Nothing puts a damper on an historic world-mobilizing event like a steaming heap of pollution. As 80Beats reports, the nation’s current and least favorite—no, really, we’re not just saying that—president is using his last days in office to enact a virtual bonanza of legislation aimed at letting industries like coal-mining and commercial fishing wreak (even more) havoc on the environment.

Via the the Natural Resources Defense Council, here’s a description of one of the proposed rules, which exempts factory farms from requiring permits that limit water pollution:

Creates a loophole allowing facility operators to avoid permits by claiming they won’t have a discharge.

Adopts a scheme that allows facilities to avoid certain environmental enforcement. For instance, if an operator certifies that the facility won’t have a discharge, environmental authorities will ignore enforcement action, even if the facility discharges to the nation’s waters.

Rejects improvements in technology that would reduce harmful bacteria and other pathogens contained in animal waste, missing an opportunity to prevent water pollution and threats to public health.

Well, guess he figures he’ll drink only bottled water after leaving the White House. (Good luck with that one.)

The new president-elect promises to usher in a “new era of scientific innovation” (of course, exactly how much funding that will entail/receive remains to be seen).

Alternative-energy industries, shrug off your wounds—there may yet be hope on the horizon.

Stem cell researchers, re-start your engines.

Another huge winner last night: The Internet.

Also consider it a huge win for academia: The president-elect, his vice president, and both their spouses have all worked in higher education.

The Senate and the House didn’t do so badly either.

And we hate to do this, but here’s the bad news.

• Get in touch with your inner polar bear—and kick some climate change a$$.

• Attention: Cruddy voting machines = cruddy news for voters.

• The Economist smacks down pretty much the entire science journalism establishment. Don’t worry, we won’t mention how you weren’t exactly first in line to predict the financial crisis.

• We love voter databases (even if they don’t love us). Unfortunately, Ohio’s might not even make it through a single fraud check. Ask us how shocked we are.

• Man v. the Internet: Did the Web hinder (or help) the financial crisis?

• Obama’s groundbreaking Web campaign: “Controlled chaos” (that looks like it’ll work).

• And if you’re looking for last minute Halloween costume ideas, look no further.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been posting thoughts from some of the biggest names in science regarding what the next U.S. president needs to do to promote/engender/rescue science in this country. And luckily, we’re not the only ones hammering away at this issue. Last week, scientists, business leaders, and policymakers gathered in Minnesota to discuss the future of science at the Innovation 2008 Conference. Here’s a report on what went down, from guest blogger and conference participant Darlene Cavalier.

“Everybody supports science, motherhood and apple pie, but when it comes to funding, it’s a different story,” IEEE-USA President Russ Lefevre told a national audience last week at Innovation 2008: Renewing America through Smarter Science & Technology Policy.

The event was co-hosted by Science Debate 2008 and the Center for Science, Technology and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute. It presented public sessions on critical issues facing the next United States president, including: Innovation and Competitiveness; Renewing Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education; Health Science Policy; Integrating Science and Technology in America’s Artistic and Civic Culture; and Energy Security and Sustainability.

“Energy and broadband are two critical fields where more attention is warranted,” Lefevre stressed. So what’s the sharpest thorn in these areas? Access.

The first step, the experts agreed, is to create Smart Grid technologies that can help manage the delivery of electricity better, and a national transmission grid to help open access to wind and solar resources.

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• Check your state’s voter-machine-hackability rating (chances are, it’s high).

• It was only a matter of time: The official “Palinisms” video game launches.

• More on the “What exactly is a ‘green job’ anyway?” question.

• For that matter, why not throw in a “Green New Deal” to save the economy (and the planet, while we’re at it)?

• While we’re on the subject of good news—aka the planet and the economy—it’s worth asking: Does the rise of one necessarily mean the fall of the other?

• A rundown of autism myths—though at this point, there are almost too many to count.

There’s a lot of talk about “green jobs” in this election. But for all the questions raised by the phrase—just how many jobs will be generated, where will they come from, how fast will they get here—so far we’ve had few definite answers.

