Canadian Ports Wade Into Political Waters. Blame Canada. That's what a new Federal Maritime Commission report does, claiming America's northern neighbor snags business from west coast ports. Lawmakers have seized on its contents, which fit comfortably into the election year narrative of declining U.S. competitiveness and outdated infrastructure. Only the report - requested by Congress a year ago - almost never came out. And the loudest ones yelling appear to be the commissioners themselves. Two of the five officials voted to squelch the study, noting vague language, misinterpretations of public comments and questionable economic analysis. Rebecca Dye, one of the two Republicans who opposed it, called the report a "political policy paper developed to justify a predetermined conclusion. Politico 

Russia Ambitious About Arctic Shelf Development. "The Arctic shelf contains nearly the fourth part of the world's energy resources, yet not all opportunities are used to use the most of these resources", Mr. Medvedev said. He added that the federal budget alone cannot ensure substantial funding of the project, and cooperation with private investors is required. Voice of Russia 

Shell Drill Ships en Route to Arctic Alaska. It's not a mass movement of ships, but after weeks of waiting, pieces of Shell's fleet have begun sailing north from Dutch Harbor to the Arctic Ocean in an effort to reopen the delicate region to exploratory oil drilling. The Aiviq anchor-handler has begun the long sea journey, bearing some of the massive anchors that will be set to hold the drilling rig Noble Discoverer in place as it drills a well in the Chukchi Sea, Shell spokespeople said Wednesday. And the ice-breaker Fennica, which will deploy a sound-recorder to establish an acoustic footprint of the anchors being set, also left Dutch Harbor on Tuesday or was about to leave. It will provide baseline data on noise levels that could prove useful as the company tries to minimize disturbance to bowhead and beluga whales and share information with the village subsistence hunters who depend on those animals, said Shell spokesman Curtis Smith. Alaska Dispatch

Sea Ice May Briefly Choke Off Marine Routes in Alaska's Arctic. A mean storm whipping over Western Alaska will cause further havoc when it moves north, choking off Arctic marine routes north of Barrow with sea ice, according to the National Weather Service. A photo posted to the National Weather Service's Alaska Facebook page said the storm should arrive in the area around Barrow, the northernmost city in the U.S., by Friday or Saturday. Forecasters expect it to push sea ice toward the shore and block access for mariners trying to move between the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Alaska Dispatch 

Canada's Mostly Northerly Post Welcomes New Commanding Officer. Albeit the cold crisp air of the Arctic, the members of the Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert warmly welcomed their new leader during the Change of Command ceremony on Aug. 1st in Canada's most northerly post. During the parade, which was presided by the Wing Logistics and Engineering Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel (LCol) Dany Breton, Major (Maj) Scott Hoffman succeeded Maj Todd Murphy as the Commanding Officer (CO) of CFS Alert. As per Alert's tradition, Maj Murphy handed his ball cap to Maj Hoffman to signify the passing of responsibility. Aviation Canada 

Study: Chatty Arctic Bowhead Whales Sing Like the Birds. In a recent study conducted in the Arctic Ocean off of Greenland, University of Washington oceanographer Kate Stafford noted an unexpected feature of the Arctic's Bowhead whale: They sing a lot. So much so, researchers are likening the 200,000 pound mammals to their smaller air-bound brethren, the birds. According to the University of Washington, Stafford and her team were investigating a highly endangered population of the whales in the Arctic waters off of Greenland and Norway's Svalbard Archipelago. They placed two underwater microphones beneath the icy Fram Strait, and left them there until the batteries ran out, a whole year. Since the whale population is thought to number in the tens of individuals, they didn't expect much, but they ended up collecting a whale cacophony. Alaska Dispatch  

Geologists to Gather Data for Danish North Pole Claim. Does the North Pole belong to Greenland and by extension to Denmark, to which it is politically linked? That's the question Danish geologists heading for the Arctic this week will be trying to answer. They hope the seismic data they collect between now and mid-September will support the claim of Denmark and Greenland to 150,000 square kilometers of extra territory extending north from Greenland into the oil and gas-rich Arctic sea floor. Their claim rests on whether an underwater formation extending north of Greenland called the Lomonosov Ridge qualifies as an extension of Greenland's land mass. If it does, Greenland can bid to extend its undersea territory. New Scientist 

NOAA, Partners: Earth's Oceans and Ecosystems Still Absorbing About Half the Greenhouse Gases Emitted by People. Earth's oceans, forests and other ecosystems continue to soak up about half the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by human activities, even as those emissions have increased, according to a study by University of Colorado and NOAA scientists published today in the journal Nature. The scientists analyzed 50 years of global carbon dioxide (CO2) measurements and found that the processes by which the planet's oceans and ecosystems absorb the greenhouse gas are not yet at capacity. NOAA