Fossil fuel industry spent nearly $2 billion to kill U.S. climate action, new study finds

It's always amusing when the Green/Left try to glue some facts on to their half-baked theories.  Below is an example.  As usual, they tell only half the story -- or rather on this occasion only a small fraction of the story.  Rather hilariously, they want to claim that the failure of their crusade is because they don't get enough publicity.

They agonize over the sums various producers of traditional fuels spend on lobbying Congress and say that environmentalists spend a lot less. And that is the only sort of promotional expenditure they mention.  And they don't even show WHAT causes the lobbyists were pushing. They assume that every cent went to promote climate skepticism. But big companies have lots of interests and it is possible that global warming was only a small part of the causes that they were lobbying for.  We don't even know that they mentioned global warming at all.  Greenies have a paranoid conviction that it was all about them but offer no proof of that. So strike one for the first part of the story that they "overlooked"

But the really BIG strike is that they have ignored the Greenie effort at promoting their cause to the PUBLIC.  Lobbying Congress is all well and good but if you have the public on your side, Congress is in your pocket.  And on my count you would be lucky to see one anti-warming article in the media for 50 pro-warming articles.  Skeptics are hugely outnumbered by apostles of the Warmist creed.  So if you look at TOTAL promotional activity, the amounts some companies spend on lobbying Congress are just a drop in the bucket.

Amazing how different it all looks when you look at the whole picture, isn't it?


Legislation to address climate change has repeatedly died in Congress. But a major new study says the policy deaths were not from natural causes — they were caused by humans, just like climate change itself is.

Climate action has been repeatedly drowned by a devastating surge and flood of money from the fossil fuel industry — nearly $2 billion in lobbying since 2000 alone.

This is according to stunning new analysis in the journal Climatic Change on “The climate lobby” by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle.

The most important conclusion of Brulle’s is that spending by those in favor of climate action was dramatically overwhelmed by the big fossil fuel suppliers and users: “Environmental organizations and the renewable energy sector lobbying expenditures were dwarfed by a ratio of 10:1 by the spending of the sectors engaged in the supply and use of fossil fuels.”

The study serves to help put to rest notion that the effort to pass climate legislation has ever been a fair fight. But then, the big corporate producers and consumers of fossil fuels have hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue — thus dwarfing the funds available to major environmental groups and the emerging clean energy sector.

Brulle analyzed the “countervailing power ratio,” which is the total lobbying expenditures by the big fossil fuel trade associations along with the transportation, electric utility, and fossil fuel sectors divided by the total lobbying expenditures of the renewable energy sector along with environmental organizations

“Special interests dominate the conversation, all working for a particular advantage for their industry,” as Dr. Brulle told ThinkProgress in an email. “The common good is not represented.”

Indeed, the other key point of the study is that a truly staggering amount of money has been spent lobbying Congress on climate change this century, more than $2 billion.

The biggest surge came, unsurprisingly, during the 2009-2010 period — when Congress came the closest it ever did to passing serious climate legislation

During 2009 and 2010, total lobbying expenditures on climate change accounted for a whopping nine percent of all lobbying expenditures.

The House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, often called the Waxman-Markey bill, by a slim margin in June 2009. At that point, the fossil fuel industry launched an all-out — and ultimately successful — lobbying push to undermine any effort by the Senate to  pass their own version of the climate bill over the next 12 months.

Indeed, of the top nine energy companies with the biggest lobbying expenditures between January 2009 and June 2010, six were Big Oil companies (led by ExxonMobil), and the other three were a coal producer and two coal-intensive utilities.

“It’s clear that when the greatest threat presents itself — like when Congress and the Executive branch are aligned and favorable to and recognize climate change as a major issue,” explained Brulle, “these corporations that engage in the supply and use of fossil fuels work the hardest to upend legislative efforts by increasing their lobby spending ten-fold.”

Finally, it’s worth noting, as Brulle does, that electric utilities, which collectively have spent vast sums lobbying on climate change, were not all lobbying uniformly against the climate bill in 2009 and 2010.

But the biggest carbon polluters at the time, such as Southern Company and American Electric Power (AEP), were among the very biggest spenders.

Also, as the study notes, “several corporations’ apparent support for climate policy is a sophisticated strategy to simultaneously attempt to appear to support such legislation, while actually supporting efforts to undermine it.”

To do this, some companies had memberships in coalitions that both supported climate legislation (U.S. Climate Action Partnership) and that opposed it (American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity).

And it appears to be the case that the opponents of the climate bill were very actively trying to kill the bill, while many of the so-called proponents were mainly lobbying to shape the bill “as a hedge against unacceptable climate legislation in case their first preference (no action) is defeated,” as the study notes.

