Acton and Muir Russell at Tribunal « Climate Audit

David will have an extremely difficult time pinning down either Acton or Russell. The transcripts of the Science and Technology Committee show that both are prone to give lengthy and unresponsive answers, thereby running out the clock.

Andrew P. Morriss: Ethanol scam driving up food prices | Tulsa World

The ethanol mandate means that ordinary Americans pay more for a poorer quality automobile fuel and more for groceries. Ethanol proponents claim these costs will bring us environmental benefits and energy security. They are wrong.

A good first question about a mandate is "how good can a product be if you have to force people to buy it?"

The answer: not very good. Ethanol is vastly inferior to gasoline...The National Council of Chain Restaurants estimates the ethanol mandate costs each of its members $18,000 per year. An inconvenience for wealthy people, rising corn prices are disastrous for the poor, at home and abroad.

Climate change inaction the fault of environmental groups, report says | Environment | guardian.co.uk

"Whatever environmentalists may hope, the Obama White House and congressional Democrats are unlikely to make global warming a top issue in 2013 or 2014," she writes....That strategy overlooked how the political reality outside clubby Washington had turned against their cause. Skocpol attributes much of that shift to the well-funded effort by conservative thinktanks to undermine climate science. The 90s and onwards saw a sharp increase in the publication of reports and books questioning climate change, which eventually got picked up by mainstream media outlets.