/or increase costs in the gas industry. Hundreds of lawsuits hamstring development (see his testimony here). The oil industry’s main message was aimed at getting U. S. politicians to act on policies that can actually increase oil and gas supplies: Remove obstacles to new exploration and development and resist the temptation to impose new taxes and constraints that will limit the oil industry’s ability to operate.
In the past, the United States could afford to shoot itself in the foot, confident that its economic power could repair the damage. The current state of the world energy markets are such that current misguided policies, let alone new ones, are much more than a shot in the foot. Read more here.
By Dr. Tim Ball, Canada Free Press
In previous parts of this series (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) I’ve shown how a political agenda took over climate science primarily through the UN and specifically the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The agenda was spread to the world at the 1992 Rio Conference. Periodic Reports from the IPCC maintained the focus on CO2 and increased the political pressure. Please understand I am not claiming a conspiracy, but rather a cabal, which is defined as a secret political clique pushing a political agenda; in this case, designed by Maurice Strong.
The most notorious was the Hockey Stick (HS) in the IPCC 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR). Despite its destruction by McIntyre and McKitrick confirmed by the Wegman committee reporting to the National Academy of Sciences, Michael Mann and his associates continue to claim their work was legitimate. Its omission from the 2007 IPCC Report told the real story.
While the Hockey Stick was exposed and rejected it drew attention away from a more insidious piece of ‘human signal’ evidence in the 2001 IPCC (TAR). This was the claim by P.D. Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that the global average annual temperature increased 0.6C plus or minus 0.2C in some 130 years. It was claimed the increase was beyond any natural increase with the strong implication it was caused by humans. The data is simply not adequate to make this conclusion. The first problem is the huge error factor of plus or minus 0.2C or 66%, which essentially makes the number meaningless. Imagine a political poll saying it was accurate plus or minus 33%. Besides, there are so many problems with the global data many consider it impossible to calculate the global temperature.
There are serious questions and proven limitations of many of the stations. Two US authorities, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS) produced different global annual averages for the year 2007. GISS claimed it was the second warmest year on record while NOAA said it was the seventh warmest year, both ostensibly using the same data.
In 1999 the US National Research Council Report, expressed serious concern about the data “Deficiencies in the accuracy, quality and continuity of the records place serious limitations on the confidence that can be placed in the research results.” In response to the report Kevin Trenberth said, “It’s very clear we do not have a climate observing system. This may be a shock to many people who assume that we do know adequately what’s going on with the climate, but we don’t.” It has not improved. In fact, there are fewer global weather stations now than in 1960. Read much more of this in-depth coverage of the data problems we have been highlighting here.