Double Jeopardy?

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an environmental disaster, and cleaning it up takes more than simply plugging a leak and mopping it up. Photo galleries try to capture the extent and degree of the damage. But what of the hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals being dumped into the Gulf as a chaser? The New York Times has a piece about this necessary evil.

Even in the best cases, dispersants are applied in what might be termed a lose-lose strategy. Scientists make the calculation that it is better to have the ocean filled with low concentrations of the dispersant chemicals — which are in themselves mild to moderate poisons — than to have dense oil on the surface or washing up onshore, places where it is most likely to harm wildlife.

Companies are protective of their dispersant formulas, and in some cases these chemicals have had their approval pulled in other countries. Speakeasy Science has some details on a few of the chemicals in use, based on MSDS information. Right now, this is preferable to a vast, suffocating oil slick but it will be important to continue to monitor the area long after the clean-up is complete. As the NYT describes it, this is "one of the largest and most aggressive experiments with chemical dispersants in the history of the country, and perhaps the world."

Drill Baby, Drill

This comes from the blog Fake Science ("For when the facts are too confusing") which is full of 'educational' posters like this one, some of which are quite funny. They seem to have missed Step 3.5 though: wring the oil out of waterfowl and other marine life.

Turning Oil Into Neuroscience

This report just in - neuroscientist and Ottawa native Bruce McNaughton was lured back across the border from Arizona to the academic powerhouse that is the University of Lethbridge. The bait? A cool $20 mill from the province of Alberta - the Polaris award. A lot of people are saying "HOLY SHITBALLS!!!!! THAT'S A LOT OF $$$$$$$!!!" And right they are. That's almost as many hits as we get by the minute here at the BayBlab (although we certainly aren't getting paid any coin for it). But let's not get too worked up about the whole thing. After all, the guy had a paper in SCIENCE (tm) just last year. He's a SCIENCE (tm) SuperStar! SuperStars are SuperStars and so we shouldn't be surprised to see that it takes SuperStar cash to reel them in. This deal seems pretty reasonable to me when you line it up with some other Alberta blockbusters:

Bruce McNaughton (Neuroscientist): $20,000,000 over 20 years.

Jarome Iginla (Hockey Player): $21,000,000 over 3 years.

Stephen Harper (Politician): $840,000 over 3 years.

Boone Pickens (Oil Tycoon): $1,000,000,000 + per year.

So be warned world - Alberta oil is waving a big fat wad of cash and they're coming after your scientists! And by the looks of it, some of them might even be crazy enough to go live there...

Do Not Fear; Solar Power Plants are Almost Here

I thought this NPR Podcast from back in March was pretty good. Ira talks to a bunch of people from the solar power industry and the message is surprisingly optimistic. Large-scale solar power plants are apparently on the verge of becoming profitable, and utility companies are getting seriously interested. The clincher is that if the ball gets rolling, they claim that a hundred 10,000 square-mile plant would be enough to provide a sustainable source of energy to the entire US (does this include the aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines?).

Maybe the imminent end of oil doesn't spell Armageddon for civilization after all. Although it's not clear how efficient fertilizer production would be without fossil fuels as a hydrogen source, and we'd still need to come up with a replacement material for the plastic in those Falcon tubes. But, unlike biofuels, solar power may provide a feasible option for a sustainable, but still modern economy.

ERRATUM: I believe I erroneously cited that a 100 mile squared piece of land would collect enough solar power for the US. I think what they actually say is 100 miles by 100 miles, or 10,000 square miles. Thus proving that you're better of just listening to the podcast yourself...

Nature Editorial Blasts Canadian Government for Scientific Ignorance

The fact that the Canadian Harper government has so little regard for anything that slows the pace of oil extraction should come as no surprise, but now their ignorance has even managed to catch the attention of the world's most prestigious scientific journal:

"Concerns can only be enhanced by the government's manifest disregard for science. Since prime minister Stephen Harper came to power, his government has been sceptical of the science on climate change and has backed away from Canada's Kyoto commitment. In January, it muzzled Environment Canada's scientists, ordering them to route all media enquires through Ottawa to control the agency's media message. Last week, the prime minister and members of the cabinet failed to attend a ceremony to honour the Canadian scientists who contributed to the international climate-change report that won a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Harper sees himself as the leader of a 'global energy powerhouse' and is committing Canada to a fossil-fuel economy. More than 40 companies have a stake in mining and upgrading the bitumen from the oil sands in Alberta and churning out 1.2 million barrels a day. This activity generates three times as much greenhouse gas as conventional oil drilling. Emissions from Canada's oil and gas industry have risen by 42% since 1990."