Which is why it’s helpful to have at least one state paving the way as an example of how to incorporate energy efficiency and “greening” into the economic scheme, and save money and create jobs in the process. The state in question is California, and according to a new study out of U.C. Berkeley, its planned investments in fighting global warming and improving energy efficiency will create as many as 403,000 jobs and jack up household incomes by $48 billion in the next 12 years. These results are a big jump even from the state’s own estimates, which were around 100,000 new jobs and $14 billion in personal income.

The key to the mystical “green job,” according to the Berkeley study, is reallocation: When people use less energy, they spend less on energy bills, and thus have more cash to spend on other things, like consumer products. Cue economic growth and job creation.

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Seeing as global warming is a defining issue of our time and all, it’s not a shock that museums would want to feature exhibits on the subject. But given that climate change is still (somewhat, on a dwindling basis) a politically-charged and controversial topic, what stance should a museum show take on the principal point of contention—specifically, whether or not the cause is mostly (or only) human activity?

That’s the dilemma that New York’s famed American Museum of Natural History is flirting with in its new show, “Climate Change: The Threat to Life and A New Energy Future.” The exhibition takes the definitive stance that human activities are primarily responsible for climate change. Museum curator Edmond Mathez, who first proposed the show several years ago, said the man-made direction was a deliberate move to educate the public on the real scientific consensus about climate change. Of course, it’s unlikely Mathez could have foreseen that the show would open during a presidential election in which one side’s VP nominee stomps on the very consensus the exhibit was built to promote—but then, all the more reason for an injection of fact into the public discourse.

So what does the show look like?

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Everyone is losing this year. Whether it be the Lehman CEO or the evicted homeowner or the aging employee with a napalmed 401K, no one—not even the supercalifragilistamega-rich— is coming out of this unscathed. But given the present and future of across-the-board pain, it’s worth looking at which industries and interests should be salvaged, or at least partially shielded from damage.

Famed paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey is already on the offensive, telling reporters during a speech the University of Arkansas at Little Rock that the economic crisis would be “just devastating” to scientific research. He fears that as the philanthropists, foundations, corporations, and governments that fund scientific research watch their coffers empty, money for grants, endowments, and other research efforts will fizzle. Starting in 2009, donations for research and exploration will be “hugely hit,” he predicts.

Environmental researchers and activists are already worried that climate work could be tossed aside in favor of more immediate (but not necessarily less worrisome) concerns. It’s not a stretch to predict that other scientific fields will be hit as well—and that the halting or delaying of research could be as big an aggregate loss as the mortgage crisis and Dow immolation combined.

Related:

Reality Base: High Gas Prices = Good; High Gas Prices = Bad
RB: Lose Your House, Lose Your Vote, Lose Your Self-Esteem
RB: DISCOVER’s Science Policy Project

So we’ve been driving a lot less, which is good. We’ve also been shifting attitudes about oil as a resource and adjusting our lives to consume less of it, which is even better. And we’ve been lavishing more time and attention (and money) on alternative energy, which is best of all.

But now oil prices are plummeting as fast as they rose, and analysts are worried that all those silver linings will be ripped out and tossed aside. As the economy grinds to a halt and the government doles out $700 billion checks, Time‘s Bryan Walsh wonders if alternative fuel initiatives—and, for that matter, any climate change legislation—might be shoved to the back of the line behind our bubbling economic woes.

Even if the gas price dip is temporary and/or U.S. consumption habits remain changed, the credit and spending slashes that are already underway could put the kibosh on funding for many alt-energy projects, as Walsh points out. Plus there’s the matter of gas prices as a source of political leverage: The Warner-Lieberman bill, Congress’ first real attempt to pass cap-and-trade legislation, was defeated when Republicans throttled it with the charge that carbon caps would lead to even higher oil prices.

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• In the wake of its banking decombustion, Iceland heads back to an economy based on fishing—at least, for another 50 years or so.

