Posts from — August 2010

This week there was waffling going on as to whether it was “necessary” to finish the relief well because BP “might” have already sealed the well with its “top kill” operation.

Jaquetta White of The Times-Picayune reports on the correct decision being made

“The relief well will be finished,” National Incident Commander Thad Allen said. “That is the end result.”

Just how the relief well will be completed is unclear. It may require, for instance, some additional steps to guard against increased pressure in the Macondo well and the possibility of oil escaping into the sea.

Allen’s comments came a day after he said drilling on the relief well might not be necessary.

The editorial page staff of The Times-Picayune echoes the feelings of many on the Gulf Coast:

This is one monster than needs a wooden stake through its heart, and it’s good that the federal government is insisting on it.

No one down here with more than three working brain cells [a requirement that excludes the elected officials of Mississippi] believes anything coming from the “Unified Command”. We won’t settle for guesses – we want concrete results – as in cement at the bottom of that well.

The Pensacola News Journal reports that Drones to study hurricanes

Frank Marks, the director of NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division, says the new study starting this week will use the Global Hawk, a jet-powered unmanned drone used by the military in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Hurricanes are an obvious choice for drone use, as there are no other aircraft around and the Global Hawk has extended flight time to observe the storm without risking a crew. It has the speed, altitude, and loiter time to sample parts of the hurricanes that manned flights avoid for flight safety reasons. The Hurricane Hunters may be crazy, but they are not suicidal.

Dr Jeff Masters has an in depth explainer on Causes of the Russian heat wave and Pakistani floods. The quick answer is that the main jet stream in the area, the high-speed air current in the upper atmosphere, has shifted significantly to the North, which is pulling the monsoon rains further North, but is pulling away the normal clouds and showers in Russia.

These shifts in jet streams may also be causing the upper level lows over the Atlantic that are sucking the life out of tropical waves with increased wind shear and dry air when we have very hot sea surface temperatures that should be producing a lot of storms.

A major problem with global climate change is that we can’t predict how things will work any more, because the circumstances have altered to such a great extent that the standard weather models are becoming less and less useful.

Yes, it’s Friday the 13^th again. The 13^th falls on a Friday more than any other day of the week, so get over it. It’s only valid in in English and Portuguese speaking countries, so go visit a Spanish-speaking neighborhood for the day.

If you want to blame someone, it’s the calendar of Pope Gregory XIII that created this imbalance. [He obviously didn’t have a problem with the number on any day.]

Dot’s Day

Go away!

[Editor: Dot and Sox are still here, but they spend a lot of time sleeping in their undisclosed locations and really don’t like the camera which is why I had to use an old picture.]

Friday Ark

It has rained on and off all day, and while I don’t like driving in the rain because of the bad drainage on many major roads and the inability of too many people to drive in the rain, I needed to check out the last two stores in town that might have the particular type of mop that my Mother prefers.

So I was stopped at a light and got hit from the back. The young woman who was driving almost avoided the accident. When she realized her car wasn’t going to stop in time she attempted to steer into a parking lot, If she had started just a foot earlier there would have been no accident.

The Honda looked almost undamaged, but the angle of contact was obviously bad for the Neon, as, in addition to the front bumper the hood bent and some of the supports looked out of whack.

I had no injuries of any kind, and the Honda didn’t move at all, as the rear bumper worked as designed and absorbed the force. The amount of force was so slight that no one’s air bags deployed, but the two people in the Neon had some bumps and were really upset.

We pulled into the parking lot to free up the major road we were on, and the wait began.

It turns out that if it had happened on the intersecting road, the Sheriff’s deputy who arrived in minutes could have taken the report, but since it happened on the main road we had to wait an hour for the Florida Highway Patrol. I fail to see the logic.

Nate Monroe of the Daily Comet [local Louisiana newspaper] tells us that an Oil blowout causes evacuations

PAINCOURTVILLE — A blown-out well in Assumption Parish was spewing oil and gas nearly 200 feet into the air Wednesday, and it could be 10 days before crews can cap it, officials said.

Assumption Parish sheriff’s deputies responded to a 3:30 a.m. complaint Wednesday of oil and gas spewing onto the road, said Assumption Sheriff Mike Waguespack.

Waguespack said no one was injured in the blowout, and State Police are investigating.
…

Mantle Oil and Gas of Friendswood, Texas, is the well operator, and Cajun Well Services of Breaux Bridge was contracted to finish the well, which began drilling in June.

It was on dry land, surrounded by sugar cane fields and [this is the totally unbelievable part] a number of knowledgeable people are saying the blowout preventer failed! I mean when is that last time anyone heard of a blowout preventer failing? There hasn’t been a failure reported in nearly… well… four months.

But people want to encourage this sort of thing.

Because he was right about the economy, I have given Paul Krugman a pass on his status as an Obama “fan boy”. But this post suggesting that it’s White House aides and not Obama that are the problem, is a bridge too far.

Obama personally selected Joe LIEberman as his “mentor” in the US Senate. Obama personally selected the people around him. Given that they didn’t even let Shirley Sherrod park the car before bombarding her with demands for a resignation, and the many instances of good people being cast aside over trivial matters, Obama knows what the people around him think, and he must approve.

It wasn’t just what Gibbs said, it was the language used: “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon.” That is wingnut language to describe “liberals”, not Democratic language.

People need to withdraw from the Obama культ личности, cult of personality, and see him as the moderate to conservative Republican that his voting record supports.

Of historic note, Tsar Nikolai knew, and the Kazaks were sent to crush the peasants who approached the palace. That was pretty much what happened to the “Bonus Marchers” during the Hoover administration, only General MacArthur used tanks.

