Alaska's Troublesome Glacier cracks up right beneath tour guide's feet

by Laurel Andrews, Alaska Dispatch, August 3, 2013

Setting up camp on Troublesome glacier. Courtesy Eric Rogers
 

Dog-mushing tour group Knik Glacier Tours was forced to shut down operations weeks earlier than planned when Troublesome Glacier, in Southcentral Alaska near Palmer, began to split open beneath the crew’s feet on Saturday, following weeks of hot weather that caused rapid melting on the glacier despite a thick covering of snow. 

“I’ve never seen a glacier deteriorate so fast,” Owner Rick Casillo said on Thursday. He has been leading tours on Troublesome Glacier for the past 10 years. 

Knik Glacier Tours leads 2-mile dog sledding tours on the glacier, using veteran Iditarod dogs that seamlessly navigate the route, allowing tourists to steer a second sled behind the lead musher.

At the beginning of the season, the crew sets up camp at lower elevations; as summer progresses and snow melts, the crew moves to higher elevations to stay on deep snow pack and away from bare ice. They had been camping at a high-elevation spot for around two weeks, where snow cover was measuring nine feet deep, when the glacial crevasses began to form. “That was the crazy thing about it,” Casillo said. "(Crevasses) usually don’t open up with that much snow.”

Crews discovered the first glacial crevasse, a 6-inch-wide hole in the glacier, in front of crew member Nick Guy’s tent on Saturday morning. The crevasse was only wide enough to stick your foot into, but it extended “probably 1,000 feet” into the depths of the glacier, Casillo said.

The crew marked the crevasse’s location, repositioned Guy’s tent, and continued on with their day. But soon, they discovered a second crevasse of similar size near the dog’s kennels. Then, a third.

As the extent of the rapidly-developing crevasses became clear, Casillo took to the air to survey the glacier’s conditions. Cracks were showing on the side of the glacier, and there didn’t appear to be anywhere safe to set up camp. So Casillo made the call to end the season then and there. “That was the first time I’ve actually had to shut down because of crevasses,” he said.

Snow is constantly melting on the glacier during summer months, but this season’s heat took the melt to a whole new level. Cloudless days and the burning sun brought temperatures that normally hover around 50 degrees on the glacier up into “t-shirt weather,” Musher Eric Rogers said.

Crews will also normally dig a ditch to position melting water away from the camp, but this year, “it turned into a stream, flowing down the glacier like a bandit,” Rogers said.   

Casillo had more than 100 people booked to tour the glacier in the next few weeks. “That was a tough thing to stomach,” he said, but he noted that the season had been profitable regardless. Among the cancellations were military veterans with the Wounded Warrior program, to whom Casillo had donated free tours. Casillo, an Iditarod runner who has renamed his kennel Battle Dawgs in support of Alaska’s Healing Hearts program, was most upset about having to cancel on the veterans.

This was Rogers’ first summer working on Troublesome Glacier. While he has seen operations shut down by snow and fog while working on glacier tours in Juneau, “I’ve never been chased out by crevasses,” he said.

Outhouse accident a bad omen?

Saturday was a surprise, because everything was “looking really great, everybody’s happy, and all of a sudden we start stepping in these holes in the ice,” Rogers said.

Rogers said that Saturday’s troubles really began, however, in the outhouse, after an accident proved to be a bad omen for the rest of the day.

Rogers described the tour group’s make-shift outhouse as a wooden structure sitting on two PVC pipes, which keep the structure aloft above the snow. Inside is a honey bucket that acts as the toilet. Every morning, Rogers gingerly steps into the outhouse, testing to make sure it’s stable on the snow.

All seemed well on Saturday, but the hot days had melted the snow from the outhouse’s exterior, leaving it on an unsteady pedestal of snow.

Rogers writes on his blog:  

“I settled on the throne and was entering deep contemplation when the outhouse shifted on its base and tumbled over backwards. Oh Fecal Material! Literally! I climbed off my back, opened the door and stood there in the toppled structure bare from the waist down. Luckily the honey bucket didn’t spill -- thank you God.”

