Previously, in these pages, we’ve visited the controversy surrounding the industrial process used in completing oil and gas wells known as Hydraulic Fracturing. Despite the lack of evidence that energy industry practices have ever contaminated groundwater resources, published data do suggest that the average American is routinely exposed to potential health hazards from high concentrations of chemicals, acids and unknown additives contained in other industrial solutions.

Recent reports indicate that a typical American’s drinking supply contained 3,296 fluid ounces (over 25 gallons!) of one such noxious concoction last year. The manufacturer of the fluid has maintained an unbroken record of secrecy of over 100 years on its proprietary formula.

Existing governmental regulations require the disclosure of certain ingredients, while others remain behind a cloak of secrecy, outside the jurisdiction of the EPA. The disclosed ingredients include phosphoric acid (H3PO4), which has a highly acidic pH of 2.8, as well as an agent (HFCS) commonly derived from bio-engineered corn. It also includes a derivative of the coca plant, the source of cocaine, and other powerful stimulants. Other rumored ingredients include glycerine, a mysterious concoction known as “Merchandise 7X”, and a product derived from insects. Ewww!

Even in the typical concentrations associated with human consumption, the ingredients have been rumored to dissolve human bone and tooth enamel.

Rumors swirl about the shadowy Atlanta-based manufacturer and its products, which, according to rumor, “… have been criticized by various sources for various reasons including negative health effects resulting from consumption of its products, exploitative labor practices, high levels of pesticides in its products, building plants in Nazi Germany which employed slave labor, environmental destruction, monopolistic business practices, hiring paramilitary units to murder trade union leaders, and marketing unhealthy products to children.”

Please, Congressman Waxman! Congressman Markey! Save us from these corporate thugs who would poison our drinking supply!

Or, …

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It’s a familiar-sounding story.

Sometime in the past, the Executive Branch surreptitiously met with Energy Industry interests to craft policy on energy issues. Specifically, officials of the Department of Energy met with energy lobbyists and friendly think-tankers to rebut a university study that cast the industry in a bad light. When the ranking member of the congressional committee charged with oversight in this area asked legitimate questions regarding the propriety of the arrangement, DOE gave him the Heisman treatment, trying to duck and dodge the congressman’s inquiry altogether.

According to the congressman, “…[I]t seems that Department of Energy officials are more concerned about how to spin my questions than how to answer them, … I’m not surprised that DOE is uncomfortable with these questions, since it appears the agency relied on special interest assistance to write this federally-funded report.” (Emphasis added.)

That would be Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and the era of BushCheneyHalliburton circa 2002?

Wrong. Try August, 2009. And this time, it’s the wind energy industry. The congressman asking questions is Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), ranking member of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

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Here’s your chance to weigh in on a matter of considerable importance.

UT to give Gore honorary degree

The degree - an Honorary Doctor of Laws and Humane Letters in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology - will be given to Gore at the spring commencement exercises of the College of Arts and Sciences on May 14, where he will be the featured speaker.

“Vice President Gore’s career has been marked by visionary leadership, and his work has quite literally changed our planet for the better,” UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek said in a statement. “He is among the most accomplished and respected Tennesseans in history, and it is fitting that he should be honored by the flagship education institution of his home state.”

I encourage you to vote the way your conscience tells you in the accompanying online poll.

Poll results as of about 2 p.m. below the fold.

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Remember the one about Indonesian peat fires? How the large scale peat fires in 1997 contributed carbon dioxide in amounts up to 40% of a typical year’s global carbon output? Do you recall that the very next year, 1998, is touted as one of the warmest on record? If saving the planet means drastically reducing carbon emissions, why not start with Indonesia?

For all its scientific-sounding pronouncements, Climate Science is anything but a real science. Real science is a process: first you make a hypothesis, then you make a prediction based on that hypothesis, then you conduct an experiment as a test of the hypothesis. If you made a good prediction, you publish your results and refine your hypothesis; if your prediction was bad, you throw out the hypothesis and start over.

Climate Science has morphed into Climate Religion. There are no testable hypotheses; we have instead a consensus and a “science” that is impossible to disprove. Skepticism is heretical. Any and all results support the theory, once you move the goalposts far enough and boldly enough. Is the weather warmer? “We told you so.” Is the weather cooler? “Weather is not climate.” More hurricanes? “Just as we said.” Fewer hurricanes? “African dust storms.” And so on.

How ’bout we test the models that the Climate Change community tout as the compelling reason that we must “FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT!”?

What better way to test the models than to control the Indonesian peat fires? All the so-called climate experts could crank up their models and predict the climate over several years. How much of an impact do the Indonesian fires have? If the answer is “none”, how can that be explained? More importantly, are the models any better than totally naive forecasts, or none at all?

