NOAA projections for BP oil spill is world wide catastrophe (Video)

This is from June and most likely bears no resemblance to what the leak is today and what the cause and effect of the spill is worldwide at this moment in time.


June 3, 5:34 PMPolitical Spin ExaminerMaryann Tobin

The National National Center for Atmospheric Research has generated a computer model that shows the projected path of the BP oil Spill.

The prediction shows where the oil slick may be 3 months from now, which coincides with estimates on when 2 relief wells presently under construction should be completed.

"BP executives initially claimed that the Deepwater Horizon was only leaking 1,000 barrels of oil a day when the spill began. Then they admitted to leaking 5,000 barrels a day.

Now, official estimates put the rate of the leak at 12,00 to 19,000 barrels a day. At 42 gallons a barrel, that means there is nearly  a million gallons of oil and gas filling the Gulf every day.

 It has been suggested that Tony Hayward has been underestimating the scope of the BP oil spill disaster  to avoid costly per-gallon EPA fines and lawsuits."

NOAA has generated a frightening computer model for the path of the BP Gulf oil spill.

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July 27, 2010

Doing research on oil spills because the only ones we hear about are the very large like the one in Alaska and of course Horizon Deep Water, because it is today, newsworthy, could have an effect on off shore drilling, and future deep water drilling. Personally I would love to see all oil dry up and disappear.  We need clean energy sources and we need them now not when the Congress of the United States stops bickering about not being able to make some side dough through the oil companies. I am sic of the bickering, of the members ignoring what the people of America want. 
The Congress is not there for us but for the SPECIAL INTEREST whether it be campaign spending and big corporations, health care companies, big oil, because saying no to them cost congress big payouts. GREEDY GREEDY what comes around goes around, and one of these days WE the PEOPLE will take back our freedom of choice and make our own decisions. And that is all I have to say on this subject.........

Crude Oil Spills: A worldwide Contaminant (Part 2)

Author: Nicole Wong
Published: June 16, 2010 at 8:31 am

Oil spills create permanent damages.
Despite the outward appearance of normality, people who know Price William Sound, the site of the Exxon Valdez disaster, know that things are not quite as they seem. Stan Stephens, who has run boat cruises in Prince William Sound since 1961, agrees that to the inexperienced observer the region is still a picture of pristine beauty, but says that wildlife populations in Prince William Sound have decreased markedly and that the area is still in the process of recovery.
Research conducted by biologists supports this: While bald eagles and pink and sockeye salmon have recovered or are in the process of doing so, populations of harbor seals, harlequin ducks, Pacific herring, marbled murrelets, sea otters and killer whales have not.
"The oil spill caused alterations to the food chain that forced harbor seals to seek out other food sources of inferior nutritional value when traditional food sources disappeared," says marine biologist Mike Castellini, who has done extensive work on the effects of the oil spill on harbor seals.
The collapse of the herring population in Prince William Sound following the oil spill forced seals to feed on nutrient-poor fish like cod and pollack, resulting in lower survival rates for young seals.
Another problem is the difficulty of restoring beaches. The Exxon clean-up ceased operations in 1992, but oil can still be found on some beaches in the oil-spill area.
In June of 1997 villagers in Chenega Bay returned to local beaches to remove oil entrenched behind boulders and beneath sand in a clean-up effort that cost $2 million. The Japan Times. March 17, 1999.
Developing countries that are significant crude oil producers don’t have money or equipment to prevent oil spills or clean up oil spills. Example: Nairobi - Kenya's ability to handle major oil spills at sea is limited, a UK expert has said. Mr. Kevin O'Connell, a training officer with Oil Spill Response Limited, said equipment at the Mombasa port, a high-risk area, could only handle common oil spills running into hundreds of tonnes. Africa News, August 5, 1999.
A new oil spill in northern Russia was reported by Greenpeace, which estimated another 13,000 tonnes of crude oil had spewed into the Arctic environment. When the snow melts in the spring, the whole area will be a disaster zone but the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations yesterday denied any knowledge of a new spill. The Age (Melbourne, Australia), November 8, 1994.