That’s when his coworker, Nick Guy, emerged from his tent and found Rogers standing amid the tumbled toilet. Guy helped Rogers resurrect the outhouse, and even resisted making fun of him.

After the outhouse incident, Rogers was struck with the feeling that “it was going to be a bad day,” he said.
The bad omen was soon confirmed. Hours later, as glacial crevasses cracked open around them seemingly out of nowhere, the tour season came to an abrupt halt.

Rogers writes:

“As Saturday progressed we went from no surface expression in camp to doing one-leggers into 4 different crevasses that spanned camp from one end to the other. Nothing wider than half a foot, but the fact we had been walking on that surface for a week and not known there was anything there got our attention. Like the outhouse, very disconcerting, but nobody hurt.”

“What a crazy summer,” Rogers concluded.
 
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130803/troublesome-glacier-cracks-right-beneath-tour-guides-feet

Read More

Alaska's forest fires burn more fiercely than they have in 10,000 years

by Tim Radford, Climate News Network, July 21, 2013

Some recent fires in the forests of Alaska have been the worst for 10,000 years, researchers say -- and they could happen elsewhere in this warming world.

LONDON, 26 July -- There have always been fires in the cold forests of Alaska. Periods of burning are part of the ecological regime, and fires return to black spruce stands of the Yukon Flats at intervals of tens to hundreds of years.

But recent evidence suggests that fire is about to come back with a vengeance -- or, in the language of science, “a transition to a unique regime of unprecedented fire activity.”

Ryan Kelly and Feng Sheng Hu, two biologists at the University of Illinois, Urbana, have examined charcoal records from 14 lakes in Yukon Flats to reconstruct the history of burning for the last 10,000 years.

They and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that during the Medieval Climate Anomaly -- the warm period that brought monastery vineyards to Britain a thousand years ago -- the dry conditions favoured what they call “peak biomass burning.”

But this apparent limit has, they report, been surpassed during recent decades, characterised by “exceptionally high fire frequency and biomass burning.”

Their warning came during a week in which, on just one day, the US space agency NASA published satellite images of burning scrub and forest in the states of California and Idaho, in the Irkutsk region of southeastern Siberia, and of illegal slash-and-burn fires to clear land in Indonesia.

This last led to unprecedented levels of air pollution in Malaysia and Singapore: schools were closed and aircraft grounded, and the Government of Malaysia issued gas masks.

Potential for 'dramatic impacts'

The fires in the northern forests matter, because the boreal forests cover about a tenth of the planet’s land surface, and they store about 30% of the planet’s terrestrial carbon.

So they are vulnerable to global warming, climate change and wildfire: wetlands, too, are likely to dry up, and permafrost continues to melt, all of which makes the forests more vulnerable. When they burn, the stands of timber release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

The slow return to normal has its own knock-on effects, say the authors: it has an impact on biogeochemical cycles, on the energy balance and the hydrology of the region, all of which can in turn feed back into climate change.

So to understand the possible global consequences for the northern forests, the authors reasoned, it would pay dividends to make a case study of one sustained natural experiment in one easily accessible landscape.

The researchers found that, after bouts of burning in centuries past, the area was colonised by more fire-resistant species, and the same has begun to happen after the most recent fires. They report that Yukon Flats is now a fragmented mosaic of “lower flammability vegetation” which ought to keep the place safe for a while.

But the fires of recent years have been the worst for 10,000 years and, they warn, things are likely to get worse: what happened to the conifers of Alaska could happen in other places as the world warms and the sub-Arctic begins to dry, with a change to deciduous trees. “Such dynamics,” they say, “have potentially dramatic ecological impacts.”

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2013/07/alaskas-forest-fires-burn-more-fiercely/  

Read More

Steve Horn: Keystone XL Scandal: Obama Attorney's Law Firm Represents TransCanada's Pipeline in Alaska

by Steve Horn, DeSmogBlog, July 16, 2013

A DeSmogBlog investigation reveals that Robert Bauer, former White House Counsel and President Barack Obama's personal attorney, works at the corporate law firm Perkins Coie LLP, which does legal work for TransCanada's South Central LNG Project, formerly known as Alaska Gas Pipeline Project.

