After initial reports that the six sea lions trapped near the Bonneville Dam were shot, government officials just announced that it was "heat prostration" or heat exhaustion that killed the poor fellows.

NOAA Fisheries, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released results from a necropsy in a very brief press release stating:

The findings for all six animals are consistent with death from heat prostration. More conclusive results may be available once studies of tissue samples taken from the dead animals are completed, in about 10 days. The investigation into the circumstances relating to the deaths of these animals continues. Necropsy reports and other documents associated with the investigation will be made public once the investigation has been completed.

Again, the animals were being trapped so they'd stop eating endangered Columbia River salmon and so that they could be sent to SeaWorld. The trapping has been put on hold until further notice. Also remember that enviros are suing to stop the government from outright killing the sea lions to cull their numbers. (We've done many posts on this, including this one from May 7, May 6, May 5 and March 18).

We believe in giving credit where credit is due, so we'll call your attention to a series that appeared this week in The Seattle Times on the challenges facing those pushing to restore Puget Sound.

The series broke some new ground on the disappearance of wetlands in the Puget Sound basin, a topic we've been meaning to get to. And it got into the transfer of development rights concept more than we've seen locally in the past (but still failed to nail Seattle for devoting all its TDR effort to promoting affordable housing rather than protecting Puget Sound.) There were also pieces on stormwater and shoreline armoring, topics we've covered before numerous times and will certainly again.

Overall, Warren Cornwall, Lynda Mapes, Craig Welch and Justin Mayo did a creditable job of giving readers an overview of the biggest obstacles facing the Puget Sound Partnership, the new state agency that appears to possibly not be up to the job of saving the Sound.

One sentence in the package stuck out to us not ringing true. In an editor's note on the front page on Sunday, someone (an editor, presumably) wrote:

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Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne just declared polar bears as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, but said repeatedly that the designation would NOT lead to regulations of greenhouse gas emissions -- despite the fact that the prime threat to the bear was the loss of sea ice from climate change.

Kempthorne also took the opportunity to make clear that he didn't think any past, present or future actions by the oil and gas industry posed any problems for the bears. He called for revisions of the Endangered Species Act, which he called "perhaps the least flexible law" ever passed by Congress. He praised the Bush administration for taking action to respond to the causes of climate change. And he lamented that economics and other factors could not be taken into consideration in his decision, that he was limited to looking only at the science regarding the threats to the bears.

Again, global warming and the loss of sea ice are what's most likely to wipe the bears out, but greenhouse gas emission reductions will not follow from today's designation.

During a press conference with Kempthorne, Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was asked by a reporter what additional protections would be given to the polar bears, to which he replied: "That's a good question."

He also defended the exclusion of greenhouse gas regulations when protecting the bears:

"We have to have the science to connect the dots between and action (greenhouse gas emissions) and an impact to a species resulting in take (or harm to the bears)."

When might that science show a link between a coal plant chugging out CO2 and melting bear habitat? "That's a long time away if ever," Hall said.

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UPDATE:
Apparently not all enviros are satisfied with John McCain's acknowledgment that climate change is real. Some are planning to show up for his fundraiser this evening at the Bellevue Hyatt, protesting the senator's connections with the oil industry.

A release from Fuse, a Washington "progressive public policy" group:

In December, McCain was the only Senator to miss a vote on an amendment to eliminate $12.7 million in tax breaks for the oil industry and direct the money towards developing renewable resources. The motion failed by one vote... McCain's economic plan includes another $3.8 billion in tax breaks for the country's five largest oil companies.

ORIGINAL POST

What will global warming naysayers do with this election? All three candidates say climate change is real, happening right now and bold steps are needed to slow the warming.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have offered their ideas for limiting greenhouse gas emissions emitted by U.S. pollutors. Now John McCain is presenting his strategy.

But first, how much wiggle room is he giving himself on the importance of the matter? From a speech given Monday, not much:

We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.

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Listening to KUOW's Weekday this morning, we were reminded of words we wrote in 2004:

It's your wedding anniversary, so you go out for seafood. As you and your mate reflect on your years together, you're both salivating in anticipation of a fine meal of ...

Jellyfish?

The occasion then was Daniel Pauly's address to the World Fisheries Congress, in which the distinguished University of British Columbia researcher recounted how in Third World countries, consumers of seafood are turning increasingly to the lower trophic levels, meaning the likes of sea cucumbers and sea urchins -- "stuff that eats dirt," as Pauly noted. In the not-too-distant future, we reported in 2004, such delectables could be commonplace, according to Pauly:

When we first presented this, it was a joke -- you're going to have a jellyfish sandwich. The journalists all ate it up -- not the jellyfish, the quote. It was a joke, but now it's real.

