President Obama and the State Department haven't approved the northern leg of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would cart tar-sands oil down from Canada, but the southern leg, which Obama blessed last year, is trucking right along. TransCanada says construction on the southern section, from Oklahoma to the Texas Gulf Coast, is about halfway complete.

From the Associated Press:

Nearly 4,000 workers in Oklahoma and Texas are aligning and welding a 485-mile section, TransCanada spokesman David Dodson told The Associated Press.

“We’re right at peak right now,” he said. “We hope to have it in operation by the end of this year.”

Where there's oil there's money, and where there's money there are job creators, right? At least so says TransCanada -- and in the short term, that's not wrong.

Civic-minded hacktivists, you best brush off those keyboards and pick out a cute outfit, because tomorrow is International Open Data Day.

Cities around the world will be hosting hackathons to turn government data dumps into useful interactive applications for citizen engagement. Check the map for info on a 'thon near you.

For this special holiday occasion, San Francisco's Climate Corporation is hosting EcoHack. "EcoHack is about using technology to improve and better understand our natural environment," say the event's organizers. "Based on the hacking model of quick, clever solutions to problems, EcoHack is an opportunity to make a difference while having fun!" Woo, nerds!

Hey, so, about that layer of long-frozen soil covering almost a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere's land surface? You know, the stuff that's started melting and freaking out climate scientists but often isn't calculated into global warming metrics?

Yeah, so, uh, according to a new study published this week in the journal Science, that may be melting way faster than we thought. From Climate Central:

If global average temperature were to rise another 2.5°F (1.5°C), say earth scientist Anton Vaks of Oxford University, and an international team of collaborators, permafrost across much of northern Canada and Siberia could start to weaken and decay. And since climate scientists project at least that much warming by the middle of the 21st century, global warming could begin to accelerate as a result, in what’s known as a feedback mechanism. ...

It's more cold comfort for drought-stricken farmers this week, and I don't mean the snow.

USDA chief economist Joe Glauber was all sunshine this Thursday in announcing that normal spring weather is expected to improve corn and soybean yields by huge percentages over last year's tiny drought-stricken crops. Bigger yields mean tinier prices -- Glauber said corn would be down about a third from last year, soy would drop more than a quarter, and wheat would be down about 11 percent.

From the South Dakota Argus Leader:

The recovery should send prices for most oilseeds and grains sharply lower, providing a much-needed reprieve for livestock, dairy and poultry producers struggling with high feed costs, and relief down the road for consumers who have paid more for food at their local grocery store. ...

“The critical factor that people will be following is weather,” Glauber said at the department’s annual outlook forum. “While the outlook for 2013 remains bright, there are many uncertainties.”

Way to bury the lede, Glauber. No matter how many times Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says "American agriculture is quite resilient," there still remains the fact that American agriculture is also in crisis, and forecasters are expecting more hot and dry weather this year.

If this past Sunday's Forward on Climate rally showed a lot of love for President Obama, it showed even more for the nonviolent direct action going down in East Texas. Throughout the day, activists blockading construction of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline received big support from even the most law-abiding demonstrators.

But though their civil disobedience might seem mainstream within the climate movement, the blockaders are taking some seriously big risks out there, and a new documentary shows just how big. The nearly hour-long film by Garrett Graham was produced in collaboration with the blockaders and includes footage they shot themselves, from some places where journalists might fear to tread lest, you know, pepper-spray, choke-holds, etc.

You can watch the whole thing right here:

The latest New York Times Magazine features a lengthy report on the horrifying ways in which processed food purveyors are sneaking tasty but disease-causing extras into our snacks.

The piece, adapted from Michael Moss' forthcoming book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, is well worth devouring. In it, Moss tracks the development of consumer-friendly products such as Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and Lunchables from research and development in the late '80s to the obesity epidemic of our modern times. Moss writes:

So why are the diabetes and obesity and hypertension numbers still spiraling out of control? It’s not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive. I talked to more than 300 people in or formerly employed by the processed-food industry, from scientists to marketers to C.E.O.’s. Some were willing whistle-blowers, while others spoke reluctantly when presented with some of the thousands of pages of secret memos that I obtained from inside the food industry’s operations. What follows is a series of small case studies of a handful of characters whose work then, and perspective now, sheds light on how the foods are created and sold to people who, while not powerless, are extremely vulnerable to the intensity of these companies’ industrial formulations and selling campaigns.

Does it surprise you that food giants Kraft, Pepsi, and General Mills use extensive research-and-development processes designed to find a consumer's ideal "bliss point"? Does it surprise you that said "bliss point" is a combination of way more sugar, salt, and fat than any of us would load up on a plate otherwise? Does it surprise you that this makes those corporate food giants a huge ton of cash?

None of these things surprised me. Moss' piece is scary, and these corporations' tactics are extraordinary, but they seem right in line with the marketing ploys that have shaped our well-padded American lives for the last three decades. What did surprise me was the story of Jeffrey Dunn.

Farmers markets sometimes get a bad rap for catering to the moneyed set, as though only the well-to-do like to buy their produce in a pleasant, social, outdoor environment, direct from the source.

It turns out that's all a bunch of compost. Low-income shoppers are actually the real farmers-market power users, buying bigger shares of their groceries at the markets than at other stores compared to middle- and high-income shoppers, according to a new report from the Project for Public Spaces.

Pirate fishing is an entertainingly named but actually terrible scourge of the oceans.

"It leaves communities without much needed food and income and the marine environment smashed and empty," according to Greenpeace, which has estimated that there are upwards of 1,000 illegal industrial-scale fishing ships at sea. "Pirate fishing compounds the global environmental damage from other destructive fisheries. Because they operate, quite literally, off the radar of any enforcement, the fishing techniques they use are destroying ocean life." The practice is rampant in Central America and parts of Europe and Africa.

But now the super-intimidating international policing ubergroup INTERPOL is convening for the first time ever to talk about policing these pirates at next week's International Fisheries Enforcement Conference in Lyon, France. "High-level Chiefs in the field of fisheries law enforcement are invited to join together with the aim of sharing expertise and strategies to prevent and combat fisheries crime," says INTERPOL.

After a seriously dry run, some drought-stricken farmers have gotten a bit of a reprieve. Snow dumping this week on the country's potential future dust bowl is great news for suffering, parched wheat crops.

Reuters reports:

Nearly a foot or more of snow fell across key growing areas in Oklahoma and Kansas in the last 24 hours, and more was coming.

"I feel a lot better this morning," said Kansas wheat farmer Scott Van Allen, who has about 2,300 acres planted to winter wheat in south-central Kansas. "It snowed all night on us. I was getting very concerned with the lack of moisture we've had."

Well, Scott, here are some scientists to rain on your parade (except without any actual rain, sorry). This extreme weather isn't nearly extreme enough to make up for the other extreme weather.

No justice, no ride to work! The vast majority of transit systems in the U.S. have cut service, raised fares, or both over the last two years, affecting those who rely on public transportation especially hard.

An article in the current issue of the Boston Review outlines the struggle for more justice and more buses:

For millions of American families, the commute to work is more than stressful: it can also be cripplingly costly. While the average family spends around 19 percent of its budget getting around, very low-income families (defined as families who make less than half of an area’s median income) can see as much as 55 percent of their earnings eaten up by transportation costs, according to a report by the Center for Transit-Oriented Development. ...