John McCain's vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, made her big debut at the GOP National Convention Wednesday, when she accepted her party's nomination with a high-profile speech.

While her focus was on boosting McCain's reform credentials, downplaying Democrat Barack Obama's experience, and focusing as often as possible on national security, she touched on some energy and environmental issues.

Environmentalists have been critical, to say the least, of Palin's record. She supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (McCain has not), opposes listing the polar bear as a threatened species (as the Bush Administration has done) and has said she doesn't believe humans are responsible for contributing to global warming (contrary to virtually every credible scientist on Earth).

In her speech Wednesday, she spent roughly 15% of her words on energy issues. Here's a look at some of what she said:

1. "I suspended the state fuel tax."
   A reference to McCain's campaign pledge to suspend the federal gas tax during the summer driving season, Palin referenced her state-level initiative. Experts have roundly criticized this proposal as nothing more than pandering, since it would do little to affect prices and would obscure the silver lining in high energy prices: investments in greater efficiency, like smaller more fuel efficient cars. ...

Toxics Targeting is one of New York's best kept secrets. A firm devoted to making government data accessible to everyone, it focuses on mapping the sits of spills, leaking underground oil tanks and other environmental problems, both small and large.

The maps give homeowners -- and, critically, home buyers -- information they need to make wise choices, to address lingering pollution issues, and to hold government and industry to account for fouling the environment and threatening human health.

The firm's latest project is to make the most detailed maps of toxic sites in the state available on the Web. More than 270,000 potentially toxic sites are mapped, showing environmental hazards in multiple Google map views. ...

As of Labor Day weekend ... bees are still dying from symptoms that have been identified as Colony Collapse Disorder. Not many, yet. But this is when it starts. So let’s look at what’s going on.

So far the villain in Colony Collapse Disorder is mostly the lack of information.

Viruses

Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus was implicated early on, but so far it hasn’t moved past the 'found in some samples' role. Continuing greenhouse research, where individual honey bees are infected with the virus definitely shows that the pathogen kills bees. But so do a host of other viruses that were found in the initial samples. The jury is still out on IAPV, at least until newer studies are published.

Other researchers are studying viruses, some known, some not, but so far nothing concrete has turned up ... or at least nothing that anybody is talking about. That’s the trouble with science ... too often the information gets sat on until the results are published ... not reviewed and given the green light but actually put on paper (or turned into electrons to grace your computer screen) and released. Some publishing outlets are quicker, some slower but all have the same criteria. So if there’s something out there we’ll just have to wait.

Pesticides

Some of the early work -- simply collecting samples of bees, wax, larvae, and pollen -- are finally coming to the top of the pile and the results, some of which have been explored here, have been eye-opening, and mostly downright scary. Beekeeper-applied chemicals to control varroa certainly are hugely evident in the samples collected ... not unlike the termite chemicals, lawn chemicals, garden chemicals, pet chemicals, and all the rest that we walk in, swim in, eat, touch and absorb everyday in our homes, work and play. Pesticides, to no one’s surprise, are abundant in our lives and equally abundant in the lives of our honey bees.

One of the unknowns, or maybe-unknowns, are the effects that those well-publicized new pesticides are having. They have made international headlines and definitely can’t be overlooked. And advocacy group, Beyond Pesticides, commented recently on these, and said that two of the primary active ingredients of concern are clothianidin and imidacloprid, both in the neonicotinoid family of chemicals. They are systemic pesticides, meaning the chemical is incorporated into plant tissue and can therefore be present in pollen and nectar, which is of particular importance to bees. They also have long persistence in the soil and can be absorbed by multiple generations of crops, increasing the likelihood of exposure for bees. Meanwhile, the manufacturers claim the chemicals safe and have data to prove it. But others in France and Germany claim just the opposite and are doing everything in their power to rid the world of these new poisons, and in the U.S. the EPA stands in the middle ... and may soon be standing in court defending their role in approving these chemicals for use.

Politics had something to do with the draft Republican platform including an acknowledgment that human activities play a role in global climate change and not including a call for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The politicos decided it wouldn’t be politic to adopt a platform that contradicts their presidential candidate’s views favoring climate legislation and opposing Arctic drilling.

The muttering was palpable. One of the platform committee members, Jeff Grossman of Oregon, said that John McCain has some catching up to do with the rest of the party on drilling the refuge.

In John McCain’s Navy, that’s known as insubordination. An ensign who tells the admiral to get with the program will swiftly find himself reassigned to new quarters in the brig. Grossman, it’s you who needs to get with McCain’s program, not the other way around.