Trump auctions Arctic refuge to oil drillers in last strike against US wilderness. In one of its last strikes against the American wilderness, Donald Trump’s administration will on Wednesday auction off portions of the Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drillers.
The lease sales are the climax to one of the nation’s highest-profile environmental battles. Tough week for oil industry (relatively) Residents win extension on oilfield pollution dump comment period. New Crop of Satellites Will Identify Biggest Contributors to Climate Change. A wave of satellites set to orbit the Earth will be able to pinpoint producers of greenhouse gases, right down to an individual leak at an oil rig.
More than a dozen governments and companies have or are planning to launch satellites that measure concentrations of heat-trapping gases such as methane, which is blamed for about one quarter of man-made global warming. Trump’s long history of pushing wild misinformation about wind turbines. A Massive Oil Spill On Pakistan's Coastline Is Threatening All Sea Life And No One’s Taking Responsibility. The Pakistan oil spill might be the worst the country has ever seen.
An oil spill off Pakistan’s coast specifically from Mubarak Village to Churna Island is causing major problems for the marine life and residents of the area. The oil spill is being attributed to Byco’s underwater pipeline which might have burst. However, Byco has denied this claim and said all their pipelines are perfectly intact. According to Dawn.com, there is a smell which is permeating from the site of the disaster and making it hard for those living in the area and nearby to breathe. The officials from the province’s Environmental Protection Agency visited the area of the spill but could not fully ascertain if the spill had been because of a leak in Byco’s pipeline. The cause of the spill thus still remains unsolved. Driven by Trump Policy Changes, Fracking Booms on Public Lands.
To proponents, the Trump administration is putting government-owned land to good use, with big returns for taxpayers. Nationally, oil production on federal lands is rising at an extraordinary pace, jumping 25 percent in the first seven months of this year compared with 2016, the last year of the Obama administration. That boom has driven up government revenue from lease sales and royalties collected from oil and gas production on federal lands, which is shared with the states.
Wyoming received $669 million from federal oil, gas and coal sales last year, money it uses to help pay for its schools, roads and other needs. One federal lease sale in New Mexico last month brought in nearly $1 billion worth of bids, more than the total lease sale revenue from all sales nationwide in 2017. Oil giant Koch Industries try to stop the attempt to expand the electric vehicle federal tax credit - Electrek.
With a new Republican-backed effort to expand the electric vehicle federal tax credit, the Koch brothers are urging senators to vote against it – putting their political donation dollars at work.
The situation around the federal tax credit for EVs is weirder than ever right now. As Tesla hit the threshold to initiate the phase-out, there are two different legislative efforts to change it. Earlier this month, a Republican senator introduced a new bill to end the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric cars and tax them even more instead. But a few days later, another Republican senator proposed a new bill to remove the federal tax credit cap for EVs and expand it to 2022. War on the wildest places: US bill may open pristine lands to development. The Big Snowy Mountains wilderness study area in Montana represents 91,000 acres of the wildest land left in America.
Viewed from a limestone bluff high in a timbered gulch, no houses are visible. No transmission lines or roads interrupting the expanse of green. No smoke curling up from cabin stovepipes. But all that could change in the near future. Trump to reverse Obama-era order aimed at planning for climate change. President Trump is expected to revoke an order requiring federal funds recipients to consider risk-management standards when building in flood zones.
(Andrew Harnik/AP) President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that he said would streamline the approval process for building infrastructure such as roads, bridges and offices by eliminating a planning step related to climate change and flood dangers. Speaking in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York, Trump said that the approval process for projects was “badly broken” and that the nation’s infrastructure was a “massive self-inflicted wound on our country.” Trump said that “no longer” would there be “one job-killing delay after another” for new projects. But he did not provide any proposal on how his much-promised infrastructure program would be financed or what it would include. business energy-environment Orlando Shooting Updates News and analysis on the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
President Trump falsely claims the U.S. spends "billions and billions and billions" on the Paris climate accords. AFP/Getty Images On Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump delivered a factually challenged speech announcing that the United States would exit the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Poison once flowed in America's waters. With Trump, it might again. As a scientist working for decades on national and global water and climate challenges, I must speak out against what I see as an assault on America’s water resources.
I grew up in New York in the 1960s hearing about massive Polychlorinated Biphenyl – a toxic chemical used as a coolant – contamination in the Hudson River and the threatened extinction of bald eagles and ospreys from eating contaminated fish. I remember watching on television Ohio’s Cuyahoga River burning. Northern Gateway British Columbia's oil problem. Written by Kai Nagata and reposted with permission from Dogwood Initiative.
