Stephan Dolezalek, Managing Director of VantagePoint Venture Partners and Tom Werner, Chief Executive of solar power company SunPower, sat down at Reuters' Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in San Francisco and shared their views on global warming, investment and cleantech.

Dolezalek sees industrialization in developing countries as a more predictable impetus for investment than global warming.

Werner sees global warming as a stimulus for new business and a tool for adaptation.

What are your thoughts?  Is global warming an economic stimulus, an unreliable driver for investment, neither or both?

(Editing/video by Courtney Hoffman, pictures by Kim White)

Rodney Russ lives for the times he is at the rudder of a Zodiac.

For the owner of Heritage Expeditions, the New Zealand-based company that is operating the Russian research ship Professor Khromov in the Bering Sea, the more challenging the conditions the better.

“The rougher the waves, the more difficult the landing, the more remote and obscure the place, the more I enjoy it,” Russ said in a corridor on the Khromov.

So it was with disappointment that Russ was forced to put the inflatable boat with the outboard motor away, after he had donned his wet-weather gear and readied the craft for a spin off the Siberian coast in late August.

The plan was nixed by the Russian navy representative on board.

It took months for the joint U.S.-Russian RUSALCA oceanographic expedition to get the necessary clearances to travel through Russian waters in the Khromov, deploying data-gathering moorings, and using a high-tech instrument to take water samples.

There was nothing in the permits about zipping around the ship in a Zodiac. Doing it could jeopardize the RUSALCA mission, which is geared to gauging the impact of global warming on the region over several years.

The next day, the ship’s research path took it slowly back toward the Russian-United States border, which lies between two tiny inhabited islands – Big Diomede and Little Diomede (Little’s on the U.S. side).

The moment the Khromov crossed the border, Russ lowered his Zodiac into the Bering Strait, and invited some passengers to take some pictures of the ship and its cold-water surroundings as it sat just on the U.S. side of the boundary between the two onetime Cold War foes.

The sea was glasslike, so it wasn’t the high-seas adventure it could have been for Russ, who began his career as a wildlife biologist. No matter.

“I was keen for the program to get some photographs,” he said. “I’m always raring to go. If there’s a chance to drive a Zodiac, I’ll go in.”

(Photo – Rodney Russ powers his Zodiac away from the Russian research ship Professor Khromov in U.S. waters of the Bering Strait on August 28, 2009. REUTERS/Jeffrey Jones)

The last of the data-gathering moorings to be plucked from the Bering Sea proved to be the most troublesome.

This one was several miles north of the Bering Strait in U.S. waters, and it took a few hours to steam up there in the Professor Khromov, the ship the RUSALCA team is using for the joint U.S.-Russian oceanographic expedition.

Once GPS pinpointed the location, the tech team in charge of retrieving the moorings sent the electronic signal that releases the chain of instruments and floats from the anchor on the ocean floor and waited. And waited. All on deck scanned around the ship for an orange ball on the water’s surface. It didn’t appear.

More beeps. Again, nothing.

After about 30 minutes, the mission’s chief scientist, Terry Whitledge, and Rebecca Woodgate, who is responsible for the mooring operations, put Plan B into action.

The high-tech gear, which has been gathering data on water content, temperature and other things 50 meters below the surface since last October, can’t just be left behind. It is key to the expedition’s mission of gauging the impact of global warming in the region.

This kind of trouble has been known to happen in the Arctic.

The new plan: slowly let out hundreds of meters of steel cable, weighed down by anchors, to scrape the ocean bottom in hopes of releasing the fouled-up mechanism. The Khromov’s captain, Alexander Dyachenko, steered the ship in wide circles. Mercifully, the sea was calm.

After about an hour of dragging the bottom, the buoy popped to the surface. From there, it was a snap to pull the mooring aboard, and the technicians went about trying to figure out what prevented it from releasing.

The episode was inconvenient, but no crisis, Woodgate said.

“I’ve been there before,” the British-born scientist said. “We’ve got a ship that can drag, so I’m not as desperate as I might otherwise be.”

Now, she and her team begin the process of placing new moorings in the ocean between the United States and Russia.

