Climate Liars – Exposing Climate Change Denial in Politics

The Bi-partisan lie of John Boehner, Rep. Dan Boren and  Jon Huntsman…

Lie: The Keystone Pipeline will create 20,000 or more jobs and increase American energy independence

Truth: The Keystone Pipeline would create about 5000 jobs and much of the oil would actually be exported

The U.S. State Department claims that the keystone pipeline would create 5,000 direct US jobs over a 2 year period.

TransCanada (the company proposing to build the pipeline running from Canada to the US) claims that building the Keystone pipeline would create 20,000 direct jobs over a 2 year period.

Needless to say, many politicians (largely Republican but some Democrats are complicit here as well) have run with TransCanada’s, with the misguided assumption that these would be 20,000 permanent US jobs (when in fact, TransCanada’s numbers include jobs in Canada).

What’s more is the pipeline may actually destroy more jobs than it creates (one of the most common tricks/fallacies in estimating job creation for a certain project is ignoring the jobs it may destroy).

Further Reading:

• Keystone pipeline: How many jobs it would really create
• Pipe Dreams: Jobs Gained, Jobs Lost by the Construction of Keystone XL
• Key Facts on Keystone XL
• Pipeline Climate Disaster: The Keystone XL Pipeline and Labor
• Keystone pipeline jobs claims: a bipartisan fumble
• TransCanada agrees to re-route Keystone pipeline

The solar industry continues to grow.  In fact, 3rd quarter for 2011 saw more solar power installations in the US than all of 2009.  As the industry continues to grow, solar technology becomes easier and less costly to replicate, bringing it closer to economic parity with traditional energy sources.

Yet renewable/alternative energy detractors continue to claim that there exists no market for solar technology, and point to the failure of Solyndra as proof.  Sadly, these detractors believe that merely injecting the word Solyndra into a sentence makes their case.  But a few simple facts disprove this:

• The solar industry continues to grow
• The failure of Solyndra is the exception, not the rule
• Solyndra’s bankruptcy is due to the decreased cost of Polysilicon (which many of their competitors used) and competition from Chinese solar manufacturers who boasted $30 billion (compare this to the $ .5 billion Solyndra received) in loans from their own government (meaning this isn’t a “free market” issue).
• The US lags behind countries with more generous subsidies

All of these facts are easily obtainable.  Sadly, many politicians who have ties to dirty energy sources or are against government subsidies and regulations due to philosophical views merely assume Solyndra’s bankruptcy provides a smoking gun against solar technology (if not an outright Watergate against President Obama).  The real tragedy is the millions of Americans who follow along without due diligence on the subject.