Claiming it could no longer abide the Obama administration’s five-year refusal to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline designed to bring 830,000 barrels a day of much-needed Alberta shale oil to U.S. refineries, the Canadian government recently approved plans for a huge new pipeline and port project to ship that oil to Asia instead.
When completed, the $7.9 billion Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, approved by Canada’s federal government on June 17, will consist of an environmentally safe, 730-mile oil pipeline. It will be capable of moving 600,000 barrels a day of Alberta oil to the Pacific coast town of Kitimat, British Columbia, where a new state-of-the-art super tanker port facility will be built to ship the oil to thirsty Asian ports.
It was initially hoped that recent discoveries of massive new Canadian oil and gas reserves could benefit both Canada and the United States by building a safe and reliable pipeline to bring the oil to U.S. refineries in Louisiana and Texas. Building the proposed 1,179-mile Keystone pipeline promised, not just a huge new supply of reliable, clean, and affordable oil to U.S. markets, but the creation of up to 20,000 high-paying construction jobs. An additional 22,000 jobs economists predicted would have resulted from the broader economic stimulus the project would have generated.
Rather than purchasing crude from a friendly and allied neighbor, the United States will most likely need to continue its reliance upon hostile sources like Venezuela. Energy analysts had hoped that construction of Keystone could have replaced almost half of the current U.S. daily crude purchases from that volatile, anti-American dictatorship, depriving Venezuela of the resources it relies upon to stay in power and fund its Cuban allies.
Refusal to approve Keystone has forced suppliers to deliver their flammable crude via thousands of trucks and railcars traveling on America’s highways and railroads, rather than in a pipeline.
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Louisiana Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy criticized President Obama’s repeated delays in approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Saturday, saying the president and Democrats in Congress are blockading a project that would create jobs just to satisfy their political base.
“The State Department says that building this pipeline creates 42,000 direct and indirect jobs, has a negligible impact upon the environment and saves lives as there are fewer accidents shipping oil by pipeline instead of rail or truck,” Cassidy said in the weekly Republican address.
“Unfortunately, President Obama continues to oppose job-creating projects, such as Keystone.”
Keystone Pipeline: State Department raises no environmental objection to project
“Sadly, Democrats in Washington stand with President Obama rather than standing with hardworking families in Louisiana and elsewhere,” he added. “They would rather your family struggle than offend their political base.”
The pipeline would carry crude oil harvested from Canadian tar sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Republicans say the project would create jobs in both the construction and energy sectors, but Democrats, worried about climate change, say the fuel being extracted is exceptionally dirty, and that the pipeline wouldn’t create as many jobs as its proponents advertise.
The State Department, which ultimately must sign off on the project because it crosses the U.S.-Canadian border, estimates that it would directly produce 3,900 jobs during the construction phase, as Cassidy notes, and it could indirectly support 42,100 related jobs over that same period.
Mr. Obama, though, told the New York Times last year that the project would only produce about 2,000 temporary construction jobs and only 50 to 100 permanent jobs after the pipeline is built.
Whatever the number, Cassidy said the repeated delays prove the president “and his allies like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are more interested in rolling out the red tape than the red carpet for these jobs.”
“Together, we must stop Harry Reid and the senators who support him from blocking the Keystone XL pipeline—blocking the jobs, the opportunity that it creates,” Cassidy said. “It’s time to retire Harry Reid as the leader of the Senate.”
Regina “Gina” McCarthy is a traitor.
Regina “Gina” McCarthy is the administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and she is killing the provision of electricity to the nation and, at the same time, is taking control of every drop of water in the United States, as an attack on its agricultural sector.
Like the rest of the Obama administration, Regina “Gina” McCarthy has no regard for real science and continues to reinterpret the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Overall, this agenda threatens every aspect of life in the nation.
As Craig Rucker, the Executive Director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) recently warned, “True to her word,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, “is busily grabbing powers for EPA that Congress specifically chose not to grant, and that the Supreme Court has denied on multiple occasions.”