(Photo – Dan Naber, with the RUSALCA mission’s mooring team, readies an anchor to drag the floor of the Bering Sea in hopes of releasing a stuck data-gathering mooring on August 25, 2009. REUTERS/Jeffrey Jones)

The research vessel Professor Khromov is just a few kms off the easternmost point of Siberia, and U.S. technologist Kevin Taylor is struggling to reel in an orange buoy that had been deep beneath the Bering Strait for nearly a year.

The first time he tries, the ship veers too far away from the prize and must make a slow, wide turn for another pass. The second time, Taylor’s hook is not quite ready and the float bobs again into the Khromov’s wake. This takes practice, even in calm waters.

A main task of the RUSALCA expedition, a joint-U.S.-Russian scientific effort taking place in August and September, is to retrieve data-gathering moorings that were dropped 50 meters to the bottom during stormy weather last October, and to leave new ones.

It takes technological and navigational know how and, it soon becomes clear, the lassoing skills of a cowboy.

Attached to moorings are instruments that gather data on temperature, currents, salinity and other things tied to RUSALCA’s study of the impact of climate change on the region. Some of the new ones are even equipped with an instrument that listens for whales. They are held to the bottom by weights fashioned from train wheels.

Three are in Russian waters and five are on the U.S. side of the strait.

When the ship gets close to a mooring location the technical team tries to get a signal from the equipment to determine the exact location. If the unit is in the spot where it was dropped — that is, ice did not move it -– then the team sends an electronic pulse to open a mechanism that detaches the anchor, allowing the floats and instruments to float to the surface.

It’s not without its risks.

The technical expert behind the moorings, University of Alaska’s David Leech, said a single barnacle has been known to foul up the release mechanism. That leaves $200,000 worth of high-tech gear stuck on the bottom of the Bering Strait. The ship’s captain must also make sure he does not run over the unit during the recovery.

Once the mooring’s grabbed, the ship’s crane plucks it from the water and puts it onto the deck, where technologists and scientists scrape away the barnacles, separate and clean the gear and get ready to upload the data. Then it’s off to the next location.

A couple more tries and Taylor snags the buoy, to cheers of his colleagues. By the third mooring, the retrieval effort is more like clockwork.

(Picture – Technologist Kevin Taylor gets ready to snag the buoy of a mooring near Siberia’s eastern coast from the deck of the Professor Khromov on Monday, August 24, 2009. REUTERS/Jeffrey Jones)

Two German ships set off on Friday on the first commercial journey from Asia to western Europe via the Arctic through the fabled Northeast Passage – a trip made possible by climate change. Niels Stolberg, president and CEO of Bremen-based Beluga Shipping, said the Northern Sea Route will cut thousands of nautical miles off the ships’ journey from South Korea to the Netherlands, reducing fuel consumption and emissions of greenhouse gas. I had the chance to ask Stolberg a few questions about the Arctic expedition:

Question: What’s the status of the voyage?
Stolberg: MV “Beluga Fraternity” and the MV “Beluga Foresight” have just started to sail from Vladivostok (on Friday) with the destination Novyy Port at the river Ob.

Question: When did they leave Vladivostok and when will they arrive in Europe?
Stolberg: They’ve just left Vladivostok. They are scheduled to arrive in Novyy Port around September 6th. After discharging, they will proceed via Murmansk to Rotterdam. Estimated time of arrival is still to be confirmed and up to further voyage development.

Question: How much time/fuel/money/CO2 will this northern route save?
Stolberg: The amount of time, fuel, money or emission saved will be significant by transiting the Northeast Passage instead of sailing the traditional way through the Suez. From Ulsan via the Suez Canal to Rotterdam it would be a roughly 11,000 nautical mile journey whereas the short cut between Asia and Europe utilising the Northeast Passage is a 8,700 mile journey. The saved distance in detail always depends on the route, so the routes could be about 3,000 to 5,000 miles shorter. Savings of about three million euros by sending six vessels through the Northeast Passage per open time frame is realistic. Saving distance means saving bunker means saving money: That is the formula.