Nearly 44 million gallons of petroleum products pass through the New York Harbor area every day in a network of tankers, barges, refineries and storage terminals, and hundreds of miles of surface and submerged pipeline. There is also an average of one spill a day, from a few gallons to a huge accident like the rupturing of the Exxon pipeline that spewed 571,000 gallons of oil into the Arthur Kill between State Island and New Jersey last month.
And while the amount spilled is small relative to oil moved, the number of accidents has increased sharply in the past three years: from 257 in 1987 to 368 last year.
The Coast Guard has already reported 110 spills this year - five of them on Friday - a record pace. But budget cuts, a shortage of inspectors and growing oil shipments have left the industry largely policing itself. Oil tankers, refineries and storage areas must have plans to prevent and clean up spills, but government inspectors rarely check them.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, for example, has one engineer to approve the plans for 226 big oil operations. And no agency has a complete map of the miles of pipeline submerged in New York Harbor. No one had inspected the pipeline in the Arthur Kill spill before it ruptured, threatening the delicate ecosystem of Pralls Island and killing at least 400 birds.
Exxon said its system to monitor leaks had been issuing false alarms for 12 years. Because the pipeline ran through New York and New Jersey, neither state had clear responsibility for it. And because it carried less than 263,000 gallons of oil an hour, the Federal Office of Pipeline Safety was not required to inspect it.
The agency, part of the Department of Transportation, is now considering changing its regulations to include all pipelines. New York Times, Feb 25, 1990.

Crude Oil Spills: A Worldwide Contaminant (Part 1)

Author: Nicole Wong
Published: June 16, 2010 at 8:31 am

To anyone who believes that the oil rig explosion in the Gulf is an isolated incident, and that oil spills are not a grave health and environmental concern, read on. Due to length restriction, this article is in 3 parts, made up of excerpts from major world publications:
The basic equipment and tactics being used: boom, dispersants, burns and use of skimmer boats to pick up the oil haven't changed much in the two decades since the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska ratcheted up calls in Congress for greater defenses against the ravages of oil spills, spill experts and environmentalists say. USA Today, May 24, 2010.
Oil spills happen in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta every day for the last 50 years. Experts estimate that some 13 million barrels of oil have been spilled in the Niger Delta since oil exploration began in 1958. This is the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez every year for 50 years. The International Herald Tribune, June 5, 2010.
According to Rigzone, an industry website, there are currently about 1,234 exploration rigs. (Spills are more common during exploration, as with the Deepwater Hori­zon.) 146 are in Europe's North Sea. The Gulf of Mexico is home to 114. The remainder are off the coasts of Brazil, Venezuela, and West Africa, in the Persian Gulf, and in the seas of South and Southeast Asia.
Ixtoc I oil spill, Gulf of Mexico, 1979: Generally considered the second-worst oil spill in history (first is a 1991 disaster at a Persian Gulf oil port during the first Gulf War,) the Ixtoc spill occurred during drilling by Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex. The Ixtoc suffered a blowout, and more than 3 million barrels of oil gushed from the well for more than nine months before engineers were able to cap it. The spill contaminated more than 162 miles of beach in Texas.

Another case on a different continental shelf: Nowruz oil field, Persian Gulf, 1983: After a tanker hit a rig off the coast of Iran, the rig began leaking 1,500 barrels a day. Because Iran and Iraq were at war, the oil flow was not stopped, and the platform was later attacked by Iraqi warplanes. Later, a second platform was attacked, and initially spilled 5,000 barrels a day before slowing to 1,500. Two years passed before Iran capped the wells, but by then some 733,000 barrels of oil had spilled into the Persian Gulf.
Yet another case closer to home: Santa Barbara, Calif., 1969: A blowout at a well five miles off the coast of Santa Barbara caused a leak that flowed for 11 days. According to a report by the Uni­ver­sity of California, Santa Barbara, the spill affected 800 square miles of ocean and coated 35 miles of coastline with oil. It led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and a moratorium on offshore drilling in California.
How about in a continent south of the hemisphere? Another case: Montara, Australia, 2009: An oil well in the Timor Sea, off the coast of Western Australia, began leaking, and the platform subsequently caught fire. The well spewed oil for more than two months, leaking as much as 2,000 barrels a day before it was capped, making it one of the worst spills in Australian history. Christian Science Monitor, May 24, 2010.

Read more: http://technorati.com/lifestyle/green/article/crude-oil-spills-a-worldwide-contaminant/page-2/#ixzz0uq1aV2gg

WikiLeaks' Afghan Documents and Me

An ex-defense contractor parses the WikiLeaks document dump.

