A Free-Market Energy Blog

Greens to Michelle Obama: Ignore Science, Please (anti-shale movement getting desperate)

By Steve Everley -- May 17, 2012

In the latest attempt by anti-shale activists to obscure the facts and disregard evidence, a group called “The Mother’s Project” recently sponsored an ad in the New York Times calling on First Lady Michelle Obama to do whatever she can to “hit the pause button” on hydraulic fracturing.

The group – which was founded by none other than Angela Monti Fox, the mother of Gasland director Josh Fox – alleges that hydraulic fracturing is causing irreversible environmental damage. One of the activists with the group, Sonia Skakich-Scrima, had this to say about the process:

We’re seeing impacts to ground and surface water across the country and in Colorado. Those you can’t fix, they’re not fixable.

It’s unclear who she is referencing by saying “we,” but she’s certainly not referring to state regulators, the U.S.

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James Hansen's War Against Canada

By Kenneth P. Green -- May 16, 2012

“Hansen’s most recent editorial has received sharp criticism for the over-reach of his claims about climate science. But what the media isn’t covering is an unprecedented call for an environmental trade war with America’s largest trading partner. Let’s hope they catch up to that aspect of the story.”

In a recent editorial assault on Canada’s oil-sands, climate activist extraordinaire James Hansen (NASA) has basically declared war on Canada’s economy (not to mention our own). Hansen wrote:

Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

He goes on to suggest that the U.S.

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Star States on the Road to U.S. Hydrocarbon Plenty

By Julia Bell -- May 15, 2012

“The way in which even a mature, supposedly quite ‘drilled out’ region—such as the United States—continues to add oil and gas reserves confirms the crucial influence of technological change and questions whether the very notion of fixed stocks and exhaustibility has much value in resource supply analysis. After all, industry operators do not regard their reserves as nonrenewable: they will invest in exploration and development to create new capacity.”

– G. C. Watkins, “The Hotelling Principle: Autobahn or Cul de Sac?,” The Energy Journal, Vol. 13-1, 1992, pp. 22-23.

The gains in U.S. crude oil production in just the past four years have been impressive. Here is where those gains are coming from.

U.S. crude oil production, after sinking to levels not seen since the mid-1940s, rose more than half a million barrels per day between 2007 and 2011.…

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The Rebranding of Global Warming (Demoting an exaggerated issue)

By Ken Maize -- May 14, 2012
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Understanding the Green Menace: Robert Zubrin’s Merchants of Despair

By -- May 11, 2012
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Wind Energy Without the PTC

By -- May 10, 2012
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Expanding 'Depletable' Resources: Solving a Paradox

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 9, 2012
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Big Wind Subsidies: Time to Terminate?

By -- May 8, 2012
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SIX WORDS for U.S. EPA

By Lance Brown -- May 7, 2012
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'Cato University' 2012: Big-Picture Political Economy

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 4, 2012
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