The Biden administration begged the Middle East to ramp up oil production Wednesday as American producers sit still on Alaska's frigid North Slope. //

Biden has been yanking permits and demanding new environmental assessments in an effort to cancel projects altogether. Last week, the Interior Department tossed out the analysis completed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), long held as the gold standard of assessing environmental impacts, and ordered a new supplemental review for leases in the Arctic refuge two months after they were suspended.

The Biden administration called the earlier review insufficient in a routine attack on projects it merely aims to cancel with the new assessment ordered to “identify the significant issues, including any legal deficiencies in the Final EIS [Environmental Impact Statement].”

“Everything we want to do, they want to stop,” Alaska’s frustrated Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy told The Federalist of the new administration. “We went from having a president who was all about creating opportunity to an administration that is all about cancelling opportunity.”

Meanwhile, current operations in neighboring Prudhoe Bay show oil and gas extraction can be done cleaner in the United States than in any other country with no harm to wildlife.

Oil and gas producers have been drilling the flat surface of Alaska’s Arctic coast 60 miles west of proposed sites in ANWR since the late 1970s. Objections to the project at the time were the same ones wielded by environmental leftists today that such operations would put the caribou in danger.

Contrary to the doomsday prophesies, the caribou have thrived, rising to peak population of 70,000 in 2010, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They have since fallen back down to 22,000 in 2016, consistent with their herd’s natural cycle, with still a higher population than the fewer than 20,000 estimated in 1997. //

The new administration staking out its opposition to drilling on environmental concerns while it welcomes extraction abroad with lower standards at first appears a classic case of NIMBYism. A look in ANWR’s backyard, though, will find the Iñupiat people as the sole tribe within the boundaries of the proposed area for drilling. They have demanded the right to develop their own land. Instead, Biden has kept operations in ANWR frozen, along with the development dreams of local villagers and Americans as a whole.

Blue hydrogen’s Achilles’ heel is the methane used to produce it. Methane is the dominant component of natural gas, and while it burns more cleanly than oil or coal, it’s a potent greenhouse gas on its own. Over 20 years, one ton of the stuff warms the atmosphere 86 times more than one ton of carbon dioxide. That means leaks along the supply chain can undo a lot of methane’s climate advantages.

Anyone who lives in an area with old pipelines knows that gas leaks are an unfortunate reality. Methane is a small molecule, and it’s great at finding cracks in the system. Gas wells and processing facilities are also pretty leaky. Add it all up, and anywhere between 1-8 percent of all energy-related methane escapes into the atmosphere, depending on where and how it's measured. //

“Combined emissions of carbon dioxide and methane are greater for gray hydrogen and for blue hydrogen (whether or not exhaust flue gases are treated for carbon capture) than for any of the fossil fuels,” Howarth and Jacobson wrote. “Methane emissions are a major contributor to this, and methane emissions from both gray and blue hydrogen are larger than for any of the fossil fuels.”

The issue here is not Hunter’s addiction or illegal behavior. Rather, it’s the intense corruption of the media and intelligence agencies, and how greatly our current president is compromised. //

A Russian woman, a drug dealer, and two of his compatriots may have stolen a laptop from Hunter Biden in 2018, Hunter told a prostitute in another sex video, leaving the president’s son concerned he may be blackmailed because of his father’s political position.

While the salacious video of Hunter Biden released earlier this week exposes more details about the troubling lifestyle of the president’s son, it reveals much more about a corrupt and complicit media, a corrupt and incompetent intelligence community, and a corrupt and compromised Joe Biden.

Kyle Lamb
@kylamb8
·
Aug 13
In the past day or two, PA, OH, MI, IN, IL & WI all saw huge case increases simultaneously. Did they all suddenly engage in erratic behavior or is there a seasonal pattern causing the spike? Let's go to our CDC correspondent, Mr. Case Curve and take a look.

https://mobile.twitter.com/kylamb8/status/1426191289603792903/photo/1 ///

Seasonal variations

Hawaii, which has had a very restrictive mask-mandate (indoors and outdoors) is getting hit by Delta at exactly the time you’d expect if you were looking at past trends.

The proof? – Hawaii’s largest previous spike happened in August of 2020, the exact month they are seeing a spike this year.

It’s not just Hawaii, though. Many midwestern states are now seeing the same trend play out. //

https://mobile.twitter.com/kylamb8/status/1426191289603792903/photo/1

Mask mandates are not working. The virus has its waves — regardless of whether a state has a mandate in place or not. That means that Florida, which has born the brunt of the criticism, is being largely vindicated. No mask mandate was going to magically fix their situation. If masks were effective, Hawaii, which is literally a group of islands in the middle of the ocean, wouldn’t be seeing their largest spike to date. //.

The correlation between mask mandates and spread does not exist. That may make the fact-checkers on social media uncomfortable, but the data is on my side, and all I can do is share that data. Anyone that doubts that COVID is seasonal and can’t be defeated by mask mandates can check back in three months. We will have seen the same spikes in the same states at around the same time, whether those states have a mask mandate or not.

The virus cannot be “crushed” from that perspective. It can only be managed by vaccinations, natural immunity, and a realization that certain segments of the population are just not statistically vulnerable. Getting the elderly, the obese, and those with other comorbidities vaccinated should be the priority, not making eight-year-olds mask up in school. Common sense needs to prevail.

The reality is that, during Trump’s tenure and despite the Afghan government’s many imperfections, Afghanistan had made great strides. The government controlled most of the country’s territory. There was real economic growth. Women could work. Children could go to school.

Further, the cost of fostering regional stability by maintaining a stable Afghanistan was well within reason. The U.S. was spending less in Afghanistan in a year than we used to spend in a week. American forces were training and advising Afghan forces. Our troops were not fighting wars and taking causalities. This was clearly sustainable.

And how, in heaven’s name, is Trump to blame for Biden’s disastrous decision to cut and run? Trump was negotiating with the Taliban, but there was nothing wrong with that. The negotiations were conditions-based, and Trump made clear the Taliban would be held accountable for its actions.

Moreover, Trump’s team made sure that if, in the end, the Taliban proved untrustworthy, the remaining U.S. force had been sized and scoped to present a serious deterrent to the Taliban and be sufficient to protect U.S. interests.

Trump, in fact, handed Biden a problem mostly solved. All Biden had to do was negotiate a lasting settlement from a position of strength or maintain an economy of force presence in Afghanistan if the Taliban failed to deliver. Instead, Biden just decided to call it a day and call the troops home regardless of what the Taliban did on the ground. //

This is the Obama-Biden playbook. Disengage in dangerous situations, and hope everything doesn’t go to hell in a handbasket. And when those fond hopes don’t pan out? Time to make excuses; shift blame; do anything but deal with the problem—unless there is absolutely no alternative. //

Biden is carrying on exactly the same foreign policy. Caving to Russia on Nord Stream 2. Refusing to confront China on the origins of COVID-19. Pleading with Tehran to let the U.S. back in the Iran nuclear deal.

No good will come of this.

This is the nadir of media malpractice taking place, where the unfortunate deaths of a few are held up as an example to forward a particular agenda and to smear a government leader. These are the same voices who constantly cry about politicizing the pandemic, lecturing that lives are too important to resort to partisanship and bias. Yet, here they are perfectly content to hold up deaths and manipulate their details, all in order to deliver a political hit on a governor they uniformly despise.

During a viral crisis, this kind of behavior is enough to make one sick.