100 Days
McClatchy features a nice anniversary article from the Miami Herald on the Well from Hell at 100 days.
My only quibble is that they are overly optimistic about the recovery. The fact that the surface oil was churned by Tropical Storm Bonnie and isn’t as visible from the air, doesn’t mean it is gone. What are gone are all of the creatures killed by the pollution.
After a hurricane you might believe that your trees survived, but then you notice that they don’t green out the following spring and you have to take them down. Theirs wasn’t a visible death, but they died just the same from the salt water carried by the wind.
Just because you don’t see the all the dead creatures wash ashore, doesn’t mean they didn’t die. The indicator of their deaths will be absence of their offspring. When the waters are again open for fishing, there may be nothing to catch.
5 comments
Once again, Mr. Duff, that is information released by BP because BP controls the collection of “official” data. Local reporters, people who actually live down here and look for themselves can tell you that that article is total, unadulterated garbage.
BP is refusing to pay for real sampling, so the 350 acres of oil wetlands is absolutely absurd, as a Times-Picayune reporter on a single outing personally saw and reported on oil in more acreage than that.
The wetlands loss is the result of drainage by oil companies and Louisiana has finally passed the legislation and dedicated the funding to reverse the trend.
Time magazine is not a reliable source of news in general, and environmental news in particular. They are another corporate shill which is why they are losing subscribers. People aren’t interested in paying to read corporate press releases.
There have been videos on the local news of pods of 8 to dolphins covered in oil.
Stop trying to make light of this and start thinking about alternatives to eating seafood, because the price will be rising significantly.
In due time there will be peer-reviewed studies of the impact in publications like Nature which will present the real facts.
… another former LSU prof who’s working for a spill response contractor, says…”
Thank you, David, for being honest enough not to omit the crux of the matter. I rest my case. No need to say more, except perhaps… Upton Sinclair.
BP won’t release all of its data, requires people who work for them to sign non-disclosure agreements, and illegally bars the media from the areas impacted.
Given that the oil plumes were documented and verified by Florida universities that are not funded by petroleum companies, plumes that BP denied existed, and that BP as lied about nearly everything concerning this well, including lying on its permit applications, I don’t have any use for anyone working with or for BP.
Eleven people died when the well blew up, more have committed suicide after being ruined by the event. Teachers and students lost the summer jobs they depended on to make it through the year. People are losing their homes and businesses. Florida has lost billions in revenue, tens of thousands have lost their jobs – how, exactly is this not a catastrophe?
BTW, Dr. Van Heerden is a geologist and climate scientist whose work on hurricanes is respected, but this isn’t in his field of expertise. He is rather fond of talking to the media, which is the main reason he is a “former LSU professor”. If you have an interest in the hydrology surrounding storm surge or building flood control systems to deal with it, he is a valuable resource.
He is not an expert on marine biology, which is where the real catastrophe is occurring, and his work on wetlands deals with their geology, not their ecology.
Mr. Duff, when you are not a tenured professor and you frequently use your time before the microphones to tell people what morons you think the leaders of your university are, you should not be surprised when they don’t renew your contract.
The conditions of the marshes, as Dr. Turner has already noted in a piece in the Washington Post won’t be known until next spring, and his comments about the airboats reflects his point that clean up efforts attempted so far, have made matters worse by spreading the pollution. The clean up in the marshes, like everything else BP has done, was incompetent. Grabbing a few comments out of context doesn’t help, and shows the bias of the reporter.
As for cheering me up, we have a disaster down here. British Petroleum caused it by their reckless behavior and exacerbated it with their total incompetence. It took a plumber from Kansas to show them how to cap the well.
In addition to the millions of gallons of oil, they pumped more than a million gallons of Corexit, a toxic oil dispersant known to cause uncontrolled hemorrhaging in people and animals, as is stated on the containers it comes in. Some of the dolphin necropsies that have shown massive internal bleeding causing death. Corexit contact is very similar to the results of Ebola.
These quotes of “experts” are coming from LSU – Louisiana State University. A public university in a state dominated by the petrochemical industry. Your contract won’t get renewed if you bad-mouth the boss in public, so they aren’t going to make overly negative comments, no matter what they make think.
David, why do you quote primarily “experts” at or from LSU? and why only people whose livelihood is cleaning up BP’s fuckups? Do you think we’re credulous, or do you want us to think you are credulous?
Most especially, what’s it to you? You’re tapping to people, remember, some of whom can look out the windows of their homes and see the effects of the spill firsthand. You’re tapping to fishermen whose daily catch has dropped precipitously. You’re tapping to people who by now are accustomed to being lied to. You can repeat official lies to these people all you want; it’s not going to change what they see. In other words, NOBODY BELIEVES YOU. Give it up, David. STFU and go home. At least you don’t have to wade through oil and dispersant to get there.