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President Barack Obama made a full-throated endorsement of global warming philosophy on Tuesday, saying during an afternoon speech that placed him on the forefront of an intensified worldwide debate about energy sources - and about the thorny question of whether the earth is warming because of human activity.

The president announced that he falls firmly in the 'yes' camp. 'As a president, as a father and as an American,' he said, 'I'm here to say, we need to act.'

But simultaneously, a senior administration official told MailOnline shortly before his address that Obama would direct the U.S. State Department to approve the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline, provided it doesn't increase net carbon emissions.

'It's coming,' a second source - this one in the State Department - said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to speak publicly about policy matters.

'Keystone is a done deal. EPA gets what it wants, I suppose, and we get to trade more with the Canadians, and less with the Venezuelans. Everybody wins but Chavez.'

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Obama, however, hedged his bets slightly during his remarks, while allowing that 'I know there's been a lot of controversy.'

'The State Department is going through the final stages' of evaluating Keystone, the president said. 'Allowing the keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that it serves our national interest.'

He insisted that the pipeline will only move forward if it 'does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.'

That finding, he insisted, 'will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project will go forward. It's relevant.'

Keystone XL, poised to carry oil from tar-sands fields in Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the U.S.-Gulf of Mexico coast, has become North America's most hotly contested environmental battle. While green groups say the project could risk the health of aquifers in the U.S. midwest, industry leaders say the oil is needed to reduce America's dependence on the Middle East and Venezuela.

And in the absence of a U.S. market, energy insiders have said, Canada will build an east-west pipeline and ship oil to China instead.

A draft study from the State Department has already determined that the pipeline would not increase greenhouse gas emissions in a significant way, but environmentalists have continued to snipe at the project, and at the study's central conclusion.

His remarks came against a mixed backdrop of friendly applause and the overhead roar of fossil fuel-powered jet engines, a juxtaposition that some in attendance at Georgetown University said was ironic and embarrassing.

'In a world that's warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by the warming planet,' Obama insisted. 'Those who are feeling the effects of climate change don't have time to deny it. They're busy dealing with it.'

Conservative commentators found the president's remarks wholly troubling, though, focusing on what Republicans have decried as the White House's 'war on coal.'

'If Congress doesn't muster the will to stop him, he'll accomplish his 2008 campaign promise of bankrupting coal and making electricity prices "necessarily skyrocket,"' Phil Kerpen, a free-market policy analyst who runs the group American Commitment, told MailOnline.

'The puzzling thing about the politics of it is he waited until after multiple scandals involving egregious abuses of executive power to announce Congress is now irrelevant in energy and environmental policy and he'll take over.'

Obama said Tuesday that coal-fired power plants 'can still dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air for free. That's not right and it needs to stop.'

Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Christopher Horner, who has long been critical of America's formalized environmental movement, added that the 'major item' in Obama's new agenda is an 'instruction to EPA to rewrite the Clean Air Act.'

That, he told MailOnline, would fulfill a vow Obama made 'to "bankrupt" anyone who tried to build a coal-fired power plant [and] to shutter all existing coal plants.'

But Environmental Entrepreneurs, a network of business leaders and investors, said the president is doing the right thing.

'The president's initiative is an economic growth and security plan for this country,' the group's co-founder, Nicole Lederer, said in a statement.

' Carbon pollution isn't just hurting our planet and our health, it's also hurting the bottom lines of companies all across America.'

Obama, too, insisted that his plan should be approached with urgency.

'We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society,' he said. 'Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it's not going to protect you from the coming storm.'

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Obama embraces global warming while saying he will approve the Keystone XL pipeline -- IF it's carbon-neutral

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President Barack Obama made a full-throated endorsement of global warming philosophy on Tuesday, saying during an afternoon speech that placed him on the forefront of an intensified worldwide debate about energy sources - and about the thorny question of whether the earth is warming because of human activity.

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biased decision!

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Backers of the Keystone XL pipeline became emboldened recently by the prospect of a Republican-led Congress finally pushing the project through.

But can dropping crude prices punch a hole in the controversial project?