By Adam Weinstein | Sun Jul. 25, 2010 10:28 PM PDT

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[For more on the WikiLeaks Afghan document dump, read posts by Kevin Drum here [1] and senior editor Dave Gilson here [2].]
Here's a cliche for you: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And here's a fact: A little knowledge is precisely what Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks cohorts have given us in the "Afghan War Diary. [3]" The intimation by Assange (and the media outlets he cherry-picked to preview the data) is that these are the Pentagon Papers of the Afghan war. Certainly there are a few eyebrow-raising details in the bunch, as Mark Mazzetti, Chris Chivers & Co. at the [4]New York Times [4] point out. But in truth, there's not much there. I know, because I've seen many of these reports before—at least, thousands of similar ones from Iraq, when I was a contractor there last year.
I haven't been through everything yet, but most of what you see on WikiLeaks are military SIGACTS (significant activity reports). These are theoretically accessible by anyone in Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Tampa, Florida-based US Central Command—soldiers and contractors—who have access to the military's most basic intranet for sensitive data, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet). Literally thousands of people in hundreds of locations could read them, and any one of them could be the source for WikiLeaks' data. I regularly went through the daily SIGACT reports in Iraq, not because my job required it, but because my colleagues and I were curious. We heard mortars or car bombs explode in the distance at night, and we couldn't help but wonder: What the hell was that? Every time a US unit engaged the enemy, encountered munitions, saw or heard something go boom, caught a criminal, or located a weapons cache, a report was filed. So, each morning when I entered my office on Camp Victory, I fired up my SIPR terminal and checked the SIGACTS for interesting stuff.
The first time I did it, my pupils dilated. A vein in my throat warmed. The reporter in me did backflips. I was about to breathe pure oxygen.
By day three or four, I was bored to tears. Here's what I learned:

Some SIGACTS are more detailed than others; most are mundane. Only a few in WikiLeaks' bunch fall in the former category. For example, an October 2009 missive provides harrowing details of a battle in which Combat Outpost Keating was overrun by Taliban fighters; Chivers at the NYT did an amazing job [5] of reconstructing that terrible massacre, in which eight US soldiers died and 23 were wounded. But most SIGACTS are much more routine-sounding; for instance, the Battle of Wanat on July 13, 2008, was actually the deadliest battle of the war for US forces so far, and a source of major controversy [6]. Yet its secret report [7] sounds dull by comparison.
Probably the most significant thing about the SIGACTS is that they're counted and graphed by the military as a metric of how we're doing, and the obvious thing about the Afghan War Diary is that there are tons more entries for recent months in 2008 and 2009 than there were in previous months through the war. That's also a function of numbers of US and coalition forces; just as crime goes up when you put more cops on the street, SIGACTS probably should go up when you put more boots on the ground. And bear in mind, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison; more SIGACTS may mean more good things, like arrests and caches found, rather than civilian and coalition casualties. Even so, the most recent numbers are pretty sobering.
There are two categories of data in the WikiLeaks files that could be really interesting—and could cause some serious repercussions. One is the military's FRAGOs, fragmentary orders. These are strategic directives from headquarter to junior military commands in the field, and they cover pretty much everything—from orders on how to deal with detainees to an on-base visit by the wrestling stars of WWE [8]. WikiLeaks provides a log of these FRAGOs, but doesn't have the orders themselves. It's a great bibliographic resource for reporters with time on their hands to file a FOIA request for the actual orders. But in the meantime, it's not much by itself.
The other interesting data are notes from what the military calls KLEs—key leader engagements. Military officers, as well as officials from State, USAID, and other agencies regularly meet with important players in a war zone to get their take on the situation. Often they're dull and tell the interviewers little they didn't already know; sometimes, though, they give insight to "atmospherics"—how Afghan locals feel about US forces or the Taliban. Many of these key leaders take their lives into their hands; from my experience in Iraq, I know that numerous Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds with high standing among their tribes—and among our enemies—took time to brief US officials, often to dish dirt on crooked or violent elements in their vicinity. If they were ever outed as collaborators with American forces, they'd be as good as dead. And Wikileaks has 16 pages of secret military KLEs [9] with individuals and groups in Afghanistan, spanning six years. No names are redacted. In this case, what retired general James Jones, the White House national security adviser, said yesterday [10] is correct: WL is putting some lives at serious risk with that particular data dump.
I'll keep running through to see if there's anything else of importance. But most of this information is tactical nuts and bolts, devoid of context, and largely useless for a war narrative; what would be far more valuable than this stuff is the strategic/political data: military info that's TOP SECRET or above, which I haven't seen yet; or stuff from the State Department or provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs). (One interesting item: A November 2006 report [11] on the WL site suggests that at least one PRT—a team of anthropologists, political and developmental specialists, and soldiers sent out to assist local Afghans in rebuilding their nation—engaged in propaganda, feeding broadcast information to local radio stations. It's not exactly damning, but it doesn't quite jibe with the PRTs' benevolent mission statement, either.)
By and large, like most of the stunts pulled by Assange, this one's long on heat and short on light, nothing you didn't already know if you were paying attention to our wars. (And to the extent that you weren't, well, I guess the leak is on the whole a good thing.) For the best color commentary on this document dump, check out the very succinct analysis [12] of Abu Muqawama at the Center for a New American Security. He pretty much says it all [12].

