Risky Business adds up climate change costs

Tom Steyer's (left) climate change project is a joint effort with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Tom Steyer's (left) climate change project is a joint effort with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Photo: Steve Helber, Associated Press Photo: Steve Helber, Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Risky Business adds up climate change costs 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Tom Steyer certainly knows how to keep his name in circulation.

The hedge fund billionaire turned climate activist has a knack for picking projects that keep him in the public eye.

Whether he's pushing through a tax-reform ballot initiative in California or bankrolling a controversial ad against the Keystone XL pipeline, Steyer rarely drops out of sight for long.

Now he has teamed with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on a typically ambitious effort - counting up the economic costs of climate change.

Risky Business

The new project, dubbed Risky Business, will try to forecast just how much money climate change could cost the United States in years to come. It will use a combination of existing data and new research to produce its risk assessment, planned for release next summer.

Steyer hosted President Obama for a fundraiser in his Pacific Heights home this spring, and he's considered a rising force in California Democratic politics.

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But Risky Business will try to straddle America's political spectrum. Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary under George W. Bush and a Republican, has signed on as co-chairman. Bloomberg, meanwhile, is an independent.

Risky Business will operate as a joint initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Paulson's office and San Francisco think tank Next Generation. Steyer sits on Next Generation's board.

Granted, Steyer, Paulson and Bloomberg could have picked a better time to announce their project. Risky Business' launch this week caused barely a stir, as the federal government shutdown shoved most every other news story to the sidelines.

We'll see if the project's results get more notice, when they finally arrive. Here's betting they will.

'Tar sands tanker'

Activists fighting an oil sands pipeline project on the West Coast have come up with a novel way to grab the public's attention.

On Tuesday, they debuted a website that tracks tanker ships bringing diluted bitumen from the oil sands to refineries in California and Washington state. The site will even alert you when a "tar sands tanker" sails into your area.

The tankers get their cargo from the Trans Mountain pipeline, which connects northern Alberta to a port just outside Vancouver. The pipeline's owner, Kinder Morgan Canada, wants to nearly triple Trans Mountain's capacity, making it even larger than the hotly debated Keystone XL pipeline extension. And yet few Americans even realize that Trans Mountain exists.

ForestEthics, an environmental group with branches in the United States and Canada, hopes to change that.

The group created the website http://tarsandssos.org to drive home the point that tankers filled with diluted bitumen - or dilbit - are already plying West Coast waters, about 80 ships per year.

And traffic would jump if Trans Mountain expands. Add in another proposed oil sands pipeline farther north - the Enbridge Northern Gateway - and the number of ships could rise to 600 per year.

"This is a cross-border issue," said Matt Krogh of ForestEthics. "Are we going to build a wall of opposition to these proposals? At ForestEthics, we say yes."

Diluted bitumen is a form of heavy crude mixed with lighter hydrocarbons. If spilled in water, it can sink once the lighter elements evaporate. That makes cleanup difficult.

"Your standard crude spill is bad enough," Krogh said. "But with tar sands, it's worse. We really don't know how to clean it up."

A Trans Mountain spokeswoman could not be reached for comment this week.

The new website uses identification numbers transmitted by ships to track them up and down the coast. But the site has glitches. On some computers, it shows two tankers, both near Vancouver, British Columbia. On other computers, it shows no ships at all. The source of the error has not yet been identified.