Yesterday’s roundup and post on the White House’s ambition to open much of the US continental shelf to oil and gas exploration, with leases and production eventual goals, mentioned that a NYTimes John M. Broder story that had a lot of facts and quick-shot opinion quotes but not much analysis to help readers sort it all out. It added that the analysis is sure to come. Lickity split, here is some today:

• NYTimes – John M. Broder: Risk is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t ; Subjectively, The Tracker agrees, the risk is clear -  and it is clear enough that while spills and accidents are never good things, their pace and scale have so far been within the ability of marine ecoystems to bounce back. Ergo tolerable. Prince William Sound may still be a bit off stride, but it’s not wrecked. More to the point, Broder here provides lists of the uncertainties – mostly in this telling political ones – inherent in any effort to greatly, or quickly, expand offshore oil production.

That’s not all. Another example of major outlet second-day head scratching:

• MSNBC Howard Fineman: Obama’s energy challenge is coal, not oil ; Nice bit of contextual reporting – and in line with what NASA climatologist and deep worrier James Hansen has been saying for a long time about the biggest gorilla in the room. One thinks, however, he should have looked at the full-up carbon costs of running cars on petroleum, or on electricity provided in part by coal fired power plants. Last I looked, an indirectly coal-charged electric car still puts less fossil carbon in the air than one running on petrel or perhaps even diesel.

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories, Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.