Furthermore, Dan Sullivan, current Commissioner of Alaska's Department of Natural Resources, and former Alaska Attorney General and former Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, is a former Perkins attorney. 

These findings come in the immediate aftermath of a recent investigation revealing the contractor hired by Obama's U.S. State Department to do the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the northern half of TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline -- Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group) -- lied on its June 2012 conflict-of interest filing. ERM Group checked the box on the form saying it had no current business ties to TransCanada.

In fact, ERM -- a member of the American Petroleum Institute (API), which has spent over $22 million lobbying on tar sands and Keystone XL since 2008 -- does maintain business ties to TransCanada, the investigation revealed. This includes an ongoing consulting relationship with South Central LNG, co-owned by TransCanada, ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips.

Under 18 USC § 1001, making a "materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation...[to the] executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States" is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail. 

On top of his job at Perkins Coie, Bauer -- a well-known architect of bending campaign finance law to allow more corporate money to flood into electoral races -- served as general counsel to President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. He also serves as general counsel to the Democratic National Committee and did electoral law work for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. 

His wife, Anita Dunn is the co-owner of SDKnickerbocker, former Obama Communications Director, senior advisor for Obama's 2012 re-election campaign and is the former communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee under then-Senator Kerry. She's met with top Obama administration officials more than 100 times since leaving in 2009, according to a recent New York Times investigation. 

Dunn currently does public relations work on behalf of TransCanada and freight rail industry lobbying group, American Association of Railroads (AAR). The tar sands pipeline boom comes alongside a freight rail boom to carry tar sands crude and fracked oil from North Dakota's Bakken Shale.

“ERM lied on its conflict of interest disclosure form, and State was either asleep at the wheel or chose to look the other way,” FOE's Ross Hammond told The Washington Post in a recent piece commenting on ERM's "Pinocchio moment."

Given the myriad ties that bind, "looking the other way" appears more plausible. 

Perkins Coie's Legal Bidding for Democrats, TransCanada AK Gas Pipeline Project

Perkins Coie is a global firm with 19 offices worldwide and maintains close ties to the Democratic Party above and beyond Bob Bauer. 

Bauer's colleague Mark Ellis, for example, does legal work on behalf of the "Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Associations and numerous U.S. senators and representatives and their campaigns," according to his Perkins Coie biography.

The Oil and Gas legal work portion of Perkins' website highlights its legal work in Alaska.

"In Alaska, our lawyers have long represented leading oil and gas companies on the North Slope and the Cook Inlet...We are extensively involved in efforts to develop the Point Thomson field and commercialize Alaska's natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets." 

The "efforts to...commercialize Alaska's natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets" that Perkins' website refers to is the South Central LNG Project co-owned by TransCanada.

A map on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website depicts the route:

 

"The project is designed to connect Alaska's North Slope natural gas resources to new markets and deliver a reliable and secure source of clean burning energy for decades to come," explain TransCanada and ExxonMobil on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website. 

"TransCanada and ExxonMobil have the expertise, experience, and financial capability to develop what would be one of the largest privately funded energy projects in the history of North America."

Before providing legal aide to South Central LNG, Perkins helped the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) -- co-owned by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron and often referred to as the Alyeska Pipeline -- get up and running. TAPS takes oil from the Alaska North Slope to the Valdez Marine Terminal, home of the Exxon Valdez spill. 

Perkins' legal aide, in fact, made TAPS a reality according to an interview appearing online with Perkins' veteran attorney Guy Martin. Martin was instrumental in opening Perkins' office focusing on Alaska in Washington DC. 

"I actually took a little, first-floor townhouse on Capitol Hill, and opened what was really a two- or three-person office. It was the first state office, and we worked pretty much exclusively on the pipeline," said Martin. "The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Act was passed as the direct result of the passing of the Settlement Act." 

Perkins Coie attorney L. John Iani -- former Region 10 (which includes Alaska) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator from 2001-2004 under President George W. Bush -- also formerly lobbied for the Alaska Gas Pipeline Project working for TransCanada from 2005-2008, Congressional lobbying disclosurerecords show. He did so while working for Van Ness Feldman from 2004-2010, a firm that today lobbies on behalf of TransCanada's Keystone XL. 

