By Kimberley Strassel, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2007

It was a scant two years ago that Georgia’s Saxby Chambliss voted with 73 other giddy senators for an energy bill that required the nation to use 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol. Georgia’s farmers loved corn-based ethanol; Georgia’s agri-businesses loved corn-based ethanol; and all that meant that then-Agriculture Committee Chairman Chambliss loved corn-based ethanol, too.

Earlier this year, Mr. Chambliss introduced a bill calling for even greater ethanol use, though with one striking difference: The bill caps the amount of that fuel that can come from corn. Turns out Georgia’s chicken farmers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia’s pork producers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia’s dairy industry hates corn-based ethanol; Georgia’s food producers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia’s hunters hate corn-based ethanol. And all that means Mr. Chambliss has had to find a new biofuels religion.  The shine is off corn ethanol, and oh, what a comedown it has been. See full story on US Senate EPW Minority Blog

Ben Geman, Environment & Energy Daily, 16 May 2007

Nearly 20 House Democrats from largely oil-and-gas producing states penned a letter to their leadership yesterday in an attempt to make sure climate change legislation does not lower energy supplies or increase prices. Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas), who coordinated the effort, told E&E Daily the lawmakers “want a seat at the table” when climate policy is crafted.

“If our climate change policy leads to gasoline or natural gas supply disruptions and price spikes, consumers and voters will question that policy,” wrote the House members from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado, Utah, Arkansas, Georgia and Hawaii. The letter links high natural gas prices in recent years to job losses in the manufacturing sector. “I want to make sure that whatever we do, we address global warming and still realize we need to run our vehicles and cool and heat our homes,” Green said in the interview. See full story here

By Pallab Ghosh , BBC Science Correspondent

Alarmist messages about global warming are counter-productive, the head of a leading climate research centre says. Professor Mike Hulme, of the UK’s Tyndall Centre, has been conducting research on people’s attitudes to media portrayals of a catastrophic future.

“There has been over-claiming or exaggeration, or at the very least casual use of language by scientists, some of whom are quite prominent,” Professor Hulme told BBC News. His concern is that these exaggerations have given the green light to the media to use the language of fear, terror and disaster when covering scientific reports - even when those reports are much more constrained in their description of the course of likely future events. He says extravagated claims simply generate a feeling of helplessness in the public. Reports of catastrophe and the “Hollywoodisation” of weather and climate were creating confusion in the public’s mind.  See full story here