• Should water be priced according to its market value? Vote today in The Economist‘s water poll.

• Morality police or no, 25 percent of teenage girls have received the HPV vaccine.

• Nuclear energy gets a PR boost.

• Some how, pork seems a little less porky when it’s going to green energy.

• The Top Ten Biggest Nobel Prize shafts.

• Doctors and drug companies: How deep does the rabbit hole go?

• And finally, perhaps the best graphic representation so far of this week’s financial wreckage.

For all those climate change activists celebrating (rightfully, in our view) the steep gas price increase as a means of forcing U.S. drivers to stop guzzling fossil fuels, here’s more good news: As the Climate Progress blog notes, Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles, or 3.6 percent less, in July 2008 than July 2007, putting 2008 on track to hit the largest dip in vehicle-driven miles since 1983. Which, from a glass-half-full perspective, means that all those potential fuel emissions are staying out of the air … or, from a glass-half-empty view, that we’re careening towards the end of civilization as we know it. Which in and of itself would probably be good for the Earth—if not so good for us.

Image: iStockphoto 

Given the historical magnitude and importance of the 2008 election, it’s no surprise that the event has been prompting plenty of artistic interpretations. Obama has inspired prints and been the subject of numerous collaborations, while New Hampshire’s Currier Museum of Art is cashing in on the trend by selling t-shirts, magnets and pins with Warhol-inspired images of the two candidates.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles-based artist Kim Abeles had a slightly more incisive idea to illustrate each candidate’s commitment to emissions reduction: Make portraits with pollution. To create her prints, Abeles placed stencil images of each candidate on top of sheets of opaque glass, then left them on the roof of her studio in downtown L.A. Obama, who has proposed an 80 percent emissions reduction, was left out for nine days, while McCain, who promises a 60 percent reduction, was out in the air for 18 days (all lengths of time were based on Abeles’s estimation of the difference in emissions levels that the two would tolerate).

When she took the prints down and removed the stencils, the images revealed themselves in all their smog-catching glory. The depth and colors offer a pictorial comparison of the pollution each candidate would leave in the atmosphere.

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Despite her running mate’s acknowledgment of the scientific consensus, Sarah Palin has once again affirmed her denial that man is the primary (or only) cause of global warming, this time on the national stage:

IFILL: Governor, I’m happy to talk to you in this next section about energy issues. Let’s talk about climate change. What is true and what is false about what we have heard, read, discussed, debated about the causes of climate change?

PALIN: Yes. Well, as the nation’s only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it’s real.

I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

The first half of this political sidestep comes as no surprise. The last paragraph is, in a word, nuts. Here are a few past examples of the Palin method—i.e., “solving” scientific problems without first determining the cause:

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Remember how un-cuddly and un-fuzzy animals were getting the shaft from both the media and the public alike? Well, finally an organization is taking a stand for the rights of the slimy, the toady, and the generally awful. The Conservation Law Foundation has asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to add the Atlantic wolffish—the picture speaks for itself—to the Endangered Species List.

As with the majority of aquatic species, the fish is being royally screwed by commercial fishing and could soon be wiped off the planet. The only difference between it and all those photogenic dolphins, however, is that the wolffish is, well, freaking hideous. Which makes it all the less likely that the CLF’s push will be well-received—especially considering that New England fishermen are already eying this move as a potential source of more fishing restrictions.

So unless it’s discovered to make pearls or form the world’s greatest sushi, we’re not holding our breaths for the foundations and charities to spring forth trumpeting the species’ survival. Ah well—we’ll always have pictures.

Image: Flickr/eirikm

EcoGeek’s Hank Green notes that while nothing could touch the 500 mph freefall of bank stocks last week, the stocks that took a surprising second-worst hit were solar. Green’s reasoning for this, which we agree with, is that the solar industry was a victim of seriously bad timing: Just as renewable energy tax credits—which have been floundering in political quicksand for months—were finally passed in the Senate, a host of mega-banks decombusted, leaving the House with the small task of saving the American economy from collapse.

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