The two presidential campaigns are now operating as weird reflections of each other. Each is criticizing the other for killing energy jobs; each is claiming to be an industry's salvation. It's basically the same strategy, but Romney says "coal" while Obama says "wind."

Photo by Hepburn Wind.

This afternoon, Mitt Romney heads to Ohio, where he'll attend a "coal event" in a small town near the West Virginia border. Romney's goal is to leverage the "war on coal" rhetoric that's dragging down the president's popularity in the region.

As Cincinnati.com notes, the optics of Romney's trip today may be tricky.

Romney will be at American Energy. A sister company within parent Murray Energy Corp. pleaded guilty last month for a pipeline rupture at a coal preparation plant near Beallsville that spilled thousands of gallons of slurry into pristine Captina Creek, turning the stream black for 22 miles. Ohio Valley Coal Co. pleaded guilty last month in federal district court to criminal violations of the federal Clean Water Act. The spill is costing the company millions.

Murray Energy is the largest privately held coal company in the nation, according to its website. An accident at its Century Mine in Beallsville on Aug. 8, 2011 killed a worker.

So why the visit? Why let Murray "[bus] in employees and their families for the rally in support of Romney"? Perhaps this CNN interview with Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, explains.

If you're familiar with the name Enbridge, it's probably because of the company's stellar track record of spilling oil all over Michigan and then spilling a bit less oil all over Wisconsin. It's like a vaudeville skit, something out of Laurel and Hardy -- a clumsy buffoon slipping and sliding all over the stage, oil pouring from his pants pockets and from under his hat.

Standard revolutionary fare in opposition to a new Enbridge pipeline. (Photo by jennzebel.)

Enbridge is currently "managed" by a guy named Patrick Daniel, continuing the new trend of dudes only having first names. Patrick Daniel (whose name I just accidentally typed as "Denial" -- seriously -- and then thought about whether I should change it) went on the radio in Canada yesterday and said the following things, according to the Edmonton Journal. His goal was to get people to like this idea he has for a new pipeline to take tar-sands oil from Alberta to British Columbia. He was maybe not so successful.

He said:

Everything that we say sounds defensive and self-interested, and on the other side, everything they say ... is really taken as gospel -- and it isn’t.

Shorter version: "Just because we lie, people don't like us."

Setting aside the irony of claiming that science is "taken as gospel," the debate isn't between oil-lovers and oil-haters. It's between people who make money by polluting and people who would like to curtail that pollution. It's between an industry that seeks to obscure the truth and a movement that wants to clarify. By the way, dude -- you sound defensive.

A subtle reminder that the environment in California is generally nice.

The long run-up to California's cap-and-trade program will finally end this November, as the state launches its market for carbon allowances. Polluters will buy allowances for each ton of carbon dioxide they produce on an open market. Producing more will therefore cost a company more; producing less will yield a cost savings. The system is intended not only to impose a cost on the pollution, but also to bring down the total amount of pollution.

From Bloomberg:

The [California Air Resources Board] is on schedule to develop a platform for a Nov. 14 auction of allowances, each allowing for the release of one metric ton of carbon under a state program that caps emissions from plants beginning next year, Chairman Mary Nichols said during an interview at Bloomberg’s San Francisco office. ...

Allowances to be used as part of the state’s program are commanding higher prices than any other carbon permits traded on futures exchanges as regulators develop rules for a system that eventually will cover 85 percent of the greenhouse gases released in the state. It would become the first economy-wide program of its kind in the U.S.

The Exxon Valdez, at the still-young age of 26, will soon leave this world once and for all.

Rocks covered with oil from the Valdez. (Photo courtesy of ARLIS Reference.)

Yes, the ship that in 1989 drenched the beaches of Alaska in crude oil is still around, having fled the scene of its crime to drift through Europe under an assumed name, like so many disgraced scoundrels before it. With Oriental Nicety now written on its outermost layer of paint, the ship sits off the coast of India, having only recently learned its fate from an Indian court: death.

From Nature:

[I]n 2011, … she was sold for $16 million to an Indian demolition company, Priya Blue Industries. The same company had attracted bad press in 2006 for breaking down a ship called the Blue Lady, despite knowing that she contained asbestos. Activists claimed that the Oriental Nicety, too, was contaminated with asbestos and polychlorinated biphenyls, a persistent organic pollutant. The Indian Supreme Court forbade docking of the ship and imposed an environmental audit.

So the Oriental Nicety sat on death row for two months, costing her owner $10 million as the value of its steel declined and the company continued to pay its crew.