These guys are bad news. They need their asses booted out of office before they manage to completely sell off the country and send the rest of us back to the stone age. Luckily, we may soon have the chance to do just that. See south of the border for a preview of where a few years of a Conservative majority is likely to take us.

Putin Trying to Redraw the Maps

In an effort to grab up huge oil reserves and potential shipping lanes, Russian geologists are claiming that a massive piece of the Russian continental shelf extends under nearly half the Arctic ice sheet, and therefore belongs to mother Russia.

The claim could even be a challenge to Canadian sovereignty, so we need to be getting our facts together. I think Rob should return to his family heritage and start re-charting the Arctic. If we play our cards right, we might even still have time to turn the whole thing around and annex Russia:

"Frankly I think it's a little bit strange," Sergey Priamikov, the international co-operation director of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St Petersburg, told the Guardian. "Canada could make exactly the same claim. The Canadians could say that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Canadian shelf, which means Russia should in fact belong to Canada, together with the whole of Eurasia." (Quoted in The Guardian)

Our Empire needs you Rob. All hail the Empire of Canada!

New Canadian Carbon Legislation Pays off for Oil Tycoons

Talk about jumping on a business opportunity. Only days after the federal government announced its latest plan for climate change, which stipulates 18% reductions in industrial CO2 production by 2010 and the payment of carbon taxes, Norway's Statoil today bought itself $2.2 billion worth of the Canadian oil sands. Interestingly, Statoil leads the world in carbon sequestration technology, and has previous experience in dealing on carbon markets through the EU emission trading scheme. The Norewegian state-owned oil company is one of the fastest growing in the world. Calgary oil tycoon and world's 382nd richest man, Clayton Riddell, (pictured above) and his company Paramount Resources Ltd. will make nearly $1 billion off this deal. Now that's what I call timing the market.

This Just In: The Earth is Getting Wamer

Maybe it's the fact that winter just doesn't seem to be happening this year (what, no tobagganing??!!), or maybe its the impact of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. Whatever the reason, it seems that even the most skeptical of the powers-that-be are finally coming to grips with the fact the global waming is really happening as it becomes an increasingly important issue in public opinion. Despite the obvious reality of global waming I've found some recent happenings pleasantly shocking and maybe even historical (if a little too late):

• Just today, multinational oil mogul Exxon has announced a reversal of its longtime denial stance, cutting its funding to the "global waming's not happening" think tanks (such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which only last year was running those infamous "carbon dioxide is life" ads), and joining greenhouse gas reduction talks being sponsored by Resources for the Future. This may well be in response to recent moves by the now democrat-controlled US congress to introduce anti-greenhouse legislation.

• Likewise, global warming has been taking centre stage in Canadian politics. It seems like a serious committment to climate change will be a cornerstone of newly elected Liberal leader Stephan Dion's platform in the next federal election, and more recently even the Conservatives have been getting proactive. After last week's cabinet shuffle, new Environment Minister John Baird's first move has been to publicly accept global warming and the need to act on climate change. This is pretty much an about face from the "scrap/sabotage Kyoto" message the government was getting out under the gong show that was previous minister Rona Ambrose.

• Of course, now that everyone seems to be getting on the same page, it may already be too late to change the course of global warming. But not to worry, our government is working to make sure the Canadian economy capitalizes. Talk is reviving these days about opening up an Arctic shipping route operating from Russia and China to Churchill, Manitoba on the Hudson Bay. This idea has been around for a while, as the northern route is shorter but blocked by ice through most of the year. However the Russians are now saying they have the icebreaking technology to get through, plus, as some point out, global warming will solve the ice problem soon enough anyway. Like it or not, the port of Churchill is likely to open up for international business as "The Gateway to North America" eventually, leading to a huge shift in the demographic, economic and environmental landscape of Canada. Currently, Churchill consists of 1, 100 people and at least as many polar bears.