Perkins still does legal work on behalf of TAPS and defended it in the 2010 case Alyeska Pipeline Service Company v. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. 

AK DNR Run by Former Perkins Attorney 

Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commissioner Dan Sullivan formerly worked at Perkins Coie from 1996 to 2006. 

His task as head of Alaska's DNR, by law, is to serve as an oil and gas industry watchdog. As such, he will aid in overseeing whether South Central LNG becomes a reality. Sullivan, it's important to remember, was named Attorney General by former Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of "drill baby, drill" fame in June 2009.

Prior to his appointment as Attorney General, Dan Sullivan served as Assistant Secretary of State during the Bush administration, reporting to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Sullivan's full title was Assistant Secretary for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs. Wikileaks diplomatic cables reveal that while at the State Department, Sullivan helped negotiate oil and gas deals with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey,Norway, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and France.    

It was also under Bush and during Sullivan's time at the State Department that the original TransCanada Keystone tar sands pipeline was approved in March 2008. Three months later, in June 2008, TransCanada proposed Keystone XL to the State Department. 

In March 2012, President Obama issued an Executive Order to expedite the building of Keystone XL's southern half from Cushing, OK, to Port Arthur, TX. It is the northern, border-crossing half whose final destiny is now in the hands of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.

"Americans Know a Rat When They Smell One" 

Anita Dunn will likely be working overtime in the coming weeks and months using her insider/outsider status to ensure its approval on behalf of the client she shares with her husband Bob Bauer's law firm, TransCanada. 

"Only in the ethically-challenged world of K Street lobbyists could it be considered OK for a power couple like Dunn & Bauer to exploit their White House connections to promote the interests of a foreign corporation like TransCanada," Hammond told DeSmogBlog in an interview.

"Beltway insiders may yawn at the fact that TransCanada has hired people so close to President Obama and Secretary Kerry to push their dirty and dangerous pipeline, but ordinary Americans know a rat when they smell one."

http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/07/16/keystone-xl-scandal-obama-bauer-dunn-perkins-transcanada

Read More

Dr. Charles Monnett sues U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) for records on BOEM's disciplinary action.Reprimanded for Climate Change Work, Scientist Says

by Iulia Filip, Courthouse New Service, April 16, 2013

     WASHINGTON (CN) - A scientist claims in court that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management refuses to release records on its reprimanding him for "circulating scientific information to scientific colleagues" about climate change.
     Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Dr. Charles Monnett sued the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) for records on BOEM's disciplinary action against Monnett.
     They claim the agency investigated Monnett on suspicion of releasing government documents without authorization, in retaliation for his studies of climate change.
     "Plaintiff Dr. Charles Monnett is a senior scientist with BOEM," the complaint states. "Dr. Monnett was the lead author of a peer-reviewed observational note published in a 2006 issue of the journal Polar Biology. Dr. Monnett's work stimulated public awareness of climate changes in the Arctic including the effects of sea ice loss. Since the time of the 2006 issue, the Department of Interior Office of Inspector General has forged an investigation into Dr. Monnett and reprimanded him for this work."
     The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management manages the United States' natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on the outer continental shelf.
     Monnett, an Arctic wildlife biologist, coordinated the agency's research on Arctic wildlife and ecology, including studies on the impact of oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean.
     In 2006, Monnett published an article that linked polar bear deaths in Alaska's Beaufort Sea to long-distance swimming due to sea ice regression.
     The article, published in the peer-reviewed journal Polar Biology, documented four dead polar bears in the Arctic Ocean that Monnett and a colleague saw while conducting overflights in 2004 for a bowhead whale study.
     The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cited Monnett's study in its 2008 decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" also mentioned the article, portraying the polar bear as a symbol of climate change.
     BOEM temporarily suspended Monnett in July 2011 during an investigation into "integrity issues," according to media reports.
     "In a report of investigation concerning Dr. Charles Monnett by the Interior Office of Inspector General released on Sept. 28, 2012, there is a section concerning alleged unauthorized release of U.S. government documents," the complaint states. "These excerpts discuss reviews conducted by Minerals Management Service ('MMS') officials concerning Dr. Monnett. These officials were carried over into BOEM in their same capacities."
     In November 2012, Monnett and his legal representative, the nonprofit watchdog Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a FOIA request with BOEM headquarters in Washington and its Alaska office. They requested records on the agency's investigation, including internal review documents, emails and meeting notes concerning hundreds of FOIA exempt emails allegedly forwarded by Monnett to unauthorized recipients.
     Among the records mentioned in the complaint are: "all written material including emails, and meeting notes reflecting the following: "[Monnett's supervisor Jeffery] Loman recalled that several BOEM managers were challenged by a few of its scientists, who asserted that the activity Shell proposed would constitute what the National Environmental Policy Act describes as 'significant impact' to the environment ... Loman explained that the scientists' opposition was handled by BOEM managers through protracted conversations and email exchanges." (Ellipses in complaint).
     The plaintiffs claim the agency delayed its response, and failed to release any information. They appealed, but received no records and no further correspondence.
     They claim that "BOEM's conduct frustrates plaintiffs' efforts to shed light on why a respected senior scientist was reprimanded for circulating scientific information to scientific colleagues. BOEM's actions also frustrate plaintiffs' efforts to educate the public regarding the status of resource deterioration in the Arctic Ocean and the extent to which federal agencies are adequately monitoring such developments and infringe on Dr. Monnett's right to access information the BOEM maintains pertaining to him."
     They want to see the documents.
     They are represented by Kathryn Douglass, staff attorney with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/04/16/56717.htm