Post 2010,  the fossil fuel industry has maintained its consistent large edge in  lobbying over environmentalists and clean energy companies.

Sadly, brand new IRS rules from the Trump administration “will no longer force Kochs and other groups to disclose donors,” as the New York Times reported Tuesday. That means major anti-climate groups, like Americans for Prosperity, will  not have to report that it is heavily backed by the Koch brothers, who are billionaire fossil fuel barons.

In short, tracking the role of dirty money in politics just got a lot harder.

The bottom line is that one major reason for the lack of action on climate change is that, for nearly two decades, the opponents of serious action have been vastly outspending the proponents.

SOURCE 





Watching Weather Waves But Missing Climate Tides

Viv Forbes

The climate alarm media, the bureaucracy and the Green Energy industry follow an agenda which is served by inflating any short-term weather event into a climate calamity. They should take a long-term view.

Earth’s climate is never still – it is always changing, with long-term trends, medium-term reversals and minor oscillations (see above graph). Humanity is best served by those who use good science to study geology, astronomy and climate history searching for clues to climate drivers and the underlying natural cycles and trends hidden in short-term weather fluctuations.

For the last 10,000 years Earth has basked in the Holocene Interglacial which is the latest of many warm cycles within the Pleistocene Ice Age. There are small warm and cool cycles within the Holocene. Today we enjoy the Modern Warm Cycle (which started about calendar 1900) following the Little Ice Age which bottomed in about 1750.

What does the future hold? The past gives clues to the future.

In every warm era, glaciers retreat, ice sheets melt and sea levels rise. Coastal land, ports and settlements are lost under the rising seas but tundra, grasslands and forests expand. Some corals manage to grow as fast as the seas rise, but others are drowned in deep water. The warmth drives more carbon dioxide from the seas, plants thrive, deserts shrink and humans are well fed.

Then solar intensity wanes, solar orbits change, less solar energy is received by the big northern lands, and the warm Earth radiates more heat to space. It starts cooling.

As Earth enters a cold era, not all of the winter snow melts over summer. The extra snow reflects more solar radiation, leading to even colder winters. The snow-line and the tree-line fluctuate lower, mountain passes are closed, and advancing glaciers threaten mountain villages. Sea ice expands, ice sheets grow, lakes and rivers are frozen, sea levels drop and coral reefs are stranded above the water line. The cooling seas absorb life-giving carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and crops fail; deserts expand, humans suffer poverty and famine, settlements are abandoned, armies march, empires fall and some species disappear.

This has happened many times before and will probably happen again.

But there are clues to the next big phase for Earth’s climate.

Earth has two natural global thermometers which can reveal short and long term trends – the advance and retreat of glaciers, and the rise and fall of sea level.

If glaciers are growing and ice sheets are advancing and getting thicker, it indicates that average global temperature is falling.

Glaciologists have drilled and analysed many of today’s glaciers. They have been surprised to discover that, outside of Antarctica and Greenland, no glacial ice older than 4,000 years has been found. For example, the Fremont Glacier in Wyoming half-way towards the Equator is only a few hundred years old.

Naturally some of these new glaciers can show melting and retreat during long spells of warm weather, but the mere existence of glaciers today where none existed at the peak of the Holocene warming over 3,000 years ago confirms what other studies show – Earth is gradually cooling towards the next Glacial Cycle.

The second natural thermometer is the changing sea level caused by fluctuations in the volume of ice and snow trapped on land, and by the expansion or contraction in the volume of sea water as it warms or cools. Coastal and near-shore locations show much evidence of past and recent sea level changes. In warm eras, glaciers and ice sheets melt, sea water expands, sea levels rise and offshore coral reefs become submerged and drown. Then as peak warming is passed, ice starts to accumulate on land, cooling sea water contracts and sea levels fall.

Even a moderate cooling event such as the Little Ice Age was sufficient to cause lowering of sea level and stranding of port cities and beaches.

Earth’s natural thermometers are now flashing an amber warning. The long-term trends point to growing glaciers and falling sea level. These warn us that the warm moist bountiful Holocene Era is past its peak. The next chapter in Earth’s History will be a long, hungry, ice-bound era. Only humans who are good at hunting and gathering or have easy access to nuclear power or carbon energy will survive.

People who try to create a “Climate Crisis” out of extreme weather events or short-term climate fluctuations (such as today’s Modern Warm Cycle) are like Lord Nelson – their telescope is applied to the blind eye. They point to the choppy waves from summer storms behind the ship, but fail to see the blizzard approaching on the horizon ahead.

Al Gore was right in one thing – warm cycles coincide with high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The warmth drove CO2 into the atmosphere, and then the cooling oceans removed it again. Carbon dioxide variations are the result, not the cause, of climate changes.

