New EPA report: natural gas prodution is even cleaner than previously thought

From the liberal Associated Press. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

The Environmental Protection Agency has dramatically lowered its estimate of how much of a potent heat-trapping gas leaks during natural gas production, in a shift with major implications for a debate that has divided environmentalists: Does the recent boom in fracking help or hurt the fight against climate change?

Oil and gas drilling companies had pushed for the change, but there have been differing scientific estimates of the amount of methane that leaks from wells, pipelines and other facilities during production and delivery. Methane is the main component of natural gas.

The new EPA data is “kind of an earthquake” in the debate over drilling, said Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental group based in Oakland, Calif. “This is great news for anybody concerned about the climate and strong proof that existing technologies can be deployed to reduce methane leaks.”

The scope of the EPA’s revision was vast. In a mid-April report on greenhouse emissions, the agency now says that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry resulted in an average annual decrease of 41.6 million metric tons of methane emissions from 1990 through 2010, or more than 850 million metric tons overall. That’s about a 20 percent reduction from previous estimates. The agency converts the methane emissions into their equivalent in carbon dioxide, following standard scientific practice.

The EPA revisions came even though natural gas production has grown by nearly 40 percent since 1990. The industry has boomed in recent years, thanks to a stunning expansion of drilling in previously untapped areas because of the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which injects sand, water and chemicals to break apart rock and free the gas inside.

Wow, when you have the EPA on board with responsible energy development, then you know it’s solid.

See my previous post in which I talked about how the EPA had exonerated fracking in Dimock, Pennsylvania.

Filed under: News, Arsenic, Conservation, Contaminant, Energy, Energy Policy, Environment, Environmental Protection Agency, Environmentalism, EPA, Fracking, Gas, Global Warming, Natural Gas, Oil, Pollution, Regulation, Research, Science, Socialism, Study, Water, Water Supply

Reuters: scientists struggling to explain 15 years of global cooling

From the left-leaning Reuters news service.

Excerpt:

Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

[...]“The climate system is not quite so simple as people thought,” said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” who estimates that moderate warming will be beneficial for crop growth and human health.

Some experts say their trust in climate science has declined because of the many uncertainties. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to correct a 2007 report that exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers and wrongly said they could all vanish by 2035.

“My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years,” said Richard Tol, an expert in climate change and professor of economics at the University of Sussex in England.

I think it’s important to note that science is not to blame for these failed predictions. What is to blame is government handing money to corrupt charlatans who then produce “scientific research” that proves that bigger government is needed to control capitalism and constrain individual liberty. In effect, government bribed the university charlatans to fake research that would trick the public into voting for more government control of job creators and their employees. The fastest way to solve this would be to get the government out of the higher education business and let science serve the needs of ordinary people instead of corrupt socialists.

Filed under: News, Big Government, Chicken Little, Climate, Climate Change, Climate Science, Communism, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Marxism, Myth, Mythology, Pseudo-science, Socialism, Speculation, Urban Legends

Report: biofuels raise the cost of gas for little environmental benefit

From the liberal BBC.

Excerpt:

A report by Chatham House says the growing reliance on sustainable liquid fuels will also increase food prices.

The author says that biodiesel made from vegetable oil was worse for the climate than fossil fuels.

Under EU law, biofuels are set to make up 5% of the UK’s transport fuel from today.

Since 2008, the UK has required fuel suppliers to add a growing proportion of sustainable materials into the petrol and diesel they supply. These biofuels are mainly ethanol distilled from corn and biodiesel made from rapeseed, used cooking oil and tallow.

But research carried out for Chatham House says that reaching the 5% level means that UK motorists will have to pay an extra £460m a year because of the higher cost of fuel at the pump and from filling up more often as biofuels have a lower energy content.

The report say that if the UK is to meet its obligations to EU energy targets the cost to motorists is likely to rise to £1.3bn per annum by 2020.

[...]There are also worries that taking EU land out of production to grow rapeseed oil in particular is creating more climate problems than it solves. The more fuel of this type that is put into cars the bigger the deficit created in the edible oils market. This had lead to increased imports of palm oil from Indonesia, often produced on deforested land.

“Once you take into account these indirect effects, biofuels made from vegetable oils actually result worldwide in more emissions than you would get from using diesel in the first place,” said Rob Bailey.

“Plus you are asking motorists to pay more for the fuel – it makes no sense, it is a completely irrational strategy.”

Meanwhile, closer to home:

The Obama administration on Monday renewed an interagency agreement that backs the development of biofuels for the aviation industry and reiterated its support for embattled federal renewable fuel targets.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood signed a pact extending a program that has worked with the private sector and rural communities to create an alternative to fossil fuels for aviation.

“We want to re-affirm the importance of this particular industry in this administration,” Vilsack told reporters at an industry conference in Washington.

The “Farm to Fly” program aims to support annual production of 1 billion gallons of aviation biofuels by 2018.