On the Death of the Climate Bill

By David Roberts | Fri Jul. 23, 2010 12:47 PM PDT

[1]

As Jon noted [2], Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has officially announced [3] that there will be no climate bill this year. But Jon's post doesn't fully convey the extent of the capitulation. What's happened is total and complete surrender. There's no silver lining in this cloud.

Not only will the bill not contain any restrictions on greenhouse gases—not even a watered-down utility-only cap—it won't even contain the two other key policies that would have moved clean energy forward: the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) and the energy efficiency standards.

Basically, Reid canvassed his caucus and figured out what they could pay for (without a carbon price for funding) and what already had 60 votes. This is it:

* Some response to the Gulf oil spill, in the form of tighter restrictions on offshore drilling.
* Some pork for natural gas vehicles. (T-Boone gets his money.)
* Home Star [4].
* Some money for land and water conservation. (Baucus demanded $5 billion for this, leaving other, much more worthy clean energy programs begging.)

Home Star is good, but as an energy bill? This is f*cking pathetic. It's little better than what the Republican Congress produced under George Bush.

I'm running around at Netroots Nation right now, so I don't have a lot of time, but just a few quick notes.

Blame where it is due: I'm frustrated with Obama's passivity on this issue. I'm frustrated with Reid. I'm frustrated with the environmental movement. But we should be clear about where the bulk of the responsibility for this farce ultimately lies: the Republican Party and a handful of "centrist" Democrats in the Senate. They are the ones who refused to vote for a bill, no matter how many compromises were made, no matter how clear the urgency of the problem. They are moral cowards, condemning their own children and grandchildren to suffering to serve their own narrow electoral interests. There isn't enough contempt in the world for them. So when the anger and recrimination get going—as they already are [5]—let's at least try to keep the focus on the real malefactors.

The cap is dead this year, but the RES & efficiency don't have to be: I've heard that some environmental groups are loath to push for an RES this year, because they think it's a kind of sweetener that will help the cap go down next year. That is dangerously short-sighted and wrong-headed. We know that the RES and efficiency have bipartisan support, and with a little bit of pressure, they could be strengthened. Green groups (and progressive senators) should rally around these two policies, and only these two policies, for the next few weeks.

Big Coal will be back begging for cap-and-trade: No, really. Right now there are EPA rules in the pipeline that are going to shut down a third or more of the existing coal fleet. No new coal plants are going to get built—they're not cost-competitive with natural gas or wind, and every one runs into a buzzsaw of grassroots opposition. In other words, carbon caps or no carbon caps, Big Coal is in trouble. Sooner or later, the industry will realize that the funding it can get from cap-and-trade, to support carbon capture and sequestration, is its only path to survival. Robert Byrd tried to tell the industry the truth before he died. Byron Dorgan tried to tell it the truth [6] just the other day. By 2012, certainly by 2015 when many of the rules kick in, the industry will be forced to acknowledge this basic truth. And they'll come begging Congress for cap-and-trade.

Protecting the EPA is now job one for progressives: Murkowski already tried to block EPA on carbon. Rockefeller's going to try again shortly, and his bid is going to be even trickier to block than hers. The EPA's ability to act must be protected. It won't be as comprehensive, as economically efficient, or as socially cooperative as smart climate legislation would have been, but it will reduce carbon. And you know what? Senators from coal-heavy states have poorly served their constituents, so as far as I'm concerned, they deserve a big ol' EPA boot to the ass. They made this bed, they can sleep in it.

"We don't have 60 votes" is bull: Every cowardly senator repeats it like a talisman to ward off the terrible threat of having to act: "We don't have the votes." Two things to say about that. First, of course you don't have votes for something this controversial before you go to the floor and force the issue. Pelosi didn't have the votes before she took the House bill to the floor. She got the votes by twisting arms and making deals. She forced the issue. That was the only way the Senate vote could ever work—if the bill was put on the floor, the issue was forced, and Dems united in daring the GOP to vote against addressing the oil spill. There's no guarantee that would have worked, but at least it would have been a political rallying point. It would have put senators on record. And it's not like the wimpy avoidance strategy is producing better results.

