Six-Month Spending Bill Unveiled: What's Cut and What's Not. House and Senate appropriators revealed details of the 2011 spending-cut deal early Tuesday morning, missing a self-imposed midnight deadline. In dueling press releases, House Republicans emphasized the magnitude of cuts they won in the six-month spending bill after marathon negotiations, while Senate Democrats emphasized cuts they were able to avoid or diminish. The Hill

Lisa Murkowski: Smaller Steps Mean Bigger Strides on Energy. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski thinks Congress will have more success taking a "graduated" approach to energy legislation while keeping up the pressure to respond to last year's Gulf of Mexico spill. While the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, in which Murkowski is the top Republican, approved separate strategies - last Congress - addressing the historic oil spill and broader energy problems, the full Senate and Congress more generally did not follow suit. Politico

Science and Politics: A tale of two meetings. More than 8,000 km separate Vienna and Bangkok. That's roughly the distance that appeared to be separating the minds of people attending very different meetings that took place in the two capitals last week. Vienna saw lots of talk about ice, particularly the Arctic kind... and not much of it was optimistic. We saw new models of how quickly Arctic sea ice will melt, and new attempts to understand key mechanisms affecting the Greenland ice sheet. 

Take a trans-continental jet over to Bangkok, meanwhile, and we see politics and science trading places.  Those of you familiar with the UN process will know that for the last few years the official negotiations have been run along two parallel tracks - one dealing with the Kyoto Protocol, the other (named Long-term Co-operative Action, or LCA) with everything else.  This was a week-long meeting, and the LCA group did not agree on its agenda until the Thursday evening.

BBC

How Fast Will Arctic Shipping Grow? Analysis: An important part of the narrative surrounding the Arctic involves the expected increase in shipping as polar ice melts and recedes. The possibilities have gotten the shipping industry's attention, as well as sparked concerns about foreign use of the Northwest Passage, spurred development of a Polar Code to regulate international shipping, and piqued Chinese interest. Amidst all of the speculation, what can we realistically expect to happen with Arctic shipping in the next 10 to 15 years? The short answer is that Arctic shipping activity will increase, but only certain kinds, and only at certain times of the year. Alaska Dispatch 

Individual Responsibility is Key in Climate Battle. I very much applaud Brent Harold's April 5 column, "Widespread climate-change denial." The problem of creating awareness and response to climate change is a huge one, and approaching it from the perspective of individual responsibility is seldom cited as a means of countering the "hole" the world is digging for itself. The writer is former chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. Cape Cod Times 

Melting Arctic Ice is a Challenge for U.S. North of Alaska, a Coast Guard cutter is mapping the ocean floor so the United States can increase its claim to the oil and gas reserves that lie beneath the Arctic waters. Other countries with Arctic coastlines are charting the continental shelves to make similar claims under the treaty that deals with jurisdiction in the Arctic, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Canada and Russia are making claims. The Day 

Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Recently, NOAA released a petition finding to list Chinook salmon as an endangered and threatened species.  The Federal Register notice is available here.

Ulmer Notes Failure of Congress to Act in Wake of Deepwater Horizon. With the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster nearly upon us, a member of the former presidential commission that reviewed it said she's disappointed Congress hasn't acted on the group's recommendations to prevent another spill. Importantly, Congress should increase the "woefully inadequate" liability cap of $75 million for offshore spills to provide enough money for a major clean-up and to deter companies from making similar missteps, said Fran Ulmer, speaking with a reporter after delivering a keynote speech at the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Monday. The Arctic Sounder

H.R. 1473, Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act. (Rogers- introduced and referred to multiple committees)

The Arctic as a Messenger for Global Processes- Climate Change and Pollution (pdf), May 4-6, 2011. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), the University of Copenhagen, and Aarhus University. The conference will include talks by invited keynote speakers, oral presentations selected on the basis of submitted abstracts, poster presentations, and short oral presentations of selected posters. A panel discussion will develop messages to be communicated to the Arctic Council Ministerial meeting that will take place in Greenland one week after the conference. 

  
Sixth International Conference on Arctic Margins, May 31-June 2, 2011 at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks. The International Conference on Arctic Margins (ICAM) will examine current geological and geophysical research on the Arctic. Topics include: hydrocarbon potential and gas hydrates; science issues relating to UNCLOS Article 76; geodynamic significance of Arctic magmatism; vertical motions in the Arctic, tectonic, and glacial; geology and palaeogeography of the Arctic continental margins; evolution of the Arctic Ocean basins, including plate reconstructions, magmatism, and sedimentology; modern Arctic environments, including geological, climatic, and oceanographic processes; recent advances in Arctic research technology. More information email.  

American Meteorological Society Summer Policy Colloquium, June 5-14. This policy colloquium brings together a group to consider atmospheric policy.  The colloquium will cover policy creation basics, interactions with congressional staff, and information on the current atmospheric policy issues. 

The Arctic Imperative, June 19-21, 2011. The Alaska Dispatch, Aspen Institute, Commonwealth North, and the Institute of the North will host a forum titled "The Arctic Imperative: Think of the Bering Strait as the Next Panama Canal."  The forum will bring together international policymakers, industry, and investment leaders to consider topics just as security, resources, port development, marine shipping, commerce, and trade.