Question: Your company has been a pioneer in reducing costs/CO2 — is that why you’re so eager to sail the northern route?
Stolberg: It is a hallmark of the corporate philosophy of Beluga Shipping to go off the beaten tracks whenever possible and reasonable: MV “Beluga SkySails”, co-powered by a towing kite system, or many projects developed and driven by our own department “Research & Innovation” follow that principle with the overall intention and make shipping more efficient as well as into a greener business. In this sense, we reckon that the Northeast Passage offers unmatched chances for efficient sea traffic when as an effect of global warming in the summer there is the chance of using this seaway for a couple of weeks, thus connecting the markets in Europe and Asia

Question: Is drawing attention to global warming an aspect of this journey?
Stolberg: This is not our intention nor does it reflect our business. My personal opinion is that global warming and climate change, obviously, are developments with some negative effects. However, the melting ice in the Northeast Passage and thus the possibility to transit through this passage for commercial purpose has positive effects, too. This development enables shipping companies to reduce bunker consumption and as a consequence CO2 and other emissions as well which, in turn, are small factors to limit the scope of the global warming.

Question: Do you think many other ships will be taking this Arctic short cut?
Stolberg: The possibility to transit the Northeast Passage in combination with the cargo flow between Europe and Asia is a major reason and motivation why the Northern Sea Route will become even more attractive for shipping companies. So, it is our goal to utilise this seaway regularly, if possible, and we could imagine others will follow our example. You also have to have appropriate modern vessels, you have to have an experienced team of experts on board and all behind in the onshore offices and you have to be granted permission by the authorities.

Question: Why have no other ships tried this northern route yet? Why are you the first?
Stolberg: Russian submarines and icebreakers have used the northern route in the past. But it wasn’t open for regular commercial shipping until now because there are many areas with thick ice. It was only last summer that satellite pictures revealed the ice is melting and a small corridor opened which could enable commercial shipping through the Northeast Passage. We’re the first company to travel the route this summer because we have suitable vessels and are well prepared to master the challenge.

Question: What are the dangers of the northern route?
Stolberg: There are numerous challenges and some risks awaiting both vessel and crew. Even though the ice is melting in the respective time frame, cold temperature and ice, drifting ice fields or ridges can become a problem and produce a risk of injury to the crew as well as a risk of damage to the vessel. The look out is highly important. Also the ship material and not least the seaworthy and all lashings of the cargo have to be checked constantly under this even more rough and inhospitable conditions than elsewhere on the ocean. There is no expertise or field report we could rely on. However, we are well prepared and have been intensively working on this project for far more than a year now.

Question: When exactly is the “window”? Will it be opening wider soon?
Stolberg: The open window for transiting the Northeast Passage roughly is a six to eight weeks time frame in the Russian summer between August and September. This is when the sun powers up to 20 or even more degrees Celsius in Russia and the ice along the route is mostly melting. Thereafter the sun loses power again and the area refreezes. Whether or not the window will open wider soon is a question only climate experts can answer.

PHOTO: The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E), a high-resolution passive microwave Instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows the state of Arctic sea ice on September 10 in this file image released September 16, 2008. Arctic nations are promising to avoid new “Cold War” scrambles linked to climate change, but a thaw may allow new shipping routes. REUTERS/NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

MEDICINE BOW NATIONAL FOREST, Wyoming - From the vantage point of an 80-foot (25 meter) tower rising above the trees, the Wyoming vista seems idyllic: snow-capped peaks in the distance give way to shimmering green spruce.

But this is a forest under siege. Among the green foliage of the healthy spruce are the orange-red needles of the sick and the dead, victims of a beetle infestation closely related to one that has already laid waste to millions of acres (hectares) of pine forest in North America.

“The gravity of the situation is very real,” said Rolf Skar, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace.

The plague has cost billions of dollars in lost timber and land values and may thwart efforts to combat climate change, as forests are major storing houses of carbon, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

The beetle outbreak, which has taken a lesser, but mounting, toll on spruce trees, could make it that much tougher to meet the ambitious target to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.

That is laid out in a climate bill that narrowly passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and waits Senate debate.

Many researchers have also linked the infestation in the U.S. and Canadian West to climate change, notably a dearth of winters cold enough to kill the voracious little bugs.

“Pine beetle infestations are cyclical in nature and have been occurring for thousands of years but what is making things worse now is the effects of global warming,” said Skar.

“If you don’t have the real cold extremes to kill off the larvae under the bark you are going to have extreme infestation events,” he said.