“The federal bureaucracy under the Obama presidency has a voracious appetite for more power. It despises individual liberty and drags down the economy every change it gets,” Rucker warns.
In addition to implementing President Obama’s “war on coal” that is depriving the nation of coal-fired plants that provide electricity, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has announced a proposed rule titled “Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’ Under the Clean Water Act”, redefining, as Ron Arnold of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise reported in the Washington Examiner “nearly everything wet as ‘waters of the United States or WOTUS - and potentially subject us all to permits and fines.”
Gina McCarthy has made it clear that the rule of law has no importance to her and this is manifestly demonstrated by the actions of the EPA. “This abomination,” says Arnold, “is equivalent to invasion by hostile troops out to seize the jurisdictions of all 50 states. WOTUS gives untrustworthy federal bureaucrats custody of every watershed, creates crushing new power to coerce all who keep America going and offers no benefit to the victimized and demoralized tax-paying public.”
In response to the EPA’s new power grab, more than 200 House members called on the Obama administration in May to drop its plans to expanded the EPA’s jurisdiction over smaller bodies of water around the nation. A letter was sent to EPA Administrator McCarthy and Department of Army Secretary John M. McHugh (re: Army Corps of Engineers) asking that the proposal be withdrawn.
“Under this plan, there’d be no body of water in America - including mud puddles and canals - that wouldn’t be at risk from job-destroying federal regulation,” said Rep, Doc Hastings (R-Wash), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. “This dramatic expansion of federal government control will directly impact the livelihoods and viability of farmers and small businesses in rural America.”
Nearly thirty major trade associations have joined together to create the Waters Advocacy Coalition. They represent the nation’s construction, manufacturing, housing, real estate, mining, agricultural and energy sectors. The coalition supports S. 2245, “Preserve the Waters of the U.S. Act” which would prevent the EPA and Corps of Engineers from issuing their “Final Guidance on Identifying Waters Protected by the Clean Water Act.”
What has this nation come to if the Senate has to try to pass an act intended to prevent the EPA from extending control over the nation’s waters beyond the Clean Waters Act that identifies such control as limited to “navigable waters? You can’t navigate a water ditch or a puddle!
There are acts that limit agencies such as the EPA from going beyond their designated powers. They are the Regulatory Flexibility Act and the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act. The coalition says that the EPA and Corps “should not be allowed to use guidance to implement the largest expansion of Clean Water Act authority since it was enacted. Only Congress has the authority to make such a sweeping change.”
In two Supreme Court decisions, one in 2001 and another in 2006, rejected regulation of “isolated waters” by the EPA.
It does not matter to the EPA or the Obama administration what the Supreme Court has ruled Congress has enacted in the Clean Water Act, nor the Clean Air Act.
We are witnessing the EPA under the administration of Gina McCarthy acting as a criminal enterprise and it must be stopped before it imposes so much damage on the nation that it destroys it.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM: April 24, 2014
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy has issued a warning to Republicans who continue to question the integrity of the agency’s scientific data: we’re coming for you.
McCarthy told an audience at the National Academy of Sciences on Monday morning the agency will go after a “small but vocal group of critics” arguing the EPA is using “secret science” to push costly clean air regulations.
“Those critics conjure up claims of ‘EPA secret science’ - but it’s not really about EPA science or secrets. It’s about challenging the credibility of world renowned scientists and institutions like Harvard University and the American Cancer Society” McCarthy said, according to Politico.
“It’s about claiming that research is secret if researchers protect confidential personal health data from those who are not qualified to analyze it and won’t agree to protect it,” she added. “If EPA is being accused of ‘secret science’ because we rely on real scientists to conduct research, and independent scientists to peer review it, and scientists who’ve spent a lifetime studying the science to reproduce it - then so be it.”