The program will focus on evaluating various sources of renewable alternatives to jet fuel, while also developing state and local partnerships with private companies.

Federal support for biofuels has come under increased scrutiny amid complaints from livestock producers and refiners that the federal biofuels mandate has contributed to higher food prices and could threaten gasoline supplies.

This isn’t a smart way to improve air quality, and it’s not going to help consumers who are already paying a ton of money for gas.

Filed under: News, Biofuels, Climate Change, Environmentalism, EPA, Global Warming, Obama

Massachusetts man facing multiple charges for shooting a bear on his property

From the libertarian Reason magazine (with links to news media stories).

Excerpt:

Richard Ahlstrand, of Auburn, Massachusetts, faces criminal charges after encountering a bear in his back yard and shooting the damned thing to avoid being mauled or eaten. Specifically, as noted at Reason 24/7, he’s charged with “illegally killing a bear, illegally baiting a bear, illegal possession of a firearm and failure to secure a firearm.” All of these charges, once translated from Massachusetts to American, seem to stack up to outrage that Ahlstrand didn’t make his yard completely inhospitable to animals that are rarely seen in the area, and then investigated a suspicious noise with a weapon in hand rather than cower under the bed. Worst of all, he actually defended himself when he encountered danger.

[...]In both the Telegram and CBS articles, “authorities” are quoted as saying they don’t think the bear was a threat to people. I suppose it’s possible that the black bears in Massachusetts are a kinder, gentler breed than the one that mauled a man near Payson, Arizona, last June. Or the one that tore up a woman in the same area in May. And then there was the bear that did a job on a woman near Pinetop …

When I see stories like this, the first thing that I think is that my role as a protector has been criminalized by the state. Suppose that I owned property and had a family and a bear wandered onto my property and threatened my family. The environmentally-friendly authorities think that I should let the bear eat my family, or at least sit still and hope that he doesn’t. Is it reasonable to have a family if you can’t protect them? What kind of incentive are these tree-hugging leftists offering men to get married when men know perfectly well that the state prefers them to watch their family be mauled by a bear rather allow that man to shoot that bear?

Filed under: News, Bear, Defense, Environmentalism, Gun Control, Guns, Home, Home Defense, Male, Men, Protector, Self-Defense, Shotgun

State Department report finds that Keystone XL pipeline is safe for the environment

The Heritage Foundation reports.

Excerpt: (links removed)

In Washington, a presidential Administration releases news it doesn’t like at 5 p.m. on Fridays. So it pays to pay attention when everyone is leaving work for the weekend.

Late last Friday, the State Department released a positive environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama has been delaying this pipeline—which would carry oil from Canada to refineries in Texas—for more than three years.

The delay has meant that America is still waiting on an additional 700,000 to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from a close ally, not to mention 179,000 American jobs.

Why has this taken so long, when all environmental reports thus far have been positive? Heritage’s Nicolas Loris, the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow, explains:

Given the need for jobs and more oil on the global market to offset high prices, the permit application had been moving along positively with bipartisan support without much attention until environmental activists made blocking the Keystone XL pipeline their issue to rally around for 2011. Although President Obama and the Department of State (DOS) said they’d make a decision at the end of 2011, they ultimately catered to a narrow set of special interests, punting the decision until after the 2012 elections.

The State Department, which is overseeing the pipeline because it crosses a U.S. border, has “already conducted a thorough, three-year environmental review with multiple comment periods,” Loris reported last year.

The review has been comprehensive:

DOS studied and addressed risk to soil, wetlands, water resources, vegetation, fish, wildlife, and endangered species. They concluded that the construction of the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk. Keystone XL also met 57 specific pipeline safety standard requirements created by DOS and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

This confirms the previous assessment done by the Nebraska government, which concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline was safe for Nebraska’s environment as well.

Related Posts

• Fracking propels North Dakota to 3.2% unemployment rate
• Ten ways that the Obama administration could lower gas prices right now
• The ten worst energy policies of the Obama administration
• Is Obama telling the truth about U.S. oil reserves?
• Production of oil, gas and coal on federal lands sinks to 9-year low
• Did Obama really create jobs with his green energy and stimulus programs?
• In Canada, a revolt against global warming socialism creates an economic boom
• Obama pleases environmental lobby by killing 20,000-job Keystone XL pipeline

Filed under: News, Alberta, Bankruptcy, Barack Obama, Budget, Clean Energy, Corruption, Crony Capitalism, Cronyism, Deficit, Economics, Economy, Employment, Energy, Environmentalism, Evergreen Solar, Global Warming, Government waste, Green Energy, Green Jobs, Growth, Jobs, Keystone, Keystone XL, Keystone XL Pipeline, Media Bias, Oil and Gas, Pipeline, Solar Power, Spending, Stimulus, Taxes, Unemployment, Unions, Waste