What am I missing here? Canadian media this week are reporting that billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. paid their fair nation a visit to scope out the tar sands oil fields.

Said the Globe and Mail:

Greg Stringham, vice-president at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, told local news media that the two men asked the industry body to give a general overview of the oil sands and Canada's position in the energy world.

Why those two, and why the tar sands?

Also this week, enviros launched the No Dirty Energy campaign for EARTHWORKS' Oil and Gas Accountability Project. Their case against this oil source:

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Update 3:51 p.m.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson was in town this afternoon so I caught him after a speech and asked him if the EPA should end its support for the Port of Seattle's voluntary approach to ending air pollution.

He didn't exactly say yes, but he skittered right up to that answer:

If our voluntary programs are not meeting our health needs, then they need to be reconsidered.

He went on to brag about putting into effect the most restrictive rules in history on small particulates and ozone, but of course didn't wax eloquent about how he didn't go as low as scientists suggested was necessary.

Original post: Our recent story on the cancer risk posed in part by industry but mostly by cars and trucks in south Seattle pointed out a glaring fault in the study on which the story was based: It ignored the contribution from anything related to the airports and seaport in the area.

Comes now a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that shows just how bad the gunk coming out of ships is. (The study isn't posted online yet but when it is I'll link to it here. Meanwhile, here is a story from UC San Diego's Web site.)

According to the scientists behind the study, it's the first time researchers have measured the shipping industry's contribution to the fine particulates that can travel far and lodge in a person's lungs. And the findings give one pause: Soot from the LA-Long Beach port was measured down off the pier of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, just north of San Diego, a distance of 94 miles according to Mapquest (although smoke travels a somewhat more direct route, not having to hop onto I-5).

The study was headed by Mark Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego, who said health officials should be paying attention:

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After our recent posts highlighting T. Boone Pickens' energy-salvation plan, we heard quite a few comments about why the wily Texas oilman's scheme is self-serving, outrageous, yadda yadda.

But don't miss today's Bill Virgin column, which provides the most lucid and straightforward deconstruction of the Pickens plan I've seen to date. Virgin's essence: It won't really work.

Virgin, whose work is a consistently good read, explains in today's piece:

There's the little matter of getting the energy to its user. Pickens envisions planting a swath of the Midwest and Great Plains, from North Dakota to Texas, with wind turbines (to illustrate why there, the Pickens Plan Web site uses a map from Seattle-based 3Tier, which assesses wind, solar and hydro potential). But that's not where the people are. Getting the electricity to them will cost hundreds of billions on top of the $1 trillion bill for the wind farms.

He also points out that the natural gas integral to Pickens' plan ain't exactly readily available, either, not anything like the network of service stations selling gasoline. Plus, it probably involves imported liquified natural gas, which Bill notes ran into bigtime problems getting sited in Oregon and which I'll point out is nothing like a good bargain, carbonwise. You have to freeze and liquify the stuff and ship it across the ocean in many cases. And it has this tendency to go kaboom, meaning it's a target for terrorists.

(Virgin doesn't even get into the speculation that Pickens' plans is partially tied to a water enterprise in which he's involved that, according to this theory, could use the nice right-of-way that Pickens could acquire by moving wind power.)

Virgin's solution?

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The very liberal MoveOn.org is hosting a rally at Westlake Center this evening protesting presidential candidate John McCain's energy plan. The group says that the proposal will subsidize oil production when it could support locally produced, clean energy.

The group cites a report from the Center for American Progress, pulling out numbers that tally the effect on Washington alone:

McCain's plan would give away $920 million of Washington's tax dollars to oil companies in the next five years. If that money were spent on clean energy projects right here in Washington, we could:

create at least 2,900 new green jobs,

weatherize 330,000 homes, saving energy AND saving consumers an average of $360 a year in reduced utility bills, or

power 230,000 or more homes with clean electricity from wind and/or geothermal power

If you're interested in attending the rally in support or opposition, here are the details:

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I'm not really sure what to think about this story that ran recently in Great Britain's Telegraph.co.uk, headlined "Mad Cows (and Livid Lambs)" that posits the theory that animals increasingly are attacking humans.

Well, actually, the piece skips right past offering this as theory and says there's been a recent upsurge of attacks on humans by elephants, wolves, lions, cougars, foxes, bears, and even dingos, cats and dogs. To name a few. (And yes, I'm aware that dingos are basically wild dogs.) The Telegraph's piece asserts:

One of the world's leading ethologists (specialists in animal behaviour) believes that a critical point has been crossed and animals are beginning to snap back. After centuries of being eaten, evicted, subjected to vivisection, killed for fun, worn as hats and made to ride bicycles in circuses, something is causing them to turn on us. And it is being taken seriously enough by scientists that it has earned its own acronym: HAC - 'human-animal conflict'.

I was fully prepared to dismiss this as some thinly sourced navel-gazing. But the unbylined article goes on to quote what appear to be academics with good credentials, and also explores the view that this is all so much anthropomorphism.