But never once, over eleven warm cycles covering the last million years, have those high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide prevented the onset of the next glacial cycle.

“Carbon Dioxide..  Causes Global Warming ..   Like Wet Roads... Cause Rain.”

Trying to remove or limit atmospheric carbon dioxide is a futile and costly gesture. Even if it were to succeed, by removing plant food from the atmosphere, it would increase the misery of the approaching cold, hungry era.

We may still have warm decades or even centuries ahead. But even when there is a heatwave in autumn, the winter still comes.

SOURCE. (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




Texas To Become World’s Number 3 Oil Producer, Passing Iran

America is a powerhouse and I mean that literally as well as figuratively. CNN Money reported Wednesday that Texas is set to become the world’s number three oil producer thanks to a boom in production:

Plunging drilling costs have sparked an explosion of production out of the Permian Basin of West Texas. In fact, Texas is pumping so much oil that it will surpass OPEC members Iran and Iraq next year, HSBC predicted in a recent report.

If it were a country, Texas would be the world’s No. 3 oil producer, behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia, the investment bank said.

“It’s remarkable. The Permian is nothing less than a blessing for the global economy,” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, a consulting firm…

“The industry cracked the code on fracking,” said McNally.

Texas is producing so much oil that it will soon be bumping up against pipeline capacity. Some producers are already selling at a discount because of the limitations. Another problem is a shortage of labor, though that will likely be good news for the state and for people moving to Texas to find work.

The boom in Texas is one reason the U.S. is set to become the world’s number one oil producer. Last week, U.S. production reached an all-time high of 11 million barrels per day:

Reuters reports that if these preliminary numbers are confirmed, the U.S. is currently the second largest producer in the world, just behind Russia:

U.S. crude oil production last week hit 11 million barrels per day (bpd) for the first time in the nation’s history, the Energy Department said on Wednesday, as the ongoing boom in shale production continues to drive output.

The gains represent a rapid increase in output, as the data, if confirmed by monthly figures, puts the United States as the second largest producer of crude oil, just behind Russia, which was producing 11.2 million bpd in early July, according to sources.

“Eleven million would have made us the biggest producer in the world; but actually Russian production in June was above 11 million. So, this is kind of like the space race,” said Sandy Fielden, director of research in commodities and energy at Morningstar.

But we won’t be behind Russia for much longer. The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted last week that production would near 12 million barrels a day by next year:

EIA forecasts total U.S. crude oil production to average 10.8 million b/d in 2018, up 1.4 million b/d from 2017. In 2019, crude oil production is forecast to average 11.8 million b/d. If realized, the forecast for both years would surpass the previous record of 9.6 million b/d set in 1970. Crude oil production at these forecast levels would probably make the United States the world’s leading crude oil producer in both years.

Of course, gasoline prices are still up a bit thanks to problems in Venezuela and sanctions on Iran. But fracking has made the U.S. the world’s energy powerhouse and that should continue well into the 2020s. This is data the Trump administration should continue to cite as a sign America is resurgent.

SOURCE 





Trump administration introduces proposal to roll back Endangered Species Act protections

The Trump administration is proposing significant changes to the way it enforces the Endangered Species Act (ESA), saying they are a needed modernization of decades-old regulations, but wildlife groups say the changes will put endangered animals and plants at risk.

The proposal would make it easier to delist an endangered species and would withdraw a policy that offered the same protections for threatened species as for endangered species unless otherwise specified.

It would streamline interagency consultations and make it more difficult to protect habitat near land where endangered species live.

The proposed rules also include an interpretation that a species considered endangered would be protected for a “foreseeable future” that extends “only as far” as it can be reasonably determined that “both the future threats and the species’ responses to those threats are probable.”

In a call with stakeholders on Thursday, Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Deputy Director Greg Sheehan called the proposal a way of “providing clarity.”

He said the changes would help the agency meet the Endangered Species Act’s main goal of “species recovery” so that animals and plants could more easily be removed from endangered and threatened species lists.

The move to change the act reflects demands from industry groups and landowners who frequently challenge endangered species protections as overbearing and unsuccessful. Critics of the law have argued that only 3 percent of all species placed on the endangered list have ever been delisted.

Republicans have also pushed for more management at the state level.

Supporters of the law have argued that the main goal of the Endangered Species Act should be to make sure that a species does not go extinct. Wildlife and conservation groups have often pushed for plant and animal species to remain listed to ensure they continue to receive increased habitat protections.

Sheehan, the former head of Utah’s wildlife agency, echoed some of the concerns raised by industry groups and landowners.

“When ESA has done its job and a species is no longer at risk for extinction, it should be delisted,” he said.

He also argued that when a species cannot be delisted easily, it can take resources away from species that need more protections.

