Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) got a grade-school education on statistics during a recent hearing on oil and natural gas production on federal lands where one expert referred to her claims on greenhouse gases as a “complete falsehood.”
AOC, the ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, began Tuesday’s hearing by claiming that that oil and gas production on federal land accounted for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Going further, she said, this is why the Green New Deal is necessary to wean the federal government off incentives to allow for drilling on public land.
Not so, said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance. That claim, which was recently reneged by the Interior Department, is based on a misreading of the statistics of greenhouse gas emissions across the country of which only a small portion come from drilling on federal lands.
“I just want to start off by correcting something the ranking member said in her opening statement. She claimed that oil and gas production on federal lands is responsible for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Sgamma. “That’s based on a misreading of a USGS