The cost of benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil dropped to $74.42 a barrel on Thursday - a 25% drop from the triple-digit highs it reached this summer. Federal analysts have warned that producers in the Canadian oil sands - slated to be a top consumer of the pipeline - will need oil prices to stay between $65 and $75 a barrel to make production there economically feasible.

"Assuming prices fell in this range, higher transportation costs could have a substantial impact on oil sands production levels - possibly in excess of the capacity of the proposed project," said a U.S. State Department report on the pipeline released in January.

The 1,179-mile pipeline extension would carry tar sand oil from Canada to Nebraska, then be transported to refineries in Texas. It could carry some 830,000 barrels each day. President Obama has said he'll approve the project only if it doesn't "significantly exacerbate" the problem of carbon pollution. His administration is still studying the project.

But some members of Congress, led by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., are moving ahead with efforts to immediately authorize Canadian firm TransCanada to build the pipeline. Lawmakers could vote on the issue as early as next week.

"We're in this interesting place where we have this push by Congress for the project at a time when the marketplace is telling us we don't need this new oil," said Anthony Swift, a staff attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, who has opposed the project. "The reality is tar sands crude only makes sense in the world of expensive oil. That's not the world we're likely to be in in the near or immediate future."

Needed or not, the sands-oil reserves in Alberta in Western Canada will likely continue producing crude into the foreseeable future, said Dinara Millington, vice president of research at Canadian Energy Research Institute, a Calgary-based independent, not-for-profit research group.

The break-even price to develop new greenfield projects at the reserves is at around $85 per barrel, so current crude prices could deter new projects, she said. But existing producers can continue pumping oil there at relatively low costs, Millington said. The oil-sands produce around 2.1 million barrels a day.

Also, conventional producers farther west in British Columbia and Saskatchewan will also be able to use the pipeline, bolstering its demand, she said.

"There's enough demand and supply fundamentals to make the economic case for the pipeline to be built," Millington said.

Customers to the pipeline have long-term contracts in place - some as high as 25 years - and its construction or use will not be impacted by the rise and fall of crude prices, Shawn Howard, a TransCanada spokesman, said in an email. He points out that customers did not shy away from the project when crude hit lows of $33 and $37 a barrel in 2009.

"Interest from customers to ship and receive oil through both Keystone XL remains strong and we continue to have a waiting list if space on Keystone XL becomes available," Howard said.

Still, the fact that crude is relatively cheap and there's more of it today than in recent years should shelve the project altogether, Swift said.

"We are in a dramatically different environment than we were in when Keystone was proposed in 2008," he said. "We don't need to consider paying that (environmental) cost."

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Lower crude prices challenge Keystone pipeline

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Backers of the Keystone XL pipeline became emboldened recently by the prospect of a Republican-led Congress finally pushing the project through. But can dropping crude prices punch a hole in the controversial project? The cost of benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil dropped to $74.42 a barrel on Thursday - a 25% drop from the triple-digit highs it reached this summer.

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what would we do without the media?

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COAL COUNTY, Okla. - According to recent reports, victims of an oil rig explosion in Oklahoma told responders a space heater was the probable cause of the blast that killed three.

On December 19, an oil rig explosion near Coalgate, Oklahoma killed two and injured three.

One of those injured, 28-year-old Mark Pittman Jr., died from his injuries on January 3.

Recently, the Coal County Sheriff's Office provided the McAlester News-Capital with the initial incident reports from the explosion.

According to the McAlester News-Capital, in the reports, Coal County Investigator Jared Bailey details initial suspicions from victims and witnesses that a space heater caused the blast.

Coal County Deputy Jerry Ward reportedly told the investigator that a witness asked a gravely wounded Pittman Jr. what caused the blast.

"We had the heater on the floor," Pittman Jr. responded to Ward and the witness.

A few days later, Bailey also asked Danny Hoover, a directional driller for Dan D Drilling, what started the fire.

According to the McAlester News-Capital, Hoover was also on the rig floor and pointed to the space heater as a possible cause.

"I asked Daniel Hoover if he knew what started the fire, and Daniel Hoover stated at approximately 21:40 hours he was on the rig floor and the heater was going," Bailey wrote. "Daniel Hoover stated the heater was going because (another driller)...had forgotten his overalls and was cold."