Not that I’d expect True Believers to go along with this proposal. They have too much to lose.

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Yesterday morning, Kiran Chetry and some pretty-boy on CNN Morning expressed their shock and horror at the day’s Big Story: the death of a Sea World trainer at the hands flukes of a killer whale.

Huh? Why do you think they call them killer whales? Free Willy wasn’t a documentary, after all.

Why is anyone surprised when animals do what animals do? Killer whales are dangerous, and that’s the attraction. People aren’t flocking to see Sea World’s “Manatee Daredevils”.

Remember when Roy (or was it Seigfried?) was mauled by his tiger? Rememberwhen that grizzly guy became grizzly chow?

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First former Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA) was found guilty on Federal bribery and racketeering charges, his 13-year sentence being the longest ever meted out to a former congressman.

Then Bill’s brother Mose was sentenced to ten years for his role in bribing the head of the Orleans Parish School Board.

Now…

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Get ready, Sean Hannity and Dr. Laura: here come a whole raft of zombie-like “progressive” seminar callers, with talking points via the intertubes.

Obama campaign arm focuses on talk radio

…which links to: http://radio.barackobama.com/

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U.S. Attorney Jim Letten and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have achieved a key break in their investigation of the New Orleans Police Department and the shooting of six civilians (two fatally) during Hurricane Katrina’s chaotic aftermath. According to Letten’s bill of information, none of the victims were armed. Former NOPD Lieutenant Jim Lohman has entered a guilty plea to federal charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice and has agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in its investigation of the other police officers involved in the incident. State charges were filed in 2006 but dismissed in 2008.

Letten is a Republican, and a Bush appointee. His office has taken down some 200 corrupt public officials during his eight year tenure in office, making him perhaps the most trusted figure in the New Orleans area. His retention as U.S. Attorney has been supported by both Sen. David Vitter and Sen. Mary Landrieu.

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There seems to be a pattern here. Just when President Obama expresses his support for an issue, said issue turns to ca-ca.

Less than one month ago in his State of the Union address, the Rookie President read the following from TOTUS:

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. (Applause.)

So less than a month later, a monitoring well near the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant has detected a leak of radioactive tritium. The apparent source of the leak is some underground piping that plant managers didn’t know existed.

R’uh-r’oh.

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The city of Boulder, CO is superlative in many ways: It is one of the most educated, most affluent, most liberal and most environmentally conscious cities around. According to an article in a recent Wall Street Journal, though, Boulder is having a tough time converting its citizens’ tree-hugging attitudes into meaningful actions.

Thus exposed is a fundamental aspect of human nature. Whatever we may say we like, People Hate Change. It’s one thing to adopt a self-flattering pose to impress a pollster or to cop a public image, but quite another voluntarily to sacrifice money, time or convenience for a nebulous collective benefit.

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Chances are, where you live it’s just Tuesday, the day after a Federal holiday. Maybe you recognize the day before the beginning of Lent as Shrove Tuesday (or Pancake Day, if you happen to live in Liberal, KS).

From Mobile to Galveston, though, today is Mardi Gras.

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“Bill Nye, the Science Guy” made some outrageously offensive and ill-informed statements Wednesday night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, going so far as to apply the word “unpatriotic” to those who don’t share his faith in the Church of Climate Change. (Video clip available here. Warning: It’s at HuffPo.)

Nye, who’s primarily known as an entertainer and producer of children’s television, was cast in the role of Official Representative of the Scientific Establishment during Ms. Maddow’s segment on Climate Change. Maddow offered several clips of conservative commentators lampooning the notion of Global Warming, while D.C. digs out of the record-breaking Blizzard of Aught-Ten.

One snowstorm, sayeth the experts Maddow and Nye, does not disprove Climate Change. Well, duh. We skeptics don’t have to disprove anything.

The recent blows to the integrity of the Climate Change community, all of which are self-inflicted, may be enough to bring down their House of Cards without much outside help.

We’re not trying disprove anything, Mr. Science Guy. Your guys are squirming. And we’re enjoying it.

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The City Council of Cambridge, MA established the Cambridge Climate Congress in 2009 and charged them with recommending actions to combat the “climate emergency” which currently threatens Life As We Know It in America’s most intellectual city.

The committee was seated in December, and considering the gravity of the emergency, has acted with alacrity in preparing a vision of the City’s New Green Future. The Drafting Committee’s first stab at a set of recommendations (a 20-page .pdf file) is available here.

While none of these measures have yet been enacted, they represent a window on the soul of the radical environmental movement, and the authoritarian means by which they’re prepared to force their vision on the rest of us.

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For those who may have missed the comments to yesterday’s post on New Orleans’ mayorial election, current Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu defeated a large field of challengers to take the election without a runoff.