CARBON FOOTPRINT

In the Medicine Bow National Forest, scientists are getting a first-hand look at the carbon implications.

The forest is home to the U.S. Forest Service’s Glacier Lakes Ecosystem Experiments site in a tower with gadgets that, among other things, examine the “carbon flux” of the forest.

The site was established a decade ago, before the spruce beetle infestation, and gives scientists a unique chance to measure the changes to carbon storage wrought by the insects.

“We are getting readings here every half hour,” said Colorado-based U.S. Forest Service scientist Mike Ryan, shouting above the wind as he pointed to an instrument that measures carbon. This gas analyzer resembles a small space capsule on the end of a horizontal metal pole.

(See more from Ryan in the video below)

In the terminology of trees and carbon, a healthy forest is a net “sink,” with trees storing carbon as they grow. When they die and rot they “emit” carbon back into the atmosphere, and so a dead or dying forest becomes a “net source” of greenhouse gas, meaning it emits more carbon dioxide than it stores.

Ryan said the net carbon storage in this patch of woods is about half of what it was three or four years ago. In another three or four years, he believes it will become a net source.

A SEA OF GREEN TURNS ORANGE

This scenarios is being replayed across the West.

In Colorado, aerial surveys show that from 1996 to 2008 Colorado lost almost 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of pine forest to the beetle outbreak, Wyoming 677,000 acres and South Dakota 354,000 acres.

Over the same period of time, the spruce beetle, which has also ravaged forests as far north as Alaska, took out 374,000 acres of spruce trees in Colorado and 340,000 in Wyoming.

That cumulative total of over 6 million acres (2.5 million hectares) is an area larger than Israel or South Africa’s Kruger National Park.

A composite picture above, shot from 2003 to 2008 by the Forest Service, shows trees dying over time in an Engelmann spruce stand in southeastern Wyoming due to a spruce beetle epidemic.

Farther north in Canada, the pine beetle has attacked trees over an area of about 39 million acres (14.5 million hectares) in British Columbia since the 1990s.

The sheer scale of the damage can be seen northwest of Denver in Colorado’s Yampa Valley. Vast tracts of formerly evergreen forest now have huge splashes of orange running through them.
Vast tracts of formerly evergreen forest now have huge splashes of orange running through them.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, a third of the United States’ land area is covered in forest but it is only expanding at a rate of about 0.1 percent per year.

Under “cap and trade” provisions in the U.S. climate bill, additional forest growth may be encouraged through a market mechanism that will allow reforestation efforts by landowners and other groups to be counted as “carbon offsets.”

Such projects could generate cash through “carbon credits” paid by polluters who want to exceed their own emissions caps.

A forest can recover, but that can take decades.

“Most forests will recover the carbon they lose but if the next 50 to 100 years is important we may not have that much time. It’s setting back carbon storage efforts,” said Ryan.

Forest growth in the United States currently sucks up about 12 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. “That’s a big number. To get another 10 percent you would have to convert a third of U.S. agriculture land to forest,” said Ryan.

The outbreak has other consequences. It is creating huge fire hazards as it leaves mountains of combustible wood in its wake. In a worrying trend, it also has spread from lodgepole pine to ponderosa pine.

There are expenses for landowners as well.

On his ranch in northern Colorado, mountain realtor Bill McClelland points to a dying tree and says: “A week ago that tree was green. I’ve lost another one.”

In May, he had to cut 476 pines on his property and then have them ground into wood chips — an expensive operation that is one of the few ways to contain the outbreak. He reckons an infestation will generally shave about 20 percent of the value off a private wood lot or ranch.

Past beetle outbreaks have been stopped by very cold winters but recent winters have not been cold enough.

Another factor scientists attribute to the outbreak is past forest clearance and fires that saw large areas cleared.

Often when this happens, the forest that regrows in its place will have huge patches of trees the same age and this makes them susceptible to a collective attack when they mature at the same time into the older trees that the bugs favor.

The beetles may collectively wreak havoc by nesting and feeding in the trees but they look harmless enough as individuals, not least because they are so tiny.

At Medicine Bow, Ryan points to a few writhing in a glass jar that have been trapped on the trunk of a spruce tree.