Fire marshals also noted the presence of the space heater at the scene.

"According to Trenton Griffin, preliminary findings are the area of origin is on the rig floor around the north side of the doghouse and the space heater," Bailey said in his report.

The owner of the rig, Dan Darling, told the McAlester News-Capital, "the heater wasn't even supposed to be up on the floor."

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is still investigating the accident.
Visit the McAlester News-Capital for more on the story. See a typo? Report it here.

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Reports: Victim of tragic oil rig explosion told responders a space heater was cause of the blast

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COAL COUNTY, Okla. - According to recent reports, victims of an oil rig explosion in Oklahoma told responders a space heater was the probable cause of the blast that killed three. On December 19, an oil rig explosion near Coalgate, Oklahoma killed two and injured three.

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We all know basics Ms. Nurse

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Co-workers of a Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola from a sick patient say they worked for days without proper protective gear and that the hospital's Ebola protocols and procedures were unclear and inadequate, leaving workers and hospital systems prone to contamination, according to a statement by the largest U.S. nurses' union.

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Add as an interest to stay up to date on the latest news, video, and analysis from ABC News.

The statement, which was provided by National Nurses United on behalf of several registered nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, details hospital procedures after Thomas Eric Duncan arrived at the hospital. The nurses are not represented by the union, and the group declined to reveal the nurses' identities.

Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola Sept. 30 and died Oct. 8. Nina Pham, one of about 70 staff members who cared for Duncan, was diagnosed Sunday with the virus. Pham's colleagues say the hospital was ill-equipped to handle the situation.

"No one knew what the protocols were or were able to verify what kind of personal protective equipment should be worn and there was no training," the statement reads.

Duncan was left in a nonquarantined zone for several hours, and a nurse supervisor faced resistance from hospital authorities after demanding that Duncan be moved to an isolation unit, according to the union's statement. Additionally, Duncan's lab specimens were sent through the hospital's tube system, potentially contaminating the system, the nurses said.

Wilmot Chayee/AP Photo

Nurses who interacted with Duncan were given the option of wearing special N95 masks, but some supervisors said the masks were not necessary, the nurses said, according to the statement.

"For their necks, nurses had to use medical tape, that is not impermeable and has permeable seams, to wrap around their necks in order to protect themselves, and had to put on the tape and take it off on their own," the statement reads.

"Nurses had to interact with Mr. Duncan with whatever protective equipment was available, at a time when he had copious amounts of diarrhea and vomiting which produces a lot of contagious fluids."

A hospital spokesman did not respond to specific claims by the nurses but said the hospital has not received similar complaints.

"Patient and employee safety is our greatest priority and we take compliance very seriously," hospital spokesman Wendell Watson said in a statement. "We have numerous measures in place to provide a safe working environment, including mandatory annual training and a 24/7 hotline and other mechanisms that allow for anonymous reporting.

"Our nursing staff is committed to providing quality, compassionate care, as we have always known, and as the world has seen firsthand in recent days. We will continue to review and respond to any concerns raised by our nurses and all employees."

Courtesy Pham Family

The problems encountered at the Dallas hospital are reflective of training and equipment insufficiencies at hospitals across the country, Deborah Burger, co-president of National Nurses United, told ABC News.

"What concerns me is that this validated what our systems say all over the country throughout the last two months, that hospitals are not prepared to take care of Ebola patients," she said. "It is disturbing to have all of our concerns validated in one hospital."

The criticisms follow a Tuesday admission by Thomas Frieden, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, who said he regrets not sending a larger team of experts to Texas when Duncan was first diagnosed with Ebola.

The CDC could have sent a "more robust management team and been more hands on from day one," Frieden said. "Looking back, we say we should have put an even larger team on the ground immediately."

Ebola has killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to recent figures by the World Health Organization.

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Dallas Nurses Accuse Hospital of Sloppy Ebola Protocols

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Co-workers of a Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola from a sick patient say they worked for days without proper protective gear - and that the hospital's Ebola protocols and procedures were unclear and inadequate, leaving workers and hospital systems prone to contamination, according to a statement by...

