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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

February 28, Donald Trump delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress. As NPR (formerly National Public Radio) notes [npr.org], this (annotated transcript [vox.com]) (61-minute video [youtube.com]) was not a State of the Union Address.

While completely ignoring the clean energy industry, Trump repeatedly stated falsehoods about the coal industry and tar sands oil pipelines.

The Center for American Progress reports [thinkprogress.org]

Coal jobs actually rose [snl.com][1] in the last half of 2016, proving yet again that the health of the industry has more to do with market factors than a regulatory "war on coal".

After the election, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) admitted [thinkprogress.org] that ending the "war on coal" may not actually bring back jobs. Energy experts largely agree [thinkprogress.org] that coal jobs are not coming back as long as fracked gas and renewable energy both remain cheap.

[...]Ignoring the millions of jobs [thinkprogress.org] created by the clean energy industry, [...] he touted his attention to two stalled oil pipelines.

[...]Trump's directive that the pipeline be made with American steel is likely to have little effect [reuters.com], because the American steel industry is not equipped to meet the project's requirements, and because the pipeline segments have for the most part already been purchased and constructed. What's more, an investigation by DeSmogBlog [desmogblog.com] found that a steel company with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin stands to gain should the project move forward.

Trump's claim that the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines would create tens of thousands of jobs is false, but it's not new. The industry, and the company that wants to build the pipeline, has been using numbers like this for years. Yet the State Department found in 2013 that the Keystone XL pipeline would create only 35 permanent jobs [thinkprogress.org], and 16,000 direct and indirect jobs [nytimes.com] [paywall [soylentnews.org]] that would not last far beyond the construction phase.

It would, however, pump oil equal to the carbon emissions of 51 coal plants every year. Similarly, the Dakota Access pipeline will create only 40 permanent jobs [hcn.org] along the entire line when all is said and done.

[1] The hyperlink in TFA is a real turd sandwich. (Doesn't it just grind your gears when people don't know what a proper hyperlink looks like?) The SNL Financials site is paywalled. (Again, writers: Mention this stuff. Better yet: Find non-paywalled sources.) Even trying [google.com] to get a Google cache failed to get any content.

Note: ThinkProgress redirects all accesses of their pages and will attach tracking numbers. I have made sure that those are not in the URLs. While their content is still very good, the last time they got a new web guy, they settled for a real loser.

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