E2-Wire

The League of Conservation Voters announced Wednesday that it will work to defeat Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) this year.

The group named Bachmann to its “Dirty Dozen” list of targets for the 2010 cycle, but with a twist – LCV said she won 60 percent in an online vote LCV hosted to select a “people’s choice” addition to the list.

“Representative Bachmann’s landslide win as the ‘People’s Choice’ clearly shows voters are fed up with her over-the-top, anti-science rhetoric in which she continually parrots the talking points of Big Oil and other corporate polluters,” said Tony Massaro, LCV’s senior vice president for political affairs, in a statement.

House Democrats pressured coal company executives Wednesday to drop opposition to climate legislation as the industry faces greater congressional scrutiny following the mine explosion last week that killed 29 miners.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, urged executives from Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and Rio Tinto to, “cease efforts to deny the science of global warming” and stop “misleading the public as to the true science behind climate change.”

The focus of the select committee’s hearing Wednesday was on the future of coal, but Markey also asked the executives if the number of safety violations reported at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia prior to the blast was unusually high, in effect launching what is likely to be weeks of congressional inquiry into the industry's safety practices. 

The American Petroleum Institute announced Wednesday that public relations veteran Linda Schoumacher Rozett, who is also a former journalist, will be the powerful trade group’s new vice president of communications.

Rozett has for several years been running the media consulting firm FirstWord Strategies. In 2007, she was communications director in the early days of former Sen. Fred Thompson’s (R-Tenn.) failed campaign for the GOP White House nomination.

Prior jobs included stints as a communications executive for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and  work with two energy trade groups: The Edison Electric Institute and the Natural Gas Supply Association.

The U.S. EPA and the Energy Department on Wednesday announced an overhaul of the Energy Star appliance labeling program aimed at preventing products that don’t meet the program’s efficiency requirements from receiving the Energy Star label.

The agencies said the revisions speed up several changes that were already underway to bolster product verification, testing and enforcement.

But they also follow a recent Government Accountability office audit that found the popular program is “vulnerable to fraud and abuse.” The congressional auditors were able to obtain Energy Star certifications for bogus products, including a gas-powered alarm clock.

Over at our On The Money blog, my colleague Jay Heflin has a piece about the Treasury Department defending Obama administration efforts to repeal billions of dollars worth of oil-and-gas industry tax breaks.

“If Henry Ford had decided not to build the Model T based upon the availability of gas stations, where would be today?” he said.

The “Climate-gate” scandal isn’t tarnishing global warming research the way that climate skeptics – including several Capitol Hill lawmakers – might have hoped.

Scores of emails among scientists connected to the UK’s Climatic Research Unit made public last year prompted allegations that the researchers were squelching information that undercut evidence of global warming.

But an independent review commissioned by the University of East Anglia – which houses the CRU – has concluded that scientists did not attempt to manipulate data as the climate skeptics had alleged.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said he’s deeply troubled by the Labor Department’s revelation Tuesday that a computer problem had prevented stepped-up federal scrutiny of Massey Energy Co.’s Upper Big Branch coal mine last year.

An explosion last week at the mine – which had a lengthy history of safety violations – killed 29 workers, making it the worst U.S. mining accident in decades.

“This is a very troubling revelation. The federal government has a basic responsibility to track and disseminate accurate information – especially when that information is essential to enforcement of worker safety rules. MSHA and DOL have fallen short here – and that is not acceptable,” Rockefeller said in a prepared statement Tuesday night, referring to the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

* A computer problem lowered federal scrutiny of Massey Energy Co.'s Upper Big Branch mine.

A Labor Department computer error prevented the West Virginia mine where 29 workers died in an explosion last week from receiving a warning about safety violations and a demand that the owners improve conditions, Labor Department officials said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

From the AP account:

The director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration said the error discovered Monday night did not have an impact on the accident at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine because improvements had been made even without the warning.

But the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and two other lawmakers called for an immediate investigation by the Labor Department's inspector general into the computer error. Reps. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., and Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., joined Miller in calling the mistake "deeply disturbing."

A computer program used by the MSHA screens mines for patterns of violations. By failing to include eight citations at the Upper Big Branch mine, the program did not flag the mine for a safety notification and an order for improvements, MSHA Director Joe Main told The Associated Press.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of a key Senate panel on energy development, is splitting with President Barack Obama over the proximity of oil drilling to U.S. coasts.

Dorgan, who heads the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, is pushing for a 45-mile buffer zone between oil rigs and a coastline. Obama on March 31 announced he is allowing drilling from Delaware to Florida, plus parts of Alaska, and called on Congress to lift a drilling ban in the eastern Gulf of Mexico — specifically calling for a 125-mile buffer zone in the Gulf.

Dorgan said more oil can be gained by reducing that buffer zone to 45 miles. He acknowledged the disagreement but repeatedly praised Obama for his decision to allow drilling.

"The estimates are that the 125-mile (buffer) would get about two-thirds of the energy that is there. Those are estimates based on 30-year-old studies. I think a more appropriate one is 45 miles but you know, I commend the president for moving as he's moved and I would hope that we have an opportunity to consider even more," Dorgan said. "A 45-mile zone is a better approach because you get more energy out of that and you still have the proper safeguards for a visual line of sight and so on. But again, I think he's moved in the right direction and I commend him for that."

The eastern half of the Gulf of Mexico has long been under a congressional moratorium on drilling, and there are also restrictions near the state's Panhandle beaches because of their proximity to military bases.

Cross-posted from the Briefing Room