Read More

Charles Monnett permitted to return to his old job with a minor reprimand for following what was common practice (and signed off on by his superiors)

by Jill Burke, Alaska Dispatch, March 23, 2013

The arduous scrutiny directed at federal Arctic wildlife biologist Dr. Charles Monnett over the past few years came down to little more than a reprimand. But the fallout rippled through the nation's offshore oil agency.

A letter obtained by Alaska Dispatch under the Freedom of Information Act shows why Monnett's employer, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), rejected two of three findings made by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). It took the two agencies nearly six months to release a handful of pages related to a request for information about the investigations of Monnett and his colleague zoologist Dr. Jeffrey Gleason. Most of what was eventually produced had already been widely disseminated last fall.

But a three-page letter, a response by the bureau to inspector general that addresses the agency's initial findings, documents in greater detail why the bureau declined to throw the book at its scientist.

Culture of bad practices 

Brought to light is a self-admitted culture within the Alaska Region of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), BOEM's predecessor agency, of bad contracting practices. The problem was apparently more widespread than the one scientist -- Monnett -- the inspector general singled out for procurement violations. So the bureau was unwilling to come down on Monnett when others in the office had done the same thing.

The U.S. Office of the Inspector General sent its agents to investigate whether Monnett inflated findings related to global warming. Along the way, the agents uncovered what they thought were other acts of misconduct -- dissemination of sensitive government documents to outside parties and inappropriately handing out a sole-source contract to a Canadian polar bear researcher. [Note that the Canadian university professor was the only qualified researcher with facilities close enough, and Monnett's superiors signed off on everything he did.]

In the end, Monnett received a written reprimand for sharing emails related to oil exploration in Arctic waters, including discussion about Royal Dutch Shell's plans in the Beaufort Sea and BP's proposed Liberty oil development, including how the projects’ environmental impacts might influence the Endangered Species Act, as well as fish and polar bears. The emails were sent to outside parties before MMS made final decisions and before a North Slope community filed a lawsuit against the service to block its approval of Shell's plans. The emails made their way into the court case, and ultimately the agency's approval was overturned.

An undercurrent of the investigation was whether Monnett and Gleason had committed scientific misconduct by publishing a paper that discussed their observation of drowned polar bears in Alaska's Arctic. The 2006 article published in the journal Polar Biology documented four dead polar bears in the Arctic Ocean that the scientists saw while conducting overflights in 2004 for a bowhead whale study. In the article, they noted the deaths could have been due to loss of sea ice and a large storm. Inspector General agents found Gleason and Monnett under-represented their observations [the agents were trying to make it look like Monnett had OVER-stated his results -- and look how that turned out for them] and that they didn't have a quality dataset to pull from to begin with [this is not true].