“Until we get a big cold spell they are going to go on until they have nothing to eat,” he said.

Large diameter trees are not doing well in California’s Yosemite National Park — there were 24 percent fewer in a recent decade than the 1930s, the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington scientists said in a new report. Climate change is the likely culprit they say, cutting snow pack, which cuts available water, which cuts growth of big trees, which cuts production of seeds for new trees, which — you get the idea, but basically the whole ecosystem is strained.

Meanwhile, fewer fires has led to growth in the type of trees that are not fire-resistant — so future fires may be particularly bad, especially with warmer, drier conditions.

The comparison of trees in 1988-1999 versus 1932-1936 was published in Forest Ecology and Management.

California’s Yosemite may not be alone — Polish woods also face an uncertain future due to climate change, according to a new Reuters story.

Photo by ROBERT GALBRAITH/REUTERS

CARBON, Wyoming - They used to mine coal in the abandoned town of Carbon. Now this patch of southern Wyoming is a battleground in the debate over what many hope will be the clean energy source of the future: wind power.

At the heart of the dispute are plans to build a network of wind farms in the American West that conservationists fear could disrupt threatened habitat such as sage brush, a dwindling piece of the region’s fragile ecosystem.

This has made the greater sage grouse — which as its name suggests is totally dependent on sage brush — an unlikely poster child for some U.S. environmentalists, in much the same way that the rare spotted owl became a symbol in the 1980s of pitched battles with the logging industry.

Wyoming is home to 54 percent of the greater sage grouse population in North America. The bird’s status is being evaluated for inclusion on the U.S. government’s threatened or endangered species list, which would give it more protection.

The problem: The chicken-sized bird lives in the vast tracts of wind-whipped open spaces that make Wyoming highly attractive to the wind industry.

Near Carbon, the focus is on a 198-turbine, $600 million wind farm proposed by Horizon Wind Energy.

“They want to build it around here but we need to be thinking truly green. It is not just about our carbon footprint,” said Alison Holloran of the National Audubon Society in Wyoming, as she pointed to clumps of grayish sage brush along a dirt road.

(see video below for more from Holloran’s comments)

Wind power will play a huge role in any move by the United States to reduce its emissions of the greenhouse gases that most scientists believe are the main causes of rapid climate change. The burning of coal and the use of other fossil fuels such as oil are the largest single source of carbon emissions, so the race is on for “clean energy” alternatives.

SHADES OF BROWN

In the public mind, wind is regarded as about as “green” an energy source as you can get. But some environmentalists see shades of brown in the industry.

They say the wind turbines and the development that goes with them, including roads and transmission lines, will further fragment critical sage habitat and disturb the grouse and other wildlife.

Horizon says the grouse issue requires more study.

“There is no peer-reviewed research on how sage grouse respond to turbines,” said Arlo Corwin, Horizon’s development director for the western region. “We believe that obtaining this research is essential to see if wind turbines and sage grouse are going to be able to coexist.”

There have been several wind power skirmishes in the United States. Off Cape Cod in Massachusetts, there is a battle over plans for an offshore wind farm that opponents say will disrupt navigation and shipping. There have also been concerns about bird/turbine collisions in some places.

Wind now delivers about 1.25 percent of the United States’ electricity supply, but the industry is growing fast, according to the American Wind Energy Association. It says wind power generation now offsets about 54 million tons of carbon a year.

In Wyoming, there are about 20 wind farms and four additional projects under construction, the association says. It ranks the state 12th in U.S. wind production but seventh in potential generation — meaning a lot of untapped capacity.

Wind turbines already spin in Carbon County not far from Horizon’s proposed development area, where the treeless countryside looks stark. The town of Carbon was abandoned over a century ago and only a few brick foundations remain.

HARSH LANDSCAPE

In this harsh landscape, sage sustains life. The greater sage grouse and around 20 other bird species depend on it for survival, and the sturdy plant also sustains big game species such as elk and mule deer during the cold Wyoming winter.

Corwin said Horizon’s planned wind development, known as the Simpson Ridge project, would make use of existing transmission lines that run through the area, removing at least one concern.

Horizon is evaluating when to apply for a permit to develop the site, which is also attractive because landowners have agreed to host the turbines on their property.