“When some of our listing decisions have been challenged, courts have sometimes appeared to set a higher bar for removing a species from a list than putting it on — that takes valuable resources away from species that do need that determination under the act,” he said.

A key issue under the proposal would involve changing the way threatened species are protected under the law, weakening a rule in place for decades that gave threatened species on private land the same protections as endangered species.

The new rule — which was first reported in April — would instead allow for more limited or “tailored” protections for threatened species — a change that environmentalists are calling a major roll-back.

Endangered species are plants and animals at the brink of extinction, while threatened species are likely to become endangered in the near future. Sheehan says that codifying the rule would make it more “predictable.”

Another proposal centers on quickening the consultation process between other federal agencies — such as the Department of Transportation and the Army Corps of Engineers — and the Interior Department on whether planned projects may affect protected plants and animals.

Officials want to explore an “alternative” or “expedited” consultation process, such as completing one consultation for an entire program instead of multiple ones for various pieces of the program.

Interior Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt told reporters on a call Thursday that the revision to consultations would be one of the biggest benefits of the proposed rule.

“I really think when the public goes through these proposals ... that they will see a very serious effort to lay out innovative ideas regarding improving the current interagency consultation process,” he said. “We have some ideas on alternatives to traditional consultation while maintaining the services’ respective roles in those processes.”

Environmentalists and animal conservationists pushed back on the package of changes to the ESA, saying the proposed efforts would ultimately weaken animal protections and benefits industry.

“This proposal turns the extinction-prevention tool of the Endangered Species Act into a rubber stamp for powerful corporate interests,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Allowing the federal government to turn a blind eye to climate change will be a death sentence for polar bears and hundreds of other animals and plants.”

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, called the proposed rule a favor to industry.

"The Trump administration doesn’t seem to know any other way to handle the environment than as an obstacle to industry profits," he said Thursday in a statement. "If a single company can make a single dollar from the destruction or displacement of an endangered species, it’s full speed ahead. The public doesn’t demand this; this is part of the endless special favors the White House and Department of the Interior are willing to do for their industry friends."

The proposal comes as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are beefing up opposition to animal protections across the board.

In May the National Park Service announced it would end an Obama-era protection that prohibited the hunting of bear cubs, as well as wolves and pups in their dens, in Alaska’s national preserves.

In April, FWS employees were told they could no longer advise land developers when they would need to apply for a special permit necessary to maintain endangered species' habitats.

An April 26 letter from Sheehan told staff that it should be left up to builders to decide whether they would need to apply for the permit, which is mandated under the law for those who think their actions may affect the habitat of endangered species.

The House this week passed a spending bill that includes a number of riders aimed at rolling back certain species protections. One of the riders that made it through mandates that any species that is not reviewed by the FWS every five years will be automatically delisted.

SOURCE 





Hippies Are Protesting Efforts To Replace An Old Pipeline With A Safer One

An aging pipeline running through Minnesota has been deemed no longer safe, but environmental groups are protesting efforts to build a newer, safer pipeline in its place.

Line 3 is a crude oil pipeline that stretches 1,097 miles from Alberta, Canada, to Superior, Wisconsin, running through Minnesota along the way. Constructed to help the U.S. meet its growing need for oil, the pipeline still provides around 400 thousand barrels of oil a day.

However, Line 3 is very old. Originally built in the 1960s and put in operation by 1968, the pipeline has experienced serious degradation. Enbridge, the energy company that operates Line 3, says it has been forced to reduce oil output due to corrosion and other defects. The Canadian company now says a replacement pipeline is needed for safety reasons.

While government regulators appear to agree with Enbridge — the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission in June unanimously approved their proposal — other groups are sharply opposed to the idea.

“They’re bringing highly toxic, highly poisonous tar sands oil directly through major watersheds and the last standing reserve of wild rice that the Ojibwe have to harvest,” Bill Paulson, a member of the Ojibwe tribe, stated to CNN. “Our culture is the wild rice and gathering and being out in the woods. If there’s a threat to that, then there’s a direct threat to the people.”

Paulson is no stranger to pipeline protests. He previously traveled to take part in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. However, Paulson doesn’t identify himself as a “protester,” but as a “water protector.”

Numerous environmentalists and Native American groups claim the new pipeline — which will be constructed father south than the current one — will pose a threat to local resources.

Honor the Earth, a Minnesota-based environmental group, will hold its sixth annual, 10-day “Love water, not oil” horse ride tour along the new Line 3 route on July 28. “It is our responsibility as water protectors to prevent this. We will not allow Line 3 to desecrate our lands, violate our treaty rights, or poison our water,” read a statement from the group’s website.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission has already approved the project, however, Line 3 has not yet cleared every hurdle. Enbridge is still required to apply for 29 federal, state and local permits before construction can begin.

SOURCE 

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