Interest in polar bears intensifies 

The inquiry by the Inspector General came just as the offshore hunt for oil in U.S. Arctic waters and public awareness of the plight of polar bears intensified. Pro- and anti-oil factions worked to gain sympathy at both the local and national levels.

When Monnett and Gleason discovered dead polar bears floating in the Beaufort Sea in 2004, they realized they were on to something significant, and they worked swiftly to become the first in the scientific community to publish their findings two years later. By 2008, the polar bear was officially listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened, largely based on projected survival rates derived from forecasts about the toll that climate change -- including less sea ice and more open water swims -- would have on the bears.

In a letter to the acting Inspector General dated Sept. 27, 2012, bureau director Tommy Beaudreau explained that the published polar bear manuscript is a “note” -- a unique observation that may suggest an avenue for future research, but which cannot be reproduced, therefore limiting its scientific value. The fact that the journal was peer-evaluated meant other scientists felt Monnett’s and Gleason's work was worth publishing. And, the Inspector General admitted the paper had not impacted the still-to-come 2008 decision to list polar bears as “threatened.”

For these reasons, the bureau refuted that any scientific misconduct had occurred. The agency also acknowledged that violations of procurement policy, if they occurred, were not limited to Monnett.

A senior contracting officer was aware of Monnett's handling of the contract and had approved the scientist’s actions. This same person acknowledged during the investigation that with sole-source contracts, you were able to be “looser in how you interact” than in competitive situations. Because MMS staff at the time was working with what is described as “little structure, policy, no procedures” regarding its procurement of contracts, the bureau refused to single out Monnett for punishment when the practices of the entire Alaska Region needed reform.

Since then, “intense focus” and “substantial reform” has taken place to clean up the way contracts are handled, Beaudreau told the Inspector General. The overhaul has included institutional changes, new leadership, and comprehensive training programs. “BOEM continues to strive for excellence and ongoing improvement in its procurement practices,” he wrote.

Lax oversight

It's an ongoing chapter in the agency's attempt to clean up its reputation in the wake of national scandals and criticism of the Alaska region. It began with BP's oil-well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, which raised questions about whether MMS had been too lax in its industry oversight. Claims that fedeal officials had unethically close relationships with oil company executives followed. [This had nothing to do with Monnett or his work.]

Making things worse, not long after the spill began, Alaska's MMS office held a staff meeting, and someone brought a cake decorated with the famous line by former Gov. Sarah Palin, “Drill Baby Drill.” It made national news and anti-drilling interests demanded that agency head John Goll be shown the door.

Within months, more trouble erupted. The General Accounting Office announced it had found serious problems in the way the Alaska MMS office authorized permits. The problems included complaints from government scientists who said their work had been dismissed to make way for industry-sought approvals.

As it turns out, BP's Liberty project in the Beaufort Sea has languished. And Shell's inaugural drilling attempt in 2013 was fraught with mishaps, forcing it into hibernation for at least a year until it can repair equipment that was damaged or failed in the 2012 drilling season. [And with all the delays in the approval, Shell still completely blew it, and for all the world to witness their incompetence.]

Leading up to his September reprimand, Monnett had been banished from the environmental division of the bureau and reassigned as an analyst. But with the final decision in, he was allowed to return to his old job, according to Monnett's attorney Jeffrey Ruch. How much of that work awaited him was unclear, as much of it has been parceled out to other staff, Ruch said.

Agency has huge Alaska reach 

Meanwhile, work at the bureau under the “overhauled” Alaska region continues in three areas: leasing, resource evaluation and environmental stewardship.

Studies of marine life in the Arctic are ongoing, including monitoring of bowhead whale migratory patterns and habitat, polar bear populations and the characteristics of bears summering onshore. There’s also research on fish, snow crab, seals and walrus under way. Many studies incorporate assessments of these species in lease and potential drilling areas.

