It is being reported that U.S. gas prices have hit an eight-month high amid rising oil prices.
The national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded climbed to $3.71 Thursday, data from AAA showed. That’s more than 13 cents higher than the week before and the highest since November.In 16 states, gas prices are up by at least 15 cents in the past week alone — and up 20 cents or more in Florida, Iowa and Indiana.The move higher follows a surge in oil prices, which have climbed more than $10 a barrel over the past month to a three-month high of more than $80.That increase, in turn, has come in response to production cuts by OPEC nations and the impact of outages at U.S. refineries, both of which are related to intense summer heat.
As Americans feel the pain at the pump, four Democratic senators are demanding the Department of Justice (DOJ) sue the fossil fuel industry based on climate crisis pseudoscience.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Ed Markey, D-Mass., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter Monday to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging him to take action against the fossil fuel industry for making climate change a “non-issue” and costing the United States trillions of dollars.”Big oil has known for decades that they are fueling the climate crisis and lied to hide it,” Markey wrote in a tweet Monday. “Now, we’re seeing record-breaking temperatures and unprecedented damage. We must hold them accountable for their misleading, unforgivable campaigning.”…In the three-page letter, the senators argued “The actions of ExxonMobil, Shell and potentially other fossil fuel companies represent a clear violation of federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws and potentially other laws, and the department must act swiftly to hold them accountable for their unlawful actions.”
Now, the American Petroleum Institute (API) has taken a defense position by back against the letter, saying it was committed to advocating for policies reducing emissions.
“The record of the past two decades demonstrates that the industry is achieving its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to U.S. consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint,” a spokesperson for API told Fox News Digital. “Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”In 2021, API published its Climate Action Framework, which stated the group shares the “goal of reduced emissions across the broader economy and, specifically, those from energy production, transportation and use by society.”
I would argue that the better choice would be to fight back against the poor science and politicized assertions these Senators are offering.
The current heat wave is being relentlessly blamed on increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but there is a much more plausible explanation, one that is virtually endorsed by two of the world’s leading scientific organizations. It turns out that levels of water vapor in the atmosphere have dramatically increased over the last year-and-a-half, and water vapor is well recognized as a greenhouse gas, whose heightened presence leads to higher temperatures, a mechanism that dwarfs any effect CO2 may have.So, why has atmospheric water vapor increased so dramatically? Because of a historic, gigantic volcanic eruption last year that I – probably along with you — had never heard of. The mass media ignored it because it took place 490 feet underwater in the South Pacific. Don’t take it from me, take it from NASA (and please do follow the link to see time lapse satellite imagery of the underwater eruption and subsequent plume of gasses and water injected into the atmosphere):
There is a great deal of other data to present that proves we live in a world in which the weather is a complex dynamic system that includes the Sun, geology, and ocean currents. Perhaps it is time the fossil fuel companies stop paying defense and come out swinging in court.
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