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national institute for occupational safety and health

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CDC - Ebola Virus Disease - NIOSH Workplace Safety & Health Topic

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CDC has developed Ebola prevention and control recommendations for healthcare workers, laboratory workers, air medical transport, mortuary and funeral workers, and first responders such as firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and police officers. CDC has also developed guidance for airline workers and humanitarian workers.

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international news & an update for all those paranoid

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if we have make it harder to be president would we have better canidates?

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Visiting the Jefferson Memorial in Washington never gets old to me.

Not only is it architecturally stunning, but the quotes on the four panels surrounding the sculpture of our third president stir a profound sense of patriotism and spiritual clarity inside me.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

"Almighty God hath created the mind free."

"God who gave us life gave us liberty."

And then there's my favorite:

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind."

That quote goes on to talk about the importance of having a fluid Constitution, one that reflects the society of the time as opposed to "the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

It's really quite profound when you think about it: a founding father granting future generations permission to make changes to a document with the ink barely dry on the original. And we have taken Jefferson up on his suggestion, such as granting women the right to vote.

But that tends to be the nature of most of the biggest changes that have been made to the Constitution: affecting the rights and behavior of citizens as opposed to the structure of the government itself.

Today, given how money, special interest groups and technology, including electronic media, have diseased the entire political process, I believe it's time we considered some sweeping changes.

And I believe those changes should start at the very top -- the president. There are three ways America can make the presidency better equipped to respond to the 21st century world.

The first would recognize that the functioning of the federal government is impeded by a president's bid to run for re-election. So how can we change that? We start by eliminating second terms.

President Obama's open mic comment, telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have "more flexibility" to discuss missile defense after the November election, wasn't as much an appalling gaffe as it was an accurate assessment of the inherent flaw of a two-term system for presidents.

In an election year, each time the president goes to Congress with a new initiative it's inevitably going to be met with partisan grandstanding and resistance.

And that's just one negative byproduct of having two terms for a president.

When you think about it, the first year is spent operating under the previous administration's budget, and part of the third and all of the fourth are spent running for re-election. Essentially we give a new president about 18 months to focus on creating meaningful policies. A good chunk of the rest of the term is spent fundraising.

But what if we were to amend the Constitution so that each president gets only one six-year term? He or she spends five years focused on governing without handwringing over a bid for re-election.

The second change: a requirement that no person could be elected president without prior military experience.

I'm OK with GOP candidates questioning Obama's foreign policy. I'm not OK with all of this tough talk about Iran, with the risk of starting another war, by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, who chose not to serve during the Vietnam War.

Military experience does not necessarily mean serving in wartime, and clearly military experience alone doesn't guarantee a sharp strategic mind (insert President George W. Bush joke here).

But it just seems logical that if you're going to be called commander in chief, there should something tangible on your resume to suggest that title has been earned and not handed to you by a super PAC. It was our 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said, "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can."

When I hear Romney, Gingrich and Rick Santorum speak about Iran, their words are not spoken through the filter of Eisenhower's insight, but rather shouted arrogantly out of a megaphone at some people who hate Obama.

It's so twisted that the views of the only candidate with military experience, Rep. Ron Paul, are routinely dismissed as being naive by a handful of warmongers who don't look as if they've ever thrown a punch in their lives.

While I agree with the overall tone Obama has taken in the Middle East, I believe he too would have been better served with military experience. It certainly would have added credibility to his push to overturn the "don't ask, don't tell" policy as well as his decision on the Afghanistan surge.

The third change I would like to see may seem small, but it's a long overdue amendment: Raise the age of eligibility to run for president from 35 to 45 -- and cap it at 70.

I know, I know, President Reagan was great -- for some -- but we don't need to be wondering if the person we elect is going to die while in the White House. And since 35 is the new 25, we definitely don't need an inexperienced youngster with his or her finger on the button either.

We're living longer and getting married later, so it would only stand to reason that we alter the age window to reflect those changes. And in this same vein, it would also make sense to establish term limits on members of Congress, and cap the amount of money one can spend on elections.

