OMG, the tar sands are coming!

After a seven-month investigation, InsideClimate News has published an in-depth series on "the biggest oil spill you've never heard of" -- a million-gallon-plus spill of oil-sands crude near Kalamazoo, Mich., in July 2010. If you like your summer reading on the heavy side, dive right into part one, or download the whole series as an e-book.

Or you can get the highlights lowlights right here:

The takeaway: Tar-sands spills are incredibly, frighteningly difficult to clean up. And it's this same kind of oil that would be pumped through the Keystone XL pipeline if it gets built, sent 1,700 miles right down the middle of the country, and right over the Ogallala Aquifer, a major source of freshwater for drinking and irrigation.

Tar-sands or oil-sands crude -- technically called bitumen -- is goopy, tricky stuff:

A version of this article originally appeared on Climate Progress.

Someday soon, robots could help us fight wildfires like the ones blazing in Colorado. (Photo by U.S. Air Force.)

In the last few years, we’ve seen an increase in extreme weather events and environmental disasters -- costing us money, and far more importantly, human lives.

Some have been natural (or indirectly caused by humans due to climate change), and others, like BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, have been directly caused by us.

With scientists warning that the frequency of wildfires, floods, drought, and other catastrophes will only increase as the planet warms, engineers are now focusing on how to use robots and other mechanical gadgets to aid in disaster response. Some of these bots vacuum up oil, some sort rubble and rescue earthquake survivors, and some help battle wildfires. Here’s a look at three of the coolest robotic defenders, both in use and on the horizon.

After months of partisan gamesmanship, Congress finally coughed up a transportation bill today.

Both the House and the Senate voted to okay a compromise of a compromise that is a major letdown for fans of bikes and clean transit. President Obama is expected to sign it into law today or tomorrow.

Despite much back-patting and talk of bipartisanship, a semi-decent Senate version of the bill was gutted during the conference-committee process. First House lawmakers loaded it up with “poison pills,” including a provision that would have forced the approval of the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline. Those pills were dropped from the final bill, but so were measures that would have promoted public transit, walking and biking infrastructure, air quality, accountability, and environmental review.

What was left? Highways, highways, and more highways.

Earlier this year, a friend of mine casually mentioned that he'd been enjoying the David Mayfield Parade album. This friend happens to be a professional music critic, so I tracked it down, despite having never heard a thing about it (and I keep up with new music pretty well).

And damn!

The album quickly became my favorite of the year (though technically it was released in 2011). In fact, it's my whole family's favorite -- all four of us can sing more or less every word to every song. Here's "Noreen," which will make you dance.

As I started digging in a little more, I realized that Mayfield has connections all over my personal music landscape. He's played drums for the Avett Brothers on tour, and they appear on the album. His little sister is Jessica Lea Mayfield, who I also love. He's toured with Mumford & Sons. He's been a session and/or touring player for all sorts of other folks. Musicians love the guy.

Anyway, the album is awesome. And I've been wondering: when's the follow-up?

Born in the USA. But in the future, that may be classified information. (Photo by USDA.)

Mystery meat is about to make a comeback.

Since 2009, the U.S. government has required grocery stores to label meat with its country of origin. Sounds logical, right? Give customers basic information about the products they're buying.

But Mexico and Canada whined about the rule to the World Trade Organization, and today the WTO slapped it down. That's what happens when we "outsourc[e] our legal system to international commercial bodies that push corporate interests,” says Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

Photo by Christopher Schoenbohm. Hold the phone. The Census Bureau has just released new numbers suggesting that America’s largest cities surged past the suburbs in 2011, growing at a faster rate than the ’burbs for the first time since Henry Ford started rolling out the cars that would fuel almost a century of sprawl. If the numbers hold up (these are between-year estimates, not full-blown census counts) they represent a dramatic shift, and one that fits nicely into our favorite narrative about cities rising from rust while suburbs languish in big-box obsolescence. Some highlights, care of the Associated Press: New …

It's not a shock that the Republican Party of Texas' official platform, announced and adopted this month, is a seething morass of racism and homophobia. Republicans: That's how we do! Nor is it surprising that the platform comes out in favor of employee discrimination and corporal punishment in schools, and opposed to comprehensive sex education, environmental protections, affirmative action, and the Voting Rights Act. Yawn, really. But get ready to hand your $10 to Nick Fury, because they actually managed to pull out something so blatant that it surprised even jaded old me: The Texas GOP's platform is explicitly opposed to critical thinking skills.

Here's the relevant text:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Remember how in junior high you used to try to convince yourself that beautiful people were congenitally dull? With tomatoes, it's actually true! Everyone knows that handsome rosy tomatoes from the supermarket taste blander than the ugly heirloom variety from the farmer's market (or your backyard). As it turns out, it's genetic -- the gene that makes tomatoes ripen uniformly, and thus makes them look appealing when sitting in grocery produce sections, also ruins their taste. 

Farmer Dan Brown has been sued by the Maine Dept. of Agriculture for selling raw milk, despite the passage of a food sovereignty ordinance in his town.

New England town meetings typically include dozens and dozens of proposals for citizens to vote up or down, on quickly forgotten matters like new stop lights and bridge repairs.

But this year, things have been different. The residents in eight small Maine towns have all voted to declare "food sovereignty" -- and they won't be forgetting the issue any time soon. In other words, they've passed ordinances that explicitly allow local farmers and ranchers to sell their food — meat, eggs, unpasteurized milk, honey, veggies — directly to consumers within town borders, without state or federal licenses, permits, or regulations.

Towns in Massachusetts, Vermont, and California have all replicated these experiments, which in Vermont have all been based on a single template [PDF]. And while the mainstream media is referring to the ordinances as “symbolic,” it is yet to be seen how the courts will rule.

Photo by USAF.

The wildfires raging through Colorado and the West are unbelievable. As of yesterday there were 242 fires burning, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Almost 350 homes have been destroyed in Colorado Springs, where 36,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. President Obama is visiting today to assess the devastation for himself.

Obviously the priority is containing the fires and protecting people. But inevitably the question is going to come up: Did climate change "cause" the fires? Regular readers know that this question drives me a little nuts. Pardon the long post, but I want to try to tackle this causation question once and for all.