Regular readers of the blog — and occasional readers of those publishing anachronisms we like to call "books" — know of my affection for Shishmaref, the tiny Arctic barrier island facing the Chukchi Sea in northwestern Alaska. Because of the scientific hoax called "global climate change," as revealed in the recent Republican debates by noted climatologist Rick Santorum, the permafrost is gone and the sea doesn't freeze for nearly as long and as hard as it used to, so Shishmaref is gradually being eaten by the ocean. This is going to require the people who live in Shishmaref to move, probably some time over the next 15 years, which will make them some of the first "climate refugees" in this particular hemisphere, which is really a lot of work to maintain the hoax, in my opinion.

Anyway, the folks in Shishmaref got some really good news recently. The folks who are gradually losing their homes and their livelihoods due to the consequences of the world's appetite for fossil fuels likely are going to get a whole bunch of brand new oil wells drilled in the ocean that's eating away their island. And people say irony is dead.

Needless to say, the locals don't quite get the joke. However, Energy secretary Ken Salazar has reassured them that Shell Oil has a plan in place right now to deal with any potential oil spill, which, of course, never happen, but which, if they do, are always the fault of some guy in a hard-hat who turned the wrong valve, and not the executives back home who'd sell the planet for parts to the Martians if they could make a buck:

Salazar said Shell must still obtain approval from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which must inspect and approve equipment that has been designed for spill response. That equipment includes Shell's capping stack, a device that could be lowered onto a well after a blowout.

The really funny thing there? The "capping stack" that is so vital to the "spill response" strategy? It hasn't been built yet! Isn't that a hoot?

Rebecca Noblin, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity in Anchorage, said Shell's cleanup plan relies on technology such as the capping stack that has not even been built, much less tested. "The reality is, we don't know how to deal with an oil spill in the Arctic," she said.

The rise in gas prices has to be scaring the daylights out of the president's campaign, even though, as we know, the rise in gas prices is approximately as spontaneous and as "market-based" as the Rose Parade. (Hint: the same thieves who robbed the big banks are now knocking over gas stations.) If this adminstration goes into the tank for anything in this election year, it's going to be about drilling for oil and about energy in general. (Here's White House press secretary Jay Carney,tap-dancing madlythe other day about the president's decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.) I'm guessing that's the place fromwhere the real anger in his base is going to come. And, sooner or later, the last of Shishmaref will fall into the Chukchi Sea. Somebody on an oil rig will wave as it floats off toward Russia.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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