Price to which Republican presidential hopeful and former Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich says he will reduce the price of a gallon of gas to if elected, which he's touting as the "Newt Gallon": $2.50
After Gingrich introduced the Twitter hashtag #250gas on Feb. 24, number of tweets that included it a day later: 2,900-3,500
Current average price of a gallon of gas: $3.72
Portion of Americans who blame President Obama for rising gas prices: 1 in 5
Portion who blame oil companies: 1 in 7
Increase in quarterly profits of the big five oil companies -- BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell -- per each penny increase in gas prices: $200 million
Percent by which the number of oil rigs operating in the U.S. has increased over the past three years: 400
Price of a gallon of gas that Gingrich called the "historic norm": $2-$2.50
Number of "Pinocchios" the Washington Post fact-checker gave him for that statement, out of a possible four indicating a blatant lie: 3
Estimated number of barrels of domestic oil that Gingrich said could be reached via deeper and more difficult drilling even with $2.50/gallon gas: 1.4 trillion
Number of metric tons of carbon dioxide released from each barrel of oil burned: 0.43
Total number of metric tons of carbon dioxide that would be released if Gingrich's plan to tap all that oil were successful: 602,000,000
Level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured in parts per million, that leading climate scientists say is the safe upper limit in order to avoid cataclysmic impacts: 350
Current level of atmospheric carbon dioxide: 392
The cost of delaying action on global warming according to Yale economist William Nordhaus, even using an outdate price for carbon: $4.1 trillion
If we were to stabilize the atmospheric carbon dioxide at roughly 550 ppm, degrees Fahrenheit by which the earth would warm: about 5.4
Warming in degrees Fahrenheit for which the world is currently on pace: 11
Date on which Newt Gingrich told Fox News that he believes "we don't know" whether man-made global warming is real: 11/30/2011
Percent of Americans who believe global warming is happening: 62
Rank of the South among the four U.S. regions where the greatest percentage of residents believe that global warming is affecting the weather: 1
(Click on figure to go to source. Image from the Newt Gingrich campaign website.)
INSTITUTE INDEX: The hidden costs of the 'Newt Gallon'
March 2, 2012
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Sue Sturgis
Sue is the editorial director of Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies.