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Monday 31 August 2009

by: Josh Meyer | Visit article original @ The Los Angeles Times

Former Vice President Dick Cheney. (Photo: Reuters)

The former vice president says he is offended by the Justice Department's decision to investigate the CIA's interrogation methods.

Washington - Former Vice President Dick Cheney lashed out at President Obama on Sunday, saying the Justice Department's decision to investigate whether CIA operatives broke the law while interrogating terrorism suspects was politically motivated and dangerous to national security.

"I just think it's an outrageous political act that will do great damage long-term to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say," Cheney said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

He refused to say whether he would cooperate with the Justice Department's inquiry. "It will depend on the circumstances and what I think their activities are really involved in," Cheney said.

Fox's formal interview, conducted last week at Cheney's Wyoming ranch, was his first since Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced last Monday that he was conducting a preliminary review into the actions of certain CIA interrogators who might have exceeded the techniques approved by the Bush administration's Justice Department.

Obama administration officials said they would have no comment.

Senators appearing on the Sunday talk shows also weighed in.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said Holder's inquiry is necessary and justified. "No one is above the law. And this is not a political process. This is a legal process . . . to find out whether the law was broken," she said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) expressed misgivings. She said she understood Holder's reasons for launching the probe, but "the timing of this is not very good" because the Senate Intelligence Committee, which she chairs, is investigating CIA interrogation and detention techniques.

"Candidly, I wish that the attorney general had waited," she said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

In his Fox interview, Cheney also said, as he has before, that the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques" saved American lives and prevented terrorist attacks. The techniques included waterboarding, which simulates drowning. It was used repeatedly on three top Al Qaeda leaders, including 183 times on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the avowed ringleader of 9/11.

Cheney said the Obama administration's second-guessing of the Bush administration "offends the hell out of me, frankly."

"The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, 'How did you do it?' " Cheney said. "Instead, they're out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions."

Cheney's comments appeared to be the first Bush administration confirmation that a classified Justice Department report will recommend that two former department lawyers be disbarred for their roles in approving the interrogation techniques.

Both attorneys have left the Justice Department: Jay S. Bybee is now a federal judge, and John C. Yoo is a professor at UC Berkeley.

Cheney said Obama should have stopped Holder from ordering the review because the president had promised not to investigate CIA personnel.

The Obama administration official said the president had never pledged to absolve all CIA officers of any potential wrongdoing -- just those who followed the law.

"Nothing has changed," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue. Also, the official said, career prosecutors in the Bush administration's Justice Department were the first to recommend that some attorneys be disbarred for their roles in the coercive techniques.

Cheney said he did not believe that certain interrogators working for the CIA should face criminal charges even for excessive use of waterboarding, or for having threatened some detainees with mock executions, a gun and an electric drill.

Those incidents were disclosed in a 2004 CIA inspector general's report that was partly declassified last week, prompting some critics to say that the actions clearly violated U.S. law.

Those issues were reviewed by prosecutors in the Bush administration's Justice Department, who decided that no charges should be filed, Cheney said.

"So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it?" Fox moderator Chris Wallace asked.

"I am," Cheney responded.

A senior Justice Department official responded, also on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment: "It is remarkable that someone who has read the full classified CIA [inspector general's] report would say that everything in that report was OK."

Cheney confirmed that he and President Bush had significant disagreements on important matters -- including whether to bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program.

But, he said, recent news reports were "wrong" that he believed Bush "went soft" in his second term.

He said his upcoming memoir "lays out my view of what we did," including where he and Bush disagreed.

"It is going to be a great book," Cheney said.

Their willingness to criticize Obama also divides the pair.

After Bush left office, he said he wouldn't be criticizing his successor.

"There are plenty of critics in the arena," Bush said. "He deserves my silence."

He has held to it while Cheney has defended the Bush administration's legacy.
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by: Suzanne Goldenberg and Damian Carrington | Visit article original @ The Observer UK

Sunday 26 July 2009
Last week, images depicting the impact of global warming in the Arctic that were kept secret during the Bush administration were declassified. (Photo: Jeremy Harbeck / NASA)
Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world's weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating.

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

A satellite image taken in July 2007 reveals the impact of global warming on the polar ice sheets. (Photo: Public Domain)

The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice - a record loss - were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.

Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. Ice cover for 2008 was almost as bad as for 2007, and this year levels look equally sparse.

"These are one-metre resolution images, which give you a big picture of the summertime Arctic," said Thorsten Markus of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre. "This is the main reason why we are so thrilled about it. One-metre resolution is the dimension that's been missing."

Disappearing summer sea ice poses considerable dangers, scientists have warned. Ice shelves are used by animals such as polar bears as platforms for hunting seals and other sea creatures. Without them, they could starve. In addition, ice reflects solar radiation. Without that process, the Arctic sea could warm up even more. The phenomenon threatens to set off runaway heating of the planet, say climatologists.

The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change. Last week the head of the US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Professor Jane Lubchenco, warned that the gathering of satellite data - crucial to predicting future climate changes - was now at "great risk" because America's ageing satellite fleet was not being replaced.

"Our primary focus is maintaining the continuity of climate observations, and those are at great risk right now because we don't have the resources to have satellites at the ready and taking the kinds of information that we need," said Lubchenco, who was appointed by Obama. "We are playing catch-up."

Even before her warning, scientists were saying that America, the world's scientific superpower, was virtually blinding itself to climate change by cutting funds to the environmental satellite programmes run by the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Nasa. A report by the National Academy of Sciences this year warned that the environmental satellite network was at risk of collapse.

In February, a Nasa satellite carrying instruments to produce the first map of the Earth's carbon emissions crashed near Antarctica only three minutes after lift-off.

The satellite would have measured carbon emissions at 100,000 points around the planet every day, providing a wealth of data compared to the 100 or so fixed towers currently in operation in a land-based network.

The NOAA is under additional pressure to provide environmental data because of the re-emergence of the El Niño climate phenomenon, where warming of the tropical Pacific causes heatwaves, droughts and flooding around the world. June's land and sea surface temperatures were the second hottest on record, and scientists are predicting this will be the warmest decade in recorded history. The last major El Niño was in 1998, the hottest year in recorded history.

The Obama administration has already taken steps to tackle America's flagging scientific lead. The president's economic recovery plan allotted $170m (£100m) to help close the gaps in climate modelling. The NOAA is seeking an additional $390m in its 2010 budget to upgrade environmental satellites, and help make data more available to researchers and government officials.
»

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.by Maggie Koerth-Baker
From the June 2009 issue, published online June 17, 2009

