As diplomats in Paris try to secure an international agreement to rein in carbon pollution from fossil fuels, lawmakers in Washington are pushing a tax break for oil refiners as Continue Reading
Two recently enacted laws authorize significant sales of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) over the next decade. The Bipartisan Budget Act authorizes the sale of 58 million Continue Reading
Efforts to reverse a 40-year-old ban on domestic crude oil exports through legislative action are not welcome, a White House spokesman said. Congressional leaders are working to pass a massive Continue Reading
A U.S. House leader said a bill passed in favor of oil exports rejects a global landscape favoring North America, but support wasn’t enough to override a veto. By a Continue Reading
The U.S. transportation bill will be partially funded by selling off some of the U.S. emergency oil reserve, but less will be sold than originally planned after negotiators in the Continue Reading
The Republican-controlled House Tuesday approved a pair of measures blocking federal rules to cut power-plant emissions , a symbolic move aimed at sowing doubt about President Barack Obama’s climate agenda Continue Reading
The Republican presidential race will cast a shadow over this week’s UN climate talks as President Barack Obama pledges to take action in Paris that his would-be successors have vowed Continue Reading
A top House lawmaker’s confrontation with government researchers over a groundbreaking climate change study is provoking a national backlash from scientists, who say his campaign represents the most serious threat Congress has posed to scientific freedom. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has subpoenaed scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and demanded that they turn over internal e-mails related to their research. Their findings contradicted earlier work showing that global warming had paused, and Smith, a climate change skeptic, has accused them of altering global temperature data and rushing to publish their research in the June issue of the journal Science. [ NOAA chief tells lawmaker: No one will ‘coerce the scientists who work for me’ ] So far, NOAA officials have resisted Smith’s demands, and the showdown has escalated. The lawmaker has threatened to subpoena Commerce Secretary Penny […]
Legislators opposing new Environmental Protection Agency efforts to mitigate climate change have received large sums of cash from the coal industry, according to an analysis released Thursday by Maplight , an independent research group that tracks the influence of money in politics. Maplight’s analysis compared coal industry donations to two groups of senators: those who recently voted to block new EPA regulations designed to limit greenhouse gas and carbon emissions, and those who voted to leave the rules intact. The group of senators who opposed the EPA rules “received, on average, 17 times as much money ($75,802) from the coal mining industry compared to senators voting against them ($4,464)” over the six year period beginning in April 2009 and ending in March of this year, Maplight said in a statement. EPA rules mandate that states cut power-plant emissions by 32 percent , compared to 2005 levels, by the year […]
The U.S. Capitol behind the natural gas and coal fueled Capitol Power Plant. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News) Scientists and top officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have agreed to start interviews akin to depositions this week with House investigators, who are demanding to know their internal deliberations on a groundbreaking climate change study. But the interviews may not be enough to placate the chairman of the House science committee, a global warming skeptic who last week stepped up the pressure on the Commerce Department to comply with his subpoena for e-mails that NOAA has refused to turn over. Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) wants thousands of e-mails among scientists and NOAA’s staff of political appointees that he thinks will show that the researchers had something to hide when they refuted claims that global warming had “paused” or slowed over the past decade. [ Congress demands climate change documents as […]
