Happy Anniversary Keystone:
KEYSTONE APPLICATION TURNS FIVE: Five years ago today, TransCanada submitted its first application to the Obama administration for approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. And Republicans are going to have a field day over the anniversary. In dual events in the House and the Senate, GOP lawmakers will argue that it’s high time the pipeline is approved.
That update came via Politico’s Morning Energy report.
Congressman Steve Daines (R-MT) also sent out this statement:
On the Keystone XL pipeline’s five-year “Red Tape Anniversary,” Congressman Steve Daines testified before a House Energy and Commerce Committee and left members with one question: “Why are we still waiting?”
Daines was among four members of Congress testifying at today’s hearing on “Keystone’s Red Tape Anniversary: Five Years of Bureaucratic Delay and Economic Benefits Denied.” Today marks five years to the day that the original permits to build the Keystone XL pipeline were filed with the U.S. State Department.
“These days in Washington, it’s hard to find many measures Republicans and Democrats agree on. The Keystone Pipeline’s bipartisan support should be telling,” Daines stated. “This is common sense. Montanans support the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and are ready to move. Why are we still waiting?”
Meanwhile, FoxNews.com has this- New study says threat of man-made global warming greatly exaggerated
A peer-reviewed climate change study released Wednesday by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change finds the threat of man-made global warming to be not only greatly exaggerated but so small as to be “embedded within the background variability of the natural climate system” and not dangerous.
The 1,000 page study was the work of 47 scientists and scholars examining many of the same journals and studies that the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC) examined, producing entirely different conclusions.
President Obama’s Secretary of Energy said we are simply seeing a “hiatus” of global warming, to which The Heartland responded:
“Point to the model that predicted this hiatus,” he said. “No increase in violent weather , no increase in hurricanes. All of this and we’re still supposed to believe the models… models they picked because they supported their political interests, not because they represented good science.”
Full video report can be viewed by clicking below.
@aaronflint Then can Obama’s job killing enviro policies take a “hiatus” as well? #MTpol
— Media Trackers MT (@MediaTrackersMT) September 19, 2013
To put it another way- (via SayAnythingBlog.com)
Obama Shouldn’t Go To War With Coal Without Congress
“The White House has requested a vote in Congress before going to war in Syria,” wrote the Detroit News in an editorial earlier this week. “The Obama administration should do the same before it declares a war on coal.”
Indeed.
The above climate report could be considered part of a 1-2 punch for climate activists and fracking opponents this week, as Forbes.com features this commentary- University Of Texas-Environmental Defense Fund Shale Gas Study Unmasks Politics Of Anti-Fracking Activist Cornell Scientists:
A University of Texas-Austin study released Monday found that methane emissions from new wells being prepared for production, a process known as completion, captured 99% of the escaping methane—on average 97% lower than estimates released in 2011 by the Environmental Protection Agency. It is the most comprehensive shale gas emissions study ever undertaken on methane leakage, covering 190 well pads around the United States. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, so leaks could theoretically wipe out the documented climate benefits with respect to reduced carbon emissions of natural gas, a comparatively clean fossil fuel.
Energy experts and environmentalists celebrated the finding that almost all the escaping methane could be captured by state of the art equipment. “Can we control it? Thanks to new EPA regulations coming online, the answer to that is good news,” Eric Pooley, a senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, told the New York Times.
In other news, the liberal 4&20Blackbirds blog frets over the enrollment decline at The University of Montana. Maybe someone should send some encouraging notes to the bloggers and remind them that an enrollment decline ought to help with the university’s carbon footprint.
In case you’re tracking- the MSU Bobcats and UM Griz are nearly tied on enrollment numbers. MSU enrollmment is now topping 15,000.