Image courtesy of AUSRA
Renewable energy has a critical role to play in reducing greenhouse gases and leading the United States toward energy independence. That role should soon be getting bigger: The U.S. government is pushing for a 100 percent increase in renewable energy by 2012. The two biggest sources are the wind and the sun. But the variable nature of wind and solar energy can cause problems with matching supply to demand-problems that would be greatly eased if only we had a really good way of storing electricity on an industrial scale. Currently there are several storage systems vying for dominance.
Compressed-Air Energy Storage
At night, when the strongest winds blow and customers are sleeping, unused wind-generated electricity can run giant compressors, forcing large amounts of air into sealed underground spaces. When demand rises during the day, the compressed air can be used to spin turbines, turning the energy back into electricity. Georgianne Peek, a mechanical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, says this technology can provide a lot of power over long periods of time at a relatively low cost. The technology is also well established: Two compressed-air storage plants have been in operation for decades. The McIntosh Unit 1 plant in McIntosh, Alabama, went online in 1991; a similar plant in Germany has been running since the 1970s. McIntosh 1 can reliably put out 110 megawatts for 26 hours. (One megawatt is enough power to supply roughly 600 to 1,000 typical American homes.)
The compressed-air system does have its drawbacks. For one, it does not completely eliminate the need for fossil fuels, because the associated electric generators use natural gas to supplement the energy from the stored compressed air. Compressed-air storage systems also require an airtight underground space, limiting the locations where they can be installed. The two existing compressed-air plants use natural salt domes. Engineers flushed the domes with water to dissolve the salt, then pumped out the brine to create a nicely sealed cavern. But salt dome formations are not plentiful, so researchers are investigating other inexpensive ways to create storage chambers. A facility proposed for Norton, Ohio, would use an abandoned limestone mine. Another, in Iowa, would pump air into drained natural aquifers. Abandoned oil wells and depleted natural gas reservoirs might also work, Peek says, as long as they are not too remote to be hooked into the electrical grid.
Molten Salt Heat Exchanger
The sun, like the wind, is a variable source of energy, disappearing at night and ducking behind clouds at inconvenient moments. Thermal storage systems, such as molten salt heat exchangers, mitigate those problems by making solar power available anytime.
Right now only one example exists: Spain's Andasol Power Station, which began operating last fall. Andasol has about 126 acres' worth of trough-shaped solar collectors that focus the sun's heat onto pipes full of synthetic oil. The hot oil is piped to a nearby power plant, where it is used to generate steam. During the day, some of the oil is used to heat a mixture of liquid nitrate salts (made by combining elements like sodium and potassium with nitric acid) to temperatures above 700 degrees Fahrenheit. These liquid salts can retain their heat for weeks in insulated tanks. When the collectors cannot generate enough power to meet demand, the salts are drawn out from the tanks and their heat is tapped to run the power plant. A full stockpile of molten salts can keep the Andasol plant running at top capacity-50 megawatts of electricity-for up to seven and a half hours.
Molten salt backup systems make solar power more flexible and reliable, says Frank Wilkins of the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Program. Wilkins says that thermal storage systems can increase a solar plant's annual capacity factor (the percentage of time, on average, that the plant is operational) from 25 percent to up to 70 percent. Expense is the biggest drawback. The Andasol Power Station cost about $400 million, and that was just for phase one of a planned three-phase project. But costs may come down as more plants are built. This past February, the Arizona Public Service power utility announced plans to construct a power station similar to Andasol. It is expected to go online in 2012.
Sodium-Sulfur Batteries
Sodium-sulfur batteries work much the same way as the lead-acid battery that starts your car; both use chemical reactions to store and produce electricity. The difference lies in the materials used. Lead-acid batteries contain a lead plate and a lead dioxide plate (the electrodes) in a bath of sulfuric acid (the electrolyte). A reaction between the lead and the acid creates the electric current. Lead-acid batteries are simple and reliable, but they are impractical to use on wind farms because of the amount of space and power electronics they would require.
The sun is a variable source of energy, disappearing at night. Thermal storage systems make solar power available at any time.
Sodium-sulfur batteries, which use molten sodium and sulfur as electrodes and a solid ceramic electrolyte, have a higher energy density. "Lead-acid batteries are cheaper," Peek says. "But you can get the same amount of energy in a smaller amount of space with sodium-sulfur-and that's important, because real estate costs money too." Sodium-sulfur batteries can also be charged up to the maximum and discharged completely, which makes them more efficient. And they last about 20 years, versus three to five years for lead-acid.
Some U.S. utility companies, including Xcel Energy, have installed small-scale combinations of wind farms and sodium-sulfur batteries. (American Electric Power's is not yet operational.) Excess electricity from the wind farms can be stored in the batteries and fed into the system later, when wind is low and demand is high. Each battery system, which is roughly the size of a semitrailer, can store about one megawatt and discharge it over six to eight hours. The downside, again, is cost, which is high in part because there are no American companies making sodium-sulfur batteries; the only manufacturers are in Japan.
Zinc bromide and vanadium redox flow batteries are other promising technologies. Although not as far along in development as sodium-sulfur, they may be easier to scale up. Vanadium batteries may also charge and discharge more quickly than sodium-sulfur, so they might be better suited to smoothing out power fluctuations caused by rapidly changing weather.
Hydrogen
Hydrogen-based energy storage looks great on paper: Use electricity to split hydrogen out of water, then convert the hydrogen back into electricity in a fuel cell when needed. Alas, the underlying technology is expensive and complicated, but MIT chemist Daniel Nocera may have found a better way. His hydrogen-ion-creating system uses an indium tin oxide electrode and a container of water with cobalt and potassium phosphate mixed in. Put the electrode in the water and add voltage. Cobalt, potassium, and phosphate migrate to the electrode, forming a catalyst that begins splitting water molecules into oxygen gas and hydrogen ions. Unlike most existing systems, the materials are fairly inexpensive, and the catalyst renews itself so it lasts a long time.
Nocera is still seeking a cheap way to convert hydrogen ions into hydrogen gas and an efficient way to get electricity from photovoltaic panels to the catalyst. But he thinks his approach will help other pieces of the hydrogen infrastructure fall into place. "The discovery opens doors we haven't been able to walk through before," Nocera says. "I don't think this will be as hard."
Assault on the Battery
Americans may be ready to embrace the electric car, but can the technology catch up?
It has taken a long, long time, but financial chaos, environmental concerns, and wild gyrations in oil prices-along with $2.4 billion in government funding-may finally bring practical electric cars to the American market. Virtually every major automaker is preparing to sell a battery-powered vehicle over the next few years. But a big question remains: Will battery technology finally be good enough to take the place of gasoline? Engineers see three ways it could happen.
Refining the Battery
A successful automotive battery must provide long driving range from a single charge and release its energy quickly enough for brisk acceleration. Lithium-ion batteries-similar to what powers your laptop or cell phone-satisfy both requirements, making them a big step up from the nickel-metal hydride cells used in gas-electric hybrids like the Toyota Prius. But the technology still has limitations: It is costly, it delivers about 1/40 as much energy per unit weight as petroleum, and if overheated or overcharged, it could burst into flames.
Nevertheless, it exists today, and carmakers are putting money into some 14 improved designs that should make lithium-ion batteries smaller, safer, and more efficient. One line of research adds manganese or iron phosphate to the technology, increasing energy capacity while protecting against runaway heating. Stanford University scientists recently showed that embedding silicon wires in batteries could increase their storage capacity tenfold, while researchers at MIT have reengineered the battery material to allow much faster charging. If these innovations make it to the market, plug-in cars like the Chevrolet Volt could recharge in minutes instead of hours and drive 400 miles on a charge.
But it will take time for such advances to make their way into the extreme environment under the hood. Price could also present a barrier. A recent Carnegie Mellon University study s

SUN GAZING These photos show sunspots near solar maximum on July 19, 2000, and near solar minimum on March 18, 2009. Some global warming skeptics speculate that the Sun may be on the verge of an extended slumber.
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: July 20, 2009
The Sun is still blank (mostly).

Ever since Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, a German astronomer, first noted in 1843 that sunspots burgeon and wane over a roughly 11-year cycle, scientists have carefully watched the Sun's activity. In the latest lull, the Sun should have reached its calmest, least pockmarked state last fall.
Indeed, last year marked the blankest year of the Sun in the last half-century - 266 days with not a single sunspot visible from Earth. Then, in the first four months of 2009, the Sun became even more blank, the pace of sunspots slowing more.
"It's been as dead as a doornail," David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said a couple of months ago.
The Sun perked up in June and July, with a sizeable clump of 20 sunspots earlier this month.
Now it is blank again, consistent with expectations that this solar cycle will be smaller and calmer, and the maximum of activity, expected to arrive in May 2013 will not be all that maximum.
For operators of satellites and power grids, that is good news. The same roiling magnetic fields that generate sunspot blotches also accelerate a devastating rain of particles that can overload and wreck electronic equipment in orbit or on Earth.
A panel of 12 scientists assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now predicts that the May 2013 peak will average 90 sunspots during that month. That would make it the weakest solar maximum since 1928, which peaked at 78 sunspots. During an average solar maximum, the Sun is covered with an average of 120 sunspots.
But the panel's consensus "was not a unanimous decision," said Douglas A. Biesecker, chairman of the panel. One member still believed the cycle would roar to life while others thought the maximum would peter out at only 70.
Among some global warming skeptics, there is speculation that the Sun may be on the verge of falling into an extended slumber similar to the so-called Maunder Minimum, several sunspot-scarce decades during the 17th and 18th centuries that coincided with an extended chilly period.
Most solar physicists do not think anything that odd is going on with the Sun. With the recent burst of sunspots, "I don't see we're going into that," Dr. Hathaway said last week.
Still, something like the Dalton Minimum - two solar cycles in the early 1800s that peaked at about an average of 50 sunspots - lies in the realm of the possible, Dr. Hathaway said. (The minimums are named after scientists who helped identify them: Edward W. Maunder and John Dalton.)
With better telescopes on the ground and a fleet of Sun-watching spacecraft, solar scientists know a lot more about the Sun than ever before. But they do not understand everything. Solar dynamo models, which seek to capture the dynamics of the magnetic field, cannot yet explain many basic questions, not even why the solar cycles average 11 years in length.
Predicting the solar cycle is, in many ways, much like predicting the stock market. A full understanding of the forces driving solar dynamics is far out of reach, so scientists look to key indicators that correlate with future events and create models based on those.
For example, in 2006, Dr. Hathaway looked at disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field that are caused by the Sun, and they were strong. During past cycles, strong disturbances at minimum indicated strong fields all over the Sun at maximum and a bounty of sunspots. Because the previous cycles had been shorter than average, Dr. Hathaway thought the next one would be shorter and thus solar minimum was imminent. He predicted the new solar cycle would be a ferocious one, consistent with a short cycle.
Instead, the new cycle did not arrive as quickly as Dr. Hathaway anticipated, and the disturbances weakened. His revised prediction is for a smaller-than-average maximum. Last November, it looked like the new cycle was finally getting started, with the new cycle sunspots in the middle latitudes outnumbering the old sunspots of the dying cycle that are closer to the equator.

The idea that solar cycles are related to climate is hard to fit with the actual change in energy output from the sun. From solar maximum to solar minimum, the Sun's energy output drops a minuscule 0.1 percent.

NASA
A NEW MISSION The Solar Dynamics Observatory will launch this fall to study the sun.
But the overlap of the Maunder Minimum with the Little Ice Age, when Europe experienced unusually cold weather, suggests that the solar cycle could have more subtle influences on climate.
One possibility proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and other scientists at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen looks to high-energy interstellar particles known as cosmic rays. When cosmic rays slam into the atmosphere, they break apart air molecules into ions and electrons, which causes water and sulfuric acid in the air to stick together in tiny droplets. These droplets are seeds that can grow into clouds, and clouds reflect sunlight, potentially lowering temperatures.
The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.
But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.
"I think it's an important effect," Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.
Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years.
But other scientists found no such pattern with higher clouds, and some other observations seem inconsistent with the hypothesis.
Terry Sloan, a cosmic ray expert at the University of Lancaster in England, said if the idea were true, one would expect the cloud-generation effect to be greatest in the polar regions where the Earth's magnetic field tends to funnel cosmic rays.
"You'd expect clouds to be modulated in the same way," Dr. Sloan said. "We can't find any such behavior."
Still, "I would think there could well be some effect," he said, but he thought the effect was probably small. Dr. Sloan's findings indicate that the cosmic rays could at most account for 20 percent of the warming of recent years.
Even without cosmic rays, however, a 0.1 percent change in the Sun's energy output is enough to set off El Niño- and La Niña-like events that can influence weather around the world, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Climate modeling showed that over the largely cloud-free areas of the Pacific Ocean, the extra heating over several years warms the water, increasing evaporation. That intensifies the tropical storms and trade winds in the eastern Pacific, and the result is cooler-than-normal waters, as in a La Niña event, the scientists reported this month in the Journal of Climate.
In a year or two, the cool water pattern evolves into a pool of El Niño-like warm water, the scientists said.
New instruments should provide more information for scientists to work with. A 1.7-meter telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in Southern California is up and running, and one of its first photographs shows "a string of pearls," each about 50 miles across.
"At that scale, they can only be the fundamental fibril structure of the Sun's magnetic field," said Philip R. Goode, director of the solar observatory. Other telescopes may have caught hints of these tiny structures, he said, but "never so many in a row and not so clearly resolved."
Sun-watching spacecraft cannot match the acuity of ground-based telescopes, but they can see wavelengths that are blocked by the atmosphere - and there are never any clouds in the way. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's newest sun-watching spacecraft, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is scheduled for

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by: Alex DeMarban | Visit article original @ The Arctic Sounder

Polar bear sightings along the southern Beaufort Sea coast in Alaska have jumped, signaling a possible migration from shrinking ice. (Photo: Paul Nicklen / National Geographic) Polar bear encounters on the North Slope oil fields have risen to record levels the last two years, a sign that increasing numbers of the white giants may be prowling on land because the sea ice they prefer is shrinking, scientists said.
Oil field sightings along the southern Beaufort Sea coast jumped to 321 in 2007 and 313 in 2008, said Craig Perham, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in Anchorage.
That's more than double the 15-year average of 138. It's also a sharp rise from 232, the previous high in 2005.
Oil companies are legally required to report a polar bear encounter to Fish and Wildlife that involves any change in the animal's behavior, even if the bear simply lifts its head to sniff the air, Perham said.
The measure is designed to protect polar bears and humans by providing information on the bears' whereabouts and behavior. Increased sightings might also be up because new exploration work has taken place on the near-coast areas where polar bears are usually found, he said.
For example, ships doing seismic exploration in the Beaufort Sea have waited out storms on barrier islands those years, giving workers the chance to spot polar bears numerous times, sometimes the same animal.
Perham hasn't "teased out" the data to find out exactly what it means, he said.
"Truth be told, we don't know," he said.
But the rising encounters are in line with what scientists expect to find - as sea ice shrinks, polar bears spend more time on land, he said.
Polar bears prefer the ice because it provides access to ringed and bearded seals, he said. But the seals are harder to find when the ice recedes so far - more than 70 miles off the coast - that it no longer sits over the shallower and biologically productive continental shelf.
The sea ice has shrunk to record levels in recent summers. One day last August, there were 400 miles of open water between the Alaska coast and pack ice.
Interestingly, the majority of oil field sightings have come in August and September, Perham said. In September, the sea ice is farthest from shore.
In those two months, oil field workers have reported spotting polar bears more than 240 times in 2007 and 2008.
During the winters of 2007 and 2008, oil field workers reported seeing polar bears no more than 14 times.
In the past, most sightings took place in the winter.
Despite the increased sightings, the oil industry hasn't reported killing a polar bear since 1993, Perham said.
If bears come too close, workers might shoo them away by shouting or slamming a car door. If that doesn't work, they might scare it away by firing off loud cracker shells.
Scientists believe the shrinking sea ice has lead to declining numbers of polar bears. If sea-ice loss continues as forecasted, the bears could someday disappear from large areas, including Alaska's coastal waters, said Eric Regehr, a federal wildlife biologist. "It's pretty grim," he said.
He said the Fish and Wildlife Service tentatively estimates the southern Beaufort Sea polar bear population at 1,526 in 2006, a drop from the previous estimate of 1,800.
The world population of polar bears is estimated between 20,000 and 25,000, he said.
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A very quick note to discuss one issue with you: my wind farm project in Pampa, Texas. There have been a lot of media stories about it, many of which misinterpreted my future plans. I want to be very clear with you that I am delaying, not cancelling, the project.

This misreporting is no doubt being fueled by those aggressively trying to convince Congress and the American public that wind and solar power can't contribute significantly to solving our energy problems. They are wrong.

I think the Bloomberg article pasted below will help clarify exactly where things are. The difficult economic situation in the U.S.-and around the world-is driving this decision, as is the need for new transmission lines in place, not any loss of support for wind energy in America, as some may have you believe.

Renewable energy is-and always will be-an important part of the Pickens Plan and will help our continued march towards energy independence. I know many of you have asked for an explanation which I appreciate and you should always feel free to ask me anything.

I cannot ever thank you enough for your continued support for the Pickens Plan.

- T. Boone Pickens

Texas Wind Project Won't Be Canceled
By Daniel Whitten

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor T. Boone Pickens said today that he is delaying, not canceling, a $10 billion wind energy project in Texas.

The so-called Pampa project will be postponed until 2013 when Texas is expected to complete a $4.9 billion transmission line, Pickens said in Washington today. News reports yesterday that he was ending the project are wrong, he said.

"I didn't cancel it," said Pickens, 81, the chairman of Dallas-based BP Capital LLC. "Financing is tough right now so what is going to happen is it's going to be pushed back a year or two." Pickens spoke after a press conference to promote legislation intended to encourage the development of natural gas-powered vehicles.

Pickens last year began promoting a national energy plan that relies on domestically produced natural gas to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Electricity generated by gas and coal could be replaced with wind and solar power once the grid is improved.

His Mesa Power LLP ordered 667 wind turbines from General Electric Co. last year for delivery, he said, starting in the first quarter of 2011. The turbines, which can produce up to 1,000 megawatts, may be installed "in Minnesota or someplace else," he said. Or he may just "put 'em in the garage," he said.

Pickens said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday that it is necessary to build a 21st century power grid to advance wind energy, which he said could happen quickly.

"I'm in the business and we are going to build the Pampa project," he said after the press conference today.

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