Republicans Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana and Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas have led the charge on pressing the EPA to make publicly available the scientific data behind its clean air regulations. McCarthy promised she would make such data publicly available during her confirmation process last year. Now her refusal to cough up the data has angered Republicans.
“EPA’s leadership is willfully ignoring the big picture and defending EPA’s practices of using science that is, in fact, secret due to the refusal of the Agency to share the underlying data with Congress and the American public,” said Vitter.
“We’re not asking, and we’ve never asked, for personal health information, and it is inexcusable for EPA to justify billions of dollars of economically significant regulations on science that is kept hidden from independent reanalysis and congressional oversight,” Vitter added.
The EPA has used non-public data to justify 85 percent of $2 trillion worth of Clean Air Act regulation benefits from 1990 to 2020. The agency also uses such datasets to assert that Clean Air Act regulation benefits exceed the costs by a 30-to-1 ratio originates from the secret data sets.
House Republicans have backed a bill that would block the EPA from crafting regulations based on “secret” data. Republicans argue that such data was used to craft onerous regulations, like one promulgated in late 2012 to reduce soot levels.
That soot rule is supposed to yield from $4 billion to $9 billion per year, according to the EPA, and costs from $53 million and $350 million.
“For far too long, the EPA has approved regulations that have placed a crippling financial burden on economic growth in this country with no public evidence to justify their actions,” said Arizona Republican Rep. David Schweikert, who introduced the bill.
“Virtually every regulation proposed by the Obama administration has been justified by nontransparent data and unverifiable claims,” said Smith, who cosponsored the bill. “The American people foot the bill for EPA’s costly regulations, and they have a right to see the underlying science. Costly environmental regulations should be based on publicly available data so that independent scientists can verify the EPA’s claims.”
Oil which is demonized is used and fuel for cars, boats, jets, trucks and home and business heating. It is an essential component of plastics, synthetic rubber, synthetic fibers like polyester, nylon and acrylic, fertilizers and pesticides, paint, photographic film, additives to extend the shelf life for processed foods, make up, medicines like aspirin and wax for candles we will need when the electric grid fails because of unreliable green energy policies.
That is a question that I’m sure is on a lot of people’s minds as they wonder if they should attend. It seems like the sort of thing warmists would do - go someplace hot, talk about how hot it is, and then hope a new record is set while there to underscore the importance of saving the planet from hotter and hotter days. It’s a PR flack’s dream.
But, expectations and reality in the climate debate are often far different, and it is that difference that makes Las Vegas a perfect place to discuss temperature, climate, and global warming, as I show below. First, let’s look at the potential for new record highs during the days of the ICCC9 conference:
Here are the records for early July during the conference, it would have to exceed 114/113 to have a new record. The normal high is 104 for the dates of July 7/8/9:
July_LasVegas_records (enlarged)
As you can see there has been a warming trend in average temperature for Las Vegas, something sure to be pounced on:
LasVegas_average_temps (enlarged)
But, it turns out that most of that trend is in overnight temperatures, which are most affected by the explosive growth of Las Vegas and the resultant UHI (1):
LasVegas_lows (enlarged)
Inconveniently, there is no upward trend in maximum temperatures, in fact it appears there has been a slight downward trend since the late 1930’s and early 1940’s:
Las Vegas highs (enlarged)
There also seems to be no increase in record high temperatures beyond the levels first noted when record keeping began in 1937, no new maximum temperature records have exceeded the 117 degree record set on July 24th, 1942 (2):
LasVegas_high_records (enlarged)
All in all, I think Las Vegas is PERFECT place to have a climate conference, because it shows that expectations of warming and the reality of data just don’t match.
I’ll be there and I’ll be giving a final report on our SurfaceStations project and what we’ve found. Registration is here if you want to attend.
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References:
(1) Summary Report, Urban Heat Island Effect, City of Las Vegas, Office of Sustainability, April 2010
(2) Source for data: NOAA/NWS Las Vegas