Mitch Landrieu claims New Orleans mayor’s office in a landslide - NOLA.com.

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, son of a former mayor and brother of a U.S. senator, routed five major challengers in Saturday’s mayoral primary, riding a sense of regret among voters who rejected him four years ago and extraordinary biracial support to claim an unprecedented first-round landslide victory.

When he takes office May 6, Landrieu will become the city’s first white chief executive since his father, Moon Landrieu, left the job in 1978. Early analysis shows that Mitch Landrieu’s victory owed to widespread crossover voting by African-Americans, who make up two-thirds of the city’s residents.

New Orleans voters to cast ballots for Ray Nagin’s successor today - NOLA.com

Despite wall-to-wall coverage of the Saints’ first-ever Super Bowl appearance in Miami, a high voter turnout is expected in today’s local and special state elections in New Orleans. A 40-45% percent turnout is expected based on the unusually high number of early and absentee ballots cast: over 17,000 out of 272,000 registered voters, more early votes than in last presidential election.

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If you invent a new currency, don’t be surprised when the scammers and counterfeiters show up. Especially when your currency is itself a scam.

Hackers Steal Millions in Carbon Credits

The hackers launched a targeted phishing attack against employees of numerous companies in Europe, New Zealand and Japan, which appeared to come from the German Emissions Trading Authority. The workers were told that their companies needed to re-register their accounts with the Authority, where carbon credits and transactions are recorded.

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On February 1, Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security released a 108-page report to Congress, the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report. Subtitled “A Strategic Framework for a Secure Homeland”, a quick glance at the report left me questioning whether the DHS is more serious about Homeland Security than they are about advancing Obama Administration policy goals.

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The President’s proposed 2011 Budget has tax-raising bulls-eye squarely on every demagogue’s favorite target, “BIG OIL”.  Nobody likes Big Oil, right? They’re the Shells, the Exxons and the BPs who keep jacking up gasoline prices, right?  WRONG. Regardless of what you think about Big Oil, those companies will hardly notice this tax increase. No, this baby will fall squarely on the backs of smaller, non-integrated domestic producers. The direct cost of this inept policy will be:

• Loss of American jobs,
• Loss of American GDP,
• Increased oil imports, and
• Reduced energy security.

The current tax system has been in place for many decades. It has been successful at doing what it was designed to do: making it easier to raise money for the risky hydrocarbon exploration business, and providing an incentive for marginal producers to keep their low-volume domestic “stripper wells” on line.

Obama proposes to change that.

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The Louisiana State Analytical and Fusion Exchange (LA-SAFE) today issued a notice titled Suspicious Activity: Helicopter Leasing Facilities for aviation interests in Louisiana. We received it at work via our membership in the Offshore Operators Committee.

Oil and gas operators use helicopters routinely to access platforms and rigs. There are several large shore bases across the Gulf that serve this activity.

Walk-up inquiries about helicopter leasing qualify as highly unusual. So do men hanging around observing operations at the fence.

Heck, at this point, I’m suspicious of anyone who drives a late-model black Impala.

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Wednesday’s State of the Union address was as much about the subjects the President avoided as about the issues or policies he proposed.

The word “wind” occurs not once in the speech. References to solar energy have to do with the number of jobs created building solar panels. Gone are the promises of a future of Rainbows, Unicorns and Magic Windmills; the Administration seems to have come to the realization that wind and solar may make a marginal contribution, but they will never be primary energy sources.

Now the focus is on “advanced biofuels” and “clean coal technology”. Advanced biofuels, relying on algae and whatnot for the generation of diesel equivalent, is one of those technologies that looks great in the lab. Its problem will be scalability, whether industry can figure out how to replace gasoline milllions of barrels at a time.

Clean coal gets the support of the big utilities and the coal companies, but implicit in their support is the government’s financing of the huge capital commitment.

Natural gas is the 800-pound gorilla that the President struggles to avoid. Natural gas delivers everything the President says he’s looking for in an ideal fuel: it is abundant, clean and American. Its infrastructure is in-place and the means to exploit it is off-the-shelf. Innovation and technology have increased the assessed resource base by over a third in just four years; we think we have a 100+ year domestic supply at current consumption rates. A commitment to natural gas would put people to work immediately, not speculatively and not years from now.

It’s as if a profitable, healthy domestic gas industry would create a problem for the President. As illogical as it may seem, his policies discourage domestic exploration. Obama seems to think that profitable, productive capitalists are a symptom of, not a cure for, the disease that ails our economy.

So what’s the problem? Success exacerbates the uneven distribution of wealth? Independent energy producers tend to be red state, conservative Republicans? That the Natural Gas Solution is by its very nature not Obama-centric?

Or maybe ALL OF THE ABOVE?

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