The agency “oversees more than 1 billion acres on the Outer Continental Shelf and more than 6,000 miles of coastline -- more coastline than in the rest of the United States combined,” according the Alaska OCS Region website, including the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, Bering Sea, Cook Inlet, and the Gulf of Alaska.

Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130323/polar-bear-scientist-probe-finds-problems-offshore-oil-agency

Read More

Appeals court ruling determines polar bears will retain 'threatened' listing

by Ben Anderson, Alaska Dispatch, March 1, 2013

PreviousPlayNext

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

A polar bear walks along the beach in Kaktovik at sunset. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

Polar bears napping during a storm in Kaktovik. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

Young polar bears are chased away from whale meat in Kaktovik. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

A polar bear mom and her cubs exploring the tundra in Kaktovik. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

A polar bear, nose red with blood after feeding on a whale carcass, walks the beach in Kaktovik. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

A polar bear stretches on the tundra in Kaktovik. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

Polar bears congregate at the carcass of a bowhead whale on the beach in Kaktovik. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

Polar bears playing in the water during a rainstorm in Kaktovik. September 6, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

Polar bear wave, Kaktovik. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

A polar bear explores the eroding bluff in Kaktovik. September 8, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

A polar bear mom and her cubs exploring the beach in Kaktovik. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

Photos: Polar bears of Kaktovik

Polar bears argue over a piece of whale meat in Kaktovik. September 7, 2012

Loren Holmes photo

A federal court of appeals ruled Friday that polar bears will remain listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, despite a legal objection brought by the State of Alaska. Though the bears are not currently endangered, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined in May 2008 that polar bears should be listed as endangered on the basis of receding sea ice, an important part of the bears' habitat.

Related:

Report suggests feeding polar bears to save the species

Federal judge in Alaska rules against plan to designate critical polar bear habitat

The ruling is significant because it marks the first time that an animal will earn protection under the Endangered Species Act based solely on the potential harm caused by climate change. Polar bears can occasionally swim long distances during the summer months in an attempt to reach land from their winter home on the ice. In 2012, the levels of sea ice in the Arctic reached new all-time lows, just five years after the previous record low occurred.

Poster children for climate change

As a result, the bruins have become the poster children for the potential impact of climate change on animal habitats. The bears have become the subject of conservation efforts worldwide, as well as a darling of popular media, including a 2007 documentary film narrated by Queen Latifah.
"Our principal responsibility here is to determine, in light of the record considered by the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), whether the Listing Rule is a product of reasoned decision making," Judge Harry Edwards wrote in the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling. "It is significant that Appellants have neither pointed to mistakes in the agency’s reasoning nor adduced any data or studies that the agency overlooked."
The court said that despite a relatively healthy polar bear population worldwide, the supporting evidence used by the Fish and Wildlife in determining the bears should be listed as threatened was sound, including the climate science indicating the loss of the bears' sea ice habitat.
The state of Alaska argued that the Fish and Wildlife failed to provide sufficient justification for its listing of the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, despite a 45-page response from the agency addressing the state's concerns in the wake of the initial listing.
"Alaska does not argue that FWS failed to give a timely response to the State’s comments. Rather, Alaska simply disagrees with the substantive content of FWS’s response," the court said, adding that the the section of the Endangered Species Act requiring Fish and Wildlife to respond to the state's concerns "does not mean to ensure that the State will be satisfied with FWS’s response."

Disappointment in Alaska

The state expressed disappointment at the ruling, and lawmakers weighed in, citing its potential effects on Arctic development. With the ruling, other animals that rely on sea ice as part of their habitat may see future listings on the same basis.
"We’re disappointed in the court’s ruling in support of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision based on speculation about environmental conditions 50 years into the future,” said state Sen. Cathy Giessel in a written statement.
One of the concerns of industry proponents is that the listing could make it more difficult to perform operations in the Arctic. Royal Dutch Shell embarked on its quest to tap into offshore Arctic oil in 2012, though the company announced just this week that it would suspend those operations for 2013 after a series of mishaps with its primary drilling vessels.
Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130301/appeals-court-ruling-determines-polar-bears-will-retain-threatened-listing

Read More