Recently in Environment Category

Yesterday, marine scientists from the University of Georgia and the Georgia Sea Grant issued a report that directly contradicts National Incident Command's Happy Talk Report that most of the oil in the Gulf from BP's blowout magically degraded in less than two weeks after getting the well shut in.  In a statement yesterday, Charles Hopkinson, director of Georgia Sea Grant and professor of marine sciences in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences...

Dr. Susan Shaw, a marine toxicologist and President of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, gave a TED talk in June about BP's unprecedented use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico.  After going to the Gulf and seeing the effect of dispersants on oil itself, she has determined that the combination is actually more toxic than just leaving the oil alone, and that dispersed oil kills more sea life faster.  Her talk confirms all our worst fears,...

Newton's First Law states: An object's inertia causes it to continue moving the way it is moving unless it is acted upon by an unbalanced force to change its motion. In the simplest of terms, this means an object (like a passive-aggressive GOP body politik) will always continue moving at its current speed (slowly or not at all as the party of "no"), and in its current direction (down into the muck) until some...

At this point in our weekend forecast, even the waterfowl have to be saying ENOUGH with all the rain we've had for the past several days, and it's supposed to continue!If you were lucky enough to be able to leave work early yesterday for the start of the holiday weekend, you probably experienced the flash flooding and poor visibility in various parts of the city. You may have driven by the bayous and seen for...

I have an idea to help pay for the oil spill cleanup. The Feds can sell corporate sponsorships, like sports arenas and stadiums do. The government agencies involved are already doing BP's bidding at every turn thus far, they might as well bring in some revenue to help defray the costs. There's the BP/EPA, who ordered that a less toxic dispersant than Corexit be used--almost a month ago. Corexit is still being dumped into the...

Same song, different verse:"A leak from Chevron's underground oil pipeline may have gone undetected for hours as it spilled 50 gallons of crude a minute Saturday into Salt Lake City's Red Butte Creek...Chevron pledged to clean up the 6-mile mess, but the company could not quantify he damage. As of late Saturday, Chevron said the leak had been stopped. But company representatives could not say when it began, how much oil spilled into city waterways...

From the New Orleans Times- Picayune:Something else to keep in mind:"The carcasses of more than 35,000 birds and 1,000 sea otters were found at the Exxon Valdez site, according to its Trustee Council website, which estimated that the actual toll was "250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs."And this spill is an Exxon Valdez every 5-10 days, according to...

Any of this sound familiar?: "... a major deepwater oil spill could start with a fire on a drilling rig, prove hard to stop and cause extensive damage to fish eggs and wetlands because there were few good ways to capture oil underwater.Regaining well control in deep water may be a problem since it could require the operator to cap and control well flow at the seabed in greater water depthsSpills in deep water may...

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour:"Barbour described the oil as "weathered, emulsified, caramel-colored mousse, like the food mousse." "Once it gets to this stage, it's not poisonous," Barbour said. "But if a small animal got coated enough with it, it could smother it. But if you got enough toothpaste on you, you couldn't breathe."What. An. Idiot....

A word of caution up front, the images which follow are disturbing, heartbreaking, and enraging. But they are images that should be seen by everyone. Everyone in this country needs to see what's happening along the Gulf Coast. Everyone including that half-term, half-wit, vapid, addle-brained, twit who screams "drill, baby, drill" and all her equally mindless followers. They should be forced to look at these images every day. I post them along with some words...