Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 1208

As Maine goes so goes the climate bill: Olympia Snowe is open to cap on utility emissions, while Susan Collins is as incoherent as Lindesy Graham

Where will Republican votes for an energy bill that contains some carbon pricing mechanism come from?

Lindsey Graham remains as incoherent as ever.  On the one hand he has said he is open to a cap on emissions from utilities (see "It's alive!"), but on the other he has said he wants to push it "next year."  Mañana, mañana, mañana.

I'm still scoring him as a "yes," if a bill actually comes up for a vote.

The next two likeliest Republicans to support some sort of cap are the Maine Senators —...

For birds and turtles, BP's oil looms like a disease

Guest blogger Shirley Siluk Gregory, who lives on Florida's Gulf coast, shares her findings from conversations with officials in the National Park Service in Pensacola, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Alabama. This is a repost from the Gulf Oil Monitor.

For the folks in charge of protecting the wildlife and natural resources along the Florida Gulf Coast, the oil from BP's blown-out Macondo well looms like a deadly disease, with few symptoms yet visible but a diagnosis that...

Energy and Global Warming News for June 23: The smart grid via white space (and Google); Nissan Leaf records 14,000 U.S. pre-orders, 90% are conquest sales; How Desertec can run Europe on solar

The Smart Grid Via White Space, Courtesy of Google

While the debate continues about what network standards are best to run smart grids, here's a wireless tech that you don't often hear about: white space, the spectrum vacated by the switch from analog televisions to digital. Today Google and startup Spectrum Bridge are announcing that they have created the first ever smart grid deployment over white space, working with the utility Plumas-Sierra Rural Electric Cooperative & Telecommunications...

Breaking: Joe Barton keeps his job! Who's sorry now? - Plus GOBP apologists say the darndest things!

"House Republican leaders moved to keep Rep. Joe Barton atop the Energy and Commerce committee a week after he apologized to BP's chief executive," the Politico just reported.  Ironically, House GOBP Leader John Boehner said:

"Joe has done the right thing by apologizing – it's time to move on."

He meant the apology for apologizing, of course.   Love of Big Oil means always having to say you're sorry.



The bigger point is, blurting out the truth is not a firing offense in the GOBP — far from i...

Oil and gas industry-funded GOP Congressman can't give safety assurances for lifting drilling moratorium

The GOP is still addicted to Deepwater exploratory drilling — and like many addicts, they pursue the next fix even knowing the dangers.  TP has the story:

Today, a federal district court judge with financial investments in the oil industry ruled against the Obama administration's 6-month moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling, which the President issued in the wake BP's Gulf oil spill to ensure that future drilling is safe and environmentally sound. The White House has said it will

Obama approval holds steady despite BP spill. Why?

This is Gallup's tracking poll since January.  Pretty hard to discern any meaningful trend.  You certainly would be hard pressed to pick out any evidence of a BP-disaster effect.

Nate Silver notes that even on the narrower question of Obama's handling of the disaster — [I only used "spill" in the headline this one time so it would fit on one line:] — Obama's numbers are flat if not slightly rebounding:

Because this seems counterintuitive it has led to much perplexity.  Silver writes:

1) Obama is...

Rep. Broun (R-GA) says clean energy legislation will cause southerners to die from hyperthermia!

The figure above shows the number of days the temperature will exceed 90°F by century's end in the IPCC's A2 scenario (850 ppm), which is actually lower than our current emissions trajectory (see "Global Warming Is A Medical Emergency": Hellish heatwaves to harm health of millions).

Yet even though much of his state is poised to exceed 90°F much of the year, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) went to the floor of the House last week to slam clean energy legislation because it would supposedly lead to ...

Judge who ruled against offshore drilling moratorium invests in oil industry

The federal judge who overturned Barack Obama's offshore drilling moratorium appears to own stock in numerous companies involved in the offshore oil industry—including Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to BP prior to its April 20 explosion in the Gulf of Mexico—according to 2008 financial disclosure reports.

So Yahoo reports.  It will not come as a big shock to CP readers — see my June 9 post, "58 percent of federal trial judges in oil-affected states have a...

Barbour backtracks on opposition to BP escrow account: "I think the President was smart"

Lasst week Dirty energy lobbyist-turned-Governor Barbour was concerned that escrow account will cut into BP's profits, saying "It bothers me." On Sunday, on NBC's Meet the Press, when host David Gregory asked Barbour why he opposed the account now that the oil giant has agreed to pay into it, Barbour made a statement that might find its way into a bar reelection campaign ad.  Think Progress has the video

BARBOUR: Right, well, I thought that they were talking about taking $20 billion...

The Grand Oil Party gets a new logo: GObP - Robinson: "A GOP chorus of Joe Bartons on the BP oil spill"

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has created a great new logo for the Grand Oil Party.  If someone is good at cleaning up such images, send me a better version, and I'll repost it.

I'm not sure if GOBP or GObP is better — what do you think?  Either way, "Joe Barton reflects the philosophy of over 115 Republicans."

That's the same point Eugene Robinson makes today in a Washington Post column, "The Texas congressman's lavish sympathy for BP — which he sees not as perpetrator of a preventable disaster ...