If we all take a look around, we'll see a good chunk of our political process has been kidnapped by career politicians and lobbyists, working to serve each other more than the American people. In order to rescue this process we must do what Jefferson encouraged us to do -- adapt.

Change.

And I believe such changes should -- no, need to -- start at the top.

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three new rules for u.s. presidents - cnn

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Visiting the Jefferson Memorial in Washington never gets old to me. Not only is it architecturally stunning, but the quotes on the four panels surrounding the sculpture of our third president stir a profound sense of patriotism and spiritual clarity inside me. "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

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What does America think of political parties?

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Is it time to get rid of political parties?

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Debate.org is a dynamic social community where you can voice your opinion on today's hottest issues.

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helpful or useless?

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Imagine a democratic political system in which no one is allowed to be a member of a political party. How would things be different?

My hypothesis is that confirmation bias, or cognitive dissonance, or something of that nature, influences voters to irrationally agree with the platform of their own party no matter what the facts suggest. My hypothesis is easy enough to test. All you'd need to do is come up with a phony issue and present it to your test subjects as something to which their party agrees, or disagrees, and see if party affiliation influences opinions. I think the effect would be large.

Now imagine what would happen to campaign funding if political parties didn't exist. In our current system, a union can give a million dollars to the Democratic Party and it doesn't seem too wrong because the party represents about half of the voters in the country. But if political parties didn't exist, unions or corporate interests would have to donate to individuals. And a large donation to an individual campaign would either be illegal or it would look so much like a bribe that it would be counter-productive.

I think political parties made sense in pre-Internet times. It was a good way to organize and to produce candidates who had a legitimate chance of getting elected. Now it's easy to imagine the Internet being a better platform for electing the right people. The problem is that there's no way to get to a different type of system from here. The major parties are too entrenched to give up power, and belonging to organizations is a fundamental freedom.

I'm fascinated by the fact that the freedom to organize into political parties limits our other freedoms more than most people realize. Political parties make the government incompetent, and the result of ineffective government is that citizens are less prosperous. Poverty is the ultimate restriction of freedom.

If Thomas Jefferson sprung back to life today, and learned about the Internet, I wonder how he would recommend changing the Constitution of the United States. I think he would favor banning political parties.

Imagine a democratic political system in which no one is allowed to be a member of a political party. How would things be different?

My hypothesis is that confirmation bias, or cognitive dissonance, or something of that nature, influences voters to irrationally agree with the platform of their own party no matter what the facts suggest. My hypothesis is easy enough to test. All you'd need to do is come up with a phony issue and present it to your test subjects as something to which their party agrees, or disagrees, and see if party affiliation influences opinions. I think the effect would be large.

Now imagine what would happen to campaign funding if political parties didn't exist. In our current system, a union can give a million dollars to the Democratic Party and it doesn't seem too wrong because the party represents about half of the voters in the country. But if political parties didn't exist, unions or corporate interests would have to donate to individuals. And a large donation to an individual campaign would either be illegal or it would look so much like a bribe that it would be counter-productive.

I think political parties made sense in pre-Internet times. It was a good way to organize and to produce candidates who had a legitimate chance of getting elected. Now it's easy to imagine the Internet being a better platform for electing the right people. The problem is that there's no way to get to a different type of system from here. The major parties are too entrenched to give up power, and belonging to organizations is a fundamental freedom.

I'm fascinated by the fact that the freedom to organize into political parties limits our other freedoms more than most people realize. Political parties make the government incompetent, and the result of ineffective government is that citizens are less prosperous. Poverty is the ultimate restriction of freedom.

If Thomas Jefferson sprung back to life today, and learned about the Internet, I wonder how he would recommend changing the Constitution of the United States. I think he would favor banning political parties.

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Eliminating Political Parties - Dilbert Blog

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Imagine a democratic political system in which no one is allowed to be a member of a political party. How would things be different? My hypothesis is that confirmation bias, or cognitive dissonance, or something of that nature, influences voters to irrationally agree with the platform of their own party no matter what the facts ...

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Does military service still matter in the presidency

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Does military service still matter in the presidency

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YES but.... there's a catch