Cheney task force set the stage for Great Gulf Oil Spill of 2010

(Photo of Dick Cheney from Flickr and talkradionews.)


How did we get to this point, where Big Oil pretty much calls its own shots, ignoring the environmental and economic consequences of what it does?

You can blame Dick Cheney. And George Bush. And Dick Armey (then majority leader of the House, now head of the Tea Party) and Tom DeLay and a bunch of other powerful pols with oil funding and oil ties.

Former VP Cheney’s National Energy Policy Tax Force and the subsequent Energy Policy Act of 2005 set the stage for the extreme pro-oil policies and self-regulation that has now led to BP’s Great Gulf Oil Spill of 2010.

Cheney always rejected efforts to reveal the machinations of the energy task force, but the subsequent legislation closely followed many of the points in the task force’s National Energy Policy Report.

Among those points:

• New authority to the Dept. of Interior to permit new drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf without adequate oversight.
• $2 billion in subsidies to encourage drilling in “ultra deepwater.”
• Tens of billions in subsidies for oil and other forms of dirty energy.
• Weakening of states’ say over drilling off their shores.
• Expansion of circumstances to waive environmental reviews.

Two excellent posts, by Climate Progress and The Center for American Progress go into much more detail about the impact of having two oil men in the White House and Texas oil-linked leadership in the House between 2001-2005. They’re definitely worth reading.

Is PB's remedy for oil spill only making matters worse?

Joe Romm, author of the award-winning blog Climate Progress, has an excellent lead story in Salon about the dangers of BP dispersing oil, which it is doing now. Would you rather protect sea birds and other wildlife on the land or marine life at the bottom of the sea? See Salon.com

It’s the moisture, stupid, not the temperature

(Photo of Capitol Building in last week's snowstorm from Flickr and photographer eped1999)

Heavy snowstorms in the East are causing quite a tizzy. Climate skeptics are loving it and spreading doubt about the validity of global warming. Especially in Washington, D.C.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) tweeted that “It’s going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.’”

And Sen. James Inhofe’s (R-Okla.) daughter and grandchildren built an igloo on the National Mall, calling it “Al Gore’s new home.”

My, my, they certainly have it in for the former vice president.

But the truth is the heavy snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic states are completely consistent with global warming.

1. The temperature is changing SLOWLY, folks. Only 1.4 degrees F in the past 100 years. That’s enough to change weather patterns, but not enough to feel.
2. Precipitation is not the same as temperature. More concentrated precipitation as the Earth warms was predicted by climate scientists. Whether it’s in the form of rain and floods or snow depends on if it’s above or below freezing. And the rain or snow tends to get dumped in some places while others stay too dry.
3. Heavy rains and snows are the result of more moisture in the air, which is caused by warming land and oceans. Water vapor in the air is up 4% since 1970.
4. The East and Upper Midwest were predicted to see see the most precip, while the South and West, which have suffered droughts, get less.

A study in 2004 said there had been a 14% increase in heavy rain or snowstorms in the past 100 years, including a significant increase in the winter in the Northeast. Another study in 2006 found a decline in precipitation in the lower Midwest, South and California, but an increase in the upper Midwest and East between 1901 and 2000.

The 2009 U.S. Climate Impact Report found “Cold season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent. There will also be an increase in lake-effect snows. The ice cover on the Great Lakes has decreased 8.4% per decade since 1973, which leads to more evaporation and heavier storms.

So don’t let people get away with saying unusually heavy snows, like those last week and in December, mean there’s no such thing as global warming. More likely they are caused at least in part by global warming and will get worse in the future if Congress sits on its hands and hopes the threat has gone away so they don’t have to stand up to the oil and coal lobbies.

(Special thanks to Climate Progress for its research and commentary on this topic. To read in more detail, go to climateprogress.org. For the U.S. Climate Impact Report see The U.S. Global Change Research Program.)