Last month, the court ruled in favour of Priya Blue: there was no toxic waste on the ship. The Oriental Nicety is welcome to beach at Alang, the world's largest ship-breaking yard, where she will be dismantled for scrap.

Connecticut has one nuclear power plant. On Saturday, one of its reactors was shut down because the water in Long Island Sound was too hot.

Unit 2 of Millstone Power Plant near New London was shut down Sunday afternoon after temperatures in the sound exceeded 75 degrees for 24 hours, the maximum temperature at which the nuclear power plant has permits to extract cooling water for the unit, said Ken Holt, spokesman for plant operator Dominion.

We've mentioned the correlation between warmer water and electricity production before. In a nuclear plant, water plays a critical role in keeping the reactor core cool. Obviously warm water is not as effective at displacing that heat. And if the reactor core isn't kept cool -- well, let's just say you want to keep it cool.

Temperatures in Long Island Sound (at left center). Click to embiggen. (Image courtesy of Weather Underground.)

Here is an excerpt from a statement from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) earlier today.

[T]he president continues to blame anyone and everyone for the drought but himself.

Yes! John Boehner, laying it on the line. Why doesn't the president accept the blame for the massive affliction that is almost unprecedented in national history? I bet John Boehner would, if he were president.

Here are some thoughts.

There are literally trillions of microbes in and around your body right now -- living in your stomach, crowded around your eyeballs, under your fingernails. But it's all a happy symbiotic relationship. You keep them alive; some of them keep you alive. None of them are trying to kill you.

Parasites, on the other hand, are happy to use your stomach itself as a food source and probably nest in your eyeballs. And with greater temperature shifts due to climate change, it's possible that you'll be more susceptible to parasitic invasion.

Parasites, which include tapeworms, the tiny organisms that cause malaria and funguses, may be more nimble at adapting to climatic shifts than the animals they live on since they are smaller and grow more quickly, scientists said.

It's possible. But you should be most worried if you're a frog.

If you look like this, be nervous. (Photo by Jonathan Choe.)

Photo by David Shankbone.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Harry Hamm, subject of a very warm profie in the Washington Post this weekend. (To be fair, I don't know that he goes by Harry, but the name "Harry Hamm" is hard to pass up, except at a diner.)

[T]he 66-year-old Hamm is a multibillionaire who could buy [his hometown of Lexington, Okla.] several times over. An early believer in the notion that the techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing could be merged to unlock new layers of oil, he is the chief executive of Continental Resources, the leading exploration company in the booming Bakken Formation, which stretches across Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan. His 68 percent stake in the company is currently worth $7.7 billion, and Forbes recently ranked him the world’s 76th-richest person.

Harold Hamm, a figure who detoured from a Horatio Alger novel straight into Dallas. Be warned, humble reader: "His public relations person jokes that once people talk to the upbeat, personable oilman, they’re 'Hammanized.' Even many of his political foes say he’s hard not to like." Seems like that should have been "Hammered," but, fine. You meet the guy, you like him. Fair enough.

Well, I haven't met him. And based on this profile, he doesn't exactly seem like the sort of guy I'd like to hang out with.

If this news surprises you, you haven't watched a lot of B-movies.

Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment could have caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan, a study has suggested.

Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident.

These images of "representative morphological abnormalities" are from the study, published in Scientific Reports. From left to right, dented eyes, deformed left eye, deformed right palpus, and deformed wing shape. Click to embiggen.

The researchers collected pale grass blue butterflies from a variety of locations around the site of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

By comparing mutations found on the butterflies collected from the different sites, the team found that areas with greater amounts of radiation in the environment were home to butterflies with much smaller wings and irregularly developed eyes.

"It has been believed that insects are very resistant to radiation," said lead researcher Joji Otaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa.

"In that sense, our results were unexpected," he told BBC News.

Last week, we outlined how the drought is depleting water reserves in American aquifers faster than expected. This is bad news over the long term, as some long-standing sources can take millennia to refill.

It is also bad news over the short term. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

[Y]ou can add residential water wells to the list of casualties claimed by the Drought of 2012.

For months, farmers have been forced to drill deeper wells to water parched crops and feed livestock. But in recent weeks, homeowners across the state have reported that they can't perform basic tasks such as doing laundry or washing dishes, let alone even think about watering their flower beds. …

The depleted supply isn't just from the lack of rain, said Renee Bungart, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The month of July was the hottest on record, which probably prompted residents to use more water.

The U.S. Geological Survey monitors water levels at wells around the state. Here's the state map. St. Louis is in the eastern part of the state, and we've labelled nearby monitoring wells.

Click to embiggen.