A couple of weeks ago, a bunch of oil appeared on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. BP was all, "Hm? What's this about oil?" Then the government said, yeah, it's from the Deepwater Horizon spill. And BP was all, "Hm? Oh, that? Yeah, I guess." And the government suggested that maybe BP try and figure out what's happening? Maybe make sure the broken well isn't leaking again? And BP sighed heavily and whined about how none of its friends had to do chores and how it had all this homework and blah blah blah so the Coast Guard decided to just check for itself. BP, pleased, put its headphones back on and mumbled under its breath about what dicks these government dudes are.

Anyway, the Coast Guard figured out the source of the leak.

An undersea camera confirms that an oil slick discovered in the Gulf of Mexico came from a 100-ton device on the seafloor that BP had used several weeks after the 2010 oil spill in a failed attempt to cap its runaway Macondo well, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday.

The oil is not coming from the Macondo itself, which was sealed in a relief well operation months after the 2010 blowout.

Less than 100 gallons of oil per day is leaking from the containment device, the Coast Guard said. The oil will continue to dribble out slowly for the time being. Officials are trying to figure out the best course forward. …

“The latest survey marks the third time since the Macondo well was permanently sealed in September 2010 that it has been visually inspected at the seafloor and confirmed not to be leaking,” BP said in a statement.

I'm kind of amused by the idea of some BP dudes floating around above the broken well when it was still spitting out oil, then plunking down a giant cover on it that didn't work. Then just sitting on that boat, scratching their chins and saying, "hmmm" to each other, dropping litter all over the place.

In Australia, carbon dioxide pollution is a hot political topic. The country recently enacted a fairly moderate carbon tax — and the right wing went bananas.

Including talk radio "shock jock" (Australia has shock jocks, I guess) Alan Jones. Jones, who apparently belongs to the Limbaugh/AEI school of factual accuracy, said this on air last year:

The percentage of man-made carbon dioxide Australia produces is 1 per cent of .001 per cent of carbon dioxide in the air. Nature produces nearly all the carbon dioxide in the air.

Which is wrong and dumb. So the Australian Communications and Media Authority did something that would never happen in the United States. It decided to make Jones go to an actual school of factual accuracy:

Controversial shock jock Alan Jones has been ordered to undergo "factual accuracy" training, and to use fact-checkers, in another damaging blow to his credibility.

External trainers will conduct training sessions for Jones and other news and current affairs staff at [radio station] 2GB. …

University of Melbourne climate change scientist David Karoly said Australians were in fact responsible for .45 per cent of total carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "Obviously, we would much rather prefer that the comments of people like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt were, in fact, correct, so it is pleasing to get this ruling from ACMA," Dr Karoly said.

Politics, as they say, is the art of compromise. You want A, I want C, we settle on B. But there's a trick that savvy politicians like to play. Instead of saying you want C, say you want F. Then, the compromise is C -- or D. And then you have the House Republicans, who argue that the most important thing for America is Z.

And so we come to subsidies for Big Oil. On their face, the subsidies are a bad deal for the country. Giving tax breaks to the most profitable companies in the world so that they have an incentive to do the thing that makes them a ton of money -- while at the same time trashing the climate? Ridiculous. But what a clever politician will do is pretend that this obviously unnecessary waste of money is crucial, dragging his point of compromise to the right, so that when he gives it up he gets as much as possible back in return.

TransCanada assures you that the Keystone XL pipeline, if ever built, will be safe and pure and shoot out dollar coins along 20-yard intervals. Spill? What's a spill? Everything will be lovely and cool. Don't worry about it. The Canadian company knows it can argue for reliability because, look, it's been doing this a long time, guys. It has miles and miles of pipeline already operational, including Keystone OG, the original, smaller pipe. ("Keystone OG" is a name that I just made up, but that I hope sticks.)

Well, Keystone OG is usually operational, anyway -- just not for the next three days. From the Washington Post:

TransCanada Corp. has temporarily shut down its existing 2,100-mile Keystone pipeline after tests showed possible safety issues, a federal agency said Thursday.

Jeannie Layson, spokeswoman for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which oversees pipelines in the U.S., said no leaks were detected on the line, which moves on average about 500,000 barrels of crude a day from Alberta, Canada, down through several states to facilities Illinois and Oklahoma. …

She said the possible problems were located on the stretch of pipeline that extends between Missouri and Illinois.

