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Sarah Palin, who coined the phrase “drill, baby, drill” during the 2008 presidential campaign, is trying to transform the dark cloud of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill into a big silver lining for the oil industry.

According to Palin, the environmental disaster caused by offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is a forceful argument for opening the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge and other fragile environments to oil and gas exploration. Naturally, she’s also blaming people who care about the environment for indirectly causing the spill, because by succeeding in keeping ANWR closed to oil exploration they’ve forced BP and other oil companies to drill offshore.

“Xtreme Greenies: see now why we push ‘drill,baby,drill’ of known reserves & promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?” Palin wrote in her Twitter account on June 1 [2010].

A few days earlier, after President Obama announced a six-month moratorium on deep-water offshore drilling, Palin wrote another similar tweet to her followers: “Deep offshore moratorium? Then correspondingly allow more onshore drilling, incl ANWR reserves. Domestic oil’s still required in US industry.”

Despite her claim to foreknowledge of the hazards of offshore drilling, Palin has been a longtime advocate of letting oil companies explore for oil pretty much anywhere they can sink a drill bit–offshore, onshore and everywhere in between.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin argued that increasing U.S. oil production with more offshore drilling would help the United States become energy independent and lower gasoline prices for consumers, even though the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that it would take nearly two decades for offshore drilling to have any effect on gas prices–and even then would lower prices by only a few pennies.

“I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem or that more supply won’t ultimately affect prices,” Palin said. “Of course it will affect prices.”

And in her October 2008 vice presidential debate with Joe Biden, Palin lambasted Biden for opposing offshore drilling.

“You even called drilling–safe, environmentally-friendly drilling offshore–as raping the outer continental shelf,” Palin said . “There–with new technology, with tiny footprints even on land, it is safe to drill and we need to do more of that.”

Palin is certainly free to change her mind–the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is causing a lot of people to rethink their position on offshore drilling. But, frankly, her recent tweets just make her sound like a twit.

Also Read:

• Election 2008: Sarah Palin on Energy and the Environment
• Sarah Palin on Climate Change: The Education of a Conservative Pundit
• What Can Pro-Environment Voters Learn from the Biden-Palin Debate?
  How Do Biden and Palin Differ on ANWR, Offshore Drilling and Renewable Energy?

At a congressional hearing on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill today, Texas Republican Joe Barton sent shock waves across Capitol Hill and along the Gulf Coast when he publicly apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for what he called a White House “shakedown” that established a BP-financed $20 billion relief fund for victims of the oil spill.

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” Barton said. “I think it is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown–in this case a $20 billion shakedown–with the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history, which has no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for our nation’s future.

“I’m only speaking for myself. I’m not speaking for anyone else, but I apologize,” Barton added. “I do not want to live in a county where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, [it is] subject to some sort of political pressure that, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown.”

Comments this misguided, declared as they were by a high-ranking public official while the nation’s worst man-made environmental disaster continues to grow worse every day, would have caused a stir no matter who said them. But the comments carried extra weight coming from Barton, who is the highest ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and in line to become committee chair if the GOP succeeds in taking back the House in the November mid-term election.

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The Senate today voted 53 to 47 to reject a resolution sponsored by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) that would have stopped the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from large polluters such as factories, power plants and oil refineries.

Murkowski, the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, claimed the EPA was exceeding its authority, saying that “this resolution is about protecting the economy and preventing agency overreach.” At an EPA environmental conference for small-business owners earlier this week, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson accused Murkowski of trying to undermine the agency’s efforts to control emissions from large polluters.

“It would take away EPA’s ability to take action on climate change,” Jackson said of Murkowski’s resolution, which environmentalists nicknamed the Dirty Air Act. “And it would ignore and override scientific findings, allowing big oil companies, big refineries and others to continue to pollute without any oversight or consequence. Finally, it will result in exactly zero protections for small businesses.”

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After many failed attempts, BP is finally making progress at containing the oil that is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.

Over the weekend, BP nearly doubled the amount of crude oil it is collecting from the ruptured undersea oil well that has been spewing oil into the gulf since April 20, when the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig killed 11 people and started the largest man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Despite that positive news, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the federal government’s response manager for the disaster, said that surface cleanup of the oil spill would take “well into the fall” and that repairing environmental damage and restoring wildlife habitat are “long-term issues” that “will be years” of ongoing effort.

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Hurricane season begins today, and the experts are predicting a high number of storms between now and November 30. Officially, the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expects an “active to extremely active” hurricane season in 2010.

According to NOAA, there is a 70 percent probability that the six-month hurricane season (June 1-November 30) will produce 14 to 23 named storms, which are defined as storms with top winds of 39 miles per hour (mph) or higher. Eight to 14 of those named storms are expected to be hurricanes with top winds of 74 mph or higher, and 3 to 7 could be major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5) with winds of at least 111 mph.

“If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared.”

Meanwhile, scientists are worried that severe hurricanes sweeping through the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico could push oil from the massive BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill deep into coastal marshes, causing even more environmental damage.

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