A Free-Market Energy Blog

Methane Emissions from Natural Gas Operations: EPA’s Continuing, Conscious Overestimate

By Katie Brown -- June 10, 2013

“As long as the EPA continues to rely on assumptions about industry activity that are not, in fact, based on actual industry activity, their estimates for methane emissions will remain wrong. The fact that those assumptions result in inflated emissions estimates makes the agency’s conscious decision not to adjust its methods even more troubling.”

Last month, the EPA released its latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory, in which the agency significantly lowered its estimate of the amount of methane emissions from natural gas systems. But even with those dramatic revisions, EPA still has a long way to go to get this right.

In its fact sheet about its changes to methane emissions estimates, EPA admits that at least some of its prior methods for collecting emissions data were flawed:

The study data show that there is more widespread use of emissions control technologies than had been assumed in the previous Inventory. 

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The Free Market Energy Movement: Strong Theory, Rich History, Real-World Momentum

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 7, 2013

“It’s not unlawful to run an ad hominem presidency. It’s merely shameful. The great rhetorical specialty of this president has been his unrelenting attribution of bad faith to those who disagree with him. He acts on principle; they from the basest of instincts.”

– Charles Krauthammer, “There’s a Fly in My Soup,” Washington Post, May 23, 2013.

The alarmist/statist side of the energy/environmental debate is losing intellectually and now politically. The agenda of inferior energies simply cannot stand up to a combination of analytic failure, government failure, and real-world realities. The oil and gas boom … the cessation of global warming; improving air and water quality … alternative energy busts ….

And as the alarmists have become ever more argumentative and shrill, even (former) allies and sympathizers are seeing a quasi-religious, nonintellectual, even ugly aspect to the Climate Progress view of the world.…

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Revisiting Climategate as Climatism Falters

By Steve Goreham -- June 6, 2013

Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, is on the wane. Once riding high, the ideology of man-made climate change is losing its influence in governments across the world. Climategate, the release of e-mails from the University of East Anglia, called the science of dangerous warming into question and turned the tide of global opinion.

Background

On November 19, 2009, and unidentified hacker or internal whistle-blower downloaded more than 1,000 documents and e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the United Kingdom and posted them on a server in Russia. Within hours, these documents were accessed by websites around the world.

These e-mails were a subset of confidential communications between top climate scientists in the United Kingdom, the United States, and other nations over the last fifteen years.…

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Wind Forcing: New England’s Coming Energy War

By -- June 5, 2013
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Rex Tillerson (Exxon Mobil) on Climate Change (energy/climate realism trumps alarmism)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 4, 2013
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AWED Energy & Environmental Newsletter (June 3, 2013)

By -- June 3, 2013
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Rice’s Baker Institute Climate Embarrassment (Sass’s ad hominem response to Rep. Smith)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 31, 2013
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Beyond Furloughs: Ax EPA Climatism

By -- May 30, 2013
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Keystone XL Deserves a Presidential “Yes” (consumers, citizens, labor all in support)

By Mark Green -- May 29, 2013
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The Ungreening of Windpower: Dina Cappiello (AP) Blows the Whistle on Big Wind (and others are following)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 28, 2013
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