oil
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Why selling off the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a good idea
Here's how releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve can lower gas prices and help get the U.S. off of oil.
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Why tapping the strategic petroleum reserve is a bad idea
When it comes to oil, this is what the U.S. looks like to the rest of the world
The Obama administration has decided over the next two months to release 60 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is kind of like giving Bubbles from the Wire $5 when he's in the middle of one of his smack binges -- it's not really going to affect consumption, and it sure as hell doesn't address the root problem, which is our seemingly insuperable addiction to oil.
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How oil and gas companies that deny climate change are adapting to it anyway
Next to agriculture, the industry most vulnerable to climate change is, arguably, the extraction of the very fossil fuels that are causing it, says Michael Cote at GOOD. And while this industry is spending millions to deny that climate change even exists and to block efforts to deal with it, it's also going to need to spend billions to cope with its effects.
Sure, climate change sucks harder than a collapsed star, but at least it's leading to ironies so vast that only particles of sputtering dumbfoundedness can escape.
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Humanity's energy dilemma in three easy charts
According to a new report from BP, our current energy path leads to catastrophe, and it's hard to even envision a scenario in which catastrophe is avoided.
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A three-step plan to solve the fossil fuel crisis
(from Fake Science) Brilliant in its simplicity. Even better: Since we may be approaching the carbon levels that killed the dinosaurs in the first place, we could just let the fossil fuels we burn kill the cloned dinos all by themselves.
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Military could use climate-killing ‘liquid coal’
By law, the U.S. military can't use fuels that have a worse climate impact than conventional oil. An amendment to a major military spending bill would rescind that law, allowing the U.S. military to buy oil made from, for example, West Virginia Sen. Joe "I literally put a bullet in the climate bill" Manchin's forthcoming […]
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Critical List: U.S. imported less than 50 percent of its oil in 2010
We're off foreign oil! More or less. One price we'll pay for that: ads with blue skies and green fields and a man with a reassuring voice saying that natural gas is totally, totally safe. The price of renewable energy will go down. So naturally, you should bet against its success. Unless you're a venture […]
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Oil traders illegally inflated oil prices in 2008, commodity watchdog says
In 2008, two commodities traders conspired to drive up the price of oil, says the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The two traders, one of whom is named Nicholas Wildgoose, the other of whom is Australian, bought up two-thirds—4.6 million barrels—of the crude oil available in Cushing, Okla., the delivery hub that sets prices for American […]
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Critical List: 481 tornado deaths this year, Texas et al. v. EPA
The average number of tornado fatalities in the U.S. each year is 55. Already this year, 481 people have died. Fifteen states, led by Texas, are looking to overturn the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health. If they fail in court, they plan to stick their fingers in their ears and go “LA […]