Now, people much more learned than I have cast doubt on some aspects of the idea.

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Keeping with the theme of the Harry Reid-Boone Pickens foner mentioned in our last post, here are some other interesting updates on the energy situation today:

Columnist Tom Friedman of The New York Times brings up an obvious contradiction in John McCain urging Congress to "get back to work" on energy by allowing an expansion of offshore drilling. A scant two weeks ago, the Senate for the eighth time failed to extend the tax credits for solar and wind power that backers say are so crucial to the industries' solidiering on. McCain missed the vote -- just as he'd missed all the other votes on the subject. Barack Obama also missed the last vote, although he'd been there to support it on three other occasions. Says Friedman:

Both the wind and solar industries depend on these credits -- which expire in December -- to scale their businesses and become competitive with coal, oil and natural gas. Unlike offshore drilling, these credits could have an immediate impact on America's energy profile.

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Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, fresh off unveiling his plan for energy independence, teamed up today with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to preview their upcoming National Energy Summit in Las Vegas. (Am I the only one who sees a fair bit of irony in scheduling this in what has to date been one of the least sustainable cities on the planet? But then again, I guess it's where they could sure collect a lot of sunlight for electricity.)

It's a star-studded -- and, the two gents hastened to add, several times, bipartisan -- cast of characters including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, the Former Occupant from Arkansas himself, and others. We'll let Reid hum a few bars:

This is an unusal situation where we have wide-ranging people attending this event. Who would have thought last year that T. Boone Pickens and Sen. Harry Reid would in a boat pulling the oar the same say and one pushing equally with the other?

Pickens -- who had just finished briefing Republican presidential candidate John McCain on energy issues -- paints himself as horrified by the $700 billion annually we're sending out of the country to feed our oil habit:

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We stuck our necks out a tiny bit this morning by quoting a Puget Sound Clean Air Agency spokeswoman saying a smog watch was pretty much a sure thing for today. But the air-heads came through with the watch late this morning as expected. Here's their press release.

If the ozone readings go high enough, Seattle could be in violation of the federal smog standard for the first time since 1992. Not a pretty picture, this brown cast to the air over the Emerald City.

It was interesting to see some of the responses in the Sound Off column this morning. Well, interesting is being kind. There were some real head-scratchers in there. To wit:

Posted by ducttape2 at 8/14/08 8:34 a.m.

Off to mow my yard and grill.

I'll go to the store later and I'll drive the truck to burn some extra carbon while I'm at it.

Just do'in my part.

And...

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Two orca-related news items our orca-crazy Dateline Earth readers might want to know about:

It looks like the guy who shocked himself when he cut an Orcas Island power line to protest the 2006 death of Luna the killer whale won't be getting any jail time. Prosecutors said Gabriel Mondragon has suffered enough because he lost an arm and several toes. You'll recall that Luna was somehow separated as a very young orca from its pod, which frequents the waters around Puget Sound. Then he grew very friendly with boaters up in Gold River, B.C., which ultimately led to his death when he was chopped up in a huge propeller. So sad. (It was also sad to see the P-I and another local paper report that Mondragon had "electrocuted himself," which would imply he died.) Mondragon said he was mad at "rich white people" for killing Luna, although if you examine the case carefully it was the actions of the local first nation at Gold River (what we call American Indians on this side of the border) that was the biggest factor in turning back plans to capture Luna and reunite him with his family a la Springer.

The only other remaining opportunity to reclaim a "lost" orca, say local orca lovers, is the one involving Lolita the killer whale, who lives at the Miami Seaqarium. Last Friday, protesters were scheduled to assemble on Miami's Rickenbacker Causeway to protest the continued captivity of Lolita. Last Friday was August 8, the anniversary of the infamous Penn Cove orca round-up that led to a ban on collecting Puget Sound's orcas for aqauariums and the like. The Vancouver Sun's Judith Lavoie commemorated the anniversary, although I haven't heard what happened, if anything, at the Miami protest. Nothing in The Miami Herald. Probably just another bout of sign-waving, we suppose, but if anyone has a first-hand account, let us know. The Seaquarium says it's questionable whether Lolita could reintegrate into life with wild orcas in Puget Sound, although orca scientist cum defender Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research, in a recent news release, begged to differ:

Lolita can have the same or better quality of food and care that she now receives. I think it is unconscionable that an animal that in nature swims 75 miles per day within a range of hundreds to thousands of miles should be subjected to a lifetime of floating in a bathtub-size pool. It is directly analogous to locking a child in a closet for its lifetime.

Enviros are claiming a victory today in keeping limits on the U.S. Navy's use of low-frequency sonar in the Pacific Ocean.

The Natural Resources Defense Council says an agreement approved today by a federal judge in San Francisco* allows the Navy to only slightly expand the scope of its training missions using the sonar. The Navy had sought to expand the sonar's use to up to 70 percent of the world's oceans.

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