A federal inspector was deployed to review test results, observe repairs and monitor any additional necessary safety issues, Layson said. PHMSA did not have additional details on what the possible safety issues were.

One possible safety issue: a giant future oil spill, I'd imagine.

You might've thought you were in the clear after last month's baconpocalypse scare, but you might be wrong. Sure, Britain's National Pig Association might have jumped the gun a bit in warning of a global bacon crisis, but that doesn't mean this summer's extreme drought isn't getting the better of the U.S. pig meat industry.

This gap, where the Interstate 75 label is, is the Straits of Mackinac.

Zoom out. It's an unassuming bit of water that plays a key role, separating Lake Michigan, at left, from Lake Huron, at right. Water from Lake Huron then flows into Lake Erie, then to Lake Ontario, then out the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic. The Great Lakes provide drinking water to 30 million people in the U.S. and Canada; the four lakes mentioned have over 8,000 miles of shoreline combined.

Interstate 75 isn't the only thing that runs across the straits. There are also oil pipelines -- pipelines run by Enbridge, the Canadian company responsible for the worst on-land oil spill in American history.

Earlier today, the National Wildlife Federation released Sunken Hazard [PDF], an assessment of the threat Enbridge's Mackinac pipelines pose to the Great Lakes region. The overview is perhaps expectedly grim.

Baby boomers are increasingly headed to the city instead of the retirement home, according to a new report by the Urban Land Institute.

Still, more than half of those 65 and over live in the ‘burbs, and the sprawl is growing grayer as many older Americans are choosing not to leave and the youth are mostly choosing not to come. But:

Many who are able to move are choosing urban locations -- both cities and suburban "town centers" -- where they can be close to grown children, friends, work, public transportation, and health care. "Leading-edge boomers will not settle gracefully into quiet retirement and move into traditional seniors housing communities for years, if they ever do," [says report author and ULI fellow John K. McIlwain].

Instead, more of them are choosing college towns (to "enjoy on-campus activities") and cohousing.

In 2007, the American Enterprise Institute was caught offering scientists $10,000 to undermine a U.N. report on climate change. The staunchly pro-business organization, heavily funded by ExxonMobil, sought researchers who would suggest that the U.N.'s process was "prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work." The AEI wasn't interested in objective climate science, it was interested in easing the way for oil companies. AEI was not happy to be caught encouraging deception.

Five years later, AEI wears its rejection of factual accuracy on its sleeve. From an opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee by Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at AEI:

Fact-checkers from Politifact, FactCheck.org, and The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog were out in force after the first two debates as they have been for much of the 2012 campaign season. Do Americans want journalists to assess the accuracy of debate claims, candidate speeches and TV ads? …

For all of the talk about high gas prices during the campaign (see this debate recap), there's a key question that hasn't been answered: Do higher gas prices erode support for the president? (In the interest of maintaining our sanity, we're going to ignore the fact that there is literally nothing that the president can do to affect prices.)

The New York Times looked at the issue this morning:

President Obama is lucky: prices at the pump have come down about 11 cents in the last month, and energy experts say they should continue to fall as the election approaches. Prices normally decline in the fall, and high gas prices in California are now easing after a series of refinery accidents a few weeks ago tightened supplies just when refiners were refitting their plants for seasonal changes in gasoline blends.

Perhaps more to the point, gasoline prices are below the national average of $3.75 a gallon in most of the swing states -- Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- that could determine the victor. Ohio, potentially the most pivotal state, has a price of $3.55 -- among the cheapest in the nation.

The big exception is Nevada, where the average gallon of regular gasoline is $3.95, 20 cents above the national average.

That sort of answers the question. But we thought we could do better.

What do ice cream, salads, and cookies all have in common? Peanuts! And, um, salmonella.

Nearly three weeks after it first began, the nationwide recall on all manner of peanutty products has expanded dramatically -- and it's hitting the organic sector particularly hard. The recall now includes raw and processed nut goods produced over the last year by New Mexico company Sunland Inc., a big producer of conventional peanuts and the nation's largest exporter of organic peanut stuffs. The Food and Drug Administration has filled its Flickr stream with helpful photos of hundreds of recalled, delicious-looking treats.