Let’s see, Wall Street dropped about 3% today, along with the major world markets.

The Treasury auctioned $24 billion in 10-year bonds and $73 billion was trying to get in.

Krugman notes that “…the real interest rate on 5-year inflation-protected securities is now negative.” [08/10/10 -0.02%].

With all of the major markets under the thrall of austerians there is no demand because everyone is trying to stuff their money under their mattress.

The world is awash in money with no place for it to go, and this will eventually lead to another bubble.

You can’t have a recovery unless there are jobs, because without jobs there is no demand. Welcome to the painful world of deflation.

Position: 28.3N 87.6W [ 4 PM CDT 2100 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [305°] near 12 mph [19 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 30 mph [45 kph].
Wind Gusts: 40 mph [ 60 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1009 mb ↑.

Currently about 105 miles [170 km] East-Southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River.

A Tropical Storm Warning has been discontinued at 4PM CDT as the storm dissipates. This is the final advisory.

I got some clouds and a very nice breeze.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

They really do want to fail and fail badly this November. How else can you judge what Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said in an interview.

Digby says Welcome Their Hatred, and Susie said Poor Robert Gibbs, just before hitting the bomb release.

This White House is a biosphere, cut off from the rest of the country. Don’t they know any real people? Do they ever leave their bubble?

They were given substantial majorities in both houses of Congress; they haven’t provided even one substantial benefit for the people who voted for them; they are talking about taking even more from those people; and they don’t understand why those people are angry.

Obama may be intelligent, but he’s not very smart.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. – Albert Einstein

First off, the formula e = mc² was not a bolt out of the blue. It expresses the ratios involved in the Law of the Conservation of Energy and is obviously derivative of Leibnitz’s formula for kinetic energy from the 1680s and the general concepts put forth in the Laws of Motion published by Isaac Newton in that time frame.

If more Americans took math and science in high school, and those that did actually paid attention, then Andrew Schlafly [spawn of Phyllis] would not have attempted to claim that the Theory of Relativity was a liberal plot to push relativism while claiming that it doesn’t allow for exceptions, and Steve Bates wouldn’t get annoyed at him.

Some basic logic for Mr. Schafly – only absolutes have no exceptions, OK? If there are no exceptions, there can’t be relativity. That’s also why the formula, e = mc², is not the equivalent of the Theory of Relativity.

Aside: Steve has already encountered more than his share of stupid this month. His DSL went down and when they reconnected it, SBC decided it didn’t want to talk to Linux users. The fact that SBC is a “Baby Bell” and Unix, the grandfather of Linux. was developed at Bell Labs and the fact that Linux powers an estimated 3 out of 4 servers on the Internet, doesn’t stop SBC from demanding that you use IE or Safari to connect to their system. Maroons, just total maroons [as a certain rabbit use to say].

Position: 26.2N 84.2W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [320°] near 5 mph [ 7 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1007 mb.

Currently about 360 miles [580 km] East-Southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River.

A Tropical Storm Warning has been issued for the Northern Gulf from Destin, Florida West to Intercoastal City, Louisiana including New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Ben Raines of the Mobile Press-Register tells a different story: Oil penetrates previously pristine Mississippi marsh, weeks after well cap

HORN ISLAND, Miss. — Weeks after BP capped its runaway well, a greasy band of oil appeared on the grasses fringing Garden Pond, a previously pristine interior marsh.

Glops of deep brown oil floated on the surface of the saltwater pond Saturday and appeared to be scarcely weathered, compared to much of the oil that has come ashore. The oil penetrated deep into the green marsh grass, coating the stalks from the mud to about 18 inches up.

The stain on the grass around the pond looked like a dirty black ring that one might see in a bathtub, although the grass still seemed vigorous.
…

Marsh periwinkles, the small snails found in coastal marshes by the thousands, could be seen clinging to the grass stems, bits of sticky oil present on their shells. Hermit crabs prowled the water’s edge, their shells also stained.

Clumps of oysters in the creek were smeared with a goopy layer of oil. A large blue crab encountered by the Press-Register raised its claws in defense of a small pool of water when approached but didn’t attempt to flee or bury itself.

Encountered again about 30 minutes later, the crab had expired, its claws hanging limp, small clumps of oil clinging to the mouth parts used for breathing and eating.

That blue crab wasn’t covered in oil, it just had small clumps on it. There were booms protecting the island, but they weren’t stained because the oil came in below the surface, something that has been noticed all along the coast. This oil is not all rising to the surface, it is coming in along the bottom.

Ben Raines in the environment reporter for the Press-Register and he gives a pretty detailed description of what was found. This wasn’t tar balls, this was oil. It isn’t rising to the surface, so it isn’t weathering.

Geoff Pender of the Biloxi Sun-Herald tells us that according to Mississippi leaders: Spill’s environmental impact overhyped

Gov. Haley Barbour, and the chiefs of the state’s two main environmental agencies — the Departments of Marine Resources and Environmental Quality — have proposed that this natural cleanup, along with some relatively minor scouring of tar off the beaches by BP workers, can be handled in a matter of weeks or a few months, not years.

“That oil might be degraded all the way to CO2 and water in a matter of weeks,” said DMR Director Bill Walker. “It might be six weeks, might be 10 weeks, but we are not talking about years.”

The it’s-not-so-bad crowd says the media and environmentalists have overhyped the environmental impact of the BP disaster, especially for Mississippi. The Magnolia State, thanks to geography, weather and tides, has been spared heavier oiling seen by its sister Gulf states.
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