Today's American Energy Alliance Comments and Energy Links:

The science is settled.

The Washington Post (9/16/14) reports: “The final report from a landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, found no evidence that chemicals or brine water from the gas drilling process moved upward to contaminate drinking water at a site in western Pennsylvania. The Department of Energy report, released Monday, was the first time an energy company allowed independent monitoring of a drilling site during the fracking process and for 18 months afterward. After those months of monitoring, researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas stayed about 5,000 feet below drinking water supplies.”

Dim Bulb Award:

“To me, the connection between militarized state violence, racism, and climate change was common-sense and intuitive…Oppression and extreme weather combine to ‘incite’ militarized violence,”– Deirdre Smith, 350.org

Populist speeches in favor of oppressive governments are getting really expensive.

The Washington Free Beacon “Actress Mia Farrow on Wednesday confirmed that she was paid by agents of the Ecuadorian government to travel to the country and speak in support of the country’s legal and political battle against oil company Chevron. “They paid my speaking fee,” she said in a message posted to Twitter. Farrow was responding to a Washington Free Beacon report revealing that MCSquared PR, a public relations firm that represents the Ecuadorian government in the United States, paid Farrow’s talent agency $188,000 last year.”

In order to to save the planet, we must rid ourselves of those dubiously renewable dams.

CleanTechnica (9/17/14) reports: “In 2007, researchers at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research calculated that the world’s largest dams emitted 104 million tons of methane annually and were responsible for 4% of the human contribution to climate change. We now have more data that supports the belief that in some locales, greenhouse emissions of methane from hydroelectric dams may cause more harm than benefit. A French team from the National Centre for Scientific Research, studying methane emissions at the largest reservoir in Southeast Asia (Nam Theun 2, in Laos) has found that big dams, dubiously renewable and often more costly than other measures, can add to global warming rather than reducing it.”

Look on the bright side, people. Not quite ten percent of the funds were properly spent.

The Washington Free Beacon (9/17/14) reports: “Over 90 percent of funding for a diesel reduction program paid for by the stimulus law was misspent, according to a report by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG). An audit analyzing $26.3 million in funding to non-profit organizations and state governments meant to reduce truck emissions and create jobs found that the program had “significant financial management issues.”…The OIG said the entirety of a $9 million grant given to Cascade Sierra Solutions was wasted after the non-profit failed to accomplish any of the project’s goals. The grant was intended for upgrading diesel trucks made before 2007 with emission control technologies.”

Now you know why they call me Dirty Harry. 

The Hill (9/16/14) reports: “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said as long as he's around there will be no nuclear waste dump in Nevada. But as November draws closer, and Republicans weigh their chances of gaining a majority in the Senate, the party is talking about reviving the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, which the administration stopped work on. To guard against such action, Reid pushed fast votes on two administration nominees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ensuring the majority of those sitting on the board have been appointed by Democrats. ‘Yucca Mountain is all through,’ Reid told reporters on Tuesday. ‘As long as I'm around there's no Yucca Mountain. It's been through two presidents.’”

He’s just your friendly neighborhood eco-terrorist.

MediaTrackers (9/17/14) reports: “Rod Coronado, a convicted eco-terrorist, is the leader of the controversial “Yellowstone Wolf Patrol,” a new environmental group that plans to shadow legal Montana wolf hunters during the state’s fall and winter wolf season and document the hunts with a video camera. Coronado, a resident of Michigan, is a radical environmentalist who “sank whaling ships nearly 30 years ago in Iceland and later went to prison after torching a Michigan State University lab in 1992 for conducting research for the fur industry” according to The Buffalo News of Buffalo, NY.  He also serves as a spokesman for the radical, militant environmental group Earth Liberation Front (ELF).”

"The Hoover Institution seeks to improve the human condition by advancing ideas that promote economic opportunity and prosperity…" So why are they promoting state RPSs and other mandates?

The Hoover Institution reports: “With growing gridlock in Washington, states are increasingly the locus of real progress in policymaking to advance energy efficiency and renewable energy. Like chefs in a kitchen, state governors, legislators, and public utility commissioners have been testing an array of recipes, to increase the deployment of solar, wind, and other renewables, to cut energy use in homes and businesses, to improve the operation of the grid, to expand financing, and, overall, to improve the efficacy—and economics—of clean energy.”

This is not about global warming. This has never been about global warming.

IBD (9/16/14) editorializes: “The joke in Washington is that climate change alarmists in the White House care more about ice than ISIS. But it's no joke. The world is aflame in violence and barbaric acts of terrorism, and Secretary of State John Kerry is running around warning one of the biggest problems facing the planet — ranking "right up there" with "terrorism, epidemics, poverty (and) the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" — is global warming. Good thing almost no voters agree with him.”