Last year, Wyoming said it would restrict development on greater sage grouse habitats it has designated “core population areas.”

U.S. government wildlife officials say that other kinds of development have not been favorable for the grouse.

“The impact of fragmentation is very, very clear. We know that they won’t occupy habitat close to an interstate for example. They are a landscape species and need big open intact habitats,” said Brian Kelly, a field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Wyoming.

Kelly said such concerns applied to all developments, including gas, oil and even housing — not just wind.

About 20 percent of the state is regarded as “core” for the bird.

“If we conserve that 20 percent we effectively conserve 40 percent of the birds in North America. That’s why it is significant,” Kelly said.

The state government estimates that only about 14 percent of Wyoming’s “economically viable wind areas” — which is based on factors like wind strength, speed and duration — is within core sage and grouse grounds while 86 percent is outside.

“We don’t need to pick one or the other, grouse or wind. We can have robust sage grouse populations and robust wind development in Wyoming — no problem,” said Aaron Clark, an energy advisor to the governor of Wyoming.

The wind industry has disputed these figures and some of the definitions used by wildlife and state officials.

Horizon’s Corwin noted that sage, which has lost about half of its historic range by some estimates, is also under threat from climate change. And reducing greenhouse gas emissions by harnessing energy sources such as wind is seen as the best way to slow or stop global warming.

More:

Facts about wind power in the United States

(Photos: REUTERS/Ed Stoddard)

A half-dozen fake letters, signed by people who don’t seem to exist and who work at made-up jobs, are causing a bit of buzz in the environmental world — mostly because the letters urged a Virginia congressman to vote against a cap-and-trade system to curb climate change.

The Sierra Club calls it “dirty tricks.” The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that the PR firm said to be behind the fake-letter lobbying effort has a history of working against climate legislation. Rep. Ed Markey, who chairs a House committee on energy independence and global warming, said the committee will investigate. The Daily Progress newspaper in Charlottesville published a detailed story.

The congressman, Tom Perriello, voted for the cap-and-trade bill anyway. It passed by a slim margin and the Senate is expected to take up this matter in September.

The alleged forgeries came in letters made to look as if they were sent from two civil rights organizations: the local branch of the NAACP and Creciendo Juntos, a network for Charlottesville’s Hispanic community — neither of which oppose cap-and-trade. The Daily Progress tracked the letters to a Washington lobbying firm, Bonner & Associates. A partner at the Bonner firm apologized to Creciendo Juntos, but that probably won’t be the end of the matter.

Jack Bonner, the president of Bonner & Associates, responded to a call for comment by e-mail: “We take our business very seriously. A temporary employee—lied to us—and contrary to our policies sent these letters. We—no one else—we on our own found this out. We immediately fired the person. We then, called those effected, explained what happened and apologized. In the case of the group in the story—we did it in person and by letter. This should not have happened—we had a bad employee—but through our internal checks, we found the problem, and on our own initiative took the step to notify the affected group.”

Interesting thing about the Bonner firm: its acknowledged specialty is “grassroots” lobbying — even though grassroots politics used to mean efforts that come from the ground up, from the rank-and-file members of a group. The Union of Concerned Scientists, which strongly favors the legislation that Bonner’s clients presumably oppose, pointed reporters to a now-defunct Web site Bonner put up for the Western Fuels Association to oppose the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol back in the 1990s.

The association said the site generated 20,000 e-mails in opposition, including one from a mythical “George Jetson.” The cartoon character complained that he would have to pay an extra $24,239,987.52 a year if Congress ratified the Kyoto pact. They didn’t, and the United States is now the only industrialized country that hasn’t joined the protocol.

Carl Pope, Sierra Club’s executive director, praised Perriello for voting for the bill and for looking into the efforts of “the dirty, old business-as-usual players who tried to sway his vote.” Pope also noted that other members of Congress may have received the same kind of forged letters, urging them to vote against the bill: “It is disturbing, to say the least, to think that some congresspeople may have, in good faith, voted thinking they were representing their communities when in fact they were not.”

So the question is: did this lobbying effort, and others, sway the vote on the climate bill in the House? Will the same efforts come into play in September in the Senate? And is this an outrage, or just the way Washington works?

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (U.S. Capitol dome, February 24, 2009)