It’s a program that has engendered distrust and alienation between Ottawa and the West: a symbol of the government’s bloody-minded determination to dictate energy policy from Central Canada. No, not Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s National Energy Program – which was pitched in the 1980s as a plan to secure the country’s oil supply at Alberta’s material expense. Trump allegedly wants to cut clean energy research funding by 72 percent.
Bitfinex, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, and Tether, a company that sells crypto-tokens it claims are pegged to the US dollar, were subpoenaed in December by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to Bloomberg.
A shadowy… Read more A shadowy backstory: Neither Hong Kong–based Tether nor Bitfinex, which is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, has been transparent about its business dealings. It recently came to light, for example, that the two seemingly separate companies share executives. Some have questioned whether Tether is really backing its $2.3 -billion worth of outstanding tokens with dollars. The company hasn’t provided conclusive evidence that it is, and recently it cut ties with an accounting firm that had been conducting an audit. Deniers club: Meet the people clouding the climate change debate. (Tom Toles / The Washington Post) August tied July as the hottest month on record, according to NASA data released this past week. This year we’ve seen half a dozen thousand-year floods, along with epic droughts.
Mother Nature is telling us there’s a problem. Big Oil’s decades of deception: Report reveals that Exxon’s known the truth about climate science since 1981. While evaluating the potential impact of developing a gas field it was interested in off Indonesia, ExxonMobil found one major reason for concern: the field in question was 70 percent carbon dioxide. If the field were developed, and that gas vented into the atmosphere, it could become the “largest point source of CO2 in the world,” accounting for a full one percent of climate change-causing emissions.
Senators Explain How Fossil Fuel Groups Use Media To Spread Denial And Thwart Climate Action. A group of U.S. Senators took to the Senate floor on July 11 and 12 to expose the “web of denial” that the fossil fuel industry has spun to block action on climate change. Essential to this effort is a media misinformation campaign that several senators described in detail. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) remarked on the “unfortunate role” that the media has played in spreading misinformation by providing false balance on the science of climate change: Oil company records from 1960s reveal patents to reduce CO2 emissions in cars. The forerunners of ExxonMobil patented technologies for electric cars and low emissions vehicles as early as 1963 – even as the oil industry lobby tried to squash government funding for such research, according to a trove of newly discovered records.
Patent records reveal oil companies actively pursued research into technologies to cut carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change from the 1960s – including early versions of the batteries now deployed to power electric cars such as the Tesla. Scientists for the companies patented technologies to strip carbon dioxide out of exhaust pipes, and improve engine efficiency, as well as fuel cells. They also conducted research into countering the rise in carbon dioxide emissions – including manipulating the weather. Global oil supply - 2 clicks. I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations. As an Arctic researcher, I’m used to gaps in data. Just over 1% of US Arctic waters have been surveyed to modern standards.
Rick Santorum garbles climate change comments by Obama's EPA chief. During an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO show, former Sen. Exxon's Never-Ending Big Dig click 2x. An oil platform sits in the distance as California brown pelicans fly over oil-contaminated water from an inland oil spill before dawn at Refugio State Beach on May 20, 2015 north of Goleta, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) This post originally appeared at TomDispatch.
Gus Bilirakis wrongly cites study to defend U.S. withdrawal from Paris agreement. Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble For Its New Weedkiller : The Salt. Trump administration plan would widely expand drilling in U.S. continental waters. A boat with the nonprofit Clean Seas deploys a boom to contain an oil spill in 2015 north of Goleta, Calif. About 21,000 gallons spilled from an abandoned pipeline. Analysis of 187 documents concludes Exxon “misled the public” on climate change. A review of 187 ExxonMobil documents, published by two Harvard researchers on Wednesday, has found that the company ”misled the public” on climate change. The documents included internal papers published by journalists at InsideClimate News as well as 50 “peer-reviewed articles on climate research and related policy analysis” written by ExxonMobil researchers.
Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming from Inside the White House. America’s Carbon-Pusher in Chief. This post originally appeared at TomDispatch. Who says President Trump doesn’t have a coherent foreign policy? Senate Republicans approve plan to allow drilling in Arctic refuge with tax legislation. Senate Republicans passed legislation early Saturday allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as part of a tax reform package, moving closer to fulfilling a long-time GOP goal. The passage of the bill marked a significant achievement for Sen. Former Coal Lobbyist On Tap For No. 2 Spot At EPA.