Today on KUOW, author Taras Grescoe was flogging his new book, "Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood." And guess what he was recommending? Yep. Jellyfish.

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Congressional Quarterly has picked up on the story we covered last month about what critics call a $1 billion "timber slush fund" resulting from the way the Bush administration settled a lumber trade war with Canada.

I can't find a free way to link you to Shawn Zeller's story. Someone showed me a copy, though. He recounts how the half the $1 billion went to the timber industry, $400,000 to timber-related non-profits and $100,000 to Habitat for Humanity.

The story also points out that Potlach Corp. and Sierra Pacific Industries spent some $5.7 million lobbying in D.C. over the last nine years, hiring, among others, former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, who served as President Bush's re-election campaign chairman, and former Republican Rep. Tom Loeffler of Texas.

Meanwhile Seattle laywer Peter Goldman, representing the Center for Biological Diversity and Conservation Northwest, hasn't finished up his Freedom of Information Act request poking into the deal.

Last we heard from Goldman, the government was preparing to tell the conservation groups which documents it was refusing to release, and why. However, we recently heard recently there may be some more interesting documents on the way.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE 4:42 p.m.: Just today Goldman received from the Bush administration lawyers not more documents but rather a list of documents that the government claims it does not have to divulge. The 208 documents on the list, the government contends, are protected from disclosure under two Freedom of Information Act exemptions covering "privileged" information.

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Imagine that Seattle is a backwater timber town. Civil War General Ulysses Grant is president. No one's ever heard of a light bulb or a telephone. And women won't get the right to vote for half a century.

That is the world into which the General Mining Law of 1872 was born. We've shown pretty thorougly why this law no longer works in the modern world, not least because it allows mining companies to take valuable minerals off publicly owned land for paltry sums. Even the mining industry agrees that it needs to be reformed.

Well, today that law turns 136 years old. We're not much for anniversary journalism, but it seems worth mentioning today because there was some news this week that bears reporting: U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell filed her version of a reform bill, the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2008.

Key features include:

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Biodiesel refiners are getting hit by "grease bandits" who steal used cooking oil from restaurants to make the environmentally-friendly fuels.

Standard Biodiesel in Arlington and Gen-X Energy in Burbank near the Tri-Cities are two manufacturers making their fuel from spent cooking oil -- considered by some as the only truly sustainable way currently available for making the fuel (see this story, and this one comparing and discussing the eco-effects of biofuels).

But thieves -- dubbed grease bandits in this excellent story in the Christian Science Monitor -- are swiping the grease out from under manufacturers. The businesses have contracts with restaurants to collect the used oil, but other folks are sneaking in and emptying the drums and dumpsters before they get there.

What's a bunch of rancid old grease worth?

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NOAA's Fisheries Service Friday released a draft analysis looking at the effects of a proposed gray whale hunt by the Makah Indian Tribe. The tribe is requesting permission for a hunt, and submitted information on how many whales would be hunted, in what areas and what time of year.

The Makahs were permitted to kill a whale off the Washington coast in May 1999. That approval later was successfully challenged in court, delaying additional hunts. In 2005, the Makahs again requested permission to hunt the eastern north Pacific gray whales. Then last September, five tribal members illegally hunted and killed a whale. They're scheduled to be sentenced next month for participating in the hunt.

In the just-released analysis, called a draft Environmental Impact Statement, NOAA is considering different six alternatives:

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Katrina squared. Maybe cubed -- maybe worse.

That's about what we're seeing in the misery spawned by the cyclone that hit Myanmar. And today we learn that the damage was exacerbated by the removal of mangrove forests in favor of shrimp aquaculture and rice paddies. Once upon a time, those shoreside buffering areas provided a natural barrier to the cyclones that came barreling up the Bay of Bengal.

Without the mangroves, storm surge -- the biggest killer in most hurricanes -- was able to drive a wall of water 25 feet high miles inland.

Here's what Jeff NcNeely, chief scientist for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, had to say:

If you look at the path of the (cyclone) that hit Myanmar, it hit exactly where it was going to do the most damage, and it's doing the most damage because much of the protective vegetation was cleared. It's an expensive lesson, but it has been one taught repeatedly. You just wonder why governments don't get on this.

Cyclones, btw, are just Indian Ocean hurricanes. This one, named Nargis, comes just after the psuedo-local Mangrove Action Project warned about the "high cost of cheap shrimp" -- including those "tiger prawns" grown where Asian mangroves once stood.

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