Second, senators need to stop talking about "60 votes" as though it's in the Constitution that the U.S. Senate—unlike every other legislative body on the planet—has a supermajority requirement. It's not in the Constitution. It's an accident, an informal rule that Republicans have taken to relentlessly abusing, not to extend debate but simply to degrade the Senate's ability to act. The filibuster is anti-democratic and it is thwarting the country's will. The American people need to be told this and senators who still want their institution to be minimally functional need to start getting angry about it.

It's a sad, corrupt state of affairs this country finds itself in. I wish I had some hopeful words to offer. But at this point, American government appears to be broken. And our children and grandchildren will suffer for it.

State and EPA Climate Action Become Key as Senate Gives Up

By Jonathan Hiskes | Fri Jul. 23, 2010 12:26 PM PDT

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[1]The Senate on Thursday officially gave up [2] on trying to pass a climate bill in the foreseeable future—so what's plan B? Leadership from states and federal agencies.
A mishmash of state plans and existing laws doesn't sound like much. Climate experts have long preferred a national, economy-wide approach to cutting carbon pollution. But existing and announced state plans would do more good than you might assume.
Ten northeastern states already run [3] a functional cap-and-trade system, and 11 Western states and Canadian provinces are planning to start their own, the Western Climate Initiative, in 2012. And the Environmental Protection Agency continues its own march toward regulating climate pollution—which the Supreme Court directed it to do [4].

So it's pretty darn useful that the World Resources Institute [4] has a new report [5] out today that calculates what exactly states and federal agencies could accomplish in the absence of Congressional action. The WRI research group looked at current and in-the-works state programs, as well as existing law directing federal agencies to cut carbon emissions. They measured the impact of these combined activities against President Obama's pledge in Copenhagen last year to cut emissions "in the range of 17 percent" below 2005 levels by 2020.
The top-line finding: States and federal agencies could keep us on track in the near-term—until about 2016—but after that they would be insufficient. That's the best-case scenario. Because there's so much uncertainty about how state and federal agency plans will be executed, WRI mapped out "lackluster," "middle-of-the-road," and "go-getter" scenarios.
Here's how each would perform compared to business as usual:Courtesy WRI.org
The bottom line on that graph charts the CO2 reductions the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the whole world must achieve to avert catastrophic climate change. But even meeting those targets only gets us down to 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide-equivalent in the atmosphere; scientific consensus holds that 350 ppm is the safe upper limit.
WRI also mapped out the projected emissions from different sectors of the economy based on the various scenarios:Courtesy WRI.org
The electricity industry (in blue) is the biggest reduction target by far, and that's where things get wonky quickly. The report considers regulatory action the EPA could take under several parts of the Clean Air Act—New Source Performance Standards, Best Available Control Technology, and even more obscure titles and section numbers. But none of this works if Congress strips the EPA's authority to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act—something some senators have threatened to do [6].
"The study highlights both the need to pass climate legislation and the importance of preserving existing authorities," WRI President Jonathan Lash said in a prepared statement. "The study's findings make it very clear that current efforts by Congress to curb EPA authority will undermine U.S. competitiveness in a clean energy world economy, block control of dangerous pollutants, and put the U.S. at odds with its allies."
The report also looks at steps the energy and transportation departments could take to boost efficiency standards for appliances and automobiles. Notably, it does not measure transportation planning—which has a profound effect on oil consumption—or forestry or agriculture.
The authors also concede something that these sorts of reports tend to downplay: It's hard to predict the future. "Longer-term reductions post-2020 are less certain under all analyzed scenarios," they write, "primarily due to uncertainty about how quickly aging power plants will be replaced and the transportation sector can be transformed."
Hence the focus on the next ten years. The report will no doubt meet criticism somewhere—in a hyper-partisan era, it's easy to dismiss think-tank research as so much political ammunition. What's interesting about this report is that it doesn't make any claims about the amount of jobs created, money saved, double rainbows [7] produced, etc. WRI makes it clear it wants a climate bill; here it looks at what may happen without one.
So is this any comfort? Good news or bad? The devil, as always, is in the details and the execution. The report illustrates the wide range between "lackluster" and "go-getter" policy. That's the field of play for anyone who wants to help.
Update: Here's an explanatory video from WRI:

This post [8] was produced by Grist [9] for the Climate Desk [1] collaboration.

Don'r Asl Don't Tell Weighs Heavily on Obama

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The Obama Paradox

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Ariz. Immigration Law takes Effecy This Thursday

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House Chart for 2010 Elections

War Diary 2004-2010 

 dedicated page for War Diary
Sunday, July 26 5pm EST.

WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.
The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.
The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.
Most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments. However the reports also contain related information from Marines intelligence, US Embassies, and reports about corruption and development activity across Afghanistan.