Shell oil ends its controversial drilling operation in Alaska.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

Shell has abandoned its controversial drilling operations in the Alaskan Arctic in the face of mounting opposition. 

Its decision, which has been welcomed by environmental campaigners, follows disappointing results from an exploratory well drilled 80 miles off Alaska’s north-west coast. Shell said it had found oil and gas but not in sufficient quantities. 

The move is a major climbdown for the Anglo-Dutch group which had talked up the prospects of oil and gas in the region. Shell has spent about $7bn (£4.6bn) on Arctic offshore development in the hope there would be deposits worth pursuing, but now says operations are being ended for the “foreseeable future.” 

Shell is expected to take a hit of around $4.1bn as a result of the decision.

Part of those losses include the 2.1 billion that Shell paid in 2008 for leases to drill in the Chuckchi Sea. 

Which may help to explain why President Obama was unable to block this exploration even though he has been very vocal about his commitment to renewable resources and addressing climate change in a serious manner.

This really should not come as a surprise since Shell really only had until today to complete this initial operation which was focused on finding deposits large enough to demonstrate that this was a financially viable enterprise.

Well this is good news for Alaska, good news for environmentalists, and good news for the planet.

New study may prove to be the death knell for the Pebble Mine Project in Alaska. If fish could applaud they would be doing so.

Bristol Bay

Courtesy of the Juneau Empire: 

A government report indicates a large-scale copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region could have devastating effects on the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery and adversely affect Alaska Natives, whose culture is built around salmon. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday released its final assessment of the impact of mining in the Bristol Bay region. Its findings are similar to those of an earlier draft report, concluding that, depending on the size of the mine, up to 94 miles of streams would be destroyed in the mere build-out of the project, including losses of between 5 and 22 miles of streams known to provide salmon spawning and rearing habitat. Up to 5,350 acres of wetlands, ponds and lakes also would be lost due to the mine footprint. 

The report concludes that “large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay watershed poses significant near- and long-term risk to salmon, wildlife and Native Alaska cultures,” EPA regional administrator Dennis McLerran said in a conference call with reporters. 

The battle over the proposed Pebble Mine has been waged for years and extended beyond Alaska’s borders, with environmental activists like actor Robert Redford opposing development. Multinational jewelers have said they won’t use minerals mined from the Alaska prospect, and pension fund managers from California and New York City last year asked London-based Rio Tinto, a shareholder of mine owner Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., to divest, a request Rio Tinto said it planned to consider. 

This battle over the Pebble Mine has been waging now for over five years, and it may never have even began if Sarah Palin had not interfered in the the early initiative process: 

The two sides spent more than $10 million -- unprecedented for such efforts in Alaska -- and throughout it all, the state's highly popular first-term governor, Sarah Palin, held back. Alaska law forbids state officials from using state resources to advocate on ballot initiatives. 

Then, six days before the Aug. 26 vote, with the race looking close, Palin broke her silence. Asked about the initiative at a news conference, she invoked "personal privilege" to give an opinion. "Let me take my governor's hat off for just a minute here and tell you, personally, Prop. 4 -- I vote no on that," she said. "I have all the confidence in the world that [the Department of Environmental Conservation] and our [Department of Natural Resources] have great, very stringent regulations and policies already in place. We're going to make sure that mines operate only safely, soundly." 

Palin's comments rocked the contest. Within a day, the pro-mining coalition fighting the referendum had placed full-page ads with a picture of the governor and the word "NO." The initiative went down to defeat, with 57 percent of voters rejecting it. 

Three days later, Palin was named Republican Sen. John McCain's running mate, throwing Alaska into a media frenzy. But the fallout has lingered from an episode that may stand as one of the most consequential in Palin's 21-month tenure. The state ethics panel is examining whether her comments violated the law against state advocacy on ballot measures; it had already ruled that a state Web site was improperly slanted toward mining interests.

So one of Palin's last acts before being tapped by McCain was to help start a war up here between the fishermen and the supporters of the Pebble Mine. And people wonder why Alaskans dislike her so much.

Anyhow this new report might be the nail that we have been searching for to finally close the coffin on the Pebble Mine for good.

At least I certainly hope so.

Rick Santorum goes the "Full Monty" on his dislike of public education, environmentalists, and....prenatal testing?

Over the weekend Rick "Frothy Mixture" Santorum decided to stop using that frustrating internal self editing process and just let his inner Cotton Mather run free.

Here is what he had to say, courtesy of the Huffington Post.

"I've repeatedly said I don't question the president's faith," Santorum told host Bob Schieffer, denying what some have said was a signal that Santorum had challenged the legitimacy of Obama's Christianity. "I've repeatedly said that I believe the president's Christian -- he says he's Christian. But I am talking about his worldview, the way he addresses problems in this country, and they're different than most people view it in America." 

In other words, he's a Christian, but not the right KIND of Christian. I see what you did there Frothy.


In a speech to Tea Party conservatives on Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, Santorum had dismissed Obama's politics as being based in "some phony theology." 

"It's not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs," Santorum said. "It's about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology." 

An incredulous Bob Schieffer began his interview with Santorum Sunday by asking, "What in the world were you talking about?" 

"I was talking about the radical environmentalists," Santorum said, suggesting that they believe man should protect the earth, rather than "steward its resources." "I think that is a phony ideal. I don't believe that's what we're here to do ... We're not here to serve the earth. That is not the objective, man is the objective." 

In other words, according to Santorum's "theology," the planet earth is specifically put here to be environmentally raped and  stripped of its resources even IF that condemns future generations to enormous suffering or even the end of the human race as we know it. So THAT'S what a Christian is?


Earlier in the day on Saturday, Santorum had also said that health insurance plans shouldn't be required to cover prenatal testing, because that testing results in more abortions, as well as contending that government-run public education was "anachronistic." 

"Free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society," Santorum told the Ohio Christian Alliance conference. 

Asked by Schieffer about his claims that prenatal testing leads to more abortions, Santorum insisted that this was "a fact." 

"We're talking about specifically prenatal testing, and specifically amniocentesis, which is a procedure that actually creates a risk of having a miscarriage when you have it, and is done for the purposes of identifying maladies of a child in the womb. And in many cases -- and in fact in most cases -- most physicians recommend, if there is a problem, they recommend abortion," Santorum said.

On this last point it kind of sounds like Santorum is directly challenging Sarah Palin's pro-life stance, and special needs parenting credibility.

As she stated to the newspapers and in her book, pro-life Palin supposedly had the amniocentesis procedure done at 12 weeks, even though it is not supposed to be performed until between the 15th and 20th week of pregnancy. (Of course Palin had to have "had" the procedure, or else how could she explain knowing about Trig's condition before he was born?)

Here is Santorum saying that, not only does that procedure place the fetus at risk, but that there is no reason for an anti-abortion advocate to even have it done.

Aha! So the gauntlet has been thrown. What say you to that Sister Sarah?

And let's also remind ourselves that this rhetoric has done NOTHING to damage Santorum's standings with the faithful (As of right now he leads Romney by eight points nationally), and in fact this kind of talk might be the very thing that has brought him to the front of the pack.

So there you go Americans. THIS is who the Republicans think should be the